Deava De’nafrin

Deava De’nafrin is a noble drow priestess of the house of De’nafrin in Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles"). She has red eyes, carries a snake whip and wears a red spider brooch, and the men of her house bow to her in fear.¹

The raid on the outpost

Ephorus was being held by dwarves at an outpost when drow attacked it. A big man with a bloodied falchion, Zaredun, opened his cell; after him came a long-haired, grey-eyed noble with two swords, Nilgrim De’nafrin. The men debated killing the surface-raised prisoner as worthless, and Ephorus was struck when he objected. Then Deava arrived and scolded the grey-eyed man as her incompetent brother.^{2 3 1}

She asked Ephorus for his true drow name; he knew only the name he used on the surface. When she wished to test his blood, he raised himself into the air and darkened the room with the powers he was born with, and she judged that his strong blood might belong to a noble family. She turned to an augury.^{4 5}

After it she first meant to keep him alive and take him to the underdark as a slave of the house, to rise in time to soldier if he proved his worth over the years. To show where he belonged she gave him a spider dagger and had him kill a dwarf prisoner, then belittled his skill.^{6 7}

She had him kiss the spider sign on her boot; the dagger vanished, his wound closed and the powers he had lost came back. She told him that his body and soul had belonged to the Spider Queen from the start, that his work was not finished and that he would come when called, and she left him on the surface. Whether the power that answered came from the Spider Queen herself, from a matron or from some other being bound to her is not known.^{8 9 10}

Deava ordered him to keep his captivity and the meeting secret. His belongings were brought back; she said she had thought of tearing up the prince's paper that named him free but left it with him, since it would be useful. His enchanted cloak was taken and another drow cloak given in its place, and at her order to burn the outpost Ephorus set it alight with the oils stored there while the drow watched.^{11 12 13}

A drow man then showed him, in a bag beside a giant riding lizard, the severed heads of an innkeeper, his wife and his daughter, punished for informing on the drow. He gave Ephorus a red spider badge of the house and told him to report to the dwarves on the surface that he had survived a raid on an inn and found the sign. Ephorus later said that he had received opposite orders from Deava and from Nilgrim, and balanced them by reporting the drow raid while keeping the house's name to himself.^{14 15 16}

The house

Above the three drow of the raid stands a matron of the house, who is not on the surface; the true underdark lies days of travel away. A captured draft by a wizard of the house who was not of noble birth was addressed to this matron and proposed breeding experiments on captives from the surface.^{17 18}

Some time later a wounded, masked drow in a dark green cloak bearing the house's sign, whom Ephorus remembered from the back of the raid, sought him out near Gromkar. He feared the priestess would punish him if he came back with his task undone, and asked Ephorus to steal a letter from a gnome mage he had drugged and poisoned. He said that the priestess and the matron had plans for Ephorus, that the noble men of the house disliked him, and that below there are family and alliances of interest rather than friendship.^{19 20 21 22}

Spoiler: Kinship with EphorusRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #31.5 · Say what you have read

In exchange, the messenger told Ephorus that Deava is his aunt, and that his mother had once been noble. Drow lineage passes through the mother, he said, but because his mother had lost her rank and his father was a commoner, Ephorus's rights were uncertain and the kinship gave him no place in the house. The priestess was keeping this to herself for her own ends, and Nilgrim and Zaredun might kill him out of jealousy if they learned it.^{23 24}