Sariel Nightbreeze

Half-Elf / Paladin

Submitted character story

"Love is the compass upon which I stake this blade. If all else fails and the world falls into ruin, love will be the guidepost to set it right once again."

Sariel grew up as the sheltered daughter of nobility in Neverwinter, born to a high elf lord and a human mother, and initially took up the sword out of vengeance. She fell in love with Galen, her half-elf mercenary-turned-bodyguard, but fell into despair and fear of loss when he was cursed by cultists of Bhaal and fled Neverwinter to protect her from the darkness slowly overtaking his mind. After years of training, she arrived at Stormwreck Isle, a newly minted paladin who had yet to pledge her oath. As she forged new alliances and friendships with the cloister of Dragon's Rest and her fellow party members, Bahamut appeared to her in visions and asked her to devote herself to him rather than vengeance. After rescuing a bronze dragon named Aidron from a misguided blue dragon named Sparkrender and witnessing the revival of Sharruth, Tiamat's Chosen, she took the Oath of Devotion to Bahamut, and it brought peace to a heart that had been steeped in sadness for far too long.

Sariel's journey to save Galen quickly spiraled into a much bigger conflict that tied into the millennia-long cycle of violence between Bahamut and Tiamat. Her companions learned of a ritual called the Dragon's Prayer that required both metallic and chromatic dragons to pray for peace at the moment when the Chosens of the dragon gods clashed. Bahamut had called Sariel to his service to help bring about the Dragon's Prayer, and her party recruited allies, both human and dragon, to their side, including Runara, the bronze dragon who led Dragon's Rest and became Bahamut's Chosen for the sake of peace.

The Dragon's Prayer was successful. Sariel and her companions faced Sharruth in the heart of her lair in the caldera of Mount Hotenow, and the tide turned, not with the edge of her blade wreathed in holy fire but by a single word: "Kneel." Sariel commanded Sharruth to kneel, Runara gained the upper hand, and the golden radiance of Io filled the caldera. The progenitor of the dragon gods appeared to her and asked what she desired, and she prayed for dragons to experience the fullness of love. It was a beautiful prayer, along with the prayers of her friends and loved ones for freedom, peace, harmony, and calm after the storm.

The war ended with Bahamut and Tiamat disappearing from Faerun to watch over this world as constellations in the night sky, and their mantles of power were returned to the dragons. Sariel lost her connection to her patron god, who had become like a grandfather to her, but gained so much more in return. She had broken Galen's curse and overcome her fear over the course of the journey, and she had fallen in love with both him and Aidron, who had become not just her friend and lover but her partner in battle - the first dragon rider in centuries. The relationship was unconventional, but the trio agreed that they were stronger together than apart, and they married shortly after the war.

The Dragon's Prayer wrought change to the balance of power. Dragons no longer answered to gods and could make their own decisions. They had freedom, and that meant they could use their newfound abilities for either good or evil. Bahamut also granted Sariel a portion of his mantle so that she could live a dragon's lifespan, and she, Galen, and Aidron set up a new life at Dragon's Rest to carry on Runara's mission of peace between people and dragons. However, the peace did not last. Dragonborn and kobolds, the scions of Bahamut and Tiamat, also received new powers, and when Sariel made her prayer to Io, it was heard not just by Io himself but countless souls who prayed across Faerun...

...including a frail, blind kobold named Grail. Tormented by the shackles of slavery to a cruel black dragon, Grail lost her entire family and her eyes at the claws of her master. As she lay dying on the floor of the underground crypt that was the dragon's lair, she heard a beautiful prayer for love. She latched onto that kind voice and gained new powers in that moment - magic unlike anything written in tomes or studied in wizard academies. Blinded and frail, but brimming with unleashed magic and the boon of truesight, Grail led an uprising with the survivors of her clan and slew her captor. But she didn't stop there. She was broken from the years of torture and grief. She loved Sariel for the prayer that had granted her new powers and hated Sariel for her alliance with dragons. She wanted to save kobolds, create a home for them, and give them a god that would wage war against their oppressors and put dragons in their rightful place beneath their feet.

And so Sariel has entered a new conflict. Grail has used her powers of seizing and controlling pocket dimensions to create an interplanar fortress for herself and her followers. She has reanimated the remains of dragons, including her old master, as dracoliches and bound her soul to them to extend her rapidly dwindling lifespan. And she has taken an ancient egg laid by Sharruth, woven the souls of the dracoliches into a tapestry, and compelled a Fire Djinn to use his only Wish spell to create a vessel from which this new, twisted god will emerge. She now only needs Sariel to free her soul from her body in combat to join the tapestry and become the sentience of this god.

Sariel knows Grail's plan. She has infiltrated Grail's sanctum and is coming for her - not to kill her, but to save her. Her heart weeps for the broken soul within Grail and the part that can be saved, and she wields a blade forged from the scales of Io that is bound to her Oath of Devotion to protect those she loves. Love is her compass, love is the unbreakable edge of her blade, and love could be the key to saving not only Grail but the family she has built - and will continue to build - at Dragon's Rest.