Zhaerun Faerzzym - The Drow Elite Warrior

Role in Its Society:

Zhaerun Faerzzym serves as weapons master and strike-captain for a mid-power drow noble house in the deep Underdark. He is the razor edge of their will—sent wherever a quiet assassination is too subtle and an open war is too costly.

Within his city’s obsidian halls, Zhaerun:

• Commands a cadre of elite warriors who execute precision raids on rival houses, duergar enclaves, and surface outposts.
• Oversees the training of young nobles and house soldiers, shaping them into disciplined killers rather than just cruel bullies.
• Acts as a political piece on the board—loaned out as a “gift” to allied houses, or sent as a message to enemies that diplomacy has failed.

Unlike many of his kin, Zhaerun has a soldier’s practicality rather than a sadist’s appetite. He still embodies drow ruthlessness, but he values efficiency, loyalty, and precision. Among Underdark denizens, he is feared less for the house he serves and more for the fact that when he is deployed, it means someone has already lost and just doesn’t know it yet.

Appearance Description:

Zhaerun is tall and lean-muscled, his obsidian-black skin bearing faint, silvery scars like spiderweb cracks at his jawline and forearms. His features are sharp and severe: high cheekbones, narrow nose, and thin lips that rarely curve into anything resembling warmth.

His hair is stark white, shaved close on the sides and pulled into a tight warrior’s tail at the back, bound with rings of blackened metal and a single strip of purple silk denoting his house. When helmed, he wears a smooth, close-fitting black steel helm with a stylized spider sigil etched in only the faintest relief.

He favors dark adamantine chain and leather, layered in overlapping plates that drink in dim light rather than reflect it. A high-collared piwafwi-style cloak drapes from his shoulders, shifting from matte black to muted violet as it moves. At his hips hang paired shortswords with slim, poison-darkened blades, their guards shaped like spider legs. A hand crossbow rests at his thigh, holstered in a rig that allows a fluid draw.

Fine tattoos in the shape of barbed sigils spiral around his wrists and over the backs of his hands—marks earned in the training pits. When he fights, his red eyes narrow to slits of focused malice, and the smooth efficiency of his movements makes it very clear: this is someone who has killed a lot, and learned from every cut.

Backstory:

Born the second son of House Faerzzym, Zhaerun was never destined for priesthood or arcane study—that glory went to his elder sister and their favored cousins. Instead, he was given to the weapons masters and thrown into the brutal crucible of drow martial training.

He thrived.

In the sparring pits beneath the house compound, Zhaerun learned that survival wasn’t about rage; it was about discipline, timing, and knowing when to bend. While other young drow showed off, he watched. While they boasted of kills, he memorized how they moved.

Over decades, he:

• Rose through the ranks of the house guard, surviving political purges that claimed flashier, more arrogant warriors.
• Led surface raids against caravan routes, coastal keeps, and poorly defended villages—evaluating human and dwarf responses with cold curiosity.
• Fought in the Shadow Galleries, an underground arena where houses tested their champions in “training duels” that just happened to end in convenient deaths.

His real turning point came when a priestess of his own house tried to engineer his “heroic” death to cover her failure. She sent him and a small unit into a trap laid by a rival house and a duergar legion, expecting his corpses to be found among the wreckage. Zhaerun survived by breaking the rules—allying temporarily with the duergar commander, then turning on the priestess’s agents on the way home.

The matron couldn’t punish him without admitting her priestess’s incompetence. Instead, House Faerzzym quietly promoted him, putting him in charge of the elite forces that did the city’s dirtiest work.

Now, Zhaerun walks a narrow line: loyal to his house but deeply aware that its priestesses would sacrifice him without a second thought. He cultivates pragmatic alliances with duergar, svirfneblin, and even certain surface mercenaries, always ready with an exit route if the webs of politics tighten around his throat.