The Black Bitch of Void's Wake

As whispered in portside taverns where the walls have ears and the ale tastes of regret

“She is neither drow nor halfling, neither shadow nor light. She is what happens when the universe’s cruelest joke learns to laugh back.” —Scribed on a cell wall in Salandrian Naval Prison, author unknown

The Many Names of One Woman

She has been called a hundred names in a dozen languages, but none stick longer than morning dew on spider silk. To the Salandrian Navy, she is “The Void Witch.” To the merchant guilds, “The Laughing Death.” To the drow of House Vel’Sharen, she is simply “The Abomination.”

But to her crew, to the forgotten and overlooked who sail under her black flag, she is the Black Bitch of Void’s Wake—and she wears the insult like a crown of salt and shadow.

Origins: The Child Who Should Not Be

Her Mother’s Flight

Vel’Sharen Zastra was a promising young priestess of the Spider Queen, third daughter of a minor matron, destined for comfortable cruelty in the middle ranks of drow society. That destiny shattered during what should have been a routine surface raid.

The halfling merchant they captured was named Willum Brightpenny—a name so absurdly cheerful that Zastra was ordered to torture him first, to wipe that insufferable smile from his small face. But Willum did something no one in the Underdark had ever done: he made her laugh. Not the cold, mocking laughter of drow superiority, but genuine, surprised delight at his ridiculous jokes told even as the knives came out.

“What’s the difference between a drow matron and a bag of spiders?” he asked, blood running down his chin. “The bag has a purpose!”

She laughed. In that moment of unexpected mirth, something cracked in her conditioning. When she discovered she was pregnant weeks later—from that one moment of connection rather than cruelty—she knew her life in the Underdark was over.

The Storm Birth

Zastra fled to the surface, pursued by her sisters’ assassins. Willum had been released (the raid leader found him too annoying to kill), and against all probability, she found him again in the port city of Saltmere. He didn’t run when he saw her swollen belly. He didn’t ask questions. He simply said, “Well then, let’s see about finding you somewhere safe to have that baby.”

The child was born during the worst storm in a generation, in a smuggler’s cave while the wind howled like all the demons of the Underdark had followed them up. The midwife—an old halfling woman who asked no questions if paid enough—took one look at the baby and crossed herself.

“That one’s going to be trouble,” she said. “Got her mother’s midnight skin and her father’s clever hands. Got both their stubbornness and neither’s good sense.”

They named her Merriel, a halfling name meaning “laughter in darkness.” It didn’t stick.

The Formative Years

Growing Between Worlds

The family tried to settle in seven different ports over twelve years. In each one, the same story: too dark for the halflings, too small for the drow, too strange for everyone else. Zastra worked as a sailmaker, her nimble drow fingers and knowledge of spider silk making her valuable enough that people overlooked her heritage—mostly. Willum went back to trading, though now he specialized in “forgotten cargo”—things that fell off manifests, items better not asked about.

Young Merriel learned from both parents:

From her mother: How to see in darkness, move in silence, and that trust is weakness unless earned in blood
From her father: How to read wind and wave, tie every knot known to sailors, and that everything’s negotiable, even racism, if you’re clever enough

But most importantly, she learned from being between—how to be nobody and everybody, how to slip through cracks in society like water through fingers.

The Formative Moment

When she was fifteen, a drow assassination team finally found them. Not for Zastra—she’d been written off as dead. They came for the “abomination,” the half-blood whose very existence mocked the Spider Queen.

The assassins struck during a festival, when the harbor was crowded. Willum died instantly, a poisoned blade through his heart. Zastra killed two assassins before the third got her, mother and daughter’s eyes meeting one last time across the crowd.

Merriel should have died then. The assassin had her cornered on the dock, blade raised. But she did something unexpected—she laughed. Not from hysteria or fear, but because she finally understood the joke. The universe had made her impossible, then tried to kill her for existing. The absurdity of it was genuinely funny.

The assassin hesitated, confused. In that moment, Merriel rolled backward off the dock, disappeared under the pier, and vanished into the maze of dock pilings that only someone her size could navigate. The assassin reported her dead, body lost to the harbor. It was easier than admitting a fifteen-year-old half-blood had escaped.

The Shadow’s Laugh

Finding the Ship

She lived in the spaces between ships for two years, stealing food, learning from every sailor who’d talk to a small, dark girl with silver hair. She was seventeen when she found it—a halfling racing sloop rotting in Whisper Cove, its crew dead from plague three seasons past.

The ship’s name had been “The Swift Laugh,” according to faded registry papers she found in the captain’s cabin. But salt and time had eaten the first word from the hull, leaving only shadows of letters and “Laugh” still visible. She took it as a sign.

The Restoration

She spent two years rebuilding the ship in secret, using everything her parents had taught her:

Drow mushroom lacquers that made wood resist rot and repel barnacles
Halfling rigging techniques that used wind resistance instead of fighting it
Spider silk wound through regular rope, invisible but three times stronger
A special paint made from squid ink and Underdark minerals that seemed to drink light

But the true innovation was how she combined the techniques. Drow knowledge assumed you were underground with limited resources. Halfling knowledge assumed you were small but working with a crew. She was alone, on the surface, with scavenged materials. She had to invent new methods, create hybrid techniques, forge a new way of sailing.

The First Crew

She didn’t recruit her first crew—they found her. Other displaced souls who recognized something in the young woman who sang drow lullabies while retying halfling knots:

Garrett “Voidmouse” Slim: A halfling who’d been press-ganged into naval service and escaped
Theren “Darkwhisper” Kaine: A human woman who’d killed her abusive captain and had nowhere else to go
Kronk “Inkfist” Marr: A half-orc who’d been thrown off a merchant ship for refusing to throw spoiled food overboard when there were hungry people in port

They weren’t a crew at first, just four broken people fixing a broken ship. But when The Shadow’s Laugh finally sailed out of Whisper Cove, they were something more. They were the first drops of what would become the Forgotten Tide.

Rise to Power

The Void’s Wake Discovery

Every captain knew about the Void’s Wake—a dead zone where compasses spun, fog never lifted, and ships that entered rarely returned. It appeared on charts as a blank space marked with warnings in every language: “Do Not Enter,” “Cursed Waters,” “Here There Be Madness.”

But the Black Bitch (she’d accepted the name by then, after the seventh port authority called her that) saw it differently. Her mother had navigated the Underdark’s twisted passages where up was down and direction was meaningless. Her father had taught her that fog patterns were just another kind of wind.

She realized the Void’s Wake wasn’t cursed—it was just operating on different rules:

The magnetic fields were reversed and spiraling
The currents ran in three dimensions, including vertical streams
The fog had tidal patterns that repeated every thirteen days
The stars reflected differently in the water because the water itself was different—denser, older, full of minerals from deep ocean vents

Where others saw chaos, her mixed heritage let her see a different kind of order.

The First Great Raid

The Shadow’s Laugh spent three months learning the Void’s Wake’s patterns. Then they struck—hitting a Salandrian gold ship that was taking the “safe” route around the dead zone. They came from the fog like a nightmare, silent until the moment of boarding when they burst into that unnerving laughter.

The raid was perfect. No deaths, just efficiently transferred cargo and a traumatized crew left to spread the story. The Salandrian Navy sent three ships to hunt them. All three captains reported the same thing: the pirate ship sailed straight into the Void’s Wake and vanished. Pursuit was impossible.

Building the Fleet

Success bred success. Every misfit sailor, every overlooked halfling, every person the sea had chewed up and spat out—they all heard the stories. There was a captain who’d made the impossible possible, who’d turned being forgotten into power.

They came to her with their ships and their stories:

Entire crews of pressed sailors who’d mutinied and had nowhere else to go
Halfling merchants who’d been cheated one too many times
Naval deserters who’d refused to massacre civilians
Even a few elves who’d grown tired of remembering and wanted to learn to forget

She organized them into the Current system, each fleet with its own specialty but all flowing toward the same goal: proving that the overlooked could rule the waves.

The Black Bitch’s Philosophy

On Power

“True power isn’t making others remember you—it’s making them forget you exist until your blade’s at their throat. The mighty write histories. The forgotten write the endings.”

On Heritage

“I’m not half-drow and half-halfling. I’m not half of anything. I’m a whole new thing, something the universe hadn’t planned for. That’s not weakness—that’s freedom from everyone’s expectations.”

On the Sea

“The sea doesn’t care about your blood, your gold, or your gods. It only cares if you can read its moods and ride its fury. That’s the only honest thing in this world—the sea will kill anyone equally.”

On Loyalty

“My crew doesn’t follow me because I’m the strongest or the smartest. They follow because I’ve proven that being nobody means you can become anybody. Every forgotten soul who joins us proves the world wrong just by existing.”

Physical Description and Mannerisms

Standing just over four feet tall, the Black Bitch is immediately recognizable yet somehow forgettable—a paradox she cultivates carefully. Her skin is the deep purple-black of drow heritage, but softer somehow, as if touched by surface moonlight. Her hair, silver-white like spider silk, is kept in elaborate braids that incorporate tiny shells and brass coins—halfling tradition meets drow complexity.

Her eyes are perhaps her most unsettling feature: the right is drow crimson, the left is halfling brown. Sailors swear they change intensity with her mood, glowing red when she’s angry, warm brown when she’s amused. The truth is simpler—she’s learned to use the light to her advantage.

She dresses in practical sailor’s clothes but made from impossible materials:

A coat of sharkskin leather that never seems to get wet
Boots soft as silk but tough as iron (actually made from treated cave-spider leather)
A hat that seems to absorb light, making her face a shadow unless she wishes to be seen

She carries three weapons:

A drow hand-crossbow modified to shoot in wet conditions
A halfling’s fishing knife that’s taken more lives than any sword
Her laugh—which she deploys as precisely as any blade

The Captain’s Secrets

She can feel the Void’s Wake calling from hundreds of miles away, a thrumming in her bones that her mixed blood interprets as both the Underdark’s stone-song and the sea’s rhythm. She’s never shared this with anyone, not even her most trusted captains.

The Mother’s Legacy

Hidden in her cabin is her mother’s journal, written in a cipher that combines drow script and halfling trade-signs. It contains not just personal memories but detailed information about drow naval tactics, Underdark water passages, and ways to navigate without sun or stars. She studies it nightly, finding new insights each time.

The Father’s Gift

She wears Willum’s last copper penny on a chain around her neck, hidden beneath her clothes. It’s worn smooth from her fingers rubbing it during difficult decisions. She’s been offered fortunes for it by collectors of maritime curiosities. She’d rather die than sell it.

The Recurring Dream

Every night, she dreams of sinking—not drowning, but sinking peacefully to where the sun doesn’t reach and the pressure would crush anyone else. In the dream, she can breathe water and see in the absolute darkness. She wakes from these dreams refreshed, as if she’s been home.

The Succession Plan

She’s secretly training seven potential successors, each from a different Current, each unaware of the others. She knows she’ll die at sea—all good pirates do—but the Forgotten Tide must survive her. The successor won’t be chosen; they’ll prove themselves by being the only one who figures out the competition exists.

The Black Bitch’s Laws

Beyond the Tide’s general code, she has personal rules that are absolute:

No slavery, ever. Her mother fled slavery. Anyone dealing in slaves gets keelhauled, then fed to the sharks.
Children sail free. A child on a captured ship is given safe passage to any port, with enough gold to start over.
Respect the sea. Crews who dump poison or excessive waste overboard face her personal wrath.
The forgotten are family. Any crew member’s family, no matter how distant, can claim sanctuary with the Tide.
Death before capture. She carries a special poison (her mother’s recipe) that kills in seconds. She’ll never be taken alive.

Songs and Stories

The Ballad of the Black Bitch

Sung in portside taverns when the watch isn’t listening:

“Oh, the Navy has its admirals, all dressed in bright gold braid, But there’s a lass who sails the Void where compasses are afraid, She’s neither tall nor mighty, just shadow mixed with sass, But cross the Black Bitch of the Wake, and she’ll laugh as you pass.

Chorus: Heave away, me lads, heave away, The Forgotten Tide comes with the gray, From the fog she’ll strike, then disappear from sight, The Black Bitch laughs at the dying of the light!“

The Children’s Rhyme

Whispered by halfling children in maritime communities:

“Silver hair and shadow skin, Smaller out but bigger in, If you’re lost and no one cares, Call her name into the airs, The Black Bitch comes for forgotten kin.”

The Naval Warning

Posted in every Salandrian naval vessel:

“BE IT KNOWN: The criminal known as the Black Bitch of Void’s Wake is to be captured ALIVE if possible. Description: Half-drow, half-halfling female, approximately 4 feet in height, silver hair, mismatched eyes. Extremely dangerous. Approach with full crew, do not pursue into fog banks. Bounty: 50,000 gold pieces alive, 10,000 dead.

Note: Previous bounty hunters who entered the Void’s Wake were found drifting three weeks later, alive but speaking only in laughter. Approach with extreme caution.“

The Future Legend

They say she’s building something in the heart of the Void’s Wake—not just a port but a nation, a place where the forgotten can be remembered on their own terms. They say she’s found what makes the Wake dead to navigation and is learning to control it. They say she’s already picked her successor and is teaching them secrets that would drive pure-blood sailors mad.

They say many things about the Black Bitch of Void’s Wake. Some are true, some are lies, and some are both simultaneously—which is exactly how she wants it.

Because in the end, she’s not just a pirate captain. She’s proof that the universe’s cruel jokes can grow teeth and bite back. She’s the shadow that learned to sail, the laughter that learned to kill, the forgotten who refused to disappear.

And somewhere out there, in fog that shouldn’t exist, sailing waters that shouldn’t be navigable, she stands at the helm of The Shadow’s Laugh, silver hair catching moonlight that seems to come from below rather than above, preparing for the next raid that everyone will forget happened—until they count their gold and find it missing.

“I am what happens when you overlook the wrong person. I am the tide you forgot to chart. I am the laughter in your worst nightmare. And I’m just getting started.” —The Black Bitch of Void’s Wake, carved into the mast of a derelict Salandrian naval vessel

Compiled from testimonies of sailors who claim to have served under her, though of course they’ve all forgotten their own names by now

Part of the Lumia canon, drawn from the LuminariMUD world-lore project.