Kara Reginleif: Champion of the Zhentarim

       My father met my stepmother when they were just children in Riatavin, and as soon as allowed, they wed, and recently celebrated their 27th anniversary… yippee. Their marriage looked perfect on the outside, blessed with three beautiful children, they own two shops around town, and seem to have so much love between them all. Then there’s me. Kara Reginleif, the bastard child. Since I, blessed to look nothing like them, could not pass for their fourth child without questions from others within the city, they falsified my origins a bit. I believe, the lie they told the neighbors and their friends was that some distant cousin in some city far away had passed on and they took me in out of the goodness of their hearts rather than admit my father had an affair. They even kept the last name my mother gave me to separate me further from them.

        In any case, my father began the affair five years after the wedding. He told me once, the only way he could describe her, was, “heavenly.” She was very beautiful, inside and out, and the embodiment of everything anyone would ever want in a partner, thus, the affair went on for around a year before she vanished without a trace. Around nine months later, my stepmother had the shock of her life when she discovered a Valkyrie standing on her front porch holding an infant. I can only imagine how great the look on her face must have been when she discovered her husband was the father… of a nonhuman child. That was the last time I ever saw my mother, not that I remember her, but she gently handed me off to my father, gave him my name and told him to raise me, that she would be watching.

         My stepmother is exceptionally racist and has a vengeance that burns like fire. Growing up with her, as you can imagine, was glorious. First, she took out all her hatred against my father’s affair on me; second, I am Half-Valkyrie, thus she believed she was superior to me in every way possible because she was human. Bitch.

       When I was thirteen, I began to feel the call that every Valkyrie feels for war and honor, so my father sent me to the only mercenary company he knew, the Zhentarim. They moved me to Waterdeep, and although it wasn’t as honorable as I would have preferred initially, it grew on me, as the Zhent’s treated me, from day one, with a much greater respect than my family ever had. Many years after joining them, we were contacted to do some work in the Underdark, unfortunately the simple raid turned out to be a trap, and everyone with me was killed. I activated my teleportation item, that was guaranteed to transport me back to Waterdeep, but something went wrong. I found myself in front of a large group of kobolds.

                                   

photo from advancedphotoshop.co.uk