Role

Chapter 1

West of the Shadow grove, through deep valleys and high mountains lies a
pififul excuse of a town called Nizhtangil. Filled with smokestacks belching
sulfurous fumes from its ironworks, Nizhtangil is hell on earth. Poor is not
even a ward you can apply to the residents, who swill moonlight so strong
that it's almost pure alcohol, and pass out wherever they happen to land. The
law, such as they were, are as brutal and sadistic as the citizens. As a
prison is surrounded by guard towers, Nizhtangil is surrounded by magical
barriers allowing only the drow merchants who control the steel trade to
pass. Nobody but the worst of the criminals dares be on the streets after
dark.

This is the place where Elgroth was born and raised, by a drunk father and
barren mother in a filthy piece of shit building teeming with vermin. Their
poverty didn't stop her old man from banging other women though. When one of
them became pregnant, he decided to have the baby - Elgroth. His father
promised to help the real mother out in any way he could, but he just wanted
the child his barren wife could never give him. When Elgroth was born, he
ripped the infant duergar from the mother's arms and brought him to his wife
to raise. "This is the child I always wanted, but you couldn't give me," he
told her.

He raised Elgroth dutifully, without complaint, because where could a barren
woman go in Nizhtangil? But when her husband wasn't home, she kept the young
duergar locked in a cage. Inbetween the sessions where a blind rage gripped her,
and she felt the need to punish the little dwarf by beating him through a
folded hide in order not to leave any marks. She despised the result of her
husband's seed, and she felt compelled to punish Elgroth because she couldn't
punish his father.

It was during one of these long punishments in the cage that Elgroth woke
to an awful pain in his left foot. Half a dozen rats, large as his father's
shoe, scuttled back and forth, squealing, teeth gnsahing. He managed to kill
them, but not before they finihed what they'd started. They ate three of his
toes. He did not hate the rats though, he hated the mages who kept him trapped
in Nizhtangil.

Elgroth eventually allied himself with a couple of other thugs. They made a fortune
by Nizhtangil standards by satisfying the town brothels' seemingly insatisfiable
need for more girls of different races. Without the consent of the girls. His soul
was in the seventh circle of hell, soon to advance to the ninth. That all happened during
one night, he cold-bloodedly got his companions drunk on cheap vodka. He then sat
back and smiled as a pack of enraged fathers, backed up mercenaries, entered the
bar. The fathers had been informed of what had happened to their daughters, and
who the perpetrators were (Elgroth excepted, of course). He skillfully took part in
beating his former companions to death, and made well sure to take their money before
anybody else.