Drow Arcane Trickster - Cordon Blades

"The name's Cordon Blades, but don't let it fool you: I'm not actually made of Blades."

• Cordon Blades c. 3E308

[MEDIUM Sized NPC] - Presupported in 32mm and 75mm Scale

Statblock included in our July 2022 5E Campaign - The Grand Hunt

A Drow orphan, found in an expedition in Lo Fuin and raised by commoners in a remote town in Baldur. Cordon has no attachment to his Drow heritage, though often feels the sting of strange looks and whispers at his presence. He found a penchant for magic as a child, being forbidden from practising in Baldur, he was sent to Belfrie where he learned to hone his magic to be in tune with his skills of guile, though it seemed the more he used magic the more it drained on him. Now he employs his skills in the World Explorer’s and Hunters League, guile and magic both being employed deftly against great monsters.

Expeditions into Lo Fuin are common place for academics, hunters and adventurers alike. Though uncommon is to find an abandoned Drow child aside the road, left with no notes or markings. The adventurers that found Cordon as a babe took him back to Zander’s Peril, the expeditionary town entrenched in the thickets of the swampy forest. A few weeks later the babe arrived in the Baldurian town of Nortros, an isolated town for the most part but the sole centre of trade on the Katarn Sea for Baldur.

Cordon spent many of his earliest years in the orphanage there, though eventually an Elven couple adopted him after losing their own son to Blight Tongue. Though they tried to raise him to be an Elf, Cordon cared little for it. He was raised among humans and felt human, despite what looked back at him in the mirror. His teens were filled with rebellion, sneaking out at night, stealing into Taverns for booze or peaking glimpses through the windows of the Gentlemen’s Parlours, Cordon and his friends quickly earned reputations as the town deviants. So it was even more unsettling when the teen discovered his gift for magic.

Hearing of the news, his parents quickly sent him to be trained in Belfrie’s University of Ardris, where he would face no discrimination for his race or magical abilities, but learn to control them. Cordon loved his time in Belfrie, though was a poor student. Him and many of the other flunkies he finished school with were all unemployable by prestigious courts, guilds and organizations, but found work together in the mercenary company of the World Explorers’ and Hunters’ League (WEHL). In the WEHL his skills of magic and guile went hand in hand for trapping and eliminating basic beasts, monsters and goblins. Though unknown to Cordon was his gift for magic was in fact a curse, for each time he used it his hand’s skin grew putrid and feral, reverting shortly after its use. When his use of magic one day consumes him, he will turn into a powerful entity to wreak destruction on the enemies of the Drow of Lo Fuin, as was intended when he was left at the wayside.

As time went on many of Cordon’s old classmates found untimely ends or early retirements in the WEHL. Only he and Ezeqial remain of those who joined the WEHL after graduation. Ezeqial and Cordon often bonded over their feelings of being aliens in the civilized lands of Tharador, and becoming hunters was an escape from that feeling, only seeing civilization in the days between jobs for the most part.