{
  "character": {
    "id": "5e1b6113-2380-4295-a328-401713f47b7f",
    "slug": "danairia-feyn",
    "name": "Danairia Feyn",
    "race": "Elf",
    "character_class": "Fighter",
    "jan_favorite": false,
    "is_ff_portrait": false,
    "profile_url": "https://framedfantasy.com/pages/hero?h=danairia-feyn",
    "character_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/characters/danairia-feyn",
    "character_json_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/characters/danairia-feyn.json",
    "character_markdown_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/characters/danairia-feyn.md",
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    "image_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/images/danairia-feyn",
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    "story_excerpt": "One of my first high fantasy characters, transferred over from an old forum roleplay titled ‘Skaerra: The Unlikely Tale’, to being my second ever D&D character, and now put into a story I'm writing to grant a home to some of my characters, currently titled 'This World of Heroes And Scoundrels'.\n\n\n‘T",
    "story": "One of my first high fantasy characters, transferred over from an old forum roleplay titled ‘Skaerra: The Unlikely Tale’, to being my second ever D&D character, and now put into a story I'm writing to grant a home to some of my characters, currently titled 'This World of Heroes And Scoundrels'.\n\n<Overview>\n‘The Drunkard of Kes’. The nickname is a statement in and of itself, one that invokes a reputation that precedes. Kes is an *elvish* nation. What the hells kind of mutant did they produce if there’s an elf somewhere out there that drinks so much they’ve gotten a reputation over being drunk? \n\n…That would be Danairia, and if you call her a mutant she may either slap the word out of your mouth or laugh about it depending on who you are to her, but she’ll never deny that she’s quite the rowdy individual. A freelancer-for-hire with plenty of stories to tell if you buy her a few drinks…and a rich life story if you’re worthy of knowing it and perhaps buy her a few more…\n\n<Background>\nDanairia Feyn grew up an only child in a household under her harsh father, the longtime captain of the city’s soldiery, named Talrius, and a saintly mother. Though Danairia was expected to become a housewife, and she was trained as such-her mother teaching her the minor household magic she knew-her mother was very practical and negotiated Talrius into training their daughter in the martial ways of a woodland warriors as well, hoping it would allow her to defend herself if she ever needed it. \n\nDespite her parents’ wishes, Danairia never exactly grew into the charming and graceful woman she was expected to be. In fact, she never got along with other elves, she could not stand arrogance and snobby behavior and she had somewhat of a brash temperament. Her mother didn’t mind, she would love Danairia no matter what, but her father was greatly disappointed by this and the pair would foster a bitter relationship over her difficult behavior that was only mellowed by the tender intercession of her mother. Her mother, the fairest saint of a woman she ever knew, could ask anything of Danairia and her father and they would try their best to make it happen.\n\n>\"...My father was Captain of the city's military forces. For over a century he led the warriors of the woodland and, only after he was ordered to, did he retire to the seat of the Lord's personal advisor. It was through him that I initially learned how to fight.\"\n\n\"He...\" Caspian began. \"...He sounds like a good man.\"\n\n\"He's a c**k,\" Danairia corrected. \"All he ever did was undermine any attempt I made to be friendly to him...He hated me...\"\n\nDanairia's expression began to grow darker.\n\n\"Which is okay...because I hated him too...My mother was the only thing keeping him and I together. She loved us both. No matter what, she cared for my father the same way she did for me. That poor woman...she deserved better than us...\" - Danairia on her home life (Skaerra)\n\n…But, when Danairia was nineteen, physically grown but yet still only a child to her people, her mother would become terribly ill and the task of caring for her would fall to Danairia as her father, now an advisor at court, busied himself with his duties. \n\nAs time wore on, her mother’s condition would only worsen to the point of Danairia needing to do everything for her. Everything.\n\n>\"My father couldn't have said more than a word to me those couple months. I know he didn't say anything to my mother because he was never home. I was nineteen years-old, taking care of my mother like she did for me only months before and that bastard didn't even bother visiting his own f**king wife. She was too weak to do anything on her own near the end...and then, one day...she was too weak to open her eyes...\" - (Skaerra)\n\nAfter the death of her mother, Danairia’s relationship with her father would crumble into nothing as she could never forgive him for his shameless abandonment and, likewise, he could show her nothing but animosity. She would run away from home, far away from anywhere she had ever been because, while she had the body of a nineteen year-old, to such a long-lived race such as elves, she was practically seen more to the human equivalent of a twelve or thirteen year-old child. And so, she left her home, left her city, and even departed the nation of Kes entirely, crossing over the border into her new life within a foreign society. As it so happened, a human one.\n\nDanairia, still capable as a housekeeper, would first try her hand at serving as a maid.\n\n…Don’t laugh, she tried very hard! She almost even made it an entire day!\n\nUnable to handle the treatment of a snobby merchant without threatening him in her particularly…colorful ways, she would take advantage of her only other talent and take up work as a wandering mercenary, willing to do whatever was needed for a paycheck.\n\nDanairia’s introduction to the game comes over two decades later. She’s fourty-three (A fresh-faced eighteen year-old by elvish equivalent) and has been working on making her name as a mercenary for over twenty years now. She’s come into her own and her skill has helped her accumulate a vast number of very colorful tales to tell…\n\n<Personality And Gameplay>\nDanairia is a deeply flawed character though she is absolutely my favorite to write for as a result.  She’s unrefined, paints remarkable images with her language, has a level of comedic timing I can only replicate maybe half the time on a GOOD day through vocalized in-character roleplay,-\n\n>“Danairia then, how are you fairing?” \n\nDanairia leaned back confidently in her chair.\n\n“Like a newborn babe, I tell you! I mean, my leg burns like a morning piss after a night in the brothel but it's been way too long since I’d seen a bath in *hot water.* Gods damn it-I could sleep like a *manic child on poppy oil.* How are you?” - Excerpt from ‘This World of Heroes And Scoundrels’\n\n>“Danairia.” Began Gale, with a slight pause. He’d initially wanted to ask how Danairia slept but has since learned to know better.\n\n“You…look ready to depart!”\n\nA fair enough save.\n\n“Oh, I’m ready like a *b••ch in heat!* Let's hit that f••king road!”\n\n…Yet certain efforts are not worth the hassle of the attempt. - The heroes start the main plot (Heroes And Scoundrels)\n\n-and she overall has that multi-layered construction to her that gives her great depth and a well-rounded range of emotion that is so rare in such simply-designed and mundane-storied characters. She isn’t some elemental, or a fallen angel, just a simple, vanilla fighter you bite into only to finally catch the bucket of tabasco sauce I poured into the creamery when nobody was looking.\n\n>As they finally neared what seemed to be a way up, he could not help but feel a little disappointed that they could not find who they were hunting. He could not help but feel that maybe what he saw was not actually there, that:\n\n*Maybe it was my imagina-...*\n\nJust as the squad began mounting the staircase up, he turned his head for one final look and saw a lone Tlamani wearing slave rags, hopping across the passageway. Time seemed to slow down as Alner's expression turned to one of confusion at the surprised face of the elvish girl.\nAs if compelled by an unseen force, Danairia, with the grace of The Empire of Dessor's top diplomats...ever-so-tactfully...delicately...\n\n...raised her middle finger to the lone imperial soldier looking at her out of his squad…  - Danairia gets chased out of a city…for the first time this story (Skaerra)\n\nDanairia, through her experience (DM-willing) is narratively intended to have a wide range of connections, however she has enemies too and much of her early story will have her hunted by a crime boss and his goons for past actions that saw her interrupt his business on moral grounds, resulting in her owing a debt she cannot pay by his own design. Ideally, this should be offset by potential friends she might encounter, though not entirely so…\n\n>“Danairia chooses her friends wisely,” said Gale, of the bartender.\n\nHans smirked at the compliment but his expression faltered quickly.\n\n“That's not true at all.”\n\n“Nonsense,” said Gale, “You've been nothing but-”\n\n“-That’s not what I speak of, Sir. That woman has a knack for making connections with those she’d have been better off never knowing,” said Hans softly. “Keep an eye on her out there…and don't trust anyone she’s familiar with.” - Excerpt from Heroes And Scoundrels\n\nDanairia is narratively intended to be able to cast minor household cantrip-type spells. Things like unrefined, small scale fire spells, a quick gust of wind, and a small healing spell for cuts (no healing, just stops the bleeding). This is mimicked in game through the 'Magic Initiate' feat. Ideally, with a thoughtful DM, a custom spell list might allow for a closer mimicry of the magic from her narrative version.\n\nAs a general rule in-game, Danairia has to spend up to half of her regular earnings at taverns in between adventures. In written narrative, she blows it all after life and upkeep expenses. For emphasis, she has three flasks that she carries on her at any given point, mostly because two would have already been nuts. Two on her person with one in her pack.\n\n>\"Hey, wait!\" She called out. \"Is there a way I can help? I'm a bit low on funds at the moment.\"\n\nDessirih stopped and shook his head at the elf. \n\n\"You're broke, aren't you?-\"\n\n\"-Spent my last penny on a shot of arak, a half-hour ago.-\"\n\n\"-Of course you did.\" - Danairia runs into a bounty hunter friend (Skaerra)\n\nShe’s impulsive and a bit of an idiot but is, much to the (narratively-intended) shock of her party, well-read and clever at problem solving. So, while she must drink mysterious liquids-\n\n>”What is this, water?” - Danairia in game, moments before rolling a bunch of acid damage and then vomiting.\n\n-and she absolutely cannot engage in activity which would result in a skill check to avoid combat (unless it’s combat she caused to begin with)-\n\n>*“Danairia,”* Gale scolded.\n\n*“I’m sorry,”* whispered Danairia, *“It's just so beautiful, you know?”*\n\nThe brigand with the stick grew impatient however, waiting for them.\n\n“Is somethin’ *funny* ‘bout this?” He challenged.\n\n*“Nay-”*\n*“Yes-”*\n- Danairia encounters a bandit (Heroes And Scoundrels)\n\n-She ultimately serves her allies when it counts and the going gets tough. Though she has limitations, she is not a burden. She is quite resourceful and goes out of her way to assist companions when they might need help.\n\n As a rule both in narrative and in game, she is entirely incapable of shooting ranged weapons with any remote level of accuracy because her aim is simply too god-awful, though she can at least throw short distances. In combat during gameplay, she will use both her longsword and woodlander sword but, while in narrative, she will only draw out her elvish blade when up against too many enemies and needs a little ‘high fantasy’ to carry her through where her otherwise typically more realistically grounded fighting style cannot.\n\nDanairia's voice is just a little bit on the medium deeper end of tone and she has a Western English-sort of Bristol accent manner of speaking, with a lot of rounder pronunciations in her words, though she might occasionally underpronounce her words when she gets excited.\n\n>Still gripping his wrist, Danairia tugs the man up enough to wrap her arm around his neck, clap her hands together, and apply gradual pressure until he is out cold after but a few seconds.\n\n\"Nighty-f••gin'-night, b••ch,\" Danairia says as she lets the man drop back down. - \n\nIn roleplay, one of her things is using wild stories of her past adventures to relate to various different topics that may come up. Though this can be done easily in writing, it’s a lot more tricky in actual roleplay and I’ve written a few canonical stories for her in anticipation, written as she would tell the story in her own words. There’s absolutely no way I could ad lib one of her stories because of just how out there they simply are narratively supposed to be.\n\n>“Anyway, so what happened was I was supposed to go round up this client’s piece-of-s••t son from a group of hustlers he’d met up with. Easy day tracking the kid down, helping him escape, and bolting back to the family with them none-the-wiser. Get paid, get drunk, get f••kin’ gone, right?”\n\nGale simply drank from his pint, listening to the story and wondering exactly how the elf managed to *still* somehow have less in her mug than him, despite having only taken a couple pulls herself.\n\n*“Wrong!”* She exclaimed, pointing right at Gale’s nose. “Turns out the little s••t’s *one of them* now and shouts for help as soon as I pop my head through the door! *Three bodies, and a broken nose later,* I’m hobbling with this scrawny dips**t over my shoulder, blood all over the back of my blouse, a **shank** in my **a••cheek,** and three city blocks in between me and the place I needed to be!”\n\nIt's only then that Gale looked about and quietly thanked the gods that they seemed to be the only patrons left in the pub…\n\n“So, I get this dumb••s home and go hobble over to talk to the father, only *this time-”* says Danairia, the frustration in her voice growing ever more apparent with each word.\n\n“-his f••king *w••re-f••king-b••ch-skank-of-a-tramp-wife!...*decided I didn't ‘look *presentable’* enough to get paid and told me that not *only* would I need to get myself cleaned up-nevermind the *nail jammed into my a••*-I’d need to clean up her *inbred, uneducated son* of hers too. Oh, she wasn't **happy** with me after that. *Best night in jail I’ve ever spent-I’ll tell you that.”*\n\nDanairia then pounded down the rest of her drink, a wry smirk of remembrance across her lips as she ordered another. - Danairia on the difficulties of life as spear carriers and outcasts (Heroes and Scoundrels)\n\n>”Anyway, I finish up gathering the plant they needed me to get-some alchemist wanted it for its hallucinogenic properties or some s••t-I don't know. **Point** is it's apparently, like, *turbo-opium* and I don't care if the guy’s a real physician or just going to shove it up his a•• as soon as I get it back to him, *anything for the money.* Either way, I’ve got enough nectar oil through the flowers in my bag to make 30 halflings *s••t and fall into a coma.”* - The beginning of one of her in-game stories\n\nHer manner of telling stories is the lens I chose to write her session recaps through. \n\nDanairia, starting her existence as a narrative character and thus not written open-endedly, unfortunately has a rather firm story arc with little variation available unless a DM can come up with a way to resolve her trauma and various personal conflicts differently than the way she was always narratively intended to. \n\nShe is supposed to be forced by necessity to return home to seek help from the warriors of Kes against a grave threat and, thus, is forced to speak to her father. Though the meeting goes as planned, it is not without bitter hostility, leading Danairia to berate her father and claim he didn’t love her mother, leading to his revelations that he loved her more than anything, that he never felt he was worthy of her, that he is weak, that he was too weak to see her withering away, that he hates himself for his ineptitudes, that he always wished Danairia could have ended up like her mother, and that this whole time Danairia actually took entirely after him in his own youth and he couldn’t stand to see that. \n\nBefore it all can properly set in though, the primary crisis of the plot knocks and their conversation is cut short by a grave, urgent report with Talrius entrusting Danairia to lead the population of their city away to safety while he takes a small detachment of his best to hold off the tide, not expecting to return and Danairia knows it. Though she tries to protest, he sternly implores her, his stoicism momentarily slipping into desperation, to, “for one single time in your entire life,” listen to him. She hardens and finally matures, taking on a mantle of responsibility for her own people she never wanted and departs. The last time Talrius and his daughter see each other, she’s organizing the evacuation, taking over his role as a matured warrior and leader for their people before his very eyes before he departs to certain death.\n\nAfter her arc, she should remain herself but mellow out considerably and consider a more stable lifestyle. Though I would hope a player or party NPC might take this position in game, in her narrative, she is intended to marry a certain bartender, and longtime friend, who has taken care of her since they first met long before the story, who appreciates her for who she is as a person, despite it not being the sort of woman her parents wanted her to be for a husband. At the end of the day though, with the way that she acts in the end, even as wholly herself, it’s shown that there really is a bit of her mother in her afterall…\n\n\n<Inspiration>\nI really just wanted to make a wood elf that wasn’t such a stereotype. She is fundamentally a narrative ‘anti-elf’ and so her design and deep flaws lean very heavily into that. Even her way of speaking was inspired by the brutal sort of language I lived around and spoke (still speak tbh 😅) myself while conceiving her identity with zero filter mostly because I saw it as the direct antithesis of the classic, Tolkien-isque elf.\n\nDanairia as a character was originally created by me for an online roleplay story called ‘Skaerra: The Unlikely Tale’ while I was still in my service MOS training and was my first REAL vehicle for high fantasy narrative writing. I still have some of her writing samples saved from back then-eleven years ago as of writing this-and the most emotional point of her speaking about her mother still somehow manages to bring a tear to my eye if I read it in character. 😅 \nShe became my second proper D&D character a year later when I managed to track down the only four guys in my squadron who happened to be running a game and I learned how to play using the (mostly) properly-understood rules of the game while using her. We were all new to it though and it took many years of my influence (long after Danairia’s game) to make my DM even remotely interested in exploring backstories, so I never got to play her properly but here’s hoping that changes at some point in a new game! Until then, her new home is going to be as a protagonist in a story I’m writing, called 'This World of Heroes And Scoundrels', precisely to give a place for some of my better characters to live on within the page.\n\nThe entire vibe of Danairia is surprisingly well-encapsulated by the musical work of the band ‘EarlyRise’, particularly their cover of ‘La La La’, ‘Dance For The Money’ for her work, ‘Memories’ for her mother, and ‘Home’ for her father.\n(https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6zuB4xC2tC9c2bvi78PkvZ?si=T--h-2XwR7eYO0kq6p8A8g%0A)\n\n(Because I can’t say it anywhere else, Mr. Kevin Rabatan, I’d like to compliment you on Renly. That’s a level of backstory and heart I’d kill to get out of a player at my table. 🙏\nAnd Vee, Nyelithe’s story and inspiration is absolutely charming. Congrats to you both. Shut up and take my hearts.❤️)"
  }
}