I was born Katayanna Silvermane on the Yules Eve over 116 years ago, in a small, rather remote village called Hillsfar. Both humans and elves, among other races, lived there, and it was a small, well-knit community. The town suffered from occasional Drow raids, but for the most part, they lived well. My birth was the result of such a raid on the village; my mother was raped by one the of the warriors in the Drow party. Good people that they were, though, my mother and her husband raised me as their own child and loved me as such.

My family follows a strange custom, having no true family name. Each child born was named after something striking about them; as in the case of myself, I was named for the silver mane of hair I was born with. Shortly after they chose my true name, they selected a "nickname" for me, that one being Onyx. It is also custom that no one in my family give their true names, for names hold great power, and knowing a person's true name allows you to work binding magic upon them. It is for this reason that I share my true name with only a handful of people, preferring to be known as Onyx, instead.

My parent's had one other child, called Thorn, who was my half-sister and seven years old when I was born, and we were very close while growing up. There was only one other person to whom I grew as close…I was eight years old when I met the boy who would become the love of my life: Remy LeBeau, more commonly known as Gambit. We loved each other even as children, but he and his family moved on from the village before I was fully 20 years old. My family and I lived happily, almost blissfully for those twenty years...

And then the next raid came...Led by the man I later came to learn was my unwitting father, the Drow attacked with a speed and efficiency beyond even the most vicious of predators. When it was done, nothing was left standing, and none survived....save the children, whom the Drow took as slaves back to the Underdark. Thorn and I spent many years there, serving them. It was there that I first learned to sneak about and gather information. There was simply no other to travel or survive in the underground city. For 40 years we remained there...and then, one day, I received word that the surface elves were planning to wage war on the Underdark City, and we managed to escape in the confusion of the battle. We returned to our lives, and began adventuring. Gambit and I were reunited for the first time since childhood, spending several years together before we parted ways again…setting the pattern we have held for nearly our entire lives; passing in and out of one another's lives for years at a time. Only in our hearts did our love remain constant. Nearly thirty years had gone by, and I spent them believing the horror was ended...but it was not to be.

I learned many things while enslaved in the Underdark, and there were rumors even then that my father, Maliketh (whose name shall not be spoken aloud, lest he should overhear and come calling) was well on his rise to power. Unusual in the matriarchal society of the Drow, indeed. But he had allied himself with Gods, they whispered, and none dared stand against him. Not long after we escaped those horrible tunnels, he burst forth from beneath the earth, ready to extend his power to the rest of the realms. He wanted to ascend to God-hood himself, and was well on his way when my sister and I joined a band of adventurers who were fighting against him. It seemed a noble cause, and until I saw him, I did not know who it was they fought against. Unable to kill him because he was too powerful, they banished him. With my sisters magic and that of another, even more powerful mage, they were able to send him from this plane, locking him outside this world in what they believed to be an empty plane where he could do no harm. We later found that they were wrong...

When we discovered this mistake, Thorn reopened the portal we had sent my father through, and I went through with the rest of the adventuring party I belonged to. We were separated in the journey through, and I never saw them again. My memories were fragmented when I arrived there...I could remember nothing of my previous life, only my name and a few instances. This world was ravaged...it was cloaked in darkness eternally, with no sun to light the day...all of the elves were dead, killed off by my father and his armies. He ruled that world with an iron fist, and he squeezed it tight. Through circumstance, I found myself thrown in with another party who stood against him. The cleric of their group, a disciple of Solonar Thelandria, was supposed to be the chosen one to slay him, and his God gave him arrow just for that purpose. We later found that this prophecy was a fabrication created by my father. I discovered that I was his daughter, and that I was the one prophesized to kill him. But by then, it was too late...

The arrow missed its mark when Chrysalis fired. The entire party, they were all slain...he killed them all. Perhaps the best friends I ever had, and they are gone. I alone lived because the spell which sent me there also drew me back to my home plane when my mission failed; Thorn had taken extra steps to ensure my return this world. It took a long time for me to piece everything together...for my memories to return. I had been gone scarcely a day here, but I had spent nearly a year there...time passed differently there, it seems. It was a good year before all of my memories returned, and my father busily furthered his schemes while I was distracted. He will never relent…he wants to crush this world beneath his heel. And he wants to crush me as well...for I am the only one who can slay him...though I know not how.

Time passed, Gambit returned to me, longer this time, before moving on again. In the next two years, I met a fallen angel named Fensgate and fell in love with him. We were engaged to be married and all seemed well. Then Gambit returned to my life once again, proclaiming his undying love for me, and I could not deny the voice in my heart. I had loved him since childhood and would, always. Fensgate and I went our separate ways. It was only a few days after that when Thorn and I discovered one last portal between my father's realm and this one, one that he was planning a rite to re-enter this world through. We did not know if he would be successful, since he had been banished from this world, but an already existing portal would make it much easier for him to attempt it. We went forth in an effort to collapse that portal once and for all, and keep him from re-entering this realm.

Thorn managed to close the portal, but not before my father managed to reach through and pull me into his realm. The portal closed behind me, and left me stranded there, forever, I thought. I thought death would come to me then, but he kept me alive…I had only just realized I was pregnant the very day before I was taken into his world, and he wanted the child's power for himself. The child was Fensgate's, the fallen angel to whom I had been engaged to marry, before Gambit's return. After my son was born, Maliketh immediately had me name him, and then bound my son to him by his true name with a magical rite that is unbreakable unto the death of one or the other. Maliketh suffered me to live only to care for the child.

My son, Tristan Lightbringer, as I named him, had much his father's angelic power. He was also very adept at using it, and I must confess, imagining the full range of the powers he would attain upon adulthood nearly frightened me. But I never saw him attain manhood. My father decreed my death when Tristan was of an age when he no longer needed my care to survive. My son invoked his power then, opening a portal and sending me back to this world once again.

I returned here, a shattered soul, a shadow of my former self. I had spent seven years in Maliketh's realm, and I was broken in both body and spirit, so malnourished and mistreated had I been. I was haunted by nightmares, even while awake, living in terror of my father's wrath upon his return to this world. It was Fensgate who healed me. His final gift to me before his death. He took away many of the memories of my time in that world, he healed my fractured soul, and imbued my body with new life. I will forever be indebted to him. Shortly afterward, Fensgate met his death at the hands of an evil opponent, with welcoming arms. His heart had been broken when I declared my true love for Gambit, and he felt he no longer had reason to live. This guilt, too, I shall bear upon my soul forever.

And so, Tristan remains in the clutches of his grandfather, an unwilling pawn in Maliketh's evil schemes. My son is surely a grown man by now, for though only a few months have passed here, years have passed in that world. It saddens my heart forever to know I have missed his childhood, that he has spent what should have been the best years of his life under the chokehold of an evil monarch. When my father has come far enough along in his ascension, he will undoubtedly use Tristan to open a portal to bring him to this world. Even if I am able to rescue Tristan from his grasp, he will continue his ascension and eventually he will gain such power he will be able to overcome the power of the spell that banished him from this world and open his own portal. And so, either way, he must eventually be faced and defeated.

I have recently formed a plan that may catch my father off-guard, one that will take the fight to his world and interrupt his ascension to power. With the help of an ancient elven artifact, called the Black Elfstone, I may be able to absorb his power. The risk is great, for my body shall be the final resting place of my father's dark power, passed through the Elfstone and into me. I may be overwhelmed by the magic, and consumed by darkness as my father is. But for the freedom of my son and this world, I can risk no less. Soon I shall go through to his world one last time...and then the final battle will be fought, with this world as the prize.