Urielle

I haven't thought about my various DnD character backstories until a few days ago since posting Sariel and Raph's last May. Here's Urielle today, whom I have a good bit of sympathy for currently due to also being sick. I did not create a good life for her.

...

Commoner children always envy the children of nobles, for they always have delicious food to eat and the newest toys to play with. But the children of nobles certainly don’t live enviable lives. Most of them, with rare exceptions, live as pawns in an intergenerational chess game of power and wealth. Ones value is directly associated with how much benefit one can bring to their family. For those with talent, the benefits can be earned. For most of the children, however, it’s through their marriage prospects. Urielle is not talented, or at least no one knew since she’s been sickly from birth, so her marriage has been set as the singular most important event in her life.

Urielle silently suffered through her childhood in Neverwinter, until her parents saw fit to send her away to Conyberry as the pastoral setting was said to help with chronic illness. Indeed her health did improve after almost a year of residency there, after which she was swiftly retrieved back to meet with prospective marriage candidates. They never even suspected that the real reason why Urielle’s health improved was that she met and fell in love with a local boy.

After finally finished with the weeks and weeks of meetings which Urielle obediently attended, she begged to go back to the village. Her parents granted her silly wish since they were busy with selecting the most suitable husband and wanted her out of the way. But since Urielle has never made a request before, much less a passionate plea, her parents were rightly suspicious and warned the servants to watch her closely. After all they had to maintain the value of their investment.

Urielle’s parents quickly selected a candidate and began negotiations with the opposing family. In the midst, they receive an alarming message from the servants. Apparently the fiance made a surprise visit to their daughter (“ha his passion surely gives us an advantage” commented Urielle’s father with a smirk), but there was also a village boy whom the daughter was fraternizing with (the mother promptly threw her teacup at the servant relying the message when she heard this). Turns out a servant caught the boy knocking on the daughters bedroom window, and coaxed the full story of their relationship from the panicking girl afterwards. Urielle’s parents sent back a simple reply after cooling down their initial rage, it said: “you will marry the husband of our choosing and the boy will be unharmed. Cut off contact with him immediately.”

And Urielle’s wedding came and went without any other interruptions or problems. Urielle being consistently nauseous with the guilt of abandoning her love did not count as a problem of course. The benefit of being a sickly child is that you learn how to hide your discomfort. Her health did rapidly deteriorate after the wedding, leaving her once again bed ridden in a different lavishly decorated mansion. Her illness also obviously prevented her from birthing a heir, and soon her husband stopped even giving excuses for his absence. That left her plenty of time to read and be consumed by her guilt. She often fantasized that he was happily married to a girl from the same village and they were living an idyllic life full of love.

This fantasy sustained her through dark times, until a day when she overheard the servants talking. She was waking from her nap as the servants who has been with her in the village walked in. They didn’t notice that she was already awake, and continued their conversation in hushed tones. Apparently one of the servants saw the boy a few times in squalor around the slums quarters, his lavender eyes being such a striking feature that the servant was certain it was the same boy despite only seeing his face once.

Urielle is pretty sure something shattered within her on the day she heard he was also subsiding in Neverwinter. Or maybe the cracks were there from the very beginning. Whatever it is, she can’t bear to be trapped where she is anymore. Or trapped at all, for her life was never her own. The brief respite in Conyberry with Raphael was a dream turned nightmare. Although what could she do? She’s been a fragile little flower sheltered in a greenhouse all her life.

But being in the pits has the distinct advantage of feeling like she has nothing to lose. So whenever Urielle wasn’t consumed by her anxiety and fear, she had her servants bring large number of tomes to read. Of any and all subjects. She slowly learned of the world outside her greenhouse and discovered an affinity for the arcane. Turns out that she was actually one of those talented children.

Then Urielle plotted. She had longer and longer periods of focus, but maintained a facade of sickness. It turns out deciphering the arcane is an effective coping mechanism. She requested more difficult arcane texts, but also of other subjects to misdirect. She read and researched with a fever, but she didn’t know if it was more motivated by reaching for a better future or simply trying to run away from her past.

And one day she was just gone from her bedroom. There was a brief uproar, followed by a lacklustre search effort, but getting away was much easier than Urielle thought. But just how little her own family and husband cares about her once she’s deemed used up or useless still comes as a bitter surprise to her. Urielle sets out to run away as far as possible.

...

One by one Urielle’s senses slowly return to her. The cooling sensation of mud on her skin, the eery quite, the faint scent of smoke, the taste of blood inside her mouth, and the brilliant night sky that stretches as far as her eyes can see. She tries to move her limbs and twist her body, but could not summon any strength to do so. Ah, she realizes, it’s finally her turn at death’s door.

It’s a door that she is quite familiar with, having blamed herself countless times for leading her party members to it. On better days she lets herself be convinced that it’s not her fault. On the best of days she even believes that abandoning Raphael wasn’t her fault. She was a naive girl that didn’t have the power to protect him (or herself) in any better way.

Urielle is no longer that girl. She became a powerful wizard that travelled the planes, meeting and parting with so many people. Some of them fleeting and inconsequential, a few (maybe one in particular) that made her feel cared for and at home.

But neither the nightmares or respites matter now. Or maybe the totality of their meaning is in this brief moment before death takes her. Does it really matter whether she was a victim or perpetrator, whether her life was a tragedy or comedy? It’s all just absurdity. What purpose does this final desperate search for meaning serve? Urielle manages a faint smile as her thoughts fade away and the her eyes close under the endless expanse of the sky.