I'm thinking about this modified as a story to submit for bardics. It's Myrrhime's background, but it's way too long to be the in-game posted background (not that anybody reads backgrounds).

Anybody have any thoughts or suggestions? Be brutal, you won't make me cry.

I wrote this for another game originally, and to be honest the overly-formal tone and the melodrama fit there much more than here, and definitely fit my character there more than the way I'm playing Myrrhime here. Tell me if you think it is too weepy.

If I enter it in bardics, I may edit it to be in 3rd person rather than 1st person.

Finally..... can anybody comment on the rp behind the mhun slave trader who lives in Moghedu and sells slaves of all races to Manara and just mhuns to Mhaldor? As far as I can figure out, it doesn't contradict anything, but it's also a bit of a stretch.

Here we go......


I am nameless, ungrateful daughter and a coward. In my former life, I was fostered by a Mhun miner in Moghedu. He was of a noble family of gem merchants, favored by the Mhunna, and he also illicitly traded in slaves with Mhaldor and Manara. I am told that my lord father found me as a baby, abandoned near the entrance to Moghedu with a spring of myrrh in my hand, and having no heir he adopted me as his own and named me Myrrhime.

Most of my childhood was spent with a tutor, my father having little time to devote to anything but his trade. However, he treated me well, providing for me amply and insisting I be granted the status and privileges of his daughter by blood. When I was fifteen, I told my father that I desired to take the Trial of Rebirth and eventually become a bard, having always had a talent for music. My father was displeased with me for having such ambitions, and insisted that I would stay in Moghedu. He ordered me away and told me that he would begin looking for a suitable husband for me, and in the meantime I was not to study music of any sort.

My tutor was sent away and I was assigned to the slave cavern to supervise their feeding and training, and to keep them secret from the other mhun who disapproved of my father's trade. My lord father did not consider that my nature ill-suited me for such work, or maybe he hoped that working with slaves would instill in me the proper attitude. This assignment affected me deeply, although I tried to hide it from the others in my father's family. As I spent time with the slaves, I realized with surprise that they were thinking, feeling, rational creatures who had been captured from lives of freedom. As young child, slaves never spoke in my presence, they simply performed their tasks and went away. In my naiveté, I assumed that slaves must be a lower race, no more capable of rational thought than horses or mules. After spending time with the slaves, I realized that they had only been silent and obedient on pain of punishment or death, and I was struck by their suffering.

I remaining in charge of the slaves for several months, and grew to care about many of them. They told me stories about their lives before they were captured, and the hardships they had faced at the hands of my father's guards. When I learned that a large number of our Tsol'aa slaves were to be sold to a particularly cruel gnoll to be used as pleasure-slaves for the soldiers, I was in agony. I went to my father and begged him to either release the slaves, or allow me to purchase them from him with the small amount of gold I had raised from selling my jewellery. Father flatly said no, that this deal with the gnoll army was part of a long-standing contract and these slaves had been hand-picked. He said they probably wouldn't last more than six months with all that the soldiers would put them through, but laughed and said replacing them would be more profit for him.

I broke down and lost my temper, sobbing and pleading with my father, telling him that it was cruel, that I couldn't understand how he he made his gold from causing so much suffering. He was furious, and berated me for my disobedience and ungratefulness. He told me that the slave trade was what had given me my rank and status, and allowed me to live in wealth and comfort. He said that the world was for the strong, and that the slaves were weak worms who did not deserve my pity. Father ordered me away, telling me that I was lucky he did not disown and enslave me for daring to speak to him as I did. Numb and broken, I left.

The next few days I spent locked in my chamber, refusing to see anybody. My father was a devout follower of Lord Shaitan, and had instilled in me the Seven Truths since I was a child, but I had never quite understood what they meant until just then. It was heartbreaking, for I had loved my father. As I grew up I wanted desperately for him to love and trust me. Everything I thought I had known was falling in shambles around me. In my misery, I began rationalizing that perhaps my father was right, perhaps I was weak and that was why I was feeling pity for the slaves, that maybe suffering was all there was to life.

After a few months, father sent two guards to bring me to his chambers. He informed me that he had found me a husband, that the dowry had already been transferred and my future husband was here waiting for me. The husband he had chosen for me was a Mhaldorian named Gack, a wealthy slave-trader and a friend and client of my father, whom I knew to be unbearably cruel to his slaves. Although I tried to be strong and show my father he had been wrong about me, I broke down and began to cry. My father coldly told me that I would consent to this marriage or I would be sold to Manara with the Tsol'aa the next month.

A feast had been planned that evening by the Mhunna for all the Mhun merchants and their families, and Gack and I were married at the feast. I could not object, knowing what would happen to me if I did. My father made a grand speech wishing us well in our marriage, speaking of me as if he truly loved me. I wanted desperately to believe him, yet all I could think of was his threat to enslave me if I refused to marry. That night, as I was forced to endure Gack's filthy touch, all I wanted was to die.

When Gack finally fell asleep, all I could think about was to get away from him and from my father. I ran blindly back to my own chamber, sobbing and in pain. In the early morning hours when my tears ran out and my mind returned, I realized that what I had suffered that night was nothing compared to what the slaves would suffer in the hands of the gnolls. Even if it meant stealing from my father, betraying everything I had ever known, I could not allow that to happen.

Taking a dagger and a small bag of gems I had been saving up, I snuck through the tunnels and back to the slave pens. Mina, a Cyrenian Tsol'aa and one of the slaves I had become closest to, saw me coming and met me at the iron gate. She was one of the slaves who was to be sold the next day. I unlocked the gate and let myself into her pen, and whispered to Mina that I would leave the gate open and that she should organize all the slaves and get them out. I gave her half of the gems and asked her to divide them among the slaves once they were free. Mina thanked me profusely. Looking at my tear-stained face, she started to ask me what had happened at the feast, but I cut her off and left the pen, telling her there was no time to talk and she had to get the slaves out.

Pretending that I had instructions from my father, I gathered the guards together and gave them a stern lecture about their lax behavior, making sure I held them long enough that all the slaves would be able to get through the gate and along the tunnel past the mines. I told the guards that on pain of death, they were to guard my father's chamber until morning, in the hopes that they would not discover the slaves missing until the next day.

With a heavy heart, I made my way to the shrine to Shaitan near my father's caverns. My father worshipped at that shrine often, offering the bodies of the slaves who died in the pens. What I had done in releasing the slaves was against everything I had been taught. Life was suffering and pain, and I was too weak to face reality. I looked blindly at the shrine, weeping, just wanting everything to be over. Gathering up my courage, I prepared to slit my wrists, to sacrifice myself in penance for my weakness.

As I started to draw the dagger across my right wrist and the first drops of blood fell onto the shrine, I felt a hand roughly grab my shoulder. I whirled around, expecting to see my father or one of his guards and preparing to fight back, hoping they would kill me rather than make me a slave. Instead, I saw Mina, who looked at me with reproach. She begged me not to kill myself, and urged me to leave Moghedu and begin a new life. Looking at Mina, my resolve weakened. I knew how much she had risked to come back here, knowing the punishment if she were caught, all to help me. Sobbing with mixed relief and self-loathing, I dropped the dagger onto the shrine. Mina looked at me with tears in her eyes, taking both my hands in hers. As I looked into her eyes, the blackness in my heart seemed to lift. I was still miserable and disillusioned, a coward who had betrayed all I had known, but somehow I would make my life worthwhile.

I read the in game backgrounds and yours was nice to read.

I think it's fitting and very interesting. I couldn't add anything to it or take anything away from it. It's wonderful to read.

Wow, interesting. Gack.... gross.

Nice job.

People still make backgrounds? Cool read.