Glab, if you still have issues with the backstory, I'm still willing to negotiate on it.<br/><br/><br/><br/><em>This male drow is just over average height for his race, with a typically lithe, slender build, and strikingly handome, patrician features; his expression is at once welcoming and almost unconciously superior.  His coal-black skin stands in sharp contrast to his pure-white hair, worn long and held back with a black leather headband, and even more so against his shockingly blue eyes, a rarity among the subterranean elves.  A strange pair of glasses perch on his sharp nose, tinted strongly enough to keep the sun from his Underdark eyes.  The elf's clothing, though all in shades of black and grey, is expensive enough to be gaudy if it were not made in the very best of taste, and finely complemented by silver, platinum, sapphire and diamond jewelry, some of it obviously magical.  His cloak is made of a material you can't quite recognize, as dark as his own skin... then, with a start, you realize it <span class="bbc_u">is</span> drow skin.  When you recoil in horror, the drow's smile grows even wider... and unspeakably cruel.  He speaks a single word of magic, making a negligent gesture in your direction, and you scream in agony as some unseen hand begins to peel the flesh from your bones.</em><br/><br/>Drenak Everhate was born to a house of minor Drow nobles in the midst of war; and in that, he may be considered lucky.  Had his family not been desperate for every supporter they could get, Drenak, the third son of the Matron Mother, would have been sacrificed to Llolth.  Though his talents for both magic and swordplay were less than those of his siblings, he proved his value as the House Herald, announcing the ruling females in times of peace, and urging their soldiers to greater fury in times of war.  He came to greatly enjoy this role, reveling in the power of his dark songs (with the sole exception of hymns; any praise for Lolth grated in his throat).  Still, as a male in the vicious, matriarchal Drow society, especially one considered a weakling, his life was far from easy or pleasant.  He hated his family members who ridiculed and abused him, the culture that placed him one step above a slave, and most of all, the evil Spider Queen, the sadistic demon-goddess who was the wellspring of all his misery.<br/><br/>Even so, he may have lived (and died) in the Underdark as so many other Drow, were it not for the final atrocity his mother planned against him.  She told young Drenak that if his voice ever displeased her, she would cut his vocal cords, thus taking away his singing, the only thing that ever made him feel truly alive.  In desperation, he cut the Matron Mother's throat as she slept, then, that very night, disguised himself as part of a war party journeying to the surface.  Once on the surface, he deserted, and set out to make a life among the lesser races.<br/><br/>And make a life there, he did; indeed, he thrived beneath the open sky, despite the blinding sun, and constant need to travel in disguise due to his peoples' well-earned and unpleasant reputation.  Without the binding constraints of Drow society keeping the "worthless male" in his place, Drenak began studying secrets discovered by the Bards and sages of the surface world, learning to tap the true power of his already magical music.  Within a few short years, his arcane might was greater than that of his home city's most accomplished Archmage (ironically, this was in no small part thanks to his constant practice fighting off the assassins his family sent after him).  He learned other, less direct ways of power as well, his skills with manipulation, both sorcerous and otherwise, making him the ruler of several surface-world nations in all but name.  Once safely ensconced in power, he set about the true goals that had driven him onward ever since he murdered his mother.<br/><br/>Both would have been  impossible, for anyone less determined and resourceful.  The first involved taking his revenge upon those who had sent him to the surface in the first place.  He roused his puppets-in-power against the Underdark, making them ever more paranoid about the possiblity of Drow attacks and raids, exaggerating the threat his people posed to the surface, and their invincibility in their own homes.  Assassins, adventuring parties, and other elite forces of the surface began making forays into the Underdark, striking at the heart of the Drows' power; the Priestesses of Lolth.  One by one, they fell to surface-forged blades, throwing their cities into (even greater than usual) anarchy, cutting off the Spider Queen from ever more of her flock.  Drenak's home city was the last to fall, and he murdered its clerics himself, saving his own sisters for last.  After the bloodbath was complete, he used the same burning Charisma that wrapped human nations around his finger to unite his leaderless, fragmented people into a single force under his command.<br/><br/>After crowning himself King of the Drow, Drenak turned to his true goal; deicide.  Ever since his Lolth-tormented childhood, Drenak had nursed a profound resentment of gods in general, regardless of their moral or ethical bent.  These supposedly all-powerful beings, controlling mortals like puppets; who do they think they are, anyway?  With his total monarchy over the Drow, mind-addled surface rulers, and newly forged alliances with the Illithid, Aboleths, and Duergar, Everhate declared war upon the gods of his world.  He began whittling away at their priesthoods and followers, slowly depriving them of the worship their powers depended upon.  He was careful to strike at each deity in turn, carefully maintaining the balance of power between the gods themselves even as he brought them closer to their downfall.  Eventually, the vast majority of mortals grew afraid to speak out for their beliefs, and their faith withered.  Those who remained vocal were swiftly silenced.  And those foolish few that began to worship Drenak himself suffered the most painful deaths he could devise.<br/><br/>All seemed to be proceeding as planned; when the first, barely-Ascended demigod "starved" from lack of worship, Drenak's court spent a full year in celebration, and he himself knew true happiness for perhaps the first time in his life.  So overcome was he by his own triumph, that he let down his guard, ever so briefly.  He made a direct, personal assault on the most powerful, sacred temple remaining upon the world, where the most faithful followers of the Sun God held vigil throughout the night.  The vast army of Drow emerging beneath their feet, so soon after they had been abandoned by their secular defenders, aroused both the suspicion of the clergy, and the focused ire of the one god most anathema to Drenak and his kind.  The avatar that was sent decimated his army, and Drenak himself barely escaped with his life, but it was only the first of many.  The weakened pantheon put aside their differences, and began to root out the presumptuous mortals who had dared challenge them, all the while restoring the faith of the people in them.<br/><br/>As the forces of the gods closed in on him, Drenak, more bitterly hateful of the divine than ever, made good his escape.  Having long known it might someday come to this, he had prepared a well-hidden portal shortly after his ascension to the throne of the Underdark, which led to the one place in the multiverse where no vengeful god could follow him; Sigil.  Safe, for the moment, within the City of Doors, he waits, and plots his next move.  Much as he did upon first leaving his Underdark home so long ago, Drenak has begun searching for allies (preferably unwitting ones) to aid his endless quest.<br/><br/><br/><strong>NOTE:</strong>Any PCs that aren't from Drenak's homeworld, or closely connected to Lolth, will almost certainly not have heard the first thing about him, other than rumors of dead gods.