The Dhampire's Tale (Perspective, Tense, POV, and Gender Switch)

"It started a long time ago..." Dame Integral Begins...

I must have been 5 when my mother began training me to pursue the advanced class of a Temple Raider, and at the time I knew little of my faith save that my mother prayed to 'Lorchos' and 'Our Father Bellow' when she said her prayers each night. She started teaching me cleric spells, but also training me in stealth and lock picking, a cross class skill, which never the less I picked up with the rapidity of a small child.

My mother and I moved around a lot, traveling from city to city, never in one place for more than a fortnight, but I was not lonely, I had friends, we were part of a caravan, and we made our money selling charms and potions, and doing divination for the masses. I was to learn as I grew older that our troupe of wanderers were different: harmed by the potions we used to heal others, healed by the black light poison we used to kill those who threatened us, and always wearing false teeth to hide our fang filled mouths.

I must have been 10 before I heard the word 'Dhampire', and 17 before I learned what it meant: that my mother and I and most of our fellows were the decedents of vampires, and that I could never have children with the boy I had had a crush on since I was 13. "**** and **** cannot beget Life." they told me, and I wept, for we had given each other our virginity and they told us we could never marry. Two weeks later "R0b3rt" drank a beaker of my mother's strongest healing potion which burned him to ash from the inside out, his suicide note saying he could not live in world where our love was forbidden. That night I discovered an identical bottle in a box under my pillow, but instead of joining him in **** I put it in the place of the missing potion and never spoke of it again. There was a note with it, but I burned it, unread. When I was 18 I left the troupe and the bitterness of my lost love to persue my mother's dream for me of becoming a Temple Raider in Lorchos service, now well along the road to achieving that goal with three levels of cleric.

Little did I realize what awaited me in the pursuit of that dream...