Death Wind

[The Diamond God]

Storm cut and took a precise bite of a smoked trout. She closed her eyes, to better savor the taste. A moment later, she opened them again, and grinned.

"Go on. Eat! Have what you'd like."  

[The Diamond God]

[Wanna here a joke? Why was the tomato blushing?]

Storm took the time to take a long drink of the amber liquid in her crystalline glass.

"I make it a habit of dining and wining with all of my new and prospective crew mates; it's easier to tell the psychopaths from compassionates, when they've had a glass or three of rum in them. They...let their guards down, so to speak. So. Are you a psychopath?"

Her smile was slight and moderately patronizing.  

[The Diamond God]

[It saw the Salad dressing. XD]

Storm pursed her lips; she thought aloud.

"Shame. Ah well. I'm sure we can still find a use for you here. Are you proud of being sane?"  

[The Diamond God]

Storm finished her fish before answering.

"Insanity is better to control. I like to control my crew. But then, sanity has its moments. Like in you. It would be nice to not be the only sane girl aboard."

She smiled gently and took a long drink of her blood-red wine, watching Melanie over the rim of the mug.

"Or even, the only girl."  

[The Diamond God]

Storm smiled gently. She's rather...delightful.

"In certain respects, perhaps. On the surface, most definitely. You once asked me where I'm from, I seem to recall. I was born the third daughter of House DiVir, Fifth House in Menzoberranzan, my home city. It is in a cavern, two miles wide and a thousand feet high. It is a monument to the other worldly, and (ultimately) the deadly grace that marks my race. It is not a large city, not by drow standards; only twenty thousand or so reside there. Where, in ages past, there had been an empty cavern of roughly shaped stalactites and stalagmites now stands artistry, row after row of carve castles thrumming in a quiet glow of magic. The city is perfection of form, where not a stone has been left to its natural shape. This...this sense of order and control, it is but an illusion. A cruel facade. It is a deception hiding the chaos and vileness of my people. Like our cities, we are a beautiful, slender and delicate race. I do not say this to boast; I say it because it is self-evident: we of beauty make it a moral imperative that our surroundings match our physical appearance.

"Ne'er does a star grace my homeland, with and without a poet's light of twinkling mysteries, nor does the sun send its rays of warmth and life; I am from the Underdark. It is a secret world (of sorts) beneath the bustling surface world; the sky is a ceiling of heartless stone and whose walls show the gray blandness of death in the torchlight of the occasional foolish surface-dwellers that stumbled down. It is not their world, not the world of light; my home is the world of the eternal nights. Most who came there uninvited do not return."

Storm lifted her finger free and sucked the digit dry.

"Those few who did escape back to the safety of the surface, they returned changed. Their eyes saw the shadows and the gloom, the inevitable doom of the Underdark. Dark corridors meander through out the dark realm in winding courses, connecting caverns great and small, with ceilings high and low. Mounds of stone as pointed as the teeth of a sleeping dragon leer down in silent threat, or rise up to block the way of intruders. And the silence...there is a silence there, profound and foreboding to surface dwellers like yourself; the crouched hush of a predator at work. To me...to me it feels like home. But all too often, it is the only sound, the only reminder to travelers in the Underdark that they have not lost their sense of hearing altogether, is a distant and echoing drip of water, beating like the heart of a beat, slipping through the silent stones to the deep Underdark pools of chilled water."

She leaned forward, dipping her finger into her drink and stirring it idly.

"Where I'm from, status is everything. Station. In all the world of the drow, there is no more important word. It is the calling of our...our religion, the incessant pulling of hungering heartstrings. Ambition overrides good sense, and compassion is through away in its face. All in the name of our...of their god, Lolth, the Spider Queen. Station is the way of Lolth, the ambition she bestows to further the chaos, to keep her drow 'children' along their appointed course of self-imprisonment. Station was the paradox of the world of my people, the limitation of our power within the hunger for power. It is gained through treachery and invites treachery against those who gain it. Those most powerful in Menzoberranzan spend their days watching over their shoulders, defending against the daggers that would find their backs....their deaths were usually met from the front."

She sat back, silent finally; Storm was nearly brooding.  

[The Diamond God]

Storm smiled again; she didn't bother to correct Melanie's assumption that she loved her people. Most surface dwellers didn't understand just how deeply she hated the other drow...with a single exception, of course.

"Why the hell not? Who's going to stop me, I ask."  

[The Diamond God]

Storm grinned widely.

"Exactly."

She nibbled on a roll, finding it delightfully buttered and still warm.

"I like you, Melanie. How do you feel about a promotion? It's good to have some sanity around me, on occasions."  

[The Diamond God]

Storm nodded.

"Sure, why not?"