Draven

The Greystone Family Story

Draven was born in April of 1339, into the same family in the mountainous region called Raven Rock into which Cain was born a couple of years later. Raven Rock is located on Faerûn's northwestern coast, in the middle of a mountain range called The Spine of the World.

The family's father is named Gyleon Greystone, a close military friend of clan chief Alrik Tenstone, and head of the Greystone family. The children's mother, Lyne Greystone, takes care of the family. Draven has five younger siblings, three brothers and two sisters. Cain is the oldest of these siblings.

Draven's actual home is located in the great forest of Lurkwood, south of the mountains of the Kingdom of Many Arrows.

Draven's early childhood was a happy time, with both parents showing him love. After Cain was born, Draven and Cain grew up together playing, wrestling, sparring with swords, and testing each other in brotherly fashion. A genuine, deep, and immediate bond and relationship formed between Draven and Cain. As more siblings were regularly born into the family in nearly consecutive years, the younger siblings, as they grew, got to follow their older brothers' mutual rivalry and loving sibling relationship.

One evening, Gyleon learned that Draven was not, in fact, his biological child. This ended the period of peaceful coexistence in the Greystone family. Gyleon learned, through his wife's confession, carrying a poisonous secret and guilt, that Lyne had been raped by a war chief serving under the Black Raven clan chief, during a negotiation between the clans. Draven was not his own biological child after all, but the result of some stranger's brutal act.

As a proud man, Gyleon flew into an uncontrollable rage over the matter, and upon understanding the situation nearly killed his wife in front of their children, but at the last moment restrained himself because he loved his children — the father's love for Draven, however, was extinguished immediately upon learning the truth.

Gyleon felt great shame and helplessness over his situation and hardened his heart toward Draven and, in part, his wife. Over the following months and years, the betrayed Gyleon raised Cain, and especially Draven, in a merciless and violent manner, driven by his own anger. The boys' mother, Lyne, always tried her best to shield Draven and Cain from the frightening father figure's cruel and sadistic treatment, with the younger siblings seeing it all unfold in the background. Gyleon couldn't stand the warm relationship between Draven and Cain, and repeatedly tried to break their bond, never succeeding.

Gyleon constantly berated and scorned Draven, signaling that he was filth from outside the family, with no place in the family, the clan, or in the hearts of his parents and other siblings. Lyne nevertheless loved Draven, even though she felt conflicting emotions about the situation, shame and guilt. As a woman, however, Lyne didn't dare oppose her husband's way of doing things, since she would surely have lost her own life sooner, having lied to her husband for years about his becoming a father.

Draven's only resources for surviving such an extremely challenging family situation were the love he'd received earlier, in his early childhood, from his parents, and his special bond with Cain, half-brother though he was. Draven's half-biological standing in the family didn't bother Cain, who considered Draven a full-blooded older brother whom he admired endlessly. Cain found his father's behavior and actions so unjust and cruel that it contributed to the extinguishing of Cain's humane side, shaping him into a brutal war machine.

Draven was the greatest source of Gyleon's shame. In the end, Lyne was practically forced to abandon Draven under the pressure and mistreatment of her husband, since she feared his revenge and rage so greatly. Eventually, carrying the anger and shame became too much for Gyleon. He gathered a war band selected from his own clan's members, favorable to him, and attacked nearby villages sadistically and mercilessly, killing most of the innocent villagers, venting his feelings this way. This campaign of revenge wasn't enough, however — after that, Gyleon returned home and killed his wife Lyne, because she had broken his heart.

Gyleon pierced his wife's heart with a sword. Draven watched as his stepfather Gyleon tore the heart from his mother's chest and threw it at Draven's feet, spitting after it. Draven saw burning rage, hatred, and contempt in his adoptive father's eyes.

Shortly after this, Gyleon summoned his younger children, Cain included. Gyleon cursed Draven and cast him out, banished him from their shared home and dwelling grounds. Gyleon blamed Draven, in front of his children, for their mother's death, while the younger children wept hysterically over the loss of their mother. Cain, however, understood what was really going on, and stayed behind to help Draven bury their mother. Cain comforted his older brother by saying he was sorry for all of this, and that their mother had abandoned Draven too. Cain promised he would never abandon Draven.

At that moment, Cain and Draven swore a blood oath to each other to always stand together. After this sacred vow, Draven's and Cain's paths parted. Utterly broken, traumatized, and mistreated, Draven left the forest region of Lurkwood without looking back, toward his new fate.

Draven's Life After His Banishment

The Body is the Feeler of Emotions and Sensations

The Mind is the Thinker of Thoughts

The Witness is the Observer of All

After his inhuman experiences, Draven continued his lonely and ragged wandering from the Raven Rock mountains toward Mirabar. Along the way, Draven robbed and killed passing travelers to survive, on top of the experiences eating away at him mentally and emotionally from within. Draven lived this way for some months, wandering the land between Mirabar and Luskan, all the while pondering the directionless state of his life.

At some point, as he finally lost his zest for life and his thirst for it, Draven, while hiding at the edge of a forest, noticed a wandering preacher of the temple knights (Life Domain), who was proclaiming, in a charismatic and magnetic speech inspired by divine power, the word of his gods to the local villagers. The villagers listened to the preacher, enraptured and focused.

The modest-looking preacher's speaking voice and the words he used made such a powerful impression on Draven that he felt every cell of his being momentarily fill with life and an inexplicable sense of balance. When the preacher was about to leave to continue his journey, Draven stumbled through the brush, looking as ragged as a beggar, to the preacher's feet, asking for help.

The preacher listened to Draven's story and was deeply moved by it. Draven asked that the preacher take him along and guide him onto the same path the preacher had spoken of a moment before. The preacher felt compassion for Draven and took him along, guiding him onto a new path. The preacher took Draven to Neverwinter, where Draven joined the training of the temple knights. Draven had to go through a long internal struggle and training regarding his own personal history in order to come to terms with himself and to find within himself a favorable channel for the divine (Life Domain) power.

Draven wanted to devote his life to healing, overcoming death, and helping others, as a counterbalance to the inhuman experiences of his family background, its cruelties, his mother's comfortless death, and the experience of being cast out by his father figure. During his training as a temple knight, Draven worked through these experiences under the guidance of his masters, gradually feeling himself cleansed of their effects and feeling freedom, joy, and gratitude growing within him like a great tree growing from a mustard seed.