GaryBlack
Posts 340
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"Prejudices. It's what made Beriel what she is. 'How and why?', you might wonder. Alright, I'll start at the beginning and explain everything in the right order.
I found her when she was still a little baby, hardly older than a few hours. She was placed in a place you can't overlook, directly in the middle of our village near the well. Noone seemed to care that there was a crying baby lying on a bench next to our only supply of water. Or rather, they all seemed to deliberately ignore it. I was new to the village as well, so I did not know all of the inhabitants yet and could not understand how or why a mother could just abandon her child like this, nor could I even begin to grasp why the baby was avoided by the others.
So I decided to take pity on that poor little infant and approached it, ready to take it home with me even though I was still pretty young myself - I just became fourteen. After loosening the cloth wrapped around the little one, I understood why noone cared. I could see little horns while the baby was looking at me with its shining bright blue eyes. Its tiny bald head was covered with strange markings all around it as well. This infant was a tiefling! 'Nevertheless, it IS a little baby that has just been abandoned, there is nothing evil are demonic about it.', is what I thought. Sadly, I was alone with that reasoning - life in this small, rural village has always been very secluded; new, open-minded thoughts like mine never reached it. So I took it in. Back at home I found a small, hardly readable note with the baby, 'I can't bear to raise this child. Please forgive me.' was all it said. The mother didn't even bother to name it. So I did. I named the baby Beriel after I found out it's a girl. Beriel became my daughter, I made that absolutely clear by giving her my family name, Ashby, as well.
Life became very hard from that point onwards for me, but even more so for Beriel. Once she was old enough to leave the house on her own and go out to play, she tried so. She wanted to play with the other children. But the opinions of their parents carried over, they avoided and ignored her. At first. Sadly, it didn't stay like this. The first stone flew when she was 9. Whenever Beriel tried to approach the other children to show them she means no harm, they started throwing stones and insulting her. She endured it while I tried my best to support my daughter. For 3 years she stayed strong, although I could see she was starting to break, regardless of all my efforts. The people around us just thought 'She is a tiefling, they are evil and will bring misfortune'. Nobody bothered to even try and think about the effects of their behaviour. One fateful day after those 3 years Beriel found a rat that was wounded and bleeding badly. Beriel took pity on that rat and took it home with her to take care of it. Thanks to the rat, she seems to become stronger and brighten up now. I'm so glad. Maybe our life will take a turn for the better now."
This is what the young woman told me, a traveling harper agent, when I discovered Beriels talents for magic by accident and asked the woman to tell me about Beriel's story. For roughly three months, I stayed in this village, taught Beriel the basics of magic and watched the situation. Sadly, their life did not improve. In fact, it ended on a fateful day at the end of third month of my presence. I was wandering through the woods when I heard a large crowd shouting, just moments later smoke was ascending. Assuming the worst, I hurried back only to see I was right. The Ashby family's house was burned down, the mother dead, buried below the ruins of the house, and no sign of Beriel.
Later I found out that a girl saw Beriel was picking up the bleeding rat and reported it the her parent. Three months later, they told it to the priest of Tyr, inventing more than actually happened. According to what the priest told me, the girl saw how Beriel was biting the rat and licking its blood before she took it home with her. To him, this was the final piece of evidence he needed. He incited the entire village to get rid of 'this evil devil spawn that was feeding on dirty creatures such as rats'. So they did. I never found a sign of Beriel, so I knew she survived and managed to escape. After I left the village I got word that she went back to the village and killed the priest with that little magic I taught to her. The murder of her mother broke her in the end. So if you ever meet her, be prepared to face incredible sadness and agony. However, she has become extremely calculating and cold-hearted on the outside. I could see as much from the way she schemed her revenge against the priest after I returned to that village and interviewed the inhabitants.
Now she has become what the humans feared. Beriel was born an innocent tiefling and made an evil devil spawn by prejudiced villagers. She is a perfect proof of the power of prejudices. I doubt she will just run around and randomly kill people. Beriel is too clever for something like this. However, I fear we have not heard the last of her.
- An anonymous harper at a camp fire
edited by GaryBlack on 3/22/2011
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Realms of Trinity DM
Leader of the O guild
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