Fadra D'Rethi
| Fadra D'rethi | |||||||
| Female Drow (Faerun) | |||||||
| Player: Gallant | |||||||
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| General Information | ||||||||||
| Full Name: | Fadra Derethoi | |||||||||
| Nicknames: | Lady Rosegold, The Rosegold Errant | |||||||||
| Age: | 164 | |||||||||
| Deity: | Sune | |||||||||
| Alignment: |
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| Occupation: | Paladin | |||||||||
| Faction/Rank: | Order of the Planes-Militant | |||||||||
| Place of Birth: | Ust Natha | |||||||||
| Physical Attributes | ||||||||||
| Height: | 4'7" | |||||||||
| Weight: | 115 | |||||||||
| Eyes: | Red | |||||||||
| Hair: | White | |||||||||
| Complexion: | Clear, Smooth | |||||||||
| Physical Build: | Athletic, Toned | |||||||||
| Physical Features: | She wears her long hair in a braid that reaches almost to her waist, and wears rose-hip piercings. She is always clean and well groomed, often smelling faintly of that plant. | |||||||||
| Skills | ||||||||||
| Aside from being an above-average swordswoman, she is a fair-handed scribe, and dabbles in painting. | ||||||||||
| Equipment and Items | ||||||||||
| She carries a Blade of Roses, and typically wears somewhat elaborately feminine fullplate or heavy armor. | ||||||||||
Fadra D'rethi (Derethoi) is a drow paladin of Sune, in the service of the Order of the Planes-Militant, Second House of Celestia, who operates in the vicinity of Sigil and across the Planescape. She is a native of Aber-Toril.
She is the bearer of Kyorlen, the Faith Keeper.
She is the Bondmate of Rarlee.
Description
Fadra is fine-featured, with crimson eyes that trend towards more rosy tones in good lighting. Her hair is stark silver, tamed and woven carefully to a fine braid. A trained warrior, she's strong, limber, and remarkably healthy. She is well endowed for a drowess, and when she is not wearing her rose-embossed armor, she can fill out a dress with little problem and as much grace.
Although she is patient and typically serene, most note that Fadra can be a bit bull-headed, often leading her friends and companions into dangerous, sometimes even impossible situations - but it's just that she's undaunted, and firm in her convictions. Behind the shining armor, is a mind that's cool, calculating, and rather exacting, and oftentimes before these apparently half-cocked adventures, Fadra will exhaust herself in research, and is not shy of asking for the help of others who are better informed than she.
Most people find her kind and pleasant to be around.
Philosophy & Outlook
Some paladins know that they are called from a very young age. Some paladins are born good, grow up in cloisters, and squire, and have adventures alongside more experienced paladins, having bright and happy days in sunlight. Fadra is not one of those.
She knows, personally, the power of kindness given to monsters, because she was - and is - a monster herself. She does not compromise her beliefs, nor does she press them on others. She is not a sword for scouring the world of evil, though she bears one, and carries it well. Fadra instead views herself as an example and a living proof, having spent almost sixty years living as her former lover's goddess wished her to, as Beryl had painted her, long ago.
Fadra, a Sunite, trusts her heart oftentimes more than her own eyes, and never acts against it, caring not a whit for what others wish of her, which can confound other similar paladins who defer to higher guidance or church structures - in short, she is more heavily good than lawful, when it's reckoned thus.
Brief History
Fadra was born in 1192DR, in the city of Ust Natha, to Matron Deneve of House Derethoi, the Fourth house in Ust Natha of that year. She was preceeded by a brother, Kieves, and two sisters, Malise and Evess. Her father was never known to her.
In 1216DR, she attended the city's local temple of Lolth, but failed out two years later, after displaying an embarassing lack of aptitude. To the eternal derision of her sisters, she was trained, instead, as a sargtlin, in the care of her older brother Kieves.
In 1284DR, around the time when she assumed nominal command of the House's slave-forces and lower Sargtlin, she broke the hands of a human craftsman named Beryl. By 1299DR, he had become a permenant fixture in her chambers, where he produced artwork for the house, and entertained the young drowess as lover and confidant. He was slain in 1303DR, by one of her sisters, prompting Fadra, not yet a full adult, to flee Ust Natha for the surface.
Directed to the Dancers of Elistraee by the area's erstwhile peacekeeper, a silver dragon, Fadra realized her calling as a paladin by way of her mourning of Beryl, and thereafter spent her time with the Dancers upon the surface.
She spent a great deal of time erranting as the "Rose Gold Knight", and eventually "Lady Rosegold", throughout northern Tethyr, and southern Amn, though mostly within those mountains.
It was while she was clearing a portion of the upperdark of Gibberlings that she stumbled into a malfunctioning portal and ended up in Sigil.
Fadra's Paladin Oaths
- • I am a peaceful promoter of art, love and beauty.
- • I will defend things of beauty by vanquishing the ugliness of evil, even cloaked in beautiful form.
- • I will perform a loving act each day and awaken it in others as true love will win over all
- • I see beauty that radiates from the core. As a rough stone hides a diamond, a drab face may hide the heart of a saint
- • I am a firehair and lead by example, not with my blade. Where my blade passes, a life is cut short, and the potential for beauty is lessened. When my blade must pass let it be with mercy and for love.
- • I accept surrender if my opponent can be redeemed—and I never assume that they cannot be. All things that live love beauty, and I will show beauty’s answer to them.
- • I liberate others to show the beauty of freedom and the freedom in beauty.
Relationships
Allies
Rarlee, Bondmate
- To say that Fadra adores Rarlee is an understatement; when asked whether she would trade her long elven life for Rarlee's, she answered that she wouldn't be able to live with herself afterwards if she didn't, which is perhaps the most selfish thing she has ever claimed in public. To Fadra, Rarlee is a source of energy, hope, and boundless curiousity, and she loves the little kobold without reserve.
Barxire, of Mystra
- Barx and Fadra have a certain bond over their shared veneration of their deities, and Fadra admires his ability and experience on the subject a great deal. Although Barx rarely helps her directly, he often helps her plan, prepare, and execute her duties across the planes and serves as a fond, if fast, friend to unload her thoughts and ideas upon.
Tasha, Sensate
- The sorceress that Fadra trusts, more or less above all other mages, Fadra is fond of Tasha's counsel and considers her to be a leal companion. Although they rarely speak about much other than business, Fadra feels she is quite canny and relies on her expertise more often than not.
Coler, Governer
- First glance would make this an odd friendship, and second glance would prove it right; Fadra is well aware that Coler is evil, but, she can't imagine he will stay so for very long. Once, she allowed him to court her, though they've remained easy friends afterwards, with Fadra often giving him romantic advice or suggestions.
Record of Deeds
Capture of Hediam
On the tenth day of her first month in Sigil, Fadra witnessed the fall of the Planetar, Hediam, of the Golden Hills.
She gathered a group of adventurers, visited Bytopia, and gained the support of Housewarden Portia of the Planes-Militant, and a proxy of Garl Glittergold, acquiring both a scroll of binding and the Planetar's fallen sword, the Defender of the Twin Paradises (Kyorlen). She also acquired a Celestial Ruby, through the wizard Hel'vyst, by way of Bytopia, which could capture the Planetar's slain soul.
She and her companions summoned and faced Hediam on the eighteenth day, and finding her unwilling to repent and return, they managed to strike her down with the assistance of the Hollyphant, Tutu, and a small host of celestials, sealing her in the ruby and returning her to Garl Glittergold.
For this she was inducted into the Planes-Militant under Housewarden Portia of the Second House of Celestia.
Irrinet Prime
Following a portal device invented by the gnome Wilbur, who had been stuck on a rapidly de-aquifying world with a species of peaceful kuo-toa, Fadra served as the primary negotiator with the Illithid, Lord Trasgul, who ruled over the remains of the world of Irrinet. Clearing out a cavern for the displaced water-worlders to live in, along with the peaceful monsters gathered by Trasgul, she assisted in resettling them peacefully.
Oh, they also managed to save the gnome.
Decimating the Century
In the ninth month of the current year, she led a patrol near Cadarn, encountering a century of devils under the mastery of the former master of the Sixth Circle of Hell. She, and a company of planeswalkers, killed them in their entirety save for their leader, who surrendered to her. As part of his surrender, she compelled him to cast off his badge, swear never to serve the Alliance of Change, again, and learned several things about his master that she passed on to Tasha, and Chandra, planeswalkers who had been searching for those particular answers.
Rise of the Atropal
In the tenth month of current year, the second month of her residency in Sigil, Fadra responded to accounts of an invincible undead ogre in the Outlands.
Over the course of two weeks she met, and gave battle, to repeated incursions from that world, until finally Chandra of the Sign of One was able to open a portal to their origin. With a group of powerful planeswalkers, Fadra entered that world, to find the god-born-dead Atropos had left an Atropal upon it, which had largely conquered it, turning all its inhabitants into near-invincible undead. At the behest of a priest of Moradin, the All-Father, she led her planeswalkers into an ancient temple, and gave battle there to its powerful occupants, in return asking that those who could be evacuated do so while they were fighting.
To reach the center of the temple, she convinced an ancient dwarven king to lend her his assistance. However, before that assistance could be granted, the Atropal appeared in person and forced the spirits to fight her party, thereafter joining the fight himself. The battle raged for some time before Chandra, Hel'vyst, and Tasha, managed to complete a ritual magic which slammed a moon into the temple - and the atropal - ending the fight and destroying that prime world.
They escaped, along with the remaining inhabitants of that plane, to the outlands.
Birth of Aira (Atropal II.)
Shortly after returning to the Outlands, another instance of the Atropal's influence became apparent in the areas nearby the Curst battlefield; the ungod had begun to raise corpses of fallen Planes-Militant. Quickly gathering a group to respond to the incursion, she and several others, among them Hyeronimus Barxire, destroyed an aspect (or incarnation) of the being and put down the undead it had gathered. However, it was clear they could not fight the Atropal directly on their own; Barx had to call on Mystra's power to create a chance for the group to escape.
She accompanied Tasha to summon the gnomic Filimael, servant of Garl Glittergold. They received a promise of his assistance, along with a warning that the Atropal would shortly manifest itself again, and likely in another prime. They were told that giving it a name, the first gift any born being is given, would help to separate it from its mother, and then they were left to their own devices.
The call came shortly thereafter; the Atropal had been spotted on a certain prime. Quickly gathering a small army of planeswalkers, Fadra took nominal command of the attack force and entered into the portal from which the citizens of the prime were fleeing. The planeswalkers accompanied a holy order of locals in an assault on their capital city, which had been over-run with undead, and procedurally cleared out the main throughfares searching for the Atropal. When they met it, it did not speak; but it took Lilia, a powerful planeswalker ranger, under thrall.
During the battle that ensued, Fadra repeatedly engaged Lilia, driving her off of her companions as they fought the Atropal. Barx and Tasha managed to both name, and separate the un-god from its mother and the dark thread of unlife, after a long and difficult battle slaying it; eventually Fadra, and Alinda, of Athena, managed to bring the ranger down as well, stunned by the death of her dominator. When Alinda stepped in to deliver the final blow, however, Fadra shouldered her aside, and guarded the fallen ranger until she could come back to her senses, preventing her death.
The Atropal was reborn as Aira, a goddess of peace and protection, raised up by all present; their reward was the kingdom's treasury, of which Fadra was given a tenth portion.
Forging of the Daylight Axe: The Dragon
Shortly after her pairing with her partner, Rarlee, Fadra pledged to assist her in the creation of a battleaxe which would resemble the properties of a Daystar blade. One of these
A Firehair of Sune
Shortly following the incident with Aira, the former Atropal, Fadra received a vision in the reflection of water which called her to a certain place, nearby a shrine to the outlands.
Notable Quotations
- "If I cut [your undead] down and beat you senseless. What exactly does that do for you? Would you stop? And killing you wouldn't solve the issue, either. It's not your life I'm after. Personally, I believe that everyone can give some beauty to the world."
- "Selfishness leads down a lonely path, in the end."
- "I don't consider my business private for the most part. I actually find the best way to confuse spies is just saying what you mean and not giving a damn."
- "Figure out what you wish to do... nobody is ever truly certain that their plans are going to work. There is always going to be a distinct chance it unravels on you. But it will unravel a lot faster if you doubt your own decisions."
- "Just like evils slips into certain cracks in our armor, so can kindness... although I think for some of these people I need an adamantine pry-bar."