Enter the Drow...
I thought it was time a fabulous authour and his even more detailed and brilliant character got a plug. Some of you may well know many of the adventures of Drizzt Do'Urden and his friends, and I have found R.A Salvatore slips some truly profound insights into Drizzt's discourses preceding each 'part' in his novels.
So, I am going to include them here, and leave it up to you to sieve out those pearls of wisdom. Any errors are totally my own, and I do hope to have transposed it correctly...do let me know if I have erred! :)
The Legacy
As written by Drizzt Do’Urden, in the novels by R.A.Salvatore.
The Inspiring Fear
Nearly three decades have passed since I left my homeland, a small measure of time by the reckoning of a drow elf, but a period that seems a lifetime to me. All that I desired, or believed I desired, when I walked out of Menzoberranzan’s dark cavern, was a true home, a place of friendship and peace of a warm hearth and share stories with trusted companions.
I have found all those now, beside Bruenor in the hallowed halls of his youth. We prosper. We have peace. I wear my weapons only on my five-day journeys between Mithril Hall and Silverymoon.
Was I wrong?
I do not doubt, nor do I ever lament, my decision to leave the vile world of Menzoberranzan, but I am beginning to believe now, in the (endless) quiet and peace, that my desires at that critical time were founded in the inevitable longing of inexperience. I had never known that calm existence I so badly wanted.
I cannot deny that my life is better, a thousand times better, than anything I ever knew in the Underdark. And yet, I cannot remember the last time I felt the anxiety, the inspiring fear, of impending battle, the tingling that can come only when an enemy is near or a challenge must be met.
Oh, I do remember the specific instance – just a year ago, when Wulfgar, Guenhwyvar, and I worked the lower tunnels in the cleansing of Mithril Hall – but that feeling, that tingle of fear, has long since faded from memory.
Are we then creatures of action? Do we say that we desire those accepted clichés of comfort when, in fact, it is the challenge and the adventure that truly gives us life?
I must admit, to myself at least, that I do not know.
There is one point that I cannot dispute, though, one truth that will inevitably help me resolve these questions and which places me in a fortunate position. For now, beside Bruenor and his kin, beside Wulfgar and Cattie-brie and Guenhwyvar, dear Guenhwyvar, my destiny is my own to choose.
I am safer now than ever before in my sixty years of life. The prospects have never looked better for the future, for continued peace and continued security. And yet, I feel mortal. For the first time, I look to what has passed rather than to what is still to come. There is no other way to explain it. I feel that I am dying, that those stories I so desire to share with friends will soon grow stale, with nothing to replace them.
But, I remind myself again, the choice is mine to make.
