Holden's History

Holden comes from a small island of mostly tieflings out on the sea. Her people tell stories of how, long ago, their ancestors left the volcanoes where it is said all tieflings originate from after the All-Father tiefling won freedom for the tieflings against a dark oppressor. Through the All-Father, magic was controlled in the world and the people hiding in the belly of the planet could return to the surface. Holden's people believed themselves to be descended directly from the All-Father but had left the volcano in search of a more fruitful life and got so far as their small island. Over the generations their population lost their greyish-purple skin tone and began to resemble far more the greens and blues of their new jungled and ocean-surrounded home. They became skilled fishermen and traded at times with a larger island of more diverse inhabitants a day's journey away by boat.
 
Enter Holden, the only child of her mother and father. Her father was lost at sea during a trading expedition to the island when a storm hit. Holden had been pretty young at the time. Subsequently she was raised by her mother, and both had to work in their village to support themselves since her father was gone. Holden took up fishing and selling her catches, her mother was a seamstress.
 
When Holden was 16 years old, a beloved friend, an old woman who Holden considered her grandmother, died and the village celebrated her passage. The island's culture is very tribal. Each village and each family group has specific markings that they carve into their horns as children, setting each tiefling apart. When a young woman married, a space on her horns, reserved from childhood, was filled in with her husband's family markings. They are staunch worshipers of their fabulous ancestor, the All-Father or He-Who-Was-Crowned. They did not show much emotion. Smiles maybe, at unguarded moments, and laughter might be permitted in very casual settings, but tears were never allowed, nor was anger. Mourning the passing of someone was more for connecting the soul of the departed to the reach of the All-Father who guided them home, not for the mourners. When Dimmeia died, Holden looked around her and wondered how anyone could hold back their tears and their anger, because she was about to burst. Her mother pulled her aside and warned her of dire consequences if she were to lose her crap at the funeral. Holden ran away, shrieking, crying out her rage and sorrow for the loss of her friend. Her mother wouldn't let her back in the house after such a spectacle and so she went fishing.
 
Once in the boat, she languished under the sky, as she often did, wondering what to do with herself. A strange commotion beneath the water drew her attention and she looked overboard to see something moving in the water and, curious, she leapt in to find out what it was and was immediately sucked under by a dangerous current. She tried to fight it but it dragged her to the bottom. Ears exploding and her lungs burning, Holden tried to escape the current by grabbing hold of the ship but oddly enough, the current pushed her deeper into the wreck, spitting her out into an unexpected wall of dry air. The water sat on one side of the chamber like a wall and dry air on the other preserved a captain's quarters, filled with books. She hears whispering from one pearl-encrusted tome in particular and touches it, when it flies open under her hand and she's enthralled by the being inside it, who promises to make something of her if she will obey him. She agrees, and thus a warlock was born.
 
 
 
Shortly after, she grew too irritated and stifled by the village's ways and slipped quietly away in the night, pausing only to tuck a note into her mother's hand and kissing her as she took the white scarf with black stripes her mother had been working on for her. Within the note, Holden relinquished her claim on her mother's nurturing, and being the last of her husband's family, relinquished her claim on her mother and freed her to be her own entity, to remarry, if she wanted. She got into her trusty little fishing boat and pushed away from her island toward an adventurer's full life, never to see her home again.