Backstory for my College of Spirits Bard Warlock multiclass for The Shattered Obelisk. Thoughts?

I’ve always loved stories. Don’t we all? I always felt such a connection with the art of storytelling, especially through text, oration or on stage. I’ve been a theatre kid for as long as I can remember, loving the stage even as a little kid. Of course, being half Drow I was usually cast as the villain, but an actor must work with the roles he is given, and there is something quite fun about playing the bad guy. I was – and am – very good at what I do, and it got me into Bard’s College in Neverwinter.

I would love to tell you that I was fully devoted to my craft while I was there, flying through my degree in record time and becoming fully submerged in the world of theatre, oration and storytelling. But that wasn’t quite the case. I allowed vices too much space in my life, mostly drink, sex and pipeweed, at least at first. I am now in the 7th year of my degree, which is supposed to be a 3-year venture, with one last exam worth a few credits to finish before I technically become a fully-fledged bard and can walk out of there with my diploma. And while, yes, fuck the system and all, I was doing less of actively working to fuck the system and more fucking other people and fucking up my own system. So less of a model revolutionary and more of a pipe-head fuck-up.

Perhaps a few words on my studies though: alongside the aforementioned, we learned something else in college: how to find and relay legendary stories from spirits. You have to open up your soul to become a conduit or something (If I’m being honest, I did not pay enough attention in Introduction to the Occult to know enough about the theory behind it) and the story kind of just flows through you. Really cool shit to be honest. It was during this practice that I was turned on to another vice: psychedelics. A colleague said that it very much helps when opening your mind and soul to hear the stories of these spirits, and to be fair, he was right. I heard some crazy things during those trips, although of course, it was hard to be sure what was real and what wasn’t.

The most interesting and probably most important nights happened during one of those trips. I was last-minute cramming for Intro to Occult and I must have borrowed the wrong book from the library, but I hadn’t paid enough attention in class to be sure. Also, I was high on pipeweed at the time. Anyway, I took the highway to spirit land as I so often did, and at one point during my trip I was greeted by some sort of fiendish type creature, weird looking big-headed green thing. It offered me great power on exchange for my soul, and thinking it was all part of the trip, I went with the flow, man. Signed that shit in glowy red ink and all. Next day, I woke up feeling all weird. Like, drained, but powerful? I went to my desk to see the book on the occult open on the page “how to summon a fiend” with a pentagram drawn in blood next to it. So, yeah. Accidentally sold my soul to some devilish being while high on psychedelics. Don’t do drugs, kids.

Now, you may be asking, if I still am not finished with my degree in Neverwinter, what am I doing in Phandalin? To that I say: I’m getting to it, chill out. So obviously drugs are expensive, students are poor and whatever acting gigs I can get are very competitive and don’t pay great. So, I may have borrowed, like, a lot of money from some very shady people, the Zhentarim. My silver tongue could only buy me so much time and they want me to pay up, else “they’ll break my kneecaps and shove both my legs up my own ass”. But I don’t have the money and I have zero way of procuring it. So yeah, I ran. Had to get away from the city, obviously, and Phandalin seemed like a nice place to go with all the Mine being rediscovered and all that. And when I got here and realised there was all this crazy shit going on, I thought that A) this will make one hell of a story, B) debt collectors will be reluctant to have to deal with weird goblins and the rest and C) maybe I can scrounge up enough to pay off my debt.

In other news, I am now clean. Totally out of personal choice and responsibility, and not because the stash I brough with me ran out two days out of Neverwinter. Look, clean is clean, okay? A whole 36 hours. I’m fine without the drugs. Totally fine without ‘em. Totally. Definitely.