SUMMER SILVERSONG THE SORCERESS OF TYMORA

The one thing that I have found that humans often fail to understand is this: The destination is rarely as important as the journey. As I sit here and look back upon my life I wonder, how did I get to be where I am now? What will history say of Summer the Lucky, Sorceress of Tymora? Rather than have my life cloaked in legend and shadow, I have decided to sit down and put pen to paper, to draw the picture of who I am and how I came to be what I came to be.

I was born in Shadowdale to the mage Averina D'Argent and the ranger Dafyd Longbow. My mother was a mage, a gold elf born and raised in Evermeet. My father had a strong hint of wild elf and was born and raised in the Dales. His family had chosen to remain close to Myth Drannor, but he never told me why. My father was never really big on explanations. My mother left Evermeet for some reason that she never revealed. Only when I pressed her did she tell me this, 'I looked without and saw the bars of a cage, I looked within and saw only emptiness. I left before I killed myself, that is all you need to know.' All of my rather convoluted sayings come from things that my mother told me. My love of mischief and chaos come from my father.

My birth name is unimportant, I was born in the month of Summertide, so my usename was Summer from the very begining. My father used to joke that they cursed themselves by using that name for me, but it was a curse they accepted happily. I have two older brothers, both a blessing and a curse at times. They were both called to the path of the Ranger. I never felt the call of the warrior paths, I was more likely to hide with a book, and spend hours daydreaming. My mother took this as a sign that I was destined for one of the more scholarly paths, my father took it as a sign that I was simply odd.

Life was quiet and peaceful, at least it was for me. My mother instilled in me a great respect for life and taught me to always look for joy and love, to keep these things in my heart and cherish them always. I drew from her my great philosophy of life and living. Life is too short to worry or fear. You must live every moment as if it is your last. You must dance and play and sing and laugh, remembering that someone who truly has joy in their heart can never be defeated.

My parents kept me very sheltered. It was not until I was 85 that I realised what a threat Zhentil Keep was to those that lived in the Dales. A serious Zhentish attack shattered my small world then. I now know this kind of thing is very common, and is actually the basis of the hatred between the Dales and the Keep, but then I was rather clueless about what was happening.

The attack itself was rather short and bloody. My father fell early, he died bravely to extract a party of scouts from an ambush. My mother lost a lot of her will to live when he died, but no one ever realised just how much until the day the battle ended. The tale is a rather interesting one, how an attack was brought to an end by the action of a single, elven mage. My mother looked at the situation, decided the loss of life was unacceptable, Gated down to the middle of the enemy army, and retributed her staff, leaving a smoking crater and the enemy army in shreds.

My brothers were rangers and had their own path to follow. My parents were dead. My mother had arranged for my apprenticeship, so at least I had a direction to head in. My new master was human, old, and rather cranky. He lived in a farming village south of Shadowdale, and was very unprepared for the new apprentice that he had acquired. I was just as unprepared for life among humans. It was interesting, to say the least. For fifteen years I lived among the humans, making occasional trips in to Shadowdale and studying the ways of the mage.

I will never claim that I did not have fun. I was always in to mischief, pushing my luck all the time and growing more and more bold with each success. There was once incident with a goat and Elminster's herb garden that still worries me, but I have it on good authority that Lhaeo has long forgotten about that little stunt. How was I to know the little beast liked mint?

When I reached my hundreth summer my master told me that he had taught me all he could teach me. At this point I had a decision to make, and I decided to take a gamble. I had no desire to stay in the Dales and marry a farmer, so I packed my things and took off for the City of Splendours.

Then my life got really interesting...