A Foreword
I have returned to the Sword Coast from Evereska with newfound meaning and certainty. Should this diary fall into other hands than my own, perhaps due to my demise, or because I have passed it on, I think it is in order for me to explain myself and give context to what is hopefully going to be more than a few pages in my journey.I was born the son of a human lumberjack and an elven bladesinger close to the city of Waterdeep, I never learned how my father and mother met, and he barely talked about her after she left him with me at the age of three and was never seen again. Often I inquired, asking about her, wanting to know what had led her to fall in love with a human, but my questions remained unanswered until my fifteenth winter. And even then he refused to talk of how he met, but he did tell my of my ancestry. He had agreed to take her family name before I was born, something that was important to my mother he explained, because House Zyavel of Evereska owned a powerful, ancestral blade and has a generation long history of famed elven bladesingers, and apparently she had wanted for me to lay claim to it once I grew old enough before she left.
I didn't believe him for a word of it. Sure, he had told me about my supposed mother, but mostly when he was drinking away his sorrow and hatred for her, how she was this fabled elven lady, skilled with the sword and the arcane travelling through Faerun to slay monsters and bandits, discover hidden relics and artefacts, but I had never believed for his word to be true. Yet, after he talked to me that day I had this growing feeling in the back of my head that I wouldn't simply spend my life in waterdeep as a simple man, at best accepted by humans and mostly looked down upon by elves, no, I slowly grew to believe that if this was true then I was meant to do something.
And so I left my father with a letter one night, travelling the lands to learn how to handle a blade and access the weave to form spells to aid me in doing so, thankfully my mother had at least left quite the amount of gold to pay for my education up to this point, and while my father certainly was no saint, he didn't use any of it to fund his drinking, and never thought about simply not working for a year and using the money he had instead, something I am still grateful to this day.
A few years of adventuring and travelling followed, years in which I really did nothing more than be apart of a few bunches of mercenaries, honorable and just one's that kept their contracts, but towards the end I quickly concluded that I had not much more to gain from staying with this life, and so I left. I left towards Evereska. Perhaps I might later recount how I made a fool of myself there, knocking on the Zyavel estate and demanding to be handed the family heirloom, something I was laughed at first. My mother refused to see me or even acknowledge my existance, and I would later learn this was because she had a second, fully elven child with another man since then and certainly didn't want to acknowledge the fact that she had born a bastard with a simple human man.
I left towards the Sword Coast where I met people which I still call close friends to this day, perhaps most importantly an elven mage named Oth aswell as Indigo, a human attempting to weave blade with magic in her own ways. During my times there I refined my technique, learned many a spell and arcane secret and perhaps most importantly I felt that my life finally had a true purpose. The purpose to show all those denying me in Evereska that I was worthy to claim what was rightfully mine as the first born child of my mother to which the blade had been handed. And so I returned there, two years later, much stronger than before, and I begged an elf of help. A famous one at that, Master Aseniel was one of the most accepted Bladesingers in the community, he trained many a young, promising elf. When I initially asked him to became my mentor he simply laughed, but I stayed persistent and he agreed to do so after a simple test, which was to be a duel between the two of us. Thanks to that which I had learned on the coast he seemed impressed by the performance of what "a half-elven bastard with a few years of experience but no formal training could achieve." Truly, I had picked for I knew that he disliked House Zyavel for the fact that they had disgraced one of his ancestors many centuries ago and he probably saw an opportunity in myself to avenge that.
Backed by him the family of my mother was forced to reply to my claim to the blade and simply answered they would "react to the matter at hand shortly" - which was to be a long, six month long wait in which they consulted all people of political and spiritual power in Evereska. Time I spent training under the elven master that finally gave me the knowledge to the missing links in their right places, it felt like I had finally unlocked all the hidden secrets and mysteries that had held me back. Eventually they concluded that they could not simply deny me, but the texts that governed who the blade should belong to said that 'it shall only be given to those deemed worthy by the acts they have comitted' and as such they laid out what they deemed an impossible list of achievements of which 'if only a few were accomplished will make us accept the half-bloods claim'.
So, long story short, they want me to kill a dragon.
Well, not me specifically, but I need to have significant impact in such feat, annnd a few more. Just, you know, basic things, like confronting a Lich's magic on my own, reclaiming an elven artifact from the Underdark or beating a renowned swordmaster in a duel with the blade. Shouldn't be that hard, and I only need a few, right? Yeah. To be honest, I don't yet know how I will accomplish even an eighth of the list of achievements I was given, perhaps I will list it at later date but my determination is still the same. They can deny my existence, my accomplishment, my skill all they want. But one day they will be forced to recognise my rightful claim.