Boons and Benefits, the Forging of a Weapon
- Location
- Terra-Luna
I did a write up of Liriel's various trinkets and talismans previously, and I figure something similar might be good to know about Liriel herself. As with the sort of kit available to someone in the highest socio-economic circle of a culture that lives and breathes magic, there's rather a lot to keep track of when Liriel is essentially an artisanally-crafted designer baby mad science experiment.
First, there's the obvious. Drow, dark elf. What are they and what can they do? This is an area where there are some fairly important distinctions in how the crunchy tabletop RPG rules from sourcebooks are intended to be indeed for a game based on narrative stories, a way for game mechanics to reflect a novel setting while conforming to an agenda with elements like balance and streamlined compatible logic with wider systems so that players can pick it up and do something with it. The qualities and abilities of drow change a great deal across editions in mechanics and fine details, but still more or less cover the same stuff one way or another that is representative of novel portrayals. In crunchiest format, 2nd edition rules are both the most comprehensive and complicated/unwieldy for gaming, but a story isn't burdened by that, save by the caveat that even this listing being laid out here isn't necessarily exact when in-universe real-world application may (may) be more organic—such as, say, the exact mechanics of "3/day".
So, what do drow do? What does it mean to be drow?
To start with, something of a semi-unhelpful baseline of comparison to humans.
In crunchy terms, the "statistically average generic adult human NPC" sort of person, well, kind of doesn't exist, because even the supposed utterly generic fellow in the background who is a Level 1 Commoner still has a history to them from a narrative perspective that can readily justify variation when their stats ostensibly should be 10 in everything but the actual average peasant farmer dude is probably pretty used to hard work, and so on, plus there's the question of how well the stat system itself even represents... but those crunchy terms gotta try to start somewhere, so... generic adult human: Str 10, Dex 10, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 10.
And those radial modifiers for the analogous "average" dark elf? +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, +2 Cha. The snobbishness drow have about being a superior race that should look down upon everyone else isn't entirely unjustified. On average, yeah, even the uninspiring drow has that, well, elfiness to them that lends some ephemeral grace like a back-alley cutpurse or trained dancer, but they're definitely slight of build look like they can't take take a hit like that other guy in a bar brawl for a reason. But there's also a reason why drow have so many goddamn wizards everywhere and keep coming up with convoluted schemes because maybe they are cleverer than you, and just ooze the elfy grace even though you know the one in front of you is a black-hearted bastard as dark as that distinct skin that... maybe doesn't need a moisturiser? Stupid dark elves cheat somehow, they're evil and pretty!
That's all before they, you know, have a life, do stuff, get experience and grow up. Advance in levels or do stuff that in-game is established to justify change, and numbers go up (or down), the Level 4 Fighter decides to get +1 Str because they've been training a lot, the old sage is in fact plain old and accumulated some experience of a different sort to see physical and mental stats tilt. Or, y'know, applicable to Liriel, maybe the little kid actually grows up grows up, because right now Liriel has some size modifiers to her stats compared to a typical adult human, in addition to canon-Liriel herself simply not being anything like average and importantly Liriel is also just a reincarnated freaking shapeshifter.
Itty-bitty Liriel right now: Str 8, Dex 18, Con 11, Int 17, Wis 16, Cha 34
All that out of the way, onto that point about elfy elfiness.
Like all elves, drow have exceptionally keen eyesight and though humans may have a hard time wrapping their heads around it, drow eyes are in fact so keen as to see heat, able to process infrared just as well as the normal visual spectrum. Magical sleep also has no effect, nor does for some reason the paralytic touch of ghouls and only ghouls. Mind enchantment to beguile their thoughts is also of limited effect, requiring an expert tough to accomplish much with reliability. This isn't anything supernatural, just a product of what they are.
On a related note, as well, because elves don't really undergo conventional sleep, dreaming reverie (or awkward shutting down for a while in the case of many drow) offers rest at about a .75:1 ratio compared to human needs. Perhaps it should count as an incredible eldritch power, but elves actually see nothing wrong with being an early riser and don't need coffee. Notably, in Liriel's case, her Ring of Sustenance lets her get by with only a quarter of an elf's needs. An hour and a half is that mythical healthy full night's sleep?! Now that's magical! (Actually the real magic is subsequently casting the Healthful Rest orison that "just" halves sleep requirement.)
Somewhat bridging natural qualities and magic, however, there's also the topic of magic resistance. All drow have a measure of resistance to magic, and it gets stronger as they get older. An important point, though, the opposite is also very much true; in drow children, their natural magic resistance is not just rather weak but also fluctuates, and quite considerably, before later stabilising, whilst Liriel is, y'know, five. Normal practice for families of means is for supplementing potions the way some human warrior might quaff one if expecting to face a wizard, but in Liriel's case, prolonged artificial resistance to magic was actually judged to be bad for her growth.
Liriel has a measure of resistance to magic being worked against her, but what that resistance actually is? Who can say?
In terms of spell-like abilities (innate magical powers that may be subject to a degree of skill and training to use better, but come naturally to them), Liriel and most drow have the following abilities closely akin to the spells:
Darkness—This spell-like ability summons into existence a typically spherical blot, a supernatural darkness that impedes all sight save some forms of magical vision. Further out, the region affected seems to smother illumination the closer to its heart, and the scope of total non-light is normally in Liriel's case up to a 30-foot radius. Plenty of older drow can conjure larger areas of darkness, but Liriel is secretly inordinately proud to have pushed her darkness to respectable size.
Dancing Lights—Will-o'-wisps, basically. This spell-like ability can bring into existence balls of illumination like lanterns or torches, able to be moved around with a thought. It should be possible to get creative with them. Liriel doesn't have much practice with this power, and she doesn't know any drow who does, not that that's saying much.
Faerie Fire—The drow favouite. This spell-like ability conjures soft ghostly fire in whatever colour desired. It doesn't burn, but it's definitely pretty, and a similar spell with indefinite duration is a standard accenting decoration everywhere. Including on enemies hoping to lurk unseen (which makes for a culture touchy about "civil" usage on each other in public). As it happens, though, faerie fire also actually reacts in a number of ways to all sorts of things, potentially making it a useful diagnostic if one has the right knowledge. Liriel does. She also knows what colour is the best colour, and you're wrong if you say it's not amber-gold.
Usually expressed more strongly hereditarily, many drow—particularly in established nobility cultivating the abilities—may also feature this:
Levitate—Wingardium Leviosa. Float up and down, very handy in the Underdark; in fact it's handy enough that pretty common practice is for house insignias and the badges of office for the instructors of Tier Breche to be enchanted with the same power (especially since it wouldn't do for an instructor to obviously be a common-born nobody). It's more typically applied to oneself, but can be used on other things.
Know Alignment—I cast Morality Debate's Philosophical Introspection! This spell-like ability is a potentially rather complicated and not necessary actually all that useful divining magic, probably better for confirming than investigating. If the subject has some sort of significant metaphysical weight, concentrating on it can discern its nature. There are a lot of ways to get a less than helpful alleged insight, though.
Detect Magic—Is that thingy there magical? Probably, actually. This spell-like ability provides feedback registering and interpreting the aura of magic. Understanding that feedback, though, is one of those things where there's probably always more room for better mastery. In Liriel's case, that deedback is visual, though she does remember about a future mage who interprets smells. She has a long way to go before she considers herself adept discerning magical qualities with this power, but she's learning.
This innate magic... sort of isn't actually innate, though. If you want to split proverbial hairs. How much can these different magics be used? That's a product of environment. The faerzress of the Underdark is sort of like a magical radiation, and though it didn't always used to be there and dark elves didn't always used to have natural/"natural" magic either, they've been living in it for long enough to be changed by it; i.e., the magical radiation made them magically mutate, and like any proper radiation mutant with a skin colour change, more means more: in crunchy terms, drow living where there is faerzress get +1/day to their innate spell-like abilities each decade... which really adds up over centuries.
Liriel is only five. However, she has a mild obsession about optimisation and synergy and plans for the future. By crunchy terms, this mad science designer baby has the Magic in the Blood feat thanks to Lolth's augmenting; all 1/day spell-like abilities are 3/day. So:
3/day:
Detect Magic, Dancing Lights, Faerie Fire, Darkness, Know Alignment, Levitate
Lolth's priestesses are blessed with their innate magic being further augmented. The results vary somewhat, but in crunch terms, there are several spell-like like abilities that may or may not be gained 1/day for every level as Cleric, and there's a further chance of expanding those abilities from a different pool of possibilities even as there's a degree of ambiguity to the extent of those alternative possibilities. (It's almost like Lolth isn't big on standardised routine) Liriel's spell-like abilities are as follows:
Detect Thoughts—What are you thinking? This spell-like ability only works on other drow, but there's a reason why priestesses seem to have an unnatural ability to know when someone is thinking something that they shouldn't. They do. The power is somewhat limited in application even beyond its drow-only nature, not some full-on mind-reaming plumbing the depths of the subject's brain to uncover hidden secrets, but... be careful what you think around Lolth's priestesses. Unless you're one of them. Culturally, it isn't a done thing to throw this power around casually (almost as if drow don't like people snooping in their sneaky secret stuff), correlating closely with relative status—i.e., any priestess might assess any male's thoughts as a matter of course, but they'd have to be circumspect with each other, yet a Matron Mother would be well in her rights to pry into her own daughter's thoughts even as she may get away with assessing a priestess of some other house, but would likely want to enjoy a significantly greater station and think twice anyway if the lesser house should be playing host or the like.
Detect Undead—Exactly what it says on the tin. This spell-like ability is sort of both useful and not. If there are undead ahead, and the priestess in question uses this ability, she can concentrate and feel it. It is limited to ahead, somewhat lacks for range, and only registers undeath, plus it can be blocked by disconcertingly small amounts of stone and earth not uncommon where undead are concerned... but on the other hand, it's often hard to realise the presence of the insufficiently dead at all before it's too late. If undead are suspected to be a potential problem, it might be a good idea to fire this up; it does last a fair while, and any forewarning spoiling undead ambush might make the difference between joining them and being able to unleash clerical powers quite effective against their kind.
Clairvoyance—In canon, this is a magic that undergoes some serious change when the nature of magic as a whole evolves. Prior to the Time of Troubles (that is to say, in the current period), there simply isn't any range limit to this spell-like ability that is basically "Scrying-lite". There is a need to know where to look, requiring familiarity beyond what more typical scrying can get away with, but quite simply, Clairvoyance allows the user to see somewhere, provided that there isn't interference, anyway. Liriel likes to use this a lot; it's sharply curtailed in the Underdark thanks to faerzress being bad for divination and teleportation, but the surface is another story and it has long been sort of a form of escapism for her to peer about and explore areas of interest on the surface.
Dispel Magic—The default countermagic. It's sort of an art and one in which Liriel knows she lacks for expertise, but it also doesn't necessarily take an expert to metaphorically grab the other artist's easel and shake it around while they're trying to use it. Too, Liriel none the less knows some of the more tactical possibilities possible with this power. Generally speaking, Dispel Magic makes active magic expire, but does so by sort of forcefully evening everything out, and that enables some options for the targeting: if strong/skillful enough compared to the target to work, it can be cast on an area and dispel all magic around, or on a person and unravel magic on just them specifically, or on a person and interfere with active attempts at spellcasting, or on magical items to shut down or prevent function temporarily. Still, while it is a very nice ability to have, in Liriel's case, it's rather overshadowed by her house insignia being able to employ the same magic as enchanted by her father, making her own dispelling of niche utility.
Suggestion—Another useful spell-like ability when employed carefully, Suggestion is a power that lends greatly to skillful usage. It empowers words with a hypnotic quality to blur the boundaries of what is reasonable and make the target highly susceptible to influence... if it works. Generally, it doesn't actually work that well on drow. Elves with magic resistance and mindbending magic, not a good recipe for success. But then of course there's all those non-drow out there.
Detect Lie—Polygraph power, self-explanatory in the name. This fairly potent spell-like ability is another staple of Lolth's priestesses' ability to seem unnervingly aware. Even hampered by the innate magic resistance of any targeted drow, it's generally quite difficult to knowingly speak falsehood and get it past a priestess looking for it. That said, well, it works the way it works; all it detects is lies, not more general deception, or simple ignorance.
How much can she sling all this around? Being that these spell-like abilities are expressly a product of divine favour, Liriel indeed has things going in her favour compared to what passes for the usual when Lolth is involved, Improved odds of clerical spell-like abilities are a pretty normal way for her to reward service of her priestesses above and beyond the norm, and Liriel certainly qualifies. However, Liriel also has an important boon applicable. Kereska—the goddess of magic of the draconic pantheon specifically—rewarded the gold dragon sorcerer Larendrammagar with what crunch rules have as doubled spells per day and the ability to cast arcane and divine spells alike; for divulging some pretty big secrets about Eilistraee and giving her word to take action regarding it (as well as Lolth just wanting excuses to "simply be rewarding a dutiful follower" in a way that wouldn't attract attention), Liriel got something not dissimilar inspired by that: magic from Lolth doubled. With much rolling, it yields the following:
8/day:
Clairvoyance
6/day:
Dispel Magic, Suggestion, Detect Lie
2/day:
Detect Undead
That's more or less for an ordinary Liriel, though. Most standout in what has been done to her is her crafting as Lolth's champion. There's actually two different but very closely related qualities, there, and it's kind of hard to tell where one ends and the other begins; in fact, together, it's possible that maybe there isn't a division.
Template time!
Chosen of Lolth, and Lolth-Blooded.
Liriel was arranged from before her birth to be an ideal vessel for Lolth's power. Sosdrielle Vandree was possessed by Lolth—made Zedriniset by drow formal distinction—and when a deity possesses a mortal, it so much turns the mortal into an avatar; the difference is almost purely academic... but that difference is something Liriel knew to be all the difference in the world under very certain conditions. Mystra, the goddess of magic and general biggest fish around save the overgod who has to work overtime to keep her in her place, became the almost-but-not-quite-quite-technical mother to the famous Seven Sisters so as to square the proverbial circle formerly causing her trouble in the she found that she needed many Chosen and yet few could withstand it without being consumed in body or mind by her power. Liriel and Lolth conspired to do similar, and so Liriel is as close to a divinity as it is possible to be whilst still being able to cling to the advantages of being a mortal, unhindered by the considerable shackles and interferences imposed upon the gods as she acts upon the mortal world. Knowing a lesser but closely related possibility of empowerment, though, and one also lesser by far of an imposition for Lolth to make it an excellent investment of her power, the not-quite demigod newly born unto the world drank not of milk but eight drops of godly blood.
The Chosen and God-Blooded templates as expressed for Liriel bring a variety of changes, some notionally natural, others more magical in nature.
From a physiological standpoint, Spider-Girl here do be spidery. For one thing, uh, maybe don't share utensils with Liriel. It's a bad idea. Her saliva is an incredibly potent venom, and one that is as much a spiritual malady as virulent physical cytotoxin, though that actually sort of straddles the line between merely extraordinary and outright mystical ability. It's about what one might expect of the bite of someone empowered by a malicious spider goddess.
Being indeed spidery, though, maybe check out hands under a microscope. Liriel can actually get a surprisingly good grip without any magic involved, though results may vary depending on the surface, and she has a knack for handling webs more generally. More obviously, though, Liriel's palms actually have silk glands, and she's adept at weaving silk with her fingers in all sorts of ways; that includes doing as many monstrous spiders can do and launching entangling webbing.
Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, however, there's a degree of overlap in what she can do. More supernatural qualities for the Chosen of Lolth and Lolth-Blooded combination include outright supernatural capacity for being spidery, with several spell-like abilities and aspects of magical nature. Moreover, too, though, Lolth is a trickster goddess, and her champion reflects that.
Constant:
Speak with Spiders—In much the same way as some priestesses and niche mages learn, Liriel has a mystical ability similar to the Speak with Animals spell, but specific to spiders (albeit with a broad definition of what is spidery enough to count). Not all spiders are exactly great conversationalists, though. By way of this magic, Liriel can converse with even common bugs that by all rights shouldn't have the mental capacity for it, but that sort still might not have much to say anyway. Of course, plenty of spiders are more intelligent than nigh-mindless bugs, even if they may lack the means for conventional speech (though there are some weirder spiders out there that might strike up a conversation with you, probably about how tasty you look).
Charm/Control Spiders—This constant spell-like ability is somewhat akin to what some priestesses and niche mages can achieve, but more like what Lolth herself and an artifact she made can do. In effect, it is similar to both Charm Monster and Dominate Monster, enthralling spiders all around Liriel. Full-on mind-control allows her to puppet spiders as extensions of herself, but even spiders that have minds of their own don't care within her influence, and that influence lingers. The charming aspect makes them friendly and generally quite obedient and loyal even should they leave her zone of total control; for spiders with little to no real minds of their own, the charm influence may simply never fade. This thralldom is automatic for true spiders, which cannot resist it at all (no save), and spider-kin and other spider-like things with significant minds of their own whom may be inclined to resist still struggle severely to withstand its influence every moment they stay in Liriel's proximity (crunch: Will save every round at -5 penalty, or at disadvantage, depending on edition preferences); of note, the latter expressly includes beings whom may only be in spider shape, such as polymorphed subjects.
Improved Spider Climb—This constant spell-like ability is similar to what Liriel can do naturally, just supernaturally (albeit indeed subject to effects that may interfere with magical ones like an antimagic field, unlike extraordinary qualities). Quite simply, it lets Liriel crawl and clamber about like a spider, going so far as to be perfectly able to scuttle upside down on some slick ceiling surface; unlike the lesser Spider Climb spell, the Improved version also works regardless of things like gloves or shoes.
Immunity to Adherence—This constant spell-like ability makes it simply impossible for things to stick to her properly. Like oil on water, they just slide right off, allowing Liriel to easily navigate any web, her own or not, as well as shrug off similar hazards such as the magic of the popular Wand of Viscid Globs or Web spells, or the likes of some alchemical traps and such. The power is identical to a very special mask in Gromph's possession, the only other way to bypass the grand silver web fence of House Baenre, and for precisely the same reason in the nature of the magic's source.
At Will:
Alter Self, Spider Form—This power is closely resembles two different shapeshifting magics. A normal Alter Self spell allows the caster to physically transform into another being similar to the original form, though a "close enough" difference may be surprising; Liriel is perfectly capable of assuming the form of an adult human as easily as a deep gnome despite being a small drow girl, though she also has zero intention of advertising the fact. She doesn't hide that she has a fluid sense of body, but obfuscates the extent, because while the normal Alter Self spell can't manage it, she herself can much more expectably take spidery form, despite that being very different from what passes for her normal shape; she can transform between drow and spider and between in hybrid, drider-like form, save for not being hideously malformed the way they are. Notably, Liriel has trouble bulking up as a spider, able to assume a Large size but not reach Huge, though this may change as she grows, and it is also an outright transformation to spider, not merely donning the likeness in costuming shape, and so Liriel may take the special abilities of spiders in question, such as having a Phase Spider's phasing, or the Truesight of the flying chasm hunter species. Ulviiravin has also been teaching Liriel to shift quickly and fluidly in the way yochlol do.
Spidereyes—With a touch, this spell-like ability allows Liriel to see through the eyes of spiders. It's quite handy in conjunction with her ability to control those around her, though also potentially limited by the eyesight of the spider in question. Most spiders do not perceive colour, and many spiders have poor eyesight generally, especially compared to elf eyes. Still, plenty less normal spiders do in fact have decent or better sight, and it's certainly an advantage to have at all. There is a significant caveat, however, in that the link does not work across planar boundaries, which break it.
Spider Strand—Liriel can naturally create silk from her spinnerets, but she can also conjure webbing; this spell-like ability works as the spell of the same name, launching a thick strand of incredibly resilient silk that can easily wrap around and restrain a subject. The magical cord of spidersilk fades to nothingness after a while, but Liriel likes to think of it as "Spider-Man meets Mandalorian".
6/day:
Web—Like the standard spell, but similar to as if with the Widened metamagic augmentation, this spell-like ability conjures a clingy, sprawling mass of unnatural spiderweb. The magical web has to be fixed to something to actually work well normally, but anyone caught within is going to have an almost impossible time forcing their way free, if they can at all. The conjured web is easily burned, though. Liriel's arrangement with Lolth allows her to employ this magic more than she otherwise might.
Other qualities:
Divine Grace, Lolth's Favor—These two interrelated empowerments were inspired by ways that Lolth blesses some of her other servants. In crunch terms, apply Charisma modifier (+12!) to all saves and Armor Class. Liriel is still coming to terms with this power, and doesn't understand her nature very well.
+10 Charisma—Gods often empower their Chosen to hold greatness somehow, beyond normal mortal ken, with the hypothetical champion of a deity like Tempus, god of battle, perhaps being some herculean figure evoking tales describing such a mighty individual as having the strength of many men and it not actually being an embellishment (canon has the orc Chosen of Gruumsh wrestle a giant and win handily, for instance), or a Chosen may be like some almost (and maybe not even almost) literal shadow; alternatively, the Chosen in question may be less standout for any one aspect and just sort of generally better. In Liriel's case, it's all in on gravitas and her force of will and presence, with an absurd Charisma boost that brings with it the kind of transcendent, unimaginable beauty that normal mortals cannot possess... and may go mad for trying. There can be no doubt; in Liriel Baenre there is a power divine.
Beyond that, however, Lolth and Liriel have cooked up a fair bit to apply to her, or just to try out and see what works. Some of that isn't entirely metaphorical cooking.
Liriel is only five, so, can't really make puns about the girl with ludicrously high Charisma being hot, but they're definitely sitting there waiting.
Liriel's nature is fire.
Before she was born, Liriel thought long and hard about what to do with herself and what a path to self-improvement might be, and one of the possibilities that really stood out in her memory was the Fire-Souled template. She ended up figuring that she could probably enact something like that herself without any help, eventually... but the alternative was to get a god to do it, and, well, Lolth. Get a deity to do it, as a reward for revealing to her the over-ambitious machinations of Bhaal and Bane and Myrkul to try to get one over on the overgod. Fair enough, though, Lolth thought it a good idea too, because it is indeed well suited for their shared aims, even if Liriel herself also just had a thing about always wanting to be fiery.
It's not actually the only fiery thing she has going for her, though. Liriel put together a whole list in her head of all the feats she could think of that had to do with spell-like abilities, because feats were something she identified as often actually a pretty good guide for ideas in how to make herself more more—many of the RPG feats simply recognised that something had been done to the character, rather than reflecting some sort of advanced training or racial quirk or whatever. One that stood out to her was Soul of The North. Put right next to Fire-Souled, though, with a deity making it happen, it got her thinking... why not an inversion of Soul of The North? Soul of The North wasn't actually one of those feats describing how something could be done to someone to yield some sort of benefit, but if they were already doing something to her soul to make her fiery... and it would address her dissatisfaction at Fire-Souled not actually being fiery enough to suit her such that she made plans to find a particular type of magic ring to burn herself alive for the sake of automatically coming back orange with some actual fire magic...
Fire-Souled,Soul of The North Soul of Flame:
The most obvious, Liriel is a girl of fire. Fire doesn't hurt her any more than it does a salamander or a red dragon. She isn't too big on cold, though. Thankfully that's not too much of a concern underground. Incidentally, this also has the interesting side effect of making her silk likewise fireproof (though not her magically conjured web, just her natural silk). The fire subtype also makes her stand out oddly to the infrared sight of other drow, giving her the look as if she's almost feverish or something... though people with a fever don't heat up everything around them the way she does, do they? When Sosdrielle's mind was hers enough to function, she thought Liriel delightfully snuggly.
What Liriel remembered of the actual Soul of The North itself: You possess a magical understanding of the nature of cold. Benefit: An innate talent for magic grants you the following spell-like abilities as a 1st-level caster: 1/day—chill touch, ray of frost, resistance. Save DC 10 + spell level + your Cha modifier. The effect, in game terms, was to simply add some chilly theme to a character. That wording about "understanding" was for all similar feats and made legitimate sense by her reckoning but wasn't something she figured she could work out for herself, which... she really didn't like for her prospects of getting magic powers and specifically fire magic. For a Fire-Souled Liriel, though, the effect of the experimentation was surprisingly easy, largely a matter of perspective that unhelpfully Liriel can't actually explain properly to Lolth; Lolth's attempts purchased by divulging an opportunity to claim the godly portfolio of Ibrandul before a preoccupied Shar just worked all of a sudden, because... it's fire, you know? (No, Liriel, people don't know when you give feedback like that). Consequently, the variation of Soul of The North likewise yields spell-like abilities equivalent to one 1st level spell and two 0th level spells:
Ray of Flame—Light 'em up! Another one of those abilities exactly what it says on the tin, this spell-like ability is nothing to write home about, really, but it allows Liriel to shoot fire, and in her hands, it has now grown to something respectable enough. A noteworthy point is that, unlike Soul of The North itself, thanks to either something Lolth did or compounding consequences of Liriel's Fire-Souled nature, or possibly just Liriel not actually understanding how "game" elements translate in real-life, it functions the same as any spell-like ability would be expected to, growing with the user instead of being locked in at a Caster Level 1 equivalent.
Flamefinger—Who gave a child the ability to play with fire?! (Oh, right, an evil goddess of chaos.) 0th level spell effects (cantrips or orisons or what have you) are usually very minor things, at least in this age, though under the right circumstances they may still be surprisingly useful—they are still magic, after all; this one lets Liriel turn her finger into a blowtorch, and, indeed, you might be surprised what a Liriel can get up to with a blowtorch, especially when she can keep it up for a good ten minutes if she concentrates. Liriel has practiced this innate magic enough to control a gentle candle flame so much turning her fingertip into a lighter... and may have caused a very teeny tiny, small, completely overlookable and perfectly understandable bit of damage trying to vary the flame to be more like a welding torch or a cutting torch.
Fire Eyes—This spell-like ability offers niche benefits, but handy benefits within that niche, and it might not exactly be "niche" for Liriel. The magic allows a supernatural clarity of sight through fire and smoke and—to her sight, if not in actual truth—burns through mist and the like, allowing unimpeded vision, even if, say, in the middle of a burning building. A related benefit Liriel has found, it actually also helps with the fact that she isn't actually all that fond of sudden bright flaring light in visual-spectrum total darkness, and summoning gouts of flame tends to do that. It has become almost reflexive for her, though it indeed does nothing for light not generated by fire. She is aware that in theory this magic should probably be able to be bestowed on others as well, but it's never come up, and she can't be certain if the effect she experiences actually directly correlates with her academic knowledge of the magic believed identified (she isn't working with some kind of actual character sheet, after all).
The Fire-Souled template itself also brings a number of other qualities beyond the fire subtype and interaction with other investitures:
Haste—Gotta go fast! This spell-like ability allows that buoying drive within her to be fanned and embraced to run wild, straightforward in consequence as a superspeed effect. It has an only modest duration (though it does grow as she herself does), but a girl can do a lot in that time when she's fast-fast-fast!
Liriel is still learning what it means to be herself and is intellectually aware that some of it should be about external perspective, but this burning fire in her soul should have a number of other consequences following a general theme of incredible inspiring verve and passion, of fire, in the more metaphysical sense than just in burning things. Part of that, though, is indeed to be more of what she is, +4 Charisma. Even in the dark, Liriel burns bright.
3/day:
Haste, Ray of Flame, Flamefinger, Fire Eyes
Moving on, one of the other big points about Liriel, the circumstances of her birth. This was an area where Lolth and Liriel kinda went hard on the experimental mad science angle.
From mentally reviewing those feats, she got the idea of the Necropolis Born feat—another of those ones like Soul of The North—being something that perhaps actually could be arranged, a scenario set up to provide that intimate understanding of life and death and mortal dread that blurs the line between how one defines the world as natural and supernatural; she was careful to stress to Lolth, however, her expectation that aiming for such with other individuals of the sort Lolth generally preferred might very well result in a subject not quite alive and not quite undead, given her ideas about the Tomb-Tainted Soul feat and similar qualities. With that as a starting point, though, Lolth indeed had a pretty good understanding herself of what might align to produce the desired consequence when her role as a deity indeed is to preside over the souls of the dead and the afterlife of her worshippers.
On the demonic plane of the Demonweb Pits, the 66th layer of the Abyss, Sosdrielle possessed by Lolth gave birth to Liriel within the Mausoleum of the Yor'thae. It was... not exactly a pleasant affair. For anyone.
Cause Fear—Boo! This spell-like ability is actually surprisingly potent in this era. Liriel shares with the subject her ordinarily ignored intimate perspective of just how terribly fragile life is, and it insinuates to the forefront of awareness to quite possibly become an all-consuming, shattering terror before the victim regains their wits.
Ghost Sound—What's that noise? Life coming into existence has a profound metaphysical significance to it so fundamental that it's hard to understand even when so obvious, and this spell-like ability is an example of such. Liriel perceives a considerable difference between these powers aligned with necromancy and her innate fire magic, coming just as easily, sure, but... different; where with her fire she just has to do fire, want to burn and blaze, Ghost Sound is more like remembering, and perhaps simply being, both at once, and she gives life to something that was not alive, something that didn't exist until she brought it into the world. It comes as sound, and she can get fairly creative with it, able to bring to life practically any sound she can imagine people making to the extent of several people together.
Touch of Fatigue—Dying... is effortless, just a matter of giving up and letting it happen; it's living that's hard. This spell-like ability has only a modest effect on those full of the vigour of life, but Liriel impresses upon the subject in mind and body the forced realisation that... it's just hard to be alive. The subject can get over it after a while, but Liriel knows the profound difference of being dead and the continuous effort to be alive that ordinarily becomes so routine as to go unnoticed.
Beyond that, though, and possibly magnifying it, Liriel was born dying.
Being impaled and ripped from Sosdrielle's body will do that.
Liriel had a clever idea, perhaps a bit too clever for her own good, maybe. See, the nature of a being as they are born is that that very act of coming into existence indeed quite literally defines them; an aspect of this is the question of what counts as the being's home plane of existence—that's why fiends can be banished back to wherever they came from when they are summoned up or invade some world other than their own, and why many entities cannot die a true death unless slain on their home plane. Liriel, however, saw this as an intriguing logic puzzle, because she remembered an intriguing magical item, typically made as a ceremonial scepter or rod, that is imbued to be very "very" of the plane of existence on which it is crafted, capturing that plane's essence such that a being holding it counted as being on their home plane and thus unable to be banished "from" a different locale... so what if a person was born under the influence of two of those? And that seemed to fit with an informed theory she built reflecting on what she knew of the quasi- and para-elemental planes defined by non-definite boundaries with the four elemental planes proper, the nature of the interaction with the Plane of Shadow with the deepest reaches of the Lowerdark, and what she remembered of canon when in that timeline serious shenanigans occurred that made the Underdark and the Abyss bleed together enough for demons that should be unable to enter the mortal world to cross that gradient anyway. What if a person was born where one plane and another somehow mingled and coexisted in the same place, rather than just being coterminous like an overlap of one only atop the other?
Dual-citizenship? For Lolth, a fell goddess with many a demon servant and always ever more being birthed from the souls of her wicked followers after their mortal lives, it was an intriguing experiment to consider for her too, well worth trying out.
There's just the small matter of subjecting the unborn individual to those twin influences.
Rather the traumatic experience for everybody involved, yes. Lolth, Liriel, and Sosdrielle for how much she was actually there did not have a good time.
Still, even that did itself contribute to another aspect that Lolth and Liriel wanted to try. At least more than they wanted to not do it, anyway. Liriel drew inspiration from a variety of sources before she was born, and though she was uncertain about Pathfinder elements, well, from her perspective, some things might be worth a try; everything should be okay with a literal goddess invested in making things work out in the end. Two items she reckoned might be deliberately arranged were the Traits Sacred Conduit and Sacred Touch:
Under more ordinary circumstances, Liriel being speared through twice over and ripped from the womb would have been a thoroughly fatal experience for mother and child. With a goddess possessing Sosdrielle, though, in the very center of her power, it was a simple matter for Lolth to flood Sosdrielle's body with enormous healing energy during the process. As a result, Liriel's nature in that morphic moment of definition is reflective of it, and she is a wellspring of a tingling, almost electrically energetic power of life inordinate to her form and spilling out of her like her own body heat. These qualities are not spell-like abilities, just her nature, albeit a supernatural nature somewhat warping the strictly literal sense of the term.
Beyond that, though, Liriel indeed had pondered greatly over the mutability of a person being born and ways that a person so being born might be influenced to become something more. Within that, her considerations about feats led her to inspiration from 5e ones. Fey Touched, Shadow Touched. Your exposure to the Feywild's magic has changed you, Your exposure to the Shadowfell's magic has changed you... Exposure?
Liriel and Lolth conspired to arrange and prepare for her birth. Faerûn has not been in close planar proximity to Faerie for some time, but only by mortal standards, and Lolth is an old existence who remembers much and has done more. Not too dissimilar to those other items acquired for Liriel's birth describing the interior of the mausoleum as both part of the Abyss and Faerûn's mortal world, Lolth was convinced to take not inconsiderable (but reusable) efforts to acquire two different crystals: one an old, old gem suffused with the energy of the Plane of Faerie, and another a dark sliver hailing from the Plane of Shadow, both themselves warped reflections of the mortal world in their own ways. In addition to making Liriel more more—+1 Cha, +1 Cha—the exposure resulted in the following innate magics:
Misty Step—This spell-like ability is only theoretical. Liriel has not dared to test it, though she is more confident than not that it should be possible. She is also confident that it would be a Bad Idea to employ a magic that is supposed to work by taking a shortcut existing more in Faerie than in Faerûn where they overlap yet do not directly corelate (take a few steps in Faerie along a shorter path that ends in Faerûn many steps from where she started) when both the two worlds are far apart presently and the part of Faerie that connects to Faerûn's Underdark is not a place she wants to visit. Faerûn's own Underdark is a dangerous place, and the Feydark is an all the more exaggerated version. Perhaps she is paranoid, but she does not care to risk the attempt when she has other avenues for what is effectively short-range teleportation; trying to take such a shortcut might fail completely, or work too well.
Charm Person—Isn't she just charming? Actually, Liriel might be perhaps too charming; this spell-like ability is indeed a spell-like ability, a natural innate magic, not a more deliberate act of touching upon the Weave to yield a mostly-predictable effect as a cast spell. It convinces the subject that she's a friend, and gosh, that Charisma score... It's very easy to like Liriel when she wants to be liked, so easy that the subject just might find themselves liking her even if Liriel both wants and does not want to be liked, where one may outweigh the other more than she consciously realises. It doesn't help that Liriel didn't choose this magic as the way that exposure to the ancient jewel's influence expressed itself, just gained it as the most natural consequence of who and what she is. It is also worth noting that in this age the mental beguilement may last a long time, too, depending on the subject's ability to properly grasp that they are being bewitched and shake it off... though they may have a hard time wanting to do that. The enchantment is however limited in target type and perhaps thankfully is not very effective against her fellow drow.
Invisibility—There's nothing there... right? There may in fact be an invisible monster about to eat your face. The Plane of Shadow is all about almost-possibilities and undefined insubstantial nothing that isn't nothing, negative impressions that have whatever meaning is given to them. Liriel is somewhat averse to touching on shadow magics because she actually knows more than a little lore about such power and the consequences for her should she deliberately or not brush against the goddess Shar's Shadow Weave, but whatever confluence of her understanding and the energies of the crystalline splinter bleeding darkness that presided over her birth, Liriel grasps how to pull about herself an illusion formed by tucking away her image in nothing-space between here and there. The magic of this spell-like ability is rather simple, really, and in some ways superfluous when she and near any drow wears the ubiquitous piwafwi offering its own invisibility with but the lowering of a hood, but all the same, it's invisibility on demand, and unlike her piwafwi, she can just as readily steal away the image of other things, not limited to her own person.
Phantom Threat—They are out to get you, it's them! Not all illusions can be seen. Some are all in the head, and the combination of factors in Liriel's birth appear to have resulted in a reflective result in this spell-like ability, which afflicts the subject with a mental phantasm blurring the line between enchantment and illusion; an individual afflicted by this magic feels a sharp, gripping paranoia of omnipresent danger, and thus can readily end up quite discombobulated and off balance, trying to react to threats at once ephemeral and larger than life. That can make it quite hard to simultaneously deal with any true threats in their midst... though it could potentially also provoke something drastic.
Though Liriel herself is not actually aware of it, Lolth took it upon herself to attempt an additional element of exposing influence that Liriel had noted as a plausible option, yet personally judged not worth the modest possible benefits when it might well interfere with much more promising prospects or simply not work. Lolth disagreed, and their little project together was as much for her own interest as their mutual benefit, and so Lolth, herself far more versed in many ways than the however insightful unborn child collaborating with her, introduced in the mausoleum a seed. She did not deign to tell Liriel of where she got it when Liriel needn't know anything at all, but it could hardly have come from a purely ordinary tree, and if Liriel was aware of Lolth's little duplicity here, she might grow suspicious over what she knows of a fallen and banished goddess's now haunted dominion in Arvandor, where the elven pantheon preside. After all, the secret addition had to be something to fit the passed up reference from another Trait of Pathfinder:
In truth, it worked, though, as in fact predicted, it didn't actually do much, exactly, beyond assuage Lolth's curiosity and yet grow it further.
Heat Water—Something something fire burn and cauldron bubble, but hold the fire. It is difficult to say how much of this spell-like ability is a product of Liriel being subjected to something suffused with the essence of nature at birth and how much is due to her own nature being that of fire, or if there's much of a difference, and it isn't helped by the fact that Liriel doesn't understand this magic in the first place even as she knows perfectly well that magic in general can be enigmatic and weird, but... Well, Liriel has found that, sometimes, things just get hot when she wants them to. Semi-reliably, she can make her tea scalding and bubbly, just the way she likes it. It sort of makes sense?
3/day:
Ghost Sound, Heat Water, Touch of Fatigue, Cause Fear, Charm Person, Phantom Threat, Invisibility, Misty Step
That could be argued to be it for the individually big things about Liriel's nature—for now, anyway, until Liriel manages to move plans further ahead—but she and her goddess engineered a considerable number of more minor alterations and enhancements to their design for her. Foremost is one that is only minor depending on how it's looked at.
Yet further drawing inspiration from feats that were intended to describe the nature of a character, Liriel postulated that, for the conjunction of other factors with her being so undifferentiated newly born, so born in the body of an elf, and bathed in Faerie's influence, it might take only a very slight nudge by someone with great power and a long memory of the ancestor's of the modern day's elvenkind, when they had not yet left the intense and less grounded Plane of Faerie for Faerûn. The very term "eladrin" is a terribly vague and unhelpful categorisation for scholars because many elf and elf-like beings take it for themselves, yet for good reason, even as some of them are undeniably more fey than others. Liriel and Lolth managed to almost not even truly change her at all and none the less see her quite different than she might otherwise be. For doing almost nothing, and for a price Liriel considered a scam tattling about Eilistraee and her special sword to be collected regardless of bonus payment, it made her more of what she is, or perhaps merely uncovered it. In effect, it is that which would be expressed by the feats indeed intended for flavouring a character as extremely strongly influenced by a fey heritage more or less fully realised: Fey Heritage, Fey Power, Fey Presence, Fey Legacy, Fey Skin, resulting in the following:
Disguise Self—Fey glamour. This spell-like ability is a staple of many feylike beings, a minor illusion, but one that allows the user to assume practically whatever likeness they please, even fudging height to what is often a surprising degree for those duped by such magic. In Liriel's case, it may be debated to be somewhat superfluous when the power of Lolth allows her Alter Self at will, but in Liriel's clandestine experience, if her shapeshifting has the capacity to emulate clothes and other affectations the way that some other shapeshifters manage, she has yet to figure out how, whilst glamour makes it easy to fake it. She is also of a mind that layered duplicity may trick people with a disguise within a disguise should the suspicious find what they seek in illusion and cease looking deeper for physical transformation.
Deep Slumber—Go to sleep... sleep, sleep, and set your worries aside to rest your weary head untroubled. Liriel has limited practice with this spell-like ability when she doesn't get out much in the first place and drow are unaffected by such magic, plus she has found it tricky to differentiate this magic from Suggestion, but like that other spell-like ability, she has learned to lace her words with a hypnotic quality that in this case ensnares the minds of those around her to immediately fall into an enchanted slumber. She surmises that it should be perfectly possible to work the effect without needing to verbally entice subjects—and she knows that they needn't even truly understand her enchanting words—but she has yet to figure out how.
Charm Monster—Aye, she is terribly charming indeed. This spell-like ability is akin to Charm Person, but where that magic is limited to "people-y" sorts, this can beguile the minds of nearly anything with a living mind to be effected. It's very easy to listen to her and think well of her. Besides, why not?
Confusion—Wh-What is going on?! A further mental bewitchment, this spell-like ability has a passing duration, but can be a doozy while it lasts, especially for the difficulty to resist. It wraps the thoughts of subjects caught in the effect in acute insanity causing almost completely random behaviour as their minds reel in abject turmoil unable to properly interpret reality. It has considerable trouble latching onto drow, but such a magic should sink its hooks in, the result are bound to almost inevitably incite violent mayhem of one sort or another.
Dimension Door—Over there is better. Somewhat limited compared to many other translocation magics, this spell-like ability none the less offers meticulously precise short-range teleportation, that even works blind, able to reach an arrival point relative to the known departure point in a way that some of those other translocation magics can't... though they also don't have risks in such maneuvers that involve terms like "telefrag" and "shunted into the Astral Plane" (that is to say, it can make a blind jump, but it will make that jump whether or not it's a good thing; safe teleportation is line of sight teleportation). The actual spell version of this magic more typically creates a doorway wormhole sort of thing, but in Liriel's experience, she can just very deliberately step where her stride should not be able to take her and yet does anyway. She can also take things with her for the trip, though if there's a way to overcome the disorientation that comes with it, she hasn't worked it out yet.
Summon Nature's Ally V—Call for aid, and maybe a bunch of horses do answer. This spell-like ability is one that Liriel is still exploring, because she's pretty sure that this sort of magic is the kind to always have more to understand. The possibilities are almost open-ended, and therefor potentially quite powerful or highly useful for a given situation, but whatever the specifics it involves summoning something that just fits in the natural order of the world. Or possibly several somethings. In practice, Liriel is fond of calling up elementals, though she's careful to employ this magic judiciously.
Other fey qualities as a result of engineering something akin to an ancestral throwback include a knack for mind magics in general and a superior ability to throw them off even by elven standards, and a fair ability to just shrug off that which does not have the bite of cold iron. Crunchy form: +3 bonus to Will saves versus enchantment, +1 to Caster Level and Save DCs for her own enchantment magic, Damage Reduction 5/cold iron. Lolth finds it amusingly ironic that for all that Liriel tries to set herself apart from Lolth's other servitors, Liriel and demons alike both share that vulnerability to cold iron.
Additionally, though the emphasising of fey heritage was considered an exceedingly excellent mere slight touch needed for considerable results at a bargain expense, Liriel personally had a thought to perhaps take it a step further, even with diminishing returns and additional bartered costs. Drow are themselves highly magical, more so than other elves; it is likely, she has surmised, as a result of environment, as denizens of Faerie so emphatically suffused with magic were and are indeed considerably more, well, magical than their counterparts who have long naturalised to the Material Plane in which Faerûn resides, even as local elvenkind steadily diminishes in the long term as this world's magic is progressively weakened more and more. Her theory fits solidly within what she knows of the nature of magic, such as why Thay has so many wizards in it because a big floating rock under Thaymount drenches the whole region in heightened magic; the faerzress in the Underdark has a lot of mystical effects, and the drow are practically swimming in it. To that end, Liriel bargained with twin similar viable plans for significantly diminishing the personal power of Ghaunadaur and—if desirable as a bargaining chip with other parties—the demon lord Demogorgon—for a boon from Lolth to so much poke her trying to make something happen along the lines of Innate Magic feat, but directed and guided towards a specific intention. The result:
Prestidigitation—Magic tricks! This somewhat quirksome spell-like ability is a magic easily learned but difficult to master because, at least to a minor degree, it can in theory do practically anything. Though a little nothing of a cantrip, it is one she is amused to think of as "Least Wish" after the far greater magics for that unstructured versatility. Fundamentally, it's less like a spell as training wheels, in a sense, enhancing an individual's ability to more easily grasp and direct magical energies for a time to do... whatever they try to make them do. That's why it was thought to be easily done and why Liriel wanted to acquire such a power; it's excellent practice, aside from admittedly also convenient a lot of the time. Liriel is aware of many possibilities, but it's almost too open-ended. Presently, she has managed to figure out how to make things clean, and to temporarily colour things gold. She also once amused Sosdrielle intently focusing on a fork to slowly put a bite in her mouth with no hands after a lot of covert prior trial and error, but she has since stopped that line of practice.
Possibly or possibly actually not unrelated, Liriel's highly fey incarnation coupled with hopeful deliberate effort and maybe Lolth secretly putting her thumb on the scale has also resulted in her achieving an attempt to make realised another point inspired from Pathfinder Traits, where there is listing in Nature Magic of the possibility for a person "to use simple spells by drawing on nature's raw majesty", corelating with more informed supposition about the nature of druidic magic, how Eilistraee learned the moon magic her priestesses now use, and explanation by Ed Greenwood, "Magic is a shorthand for harnessing the natural forces of the world. Tidal, convection, kinetic like avalanches and landslides, the winds, magnetic, the flowing water. All the natural forces of volcanism, all of that stuff. Magic is a way of harnessing some of that energy and getting predictable or semipredictable results out of it." It gives her the impression that maybe she has caught a clue about why a lot of elves sneer at humans not really understanding magic just for studying a bunch of musty old tomes, even if they are great and mighty mages for it. It also has enabled a small but no less real measure of magical ability to do with that:
Know Direction—Exactly what it says on the tin, again. Quite simply, Liriel doesn't lose track of which direction is which. This spell-like ability is constant, and by her reckoning is less a magic that she does, per se, and more a matter of perspective, having a sense of the world around her. Certainly, it's quite possible for Liriel to get confused as to where things are relative to one another on a small scale, with the twisting labyrinth of the Underdark making it easy to forget a path in abstract, the same as a person might mix up any other jumble and forget things, but the world around her is in its orientation and she knows her own orientation relative to it. North is north, and so on.
Naturewatch—What is there to see? This spell-like ability... may or may not actually be a spell-like ability. Liriel isn't sure. She's leaning towards thinking that maybe it's something perhaps so fundamentally ordinary as to actually be special, because she has found that, sometimes, if she just... just looks, really looks and pays attention and tries to understand what she's looking at... she does? Is that magical? She suspects that anyone could do it if they really tried, but then she also knows that the stone beneath her feet could tattle on her if she sticks around long enough for the slow attention and that trees talk to one another, but most people can't understand without a spell even as some don't need it. Whatever the case, it's good for checking up on her little spider buddies to see how they're doing.
Notably, though, as these latter magics are not a part of her, to thus subject to the compounding benefits of the Magic in the Blood quality that has practically turned what runs in her veins into the mystic equivalent of pure oxygen, nor provided by Lolth and subject to Liriel's pact with the goddess, this latter nature magic kind of lags behind by comparison.
Constant:
Know Direction
3/day:
Prestidigitation, Disguise Self, Deep Slumber, Charm Monster, Confusion, Dimension Door, Summon Nature's Ally V
1/day:
Naturewatch
Keen to amass as great and as many advantages as possible, and with a perhaps too enthusiastic of a goddess collaborating Liriel also bargained, argued for, and simply had pressed upon her a number of more minor boons and blessings. Many of these were drawn from references that stood out to Liriel as more likely for Lolth to grant than others, or especially useful relative to the cost for Lolth and herself. Some benefits were also less granted by Lolth as simply possible because of her if but Liriel pursued them, if anyone did for awareness of those possibilities.
Significant amongst the relatively not so significant benefits Liriel acquired is the gift of foresight. She is of a like mind to her father in that knowledge is the most potent power of all, and from reading two different entries in the time before her elven incarnation, she thought it entirely possible to hold it twice over in complementary fashion, in a way that might well save her life even without input on her part.
Augury—Is that a disturbance in the Force? This spell-like ability is a queer thing to Liriel. It is probably complicated by the fact that she can in a way sort of do the same thing two different ways, except doubling up on the foresight has probably resulted in something indeed both together and neither one alone, even as part of it is from her and part of it is from Lolth... except the difference between her and Lolth is also complicated. Or maybe reading the future is just weird and often unhelpfully vague? Whatever the case, Liriel has learned to... just sort of think, except differently than normal, and... it works? She needs to grow into a much more learned wizard before she can explain very well a lot of what comes almost instinctually (or not even almost, sometimes), but it does work, and she can get an at once vague but concrete insight into aspects of the future: is something specific she thinks about going to be good or bad? Something exactly specific, though, which itself might be good or bad depending on how careful she is and what knowledge she already has to work with. Of course, even without trying to figure anything out, she can still sort of look without looking. ...the whole thing's complicated.
Indeed, Liriel is all sorts of complicated, and more than a little of that is her own fault.
Divine Fervor—Become greater. This is a supernatural ability, not a spell-like ability, though the difference is somewhat academic (save for all those brave knights who mistakenly believe that enchanted armour that resists spells will save them from dragon fire). It also isn't something Liriel entered into any sort of pact with Lolth for or the like, and nothing that she is aware that Lolth has dropped onto her of her own accord either, just something that Liriel can do, draw upon divine power to make herself a little stronger, or a little faster, a little more more. It lasts for about a minute and a half by her less than precise reckoning, and has slightly worried her for a lot longer.
Liriel... might have succeeded too much in her attempts?
A further item Liriel and Lolth agreed upon, one in which Liriel thinks the got the better of Lolth and isn't sure if Lolth doesn't think she pulled something on Liriel herself, was inspired by something for Krynnspace where Lolth's has little influence, but could manage this perfectly well when it is so on theme for her: Divinely Favored, "A god chose you to carry a spark of their power." The blessing gave Liriel additional aptitude for peering at the future, able to wield her Augury spell-like ability all the more, but also an additional magic.
Protection From Evil—Deny the wicked. This was a gamble on Liriel's part, but a calculated one. In the timeline that would have occurred for the other Liriel, the many children sired by Bhaal, Lord of Murder, had very real power thanks to their divine parentage, half god, half mortal, but just how exactly that power expressed was very pointedly shown to be highly dependent upon who they were despite it's blackest origins that tempted but could not truly force them to evil. Liriel, who already held great power as a Chosen, pondered the possibility of a comparatively far lesser investiture, but one more hers rather than something she, in a way, sort of just held onto as a vessel for it. It is a small spark, a spark, no great flame, but it is one that, indeed, she has made her own. This spell-like ability now a part of her is a ward and imposition against the evil, helping protect her from those who work it and the works themselves of such a nature, and it rejects outright the touch of those truly defined by evil in their essence. It also inhibits the effects of mental influence, despite not actually affecting the cause.
More concerning for Liriel, however, there are a couple element for which she holds uncertainty, one thought neatly mutually beneficial and one that by her judgement corelates to something from Pathfinder that she had reviewed in her early brainstorming with Lolth, but dismissed as undesirable and irreconcilable:
The former is a shoe-in for taking up, essentially business as usual for a god and just more so; when also to Lolth's benefit as much as Liriel's, it was an easy, token price to pay to get Lolth to provide it, glad to see it used. Was Lolth perhaps more forthcoming than she should have been, though? And to her knowledge, Lolth plain never provided the latter, period, and it shouldn't work... probably—but she also can't rule that out when she distrusts Lolth and much of what a given person can manage that has to do with a god is indeed because a god is involved making it work—and in the end, she, who has in fact never needed a holy symbol to channel her clerical prayers in the first place, can enact two different magics for which she has no other explanation, and which fit domains of godly purview associated with Lolth:
Protection from Law—Liberty unchained. Similar and yet so very different to Protection from Evil, this spell-like ability is a power that comes unnervingly easily to her if she lets it get to her. Perhaps she is just projecting or something due to her feelings about working under Lolth, and maybe she has gotten unreasonably impassioned by her own philosophical musings a time or two, but if she embraces the feeling she sometimes gets, lets it fill her when she just can't stand the very idea of oppression and subjugation anymore, it spills out of her as something made manifest.
Cloak of Dark Power—Metaphorically literal. The other spell-like ability that has Liriel unsettled, this power is in many ways all a drow could want if they actually had any limits, despite it actually being a quite modest magic. Liriel has but to want, and the power within her responds with a wreathing shroud of twisting unlight as if she simply isn't as illuminated as everything around her, which is actually much the case, as even the direct noonday sun or even magical light a fair degree more potent than the cloak cannot pierce it, less a shadow or a black darkness as not shone upon where light cannot touch. Though she has never had need of it—actually an intellectual curiosity when the Demonweb Pits are not the Underdark—she is aware that it should also shield faerzress-wrought magical items from the sun as well, and empower her clerical authority over undead, whilst also putting spiders at a disadvantage even if they do somehow try to act against her. It would just be nice if she understood why she can do this, because it's actually a small comfort to her that she cannot wield both spell-like abilities together when her attention can't help but be drawn to the fact that deities are supposed to be able to naturally wield all the magic expressed by their domains.
More on the topic of divine magic easily cast, Liriel and Lolth have come up with several ideas that Liriel likes to think of as a business plan. One of which was inspired by the Minor Divine Spellcaster feat, which is a pittance for Lolth to provide, barely the slightest expansion from what she does normally already, and blesses an individual to wield power much the way a novice entering a clerical order might possess before learning to handle "real" spells... but the capacity to enact a partial handful of 0th level spells is also only something that Lolth has to bestow once, and then usually has people praying to her a whole lot more and a whole lot harder for upkeep, because it's just proactive marketing, really. Liriel is a beneficiary of this pushed to its limit; whether or not that's saying much is debatable, but it does allow her to cast seven different orisons, collectively up to six (which is actually twelve) times daily, and it's in addition to her normal spellcasting, though it is indeed standard spellcasting, not a big batch of spell-like abilities. Liriel's chosen minor prayers are thusly:
Somewhat similar, Lolth also provided Liriel with another blessing sought by a Pathfinder reference deemed realistic, actually twice over:
Firefinger—This spell-like ability is very similar to the indeed similarly named Flamefinger. It also, though, was something that Liriel could actually consciously choose, and... Lolth may have been more accommodating than perhaps expectable in order to get the girl desperate for fire magic to at least hopefully be a little less inclined to commit suicide because "it'd totally be okay!" and a Ring of the Phoenix would let her come right back able to shoot fireballs and control fire. Instead (or in the meantime), Liriel can use this magic to spout off small but surprisingly intense jets of fire. It has been tricky for her to differentiate similar magics, and she's not convinced that there actually is a difference, but she has figured out how to pretend very hard to be a fire-breathing dragon, and very promising and exciting are her experiments to see how she can better manipulate this magic inspired by what she knows is possible with Darkness, to sort of combine multiple uses together for not so small, surprisingly intense jets of fire.
Summon Spider—Initially unbeknownst to Liriel, Lolth simply bestowed Liriel with this spell-like ability without prompting and of her own accord, "whimsy of the gods" indeed. As a minor little cantrip, it's an unimpressive working, and simply snatches up some ordinary little spider from somewhere in the broad multiverse to bring to Liriel. Still, there's actually some variability in where it can be summoned, anywhere in her immediate proximity, not necessarily in her hand per her usual practice, and combined with some of the other things Liriel can do with spiders, there's understated potential with creativity. It also is simply appropriate by Lolth's reckoning, and unbeknownst to Liriel, she fairly often does similar things from time to time as that aptly described whimsy finds her.
Lolth's capriciousness is considerable, however. Liriel's thoughts prior to her birth on how she might gird herself for the future were many and varied, and had Lolth reading over her shoulder, sometimes literally. In Liriel's memories, Lolth's attention caught on a delightful section dubbed "Dark Gifts", for gaming intended for the Demiplane of Dread, but thematically all too appropriate for the Abyss as well. She also was rather fond of a character Liriel spoke of in one of the book series she used to read (Nicodemus Archleone, of The Dresden Files, just Lolth's sort of guy), and confronted Liriel with a choice, to pick what Dark Gift Lolth would "grant" her. Liriel reluctantly selected the one she thought least bad, as Lolth knew she would:
Living Shadow—Liriel's shadow is a thing its own. Often it follows Liriel and emulates her as a normal shadow ought, but... often it doesn't, as well. Liriel's shadow sometimes takes it upon itself to move independently, and almost seems to take a sly amusement in instead acting as a shadow shouldn't be able to, growing despite illumination not changing, casing itself in the opposite direction, or such. More significantly, Liriel's shadow can also do things that are less contrary and more supernatural, interacting with the physical world as if that which casts the shadow rather than the shadow itself, and even occasionally lifting straight from its surface; this also means that indeed it can do things with people, and Liriel's shadow has been known to react violently towards others enough for it to matter, strangling people of its own accord with more than insubstantial hands or tripping them. Liriel is unsettled however by the prospect that just maybe her shadow doesn't have a mind of its own with a will to be an inaccurate reflection of her, but might simply be... freer, maybe. Perhaps more disturbing for other people, though, is when Liriel and her shadow actually cooperate, because Liriel can control her supernatural shadow as well, and exploit its unnatural abilities and link with her to act through it to deliver touch-based magic or to reach from afar. Related, this also allows Liriel a capacity to make a completely detached shadow hand, though Liriel does not know if there may be any interaction between this Dark Gift and the influence of the Plane of Shadow presiding over her birth.
Mage Hand—Telekinesis-lite. This spell-like ability is derived from the power of her living shadow. The same magic that enables her shadow to be much more than any shadow should be also allows her to deliberately cast a shadow of her hand where none should form, and to use it to reach out and manipulate things with the disembodied floating shadow hand as if it were her own, albeit without her strength... though still indeed more than a mere shadow and one without an attached arm should manage.
At Will:
Mage Hand
6/day:
Augury
3/day:
Firefinger, Summon Spider, Cloak of Dark Power*, Protection from Law*, Protection from Evil
*mutually exclusive
Lolth has invested Liriel with great power, but Liriel has also initiative of her own to acquire greater means, or in some cases at least to make realised greater means that could be argued to be provided already. One of which was to essentially do what she was already doing, but more, and so benefit much as she already was, but more. Lolth enabled Liriel to be a sorceress, and with the intended role for Liriel as a weapon against her enemies. Liriel, thus, thought it quite appropriate to indeed take up that mantle and be a Sorcerer much like a Cleric in a way known to her, a way she already knew Lolth would allow despite their differences.
For this, Liriel wields the power of Destruction. Liriel's sorcerous talents are limited in scope—indeed, that's one of the main differences between a sorcerer and a wizard, even when they aren't just beginning to learn the art of magic—but Lolth's fury is within that expanded scope; in so actively trying to be a sorceress like a priestess, it... just sort of clicks in her head, and makes sense how to do it. Do what a priestess would do if a priestess was a sorceress. Part of that is also the act of bringing to bear divine power aligned to Destruction:
Smite—SMITE! Liriel can smite. This supernatural power cannot be used so frequently as many of her spell-like abilities, but also probably doesn't need to. For all that she is a tiny little girl of five, she can wield the power of Destruction to strike with an intense and brutal metaphysical weight behind it utterly beyond her physical form. It's called smiting for a reason. Many of Lolth's priestesses can do it to, and she could have herself as a priestess if other aspects of Lolth had not resonated with her more first, but few people expect it from so small a figure, and fewer expect it twice.
As a priestess of Lolth, however, to her, what it meant for Lolth to be Lolth was Pride and Trickery, and Liriel's philosophical approach toward her relationship with her goddess reflects that in consequential ways. Her connection with Lolth through the lens of Pride grants her a corresponding domain power that in crunch terms would mean that Natural 1s on saves are retried, and in actual effect... sort of means that she just doesn't ever have a bad day. On a good day, could a foe take her? Maybe, maybe not. A foe on a bad day would do worse, and it'd be bad for them if she was on a good day... but they're just not going to get her doing her worst, because it doesn't happen. She's above it, won't allow it of herself, and has divine energy coursing through her to force herself to live up to her own higher standards. It's a subtle thing in the narrow focus, but hard to miss in the big picture.
Trickery, though? Even more than Pride, Liriel really gets Trickery, and in her eyes, it's essentially one and the same as simply being smart, being normal. Liriel is of the opinion that everyone is always trying to influence and manipulate everyone, and that though the drow sometimes make it easy to think otherwise, it isn't some bad thing, just communication. Want to get an idea across? That's influencing them, doing something with the deliberate intention of making them thing something; the act of talking is to follow the principles of Trickery, for good or ill, and most people just do it without giving it much of a thought. Liriel embraces it. Consequently, she has Trickery's domain power, which gives her an outright more than normal sense of how to shape thoughts and perspectives and fit within them—Bluff, Disguise, and Hide are considered class skills by crunch terms, a fact of life the way they might be for a Bard or a Rogue. Liriel's perspective on Trickery—perhaps also enabled by foreknowledge or expectation that might also be faith—also allows her to do more though:
Simulacrum—Are you sure you see what you think you see, because you might actually be less and more right than you think! The expression of the Trickery Devotion feat, this supernatural ability uses divine power to bring into existence something between an image and a force in Liriel's likeness which in truth is no more and no less than an extension of her. Right now, she can only use it up to five minutes and it's closer to an illusion than "real enough", but as her power as a priestess grows, the difference between her and her simulacrum becomes less and less relevant.
Divine Intercession—Actually, you missed. A more forceful expression of Trickery, this supernatural ability uses quite a bit of divine power to allow Liriel to play Schrodinger, blurring the difference between her being in one place and another nearby to allow Liriel to flit through that ambiguity in a form of short-ranged teleportation. If Trickery Devotion lets her be glad that no one who gets the reference can here her think Kage Bunshin whenever she does it, she thinks Divine Intercession as her budget Izanagi. She is curious just how "budget" it may be though when she's philosophical about Trickery and the Buddhist view that what one makes of reality being real enough and untrue enough to also matter. Liriel has mused before that if she had somehow incarnated in Kara-Tur instead of Faerûn (or technically the Abyss), maybe she might be a xianxia protagonist following the Dao of Trickery... and if maybe she is anyway.
Liriel has also been pretty busy since she was born, too. Further, she has spent the last five years with honestly a pretty serious idea of what to do or what could be done, after having done a whole lot of planning about it. She has been paying attention, often with little else to do in the first place, and the combination of both being a nigh helpless infant and really, really wanting to pursue magic as much as she absolutely possibly can... that has had an impact. There are some 5e feats that she thought intriguing, a variety of them that follow a general trend of being designed to flavour a character as someone of a particular class or inclination but also managing to dip their toes in other areas and pull it off without it being any great imposition or needing to actually commit to some alternative path. And amidst that, Liriel had Ulviiravin and Lolth as the main people she interacted with outside of her mother.
Stick a nanny right in front of a bored, terribly restless, and desperately yearning Liriel, and make that nanny a Bard who can literally sing magic into existence?!
In Liriel's head:
Magic, magic, magic! Get! Ulviiravin was living the example right in front of her! The magic of music, something so intimately tied with emotion and idea as to almost be one and the same as magic, and maybe is magic in and of itself in this world! How could Liriel possibly not try to grasp that? When she had an informed reference point in the first place, she succeeded. She isn't a Bard, but, well, her nanny did indeed manage to raise her, more than Ulviiravin and Lolth actually would have preferred, and so Liriel has a limited but genuine grasp of how to work magic in such a fashion:
Lullaby—"Hush, little fire-baby, don't burn it up..." Elves are not subject to sleep magic, but a soothing ensorcellment of calm and drowsiness is not the same thing (though it's still trickier with elves to pull off mind magic generally). Liriel has a lot of experience with this sort of magic, enough to pick up on the melody herself. It's an actual spell, rather than a spell-like ability, but Liriel isn't sure if there's truly much of a difference fundamentally.
Message—Oi! This spell is another that Liriel has seen done in front of her a great deal, and before Ulviiravin caught on that, indeed, Liriel actually was learning what she was doing, the demon nanny actually delighted in carefully demonstrating to show off for the easily amused and terribly pleased child. Give Liriel a bit of copper wire, and she knows how to shift her words to carry what she says to where someone listens.
Focusing Chant—Clear your mind... It's a meditative chant, one of Ulviiravin's very commonly used spells, especially since she often uses it to help Liriel in her studies with her. Liriel doesn't know how to do whatever Ulviiravin does to impart the guiding focus to another, but she is very familiar with the spell, and can perform the meditative chant herself. Ulviiravin is of conflicted opinions when it is deemed a distraction from Liriel's studies as a priestess that she uses for such; Lolth is herself displeased with Liriel being sidetracked but deeply amused by her handmaiden's plight and Liriel's capacity for causing trouble.
Ulviiravin is not the only demon Liriel has made a concerted effort to learn from, though. Lolth is a goddess. She was not always such, however. More specifically, Lolth is herself a demon who has managed to attain divinity, and more specifically still, to regain divinity, as she was long ago stripped of her godhood by Corellon Larethian—king of the gods of the elven pantheon, who had elevated her in the first place—and banished to the Abyss, but since manage to work her way back to becoming a goddess in her own right. The fact that she is a demon and just one who is also a goddess, though, is important in Liriel's thinking. Liriel had given thought to warlocks and how they develop their powers, and, indeed, Lolth is a demon.
In Liriel's early considerations for paths to power and avenues for accomplishing things, several points stood out prominently: many options that in game terms were encompassed as Classes seemed to fall into two distinct categories, as what a person simply was, and what a person did. She could not somehow make herself into a Sorcerer, but had to be born that way or otherwise somehow or another just happen to end up that way due to whatever causes outside her control, but she could dutifully undertake martial training as per a Fighter, or study like a Wizard, or such. She also reckoned, however, that sword-swingers standing shoulder to shoulder with those who worked magic really was only a game mechanic; a cut throat was a cut throat, regardless of "HP", and there was a reason why the real movers and shakers of the world able to get things done as individual, personal powerhouses were almost exclusively magically powerful. Thus Liriel's choice to take the path of a priestess to get Lolth to give her mystical might and of a wizard to learn to work such forces more directly, aside from convincing Lolth to so make her a sorceress. But there are considerable parallels between a Cleric and a Warlock, and Liriel was already tied to Lolth anyway, so... Eldritch Adept.
Liriel has not diversified her attentions to focus heavily on how to work magic as warlocks do, but Warlock is a very tempting forth choice down her list that just misses out because other options are all the more attractive. She has not ignored it entirely, though, because she indeed recognises that it's something that she can do that can—and does—bring results at a high return for her investment. She is a priestess of a goddess who is also a demon, and the great and mighty rulers of the Abyss are amongst the most common backers of warlocks; for her, it's an obvious option, and something she brought up with Lolth as part of her "business plan" ideas—Lolth is something of an exception amongst the great powers of the Abyss in not making an outreach toward mortals to serve her as warlocks because priestesses are analogous, but she could, and indeed just recently has expanded that outreach, under the raised consideration that, as it happens, many mortals (particularly non-drow and on the surface, where Lolth seeks to expand) may in fact be more open to that kind of relationship than worshipping her as their goddess, and yet the two are closely analogous regardless of the particular flavour of mortals' opinions.
Bestow Curse—Liriel has learned from Lolth a limited ability to work certain dark energies so easily accessible to her as Lolth's Chosen. Though she could expand upon this field and experimented a little bit previously, figuring out some more potent invocations as she grew, she had to focus on one at a time exclusively when the power escaped her novice skills when she tried to make it do multiple things, so she settled fairly quickly on a particular invocation, learning to weave curses. Limited though her warlock skills may be, she has gotten good at curses. Turning that ready malevolence into curses is something that comes easily to her as silk spinning, and given Lolth's nature, Liriel figures that the two might well be in fact interrelated. Her one warlock invocation is a spell-like ability that she can lay with a touch—or her shadow's—and she has made use of this skill to such an extent that it almost becomes rote and thoughtless, leading to her leaving about cursing energy almost as much as her hair and cobwebs get everywhere, making Ulviiravin often chide her as "such an untidy child".
In terms of things closer to her actual classing, Liriel has also picked up what could be described by the feat Divine Spell Power as something she learned for herself. In effect, though, it's actually quite straightforward, with her simply doing what she already knew perfectly possible and just using divine power to make her spells stronger; in crunchy terms, it raises the caster level of the so boosted spells. The most basic, classic use of divine power as employed by clerics against undead is something she hasn't ever used in actual practice, but she knows the theory well enough and figures that she has ample power to spare to make it work should the need arise. She instead is currently trying to figure out all that "metamagic" goodness and pursue ideas about wielding divine spells as arcane and vice versa as per the practice amongst priests in Mulhorand, attempting to use her sorcery as a basis, but she hasn't made much progress there when she has been quite busy with all sorts of other things as well, particularly her innate magic and ways it can be wielded differently and combined together.
To that end, Liriel's magic as a Divine Soul Sorcerer is actually somewhat behind in breadth compared to depth (though given the similarity between spell-like abilities and sorcery, one might argue that the progress is simply expressed slightly differently). Thus, her arcane repertoire:
Of these, her most recent personal endurance test puts her at being able to churn out nine cantrips in a row, and seven 1st Level spells in a row purely with sorcery, a testament to both her enormous force of will and experimentation upon her in the womb that significantly strengthens her sorcerous abilities, as well as a boon bought with insight into Mystra and where her tolerance and intolerance lay. The experimentation was pioneering work that Liriel merely surmised should probably be possible one way or another based on references she didn't consider actually reputable guides in a very direct sense, but the idea behind a link between inborn sorcerous aptitude and influenced natal development made sense, separate from the fact that Liriel knew that her counterpart just really had a gift for wizardry in a way that she herself presumed to and could likewise be so blessed to have such a gift for sorcery, the Spellcasting Prodigy feat twice over in different ways and benefits inspired by what Liriel had read in the Ghostwalk sourcebook. In effect, crunchy terming is that Liriel treats her Charisma as +6 higher than normal where spellcasting is concerned (and Intelligence +2 higher as well where wizardry is concerned, thanks to what she and her counterpart indeed both got from Gromph).
Recap summary:
Liriel Baenre, Lolth-Blooded Fire-Souled Drow Chosen of Lolth
Cleric 5/Sorcerer 3/Wizard 1
Str 8, Dex 18, Con 11, Int 17, Wis 16, Cha 34
Constant:
Know Direction, Speak with Spiders, Immunity to Adherence, Improved Spider Climb, Charm/Control Spiders
At Will:
Mage Hand, Spidereyes, Alter Self, Spider Form, Spider Strand
8/day:
Clairvoyance
6/day:
Augury, Web, Dispel Magic, Suggestion, Detect Lie
3/day:
Detect Magic, Dancing Lights, Faerie Fire, Fire Eyes, Firefinger, Flamefinger, Ghost Sound, Heat Water, Prestidigitation, Summon Spider, Touch of Fatigue, Cause Fear, Charm Person, Cloak of Dark Power OR Protection from Law, Darkness, Disguise Self, Phantom Threat, Protection from Evil, Ray of Flame, Invisibility, Levitate, Know Alignment, Misty Step, Deep Slumber, Haste, Charm Monster, Confusion, Dimension Door, Summon Nature's Ally V
2/day:
Detect Undead
1/day:
Naturewatch
Elf Qualities, Light Sensitivity, Divine Grace, Lolth's Favor, Poison, Web, Fire Subtype: Immunity to Fire and Vulnerability to Cold, Inspiring, DR 5/cold iron, Sacred Conduit, Sacred Touch, Seer, God Touched, Divine Fervor, Living Shadow, Destruction Domain Power, Pride Domain Power, Trickery Domain Power, Trickery Domain: Simulacrum, Trickery Domain: Divine Intercession, Divine Spell Power, Empower Turning, Enhance Turning, Extra Turning, Heighten Turning, Ignore Turn Resistance, Improved Turning, Intensify Turning, Planar Turning, (Greater) Enhanced Sorcery, Spellcasting Prodigy: Sorcerer, Spellcasting Prodigy: Wizard, ...demon ninja maid nanny & watching Lolth
All told, Liriel has accrued a ludicrous degree of benefits and advantages. She was born utterly beyond anything remotely normal and beggars belief as a mere five-year-old. And yet, she considers this to but be hitting the ground running, and has much more in store for the future.
First, there's the obvious. Drow, dark elf. What are they and what can they do? This is an area where there are some fairly important distinctions in how the crunchy tabletop RPG rules from sourcebooks are intended to be indeed for a game based on narrative stories, a way for game mechanics to reflect a novel setting while conforming to an agenda with elements like balance and streamlined compatible logic with wider systems so that players can pick it up and do something with it. The qualities and abilities of drow change a great deal across editions in mechanics and fine details, but still more or less cover the same stuff one way or another that is representative of novel portrayals. In crunchiest format, 2nd edition rules are both the most comprehensive and complicated/unwieldy for gaming, but a story isn't burdened by that, save by the caveat that even this listing being laid out here isn't necessarily exact when in-universe real-world application may (may) be more organic—such as, say, the exact mechanics of "3/day".
So, what do drow do? What does it mean to be drow?
To start with, something of a semi-unhelpful baseline of comparison to humans.
In crunchy terms, the "statistically average generic adult human NPC" sort of person, well, kind of doesn't exist, because even the supposed utterly generic fellow in the background who is a Level 1 Commoner still has a history to them from a narrative perspective that can readily justify variation when their stats ostensibly should be 10 in everything but the actual average peasant farmer dude is probably pretty used to hard work, and so on, plus there's the question of how well the stat system itself even represents... but those crunchy terms gotta try to start somewhere, so... generic adult human: Str 10, Dex 10, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 10.
And those radial modifiers for the analogous "average" dark elf? +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 Int, +2 Cha. The snobbishness drow have about being a superior race that should look down upon everyone else isn't entirely unjustified. On average, yeah, even the uninspiring drow has that, well, elfiness to them that lends some ephemeral grace like a back-alley cutpurse or trained dancer, but they're definitely slight of build look like they can't take take a hit like that other guy in a bar brawl for a reason. But there's also a reason why drow have so many goddamn wizards everywhere and keep coming up with convoluted schemes because maybe they are cleverer than you, and just ooze the elfy grace even though you know the one in front of you is a black-hearted bastard as dark as that distinct skin that... maybe doesn't need a moisturiser? Stupid dark elves cheat somehow, they're evil and pretty!
That's all before they, you know, have a life, do stuff, get experience and grow up. Advance in levels or do stuff that in-game is established to justify change, and numbers go up (or down), the Level 4 Fighter decides to get +1 Str because they've been training a lot, the old sage is in fact plain old and accumulated some experience of a different sort to see physical and mental stats tilt. Or, y'know, applicable to Liriel, maybe the little kid actually grows up grows up, because right now Liriel has some size modifiers to her stats compared to a typical adult human, in addition to canon-Liriel herself simply not being anything like average and importantly Liriel is also just a reincarnated freaking shapeshifter.
Itty-bitty Liriel right now: Str 8, Dex 18, Con 11, Int 17, Wis 16, Cha 34
All that out of the way, onto that point about elfy elfiness.
Like all elves, drow have exceptionally keen eyesight and though humans may have a hard time wrapping their heads around it, drow eyes are in fact so keen as to see heat, able to process infrared just as well as the normal visual spectrum. Magical sleep also has no effect, nor does for some reason the paralytic touch of ghouls and only ghouls. Mind enchantment to beguile their thoughts is also of limited effect, requiring an expert tough to accomplish much with reliability. This isn't anything supernatural, just a product of what they are.
On a related note, as well, because elves don't really undergo conventional sleep, dreaming reverie (or awkward shutting down for a while in the case of many drow) offers rest at about a .75:1 ratio compared to human needs. Perhaps it should count as an incredible eldritch power, but elves actually see nothing wrong with being an early riser and don't need coffee. Notably, in Liriel's case, her Ring of Sustenance lets her get by with only a quarter of an elf's needs. An hour and a half is that mythical healthy full night's sleep?! Now that's magical! (Actually the real magic is subsequently casting the Healthful Rest orison that "just" halves sleep requirement.)
Somewhat bridging natural qualities and magic, however, there's also the topic of magic resistance. All drow have a measure of resistance to magic, and it gets stronger as they get older. An important point, though, the opposite is also very much true; in drow children, their natural magic resistance is not just rather weak but also fluctuates, and quite considerably, before later stabilising, whilst Liriel is, y'know, five. Normal practice for families of means is for supplementing potions the way some human warrior might quaff one if expecting to face a wizard, but in Liriel's case, prolonged artificial resistance to magic was actually judged to be bad for her growth.
Liriel has a measure of resistance to magic being worked against her, but what that resistance actually is? Who can say?
In terms of spell-like abilities (innate magical powers that may be subject to a degree of skill and training to use better, but come naturally to them), Liriel and most drow have the following abilities closely akin to the spells:
Darkness—This spell-like ability summons into existence a typically spherical blot, a supernatural darkness that impedes all sight save some forms of magical vision. Further out, the region affected seems to smother illumination the closer to its heart, and the scope of total non-light is normally in Liriel's case up to a 30-foot radius. Plenty of older drow can conjure larger areas of darkness, but Liriel is secretly inordinately proud to have pushed her darkness to respectable size.
Intensify Darkness. Inspired by a memory of something the other Liriel does at one point making a great wall of darkness and aware that it should be possible, Liriel has also figured out a way to twist this power, holding it in and building it up instead of just casting it forth. This results in an effect akin to the Deeper Darkness spell, a much larger inky cloud three times the normal size, and it can linger for days instead of the hour and a quarter that her normal darkness currently lasts. It isn't something that can be whipped out quickly, though.
Dancing Lights—Will-o'-wisps, basically. This spell-like ability can bring into existence balls of illumination like lanterns or torches, able to be moved around with a thought. It should be possible to get creative with them. Liriel doesn't have much practice with this power, and she doesn't know any drow who does, not that that's saying much.
Faerie Fire—The drow favouite. This spell-like ability conjures soft ghostly fire in whatever colour desired. It doesn't burn, but it's definitely pretty, and a similar spell with indefinite duration is a standard accenting decoration everywhere. Including on enemies hoping to lurk unseen (which makes for a culture touchy about "civil" usage on each other in public). As it happens, though, faerie fire also actually reacts in a number of ways to all sorts of things, potentially making it a useful diagnostic if one has the right knowledge. Liriel does. She also knows what colour is the best colour, and you're wrong if you say it's not amber-gold.
Usually expressed more strongly hereditarily, many drow—particularly in established nobility cultivating the abilities—may also feature this:
Levitate—Wingardium Leviosa. Float up and down, very handy in the Underdark; in fact it's handy enough that pretty common practice is for house insignias and the badges of office for the instructors of Tier Breche to be enchanted with the same power (especially since it wouldn't do for an instructor to obviously be a common-born nobody). It's more typically applied to oneself, but can be used on other things.
The Enemy Gate Is Down. Liriel has learned a way to apply the same magic in perhaps not so much a different way but with a different perspective. The magic moves the target back and forth along an axis, and that axis is relative. Force Push and Force Pull, just not very forceful.
Know Alignment—I cast Morality Debate's Philosophical Introspection! This spell-like ability is a potentially rather complicated and not necessary actually all that useful divining magic, probably better for confirming than investigating. If the subject has some sort of significant metaphysical weight, concentrating on it can discern its nature. There are a lot of ways to get a less than helpful alleged insight, though.
Detect Magic—Is that thingy there magical? Probably, actually. This spell-like ability provides feedback registering and interpreting the aura of magic. Understanding that feedback, though, is one of those things where there's probably always more room for better mastery. In Liriel's case, that deedback is visual, though she does remember about a future mage who interprets smells. She has a long way to go before she considers herself adept discerning magical qualities with this power, but she's learning.
This innate magic... sort of isn't actually innate, though. If you want to split proverbial hairs. How much can these different magics be used? That's a product of environment. The faerzress of the Underdark is sort of like a magical radiation, and though it didn't always used to be there and dark elves didn't always used to have natural/"natural" magic either, they've been living in it for long enough to be changed by it; i.e., the magical radiation made them magically mutate, and like any proper radiation mutant with a skin colour change, more means more: in crunchy terms, drow living where there is faerzress get +1/day to their innate spell-like abilities each decade... which really adds up over centuries.
Liriel is only five. However, she has a mild obsession about optimisation and synergy and plans for the future. By crunchy terms, this mad science designer baby has the Magic in the Blood feat thanks to Lolth's augmenting; all 1/day spell-like abilities are 3/day. So:
3/day:
Detect Magic, Dancing Lights, Faerie Fire, Darkness, Know Alignment, Levitate
Lolth's priestesses are blessed with their innate magic being further augmented. The results vary somewhat, but in crunch terms, there are several spell-like like abilities that may or may not be gained 1/day for every level as Cleric, and there's a further chance of expanding those abilities from a different pool of possibilities even as there's a degree of ambiguity to the extent of those alternative possibilities. (It's almost like Lolth isn't big on standardised routine) Liriel's spell-like abilities are as follows:
Detect Thoughts—What are you thinking? This spell-like ability only works on other drow, but there's a reason why priestesses seem to have an unnatural ability to know when someone is thinking something that they shouldn't. They do. The power is somewhat limited in application even beyond its drow-only nature, not some full-on mind-reaming plumbing the depths of the subject's brain to uncover hidden secrets, but... be careful what you think around Lolth's priestesses. Unless you're one of them. Culturally, it isn't a done thing to throw this power around casually (almost as if drow don't like people snooping in their sneaky secret stuff), correlating closely with relative status—i.e., any priestess might assess any male's thoughts as a matter of course, but they'd have to be circumspect with each other, yet a Matron Mother would be well in her rights to pry into her own daughter's thoughts even as she may get away with assessing a priestess of some other house, but would likely want to enjoy a significantly greater station and think twice anyway if the lesser house should be playing host or the like.
Detect Undead—Exactly what it says on the tin. This spell-like ability is sort of both useful and not. If there are undead ahead, and the priestess in question uses this ability, she can concentrate and feel it. It is limited to ahead, somewhat lacks for range, and only registers undeath, plus it can be blocked by disconcertingly small amounts of stone and earth not uncommon where undead are concerned... but on the other hand, it's often hard to realise the presence of the insufficiently dead at all before it's too late. If undead are suspected to be a potential problem, it might be a good idea to fire this up; it does last a fair while, and any forewarning spoiling undead ambush might make the difference between joining them and being able to unleash clerical powers quite effective against their kind.
Clairvoyance—In canon, this is a magic that undergoes some serious change when the nature of magic as a whole evolves. Prior to the Time of Troubles (that is to say, in the current period), there simply isn't any range limit to this spell-like ability that is basically "Scrying-lite". There is a need to know where to look, requiring familiarity beyond what more typical scrying can get away with, but quite simply, Clairvoyance allows the user to see somewhere, provided that there isn't interference, anyway. Liriel likes to use this a lot; it's sharply curtailed in the Underdark thanks to faerzress being bad for divination and teleportation, but the surface is another story and it has long been sort of a form of escapism for her to peer about and explore areas of interest on the surface.
Dispel Magic—The default countermagic. It's sort of an art and one in which Liriel knows she lacks for expertise, but it also doesn't necessarily take an expert to metaphorically grab the other artist's easel and shake it around while they're trying to use it. Too, Liriel none the less knows some of the more tactical possibilities possible with this power. Generally speaking, Dispel Magic makes active magic expire, but does so by sort of forcefully evening everything out, and that enables some options for the targeting: if strong/skillful enough compared to the target to work, it can be cast on an area and dispel all magic around, or on a person and unravel magic on just them specifically, or on a person and interfere with active attempts at spellcasting, or on magical items to shut down or prevent function temporarily. Still, while it is a very nice ability to have, in Liriel's case, it's rather overshadowed by her house insignia being able to employ the same magic as enchanted by her father, making her own dispelling of niche utility.
Suggestion—Another useful spell-like ability when employed carefully, Suggestion is a power that lends greatly to skillful usage. It empowers words with a hypnotic quality to blur the boundaries of what is reasonable and make the target highly susceptible to influence... if it works. Generally, it doesn't actually work that well on drow. Elves with magic resistance and mindbending magic, not a good recipe for success. But then of course there's all those non-drow out there.
Detect Lie—Polygraph power, self-explanatory in the name. This fairly potent spell-like ability is another staple of Lolth's priestesses' ability to seem unnervingly aware. Even hampered by the innate magic resistance of any targeted drow, it's generally quite difficult to knowingly speak falsehood and get it past a priestess looking for it. That said, well, it works the way it works; all it detects is lies, not more general deception, or simple ignorance.
How much can she sling all this around? Being that these spell-like abilities are expressly a product of divine favour, Liriel indeed has things going in her favour compared to what passes for the usual when Lolth is involved, Improved odds of clerical spell-like abilities are a pretty normal way for her to reward service of her priestesses above and beyond the norm, and Liriel certainly qualifies. However, Liriel also has an important boon applicable. Kereska—the goddess of magic of the draconic pantheon specifically—rewarded the gold dragon sorcerer Larendrammagar with what crunch rules have as doubled spells per day and the ability to cast arcane and divine spells alike; for divulging some pretty big secrets about Eilistraee and giving her word to take action regarding it (as well as Lolth just wanting excuses to "simply be rewarding a dutiful follower" in a way that wouldn't attract attention), Liriel got something not dissimilar inspired by that: magic from Lolth doubled. With much rolling, it yields the following:
8/day:
Clairvoyance
6/day:
Dispel Magic, Suggestion, Detect Lie
2/day:
Detect Undead
That's more or less for an ordinary Liriel, though. Most standout in what has been done to her is her crafting as Lolth's champion. There's actually two different but very closely related qualities, there, and it's kind of hard to tell where one ends and the other begins; in fact, together, it's possible that maybe there isn't a division.
Template time!
Chosen of Lolth, and Lolth-Blooded.
Liriel was arranged from before her birth to be an ideal vessel for Lolth's power. Sosdrielle Vandree was possessed by Lolth—made Zedriniset by drow formal distinction—and when a deity possesses a mortal, it so much turns the mortal into an avatar; the difference is almost purely academic... but that difference is something Liriel knew to be all the difference in the world under very certain conditions. Mystra, the goddess of magic and general biggest fish around save the overgod who has to work overtime to keep her in her place, became the almost-but-not-quite-quite-technical mother to the famous Seven Sisters so as to square the proverbial circle formerly causing her trouble in the she found that she needed many Chosen and yet few could withstand it without being consumed in body or mind by her power. Liriel and Lolth conspired to do similar, and so Liriel is as close to a divinity as it is possible to be whilst still being able to cling to the advantages of being a mortal, unhindered by the considerable shackles and interferences imposed upon the gods as she acts upon the mortal world. Knowing a lesser but closely related possibility of empowerment, though, and one also lesser by far of an imposition for Lolth to make it an excellent investment of her power, the not-quite demigod newly born unto the world drank not of milk but eight drops of godly blood.
The Chosen and God-Blooded templates as expressed for Liriel bring a variety of changes, some notionally natural, others more magical in nature.
From a physiological standpoint, Spider-Girl here do be spidery. For one thing, uh, maybe don't share utensils with Liriel. It's a bad idea. Her saliva is an incredibly potent venom, and one that is as much a spiritual malady as virulent physical cytotoxin, though that actually sort of straddles the line between merely extraordinary and outright mystical ability. It's about what one might expect of the bite of someone empowered by a malicious spider goddess.
Being indeed spidery, though, maybe check out hands under a microscope. Liriel can actually get a surprisingly good grip without any magic involved, though results may vary depending on the surface, and she has a knack for handling webs more generally. More obviously, though, Liriel's palms actually have silk glands, and she's adept at weaving silk with her fingers in all sorts of ways; that includes doing as many monstrous spiders can do and launching entangling webbing.
Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, however, there's a degree of overlap in what she can do. More supernatural qualities for the Chosen of Lolth and Lolth-Blooded combination include outright supernatural capacity for being spidery, with several spell-like abilities and aspects of magical nature. Moreover, too, though, Lolth is a trickster goddess, and her champion reflects that.
Constant:
Speak with Spiders—In much the same way as some priestesses and niche mages learn, Liriel has a mystical ability similar to the Speak with Animals spell, but specific to spiders (albeit with a broad definition of what is spidery enough to count). Not all spiders are exactly great conversationalists, though. By way of this magic, Liriel can converse with even common bugs that by all rights shouldn't have the mental capacity for it, but that sort still might not have much to say anyway. Of course, plenty of spiders are more intelligent than nigh-mindless bugs, even if they may lack the means for conventional speech (though there are some weirder spiders out there that might strike up a conversation with you, probably about how tasty you look).
Charm/Control Spiders—This constant spell-like ability is somewhat akin to what some priestesses and niche mages can achieve, but more like what Lolth herself and an artifact she made can do. In effect, it is similar to both Charm Monster and Dominate Monster, enthralling spiders all around Liriel. Full-on mind-control allows her to puppet spiders as extensions of herself, but even spiders that have minds of their own don't care within her influence, and that influence lingers. The charming aspect makes them friendly and generally quite obedient and loyal even should they leave her zone of total control; for spiders with little to no real minds of their own, the charm influence may simply never fade. This thralldom is automatic for true spiders, which cannot resist it at all (no save), and spider-kin and other spider-like things with significant minds of their own whom may be inclined to resist still struggle severely to withstand its influence every moment they stay in Liriel's proximity (crunch: Will save every round at -5 penalty, or at disadvantage, depending on edition preferences); of note, the latter expressly includes beings whom may only be in spider shape, such as polymorphed subjects.
Improved Spider Climb—This constant spell-like ability is similar to what Liriel can do naturally, just supernaturally (albeit indeed subject to effects that may interfere with magical ones like an antimagic field, unlike extraordinary qualities). Quite simply, it lets Liriel crawl and clamber about like a spider, going so far as to be perfectly able to scuttle upside down on some slick ceiling surface; unlike the lesser Spider Climb spell, the Improved version also works regardless of things like gloves or shoes.
Immunity to Adherence—This constant spell-like ability makes it simply impossible for things to stick to her properly. Like oil on water, they just slide right off, allowing Liriel to easily navigate any web, her own or not, as well as shrug off similar hazards such as the magic of the popular Wand of Viscid Globs or Web spells, or the likes of some alchemical traps and such. The power is identical to a very special mask in Gromph's possession, the only other way to bypass the grand silver web fence of House Baenre, and for precisely the same reason in the nature of the magic's source.
At Will:
Alter Self, Spider Form—This power is closely resembles two different shapeshifting magics. A normal Alter Self spell allows the caster to physically transform into another being similar to the original form, though a "close enough" difference may be surprising; Liriel is perfectly capable of assuming the form of an adult human as easily as a deep gnome despite being a small drow girl, though she also has zero intention of advertising the fact. She doesn't hide that she has a fluid sense of body, but obfuscates the extent, because while the normal Alter Self spell can't manage it, she herself can much more expectably take spidery form, despite that being very different from what passes for her normal shape; she can transform between drow and spider and between in hybrid, drider-like form, save for not being hideously malformed the way they are. Notably, Liriel has trouble bulking up as a spider, able to assume a Large size but not reach Huge, though this may change as she grows, and it is also an outright transformation to spider, not merely donning the likeness in costuming shape, and so Liriel may take the special abilities of spiders in question, such as having a Phase Spider's phasing, or the Truesight of the flying chasm hunter species. Ulviiravin has also been teaching Liriel to shift quickly and fluidly in the way yochlol do.
Spidereyes—With a touch, this spell-like ability allows Liriel to see through the eyes of spiders. It's quite handy in conjunction with her ability to control those around her, though also potentially limited by the eyesight of the spider in question. Most spiders do not perceive colour, and many spiders have poor eyesight generally, especially compared to elf eyes. Still, plenty less normal spiders do in fact have decent or better sight, and it's certainly an advantage to have at all. There is a significant caveat, however, in that the link does not work across planar boundaries, which break it.
Spider Strand—Liriel can naturally create silk from her spinnerets, but she can also conjure webbing; this spell-like ability works as the spell of the same name, launching a thick strand of incredibly resilient silk that can easily wrap around and restrain a subject. The magical cord of spidersilk fades to nothingness after a while, but Liriel likes to think of it as "Spider-Man meets Mandalorian".
6/day:
Web—Like the standard spell, but similar to as if with the Widened metamagic augmentation, this spell-like ability conjures a clingy, sprawling mass of unnatural spiderweb. The magical web has to be fixed to something to actually work well normally, but anyone caught within is going to have an almost impossible time forcing their way free, if they can at all. The conjured web is easily burned, though. Liriel's arrangement with Lolth allows her to employ this magic more than she otherwise might.
Other qualities:
Divine Grace, Lolth's Favor—These two interrelated empowerments were inspired by ways that Lolth blesses some of her other servants. In crunch terms, apply Charisma modifier (+12!) to all saves and Armor Class. Liriel is still coming to terms with this power, and doesn't understand her nature very well.
+10 Charisma—Gods often empower their Chosen to hold greatness somehow, beyond normal mortal ken, with the hypothetical champion of a deity like Tempus, god of battle, perhaps being some herculean figure evoking tales describing such a mighty individual as having the strength of many men and it not actually being an embellishment (canon has the orc Chosen of Gruumsh wrestle a giant and win handily, for instance), or a Chosen may be like some almost (and maybe not even almost) literal shadow; alternatively, the Chosen in question may be less standout for any one aspect and just sort of generally better. In Liriel's case, it's all in on gravitas and her force of will and presence, with an absurd Charisma boost that brings with it the kind of transcendent, unimaginable beauty that normal mortals cannot possess... and may go mad for trying. There can be no doubt; in Liriel Baenre there is a power divine.
Beyond that, however, Lolth and Liriel have cooked up a fair bit to apply to her, or just to try out and see what works. Some of that isn't entirely metaphorical cooking.
Liriel is only five, so, can't really make puns about the girl with ludicrously high Charisma being hot, but they're definitely sitting there waiting.
Liriel's nature is fire.
Before she was born, Liriel thought long and hard about what to do with herself and what a path to self-improvement might be, and one of the possibilities that really stood out in her memory was the Fire-Souled template. She ended up figuring that she could probably enact something like that herself without any help, eventually... but the alternative was to get a god to do it, and, well, Lolth. Get a deity to do it, as a reward for revealing to her the over-ambitious machinations of Bhaal and Bane and Myrkul to try to get one over on the overgod. Fair enough, though, Lolth thought it a good idea too, because it is indeed well suited for their shared aims, even if Liriel herself also just had a thing about always wanting to be fiery.
It's not actually the only fiery thing she has going for her, though. Liriel put together a whole list in her head of all the feats she could think of that had to do with spell-like abilities, because feats were something she identified as often actually a pretty good guide for ideas in how to make herself more more—many of the RPG feats simply recognised that something had been done to the character, rather than reflecting some sort of advanced training or racial quirk or whatever. One that stood out to her was Soul of The North. Put right next to Fire-Souled, though, with a deity making it happen, it got her thinking... why not an inversion of Soul of The North? Soul of The North wasn't actually one of those feats describing how something could be done to someone to yield some sort of benefit, but if they were already doing something to her soul to make her fiery... and it would address her dissatisfaction at Fire-Souled not actually being fiery enough to suit her such that she made plans to find a particular type of magic ring to burn herself alive for the sake of automatically coming back orange with some actual fire magic...
Fire-Souled,
The most obvious, Liriel is a girl of fire. Fire doesn't hurt her any more than it does a salamander or a red dragon. She isn't too big on cold, though. Thankfully that's not too much of a concern underground. Incidentally, this also has the interesting side effect of making her silk likewise fireproof (though not her magically conjured web, just her natural silk). The fire subtype also makes her stand out oddly to the infrared sight of other drow, giving her the look as if she's almost feverish or something... though people with a fever don't heat up everything around them the way she does, do they? When Sosdrielle's mind was hers enough to function, she thought Liriel delightfully snuggly.
What Liriel remembered of the actual Soul of The North itself: You possess a magical understanding of the nature of cold. Benefit: An innate talent for magic grants you the following spell-like abilities as a 1st-level caster: 1/day—chill touch, ray of frost, resistance. Save DC 10 + spell level + your Cha modifier. The effect, in game terms, was to simply add some chilly theme to a character. That wording about "understanding" was for all similar feats and made legitimate sense by her reckoning but wasn't something she figured she could work out for herself, which... she really didn't like for her prospects of getting magic powers and specifically fire magic. For a Fire-Souled Liriel, though, the effect of the experimentation was surprisingly easy, largely a matter of perspective that unhelpfully Liriel can't actually explain properly to Lolth; Lolth's attempts purchased by divulging an opportunity to claim the godly portfolio of Ibrandul before a preoccupied Shar just worked all of a sudden, because... it's fire, you know? (No, Liriel, people don't know when you give feedback like that). Consequently, the variation of Soul of The North likewise yields spell-like abilities equivalent to one 1st level spell and two 0th level spells:
Ray of Flame—Light 'em up! Another one of those abilities exactly what it says on the tin, this spell-like ability is nothing to write home about, really, but it allows Liriel to shoot fire, and in her hands, it has now grown to something respectable enough. A noteworthy point is that, unlike Soul of The North itself, thanks to either something Lolth did or compounding consequences of Liriel's Fire-Souled nature, or possibly just Liriel not actually understanding how "game" elements translate in real-life, it functions the same as any spell-like ability would be expected to, growing with the user instead of being locked in at a Caster Level 1 equivalent.
Flamefinger—Who gave a child the ability to play with fire?! (Oh, right, an evil goddess of chaos.) 0th level spell effects (cantrips or orisons or what have you) are usually very minor things, at least in this age, though under the right circumstances they may still be surprisingly useful—they are still magic, after all; this one lets Liriel turn her finger into a blowtorch, and, indeed, you might be surprised what a Liriel can get up to with a blowtorch, especially when she can keep it up for a good ten minutes if she concentrates. Liriel has practiced this innate magic enough to control a gentle candle flame so much turning her fingertip into a lighter... and may have caused a very teeny tiny, small, completely overlookable and perfectly understandable bit of damage trying to vary the flame to be more like a welding torch or a cutting torch.
Fire Eyes—This spell-like ability offers niche benefits, but handy benefits within that niche, and it might not exactly be "niche" for Liriel. The magic allows a supernatural clarity of sight through fire and smoke and—to her sight, if not in actual truth—burns through mist and the like, allowing unimpeded vision, even if, say, in the middle of a burning building. A related benefit Liriel has found, it actually also helps with the fact that she isn't actually all that fond of sudden bright flaring light in visual-spectrum total darkness, and summoning gouts of flame tends to do that. It has become almost reflexive for her, though it indeed does nothing for light not generated by fire. She is aware that in theory this magic should probably be able to be bestowed on others as well, but it's never come up, and she can't be certain if the effect she experiences actually directly correlates with her academic knowledge of the magic believed identified (she isn't working with some kind of actual character sheet, after all).
The Fire-Souled template itself also brings a number of other qualities beyond the fire subtype and interaction with other investitures:
Haste—Gotta go fast! This spell-like ability allows that buoying drive within her to be fanned and embraced to run wild, straightforward in consequence as a superspeed effect. It has an only modest duration (though it does grow as she herself does), but a girl can do a lot in that time when she's fast-fast-fast!
Liriel is still learning what it means to be herself and is intellectually aware that some of it should be about external perspective, but this burning fire in her soul should have a number of other consequences following a general theme of incredible inspiring verve and passion, of fire, in the more metaphysical sense than just in burning things. Part of that, though, is indeed to be more of what she is, +4 Charisma. Even in the dark, Liriel burns bright.
3/day:
Haste, Ray of Flame, Flamefinger, Fire Eyes
Moving on, one of the other big points about Liriel, the circumstances of her birth. This was an area where Lolth and Liriel kinda went hard on the experimental mad science angle.
From mentally reviewing those feats, she got the idea of the Necropolis Born feat—another of those ones like Soul of The North—being something that perhaps actually could be arranged, a scenario set up to provide that intimate understanding of life and death and mortal dread that blurs the line between how one defines the world as natural and supernatural; she was careful to stress to Lolth, however, her expectation that aiming for such with other individuals of the sort Lolth generally preferred might very well result in a subject not quite alive and not quite undead, given her ideas about the Tomb-Tainted Soul feat and similar qualities. With that as a starting point, though, Lolth indeed had a pretty good understanding herself of what might align to produce the desired consequence when her role as a deity indeed is to preside over the souls of the dead and the afterlife of her worshippers.
On the demonic plane of the Demonweb Pits, the 66th layer of the Abyss, Sosdrielle possessed by Lolth gave birth to Liriel within the Mausoleum of the Yor'thae. It was... not exactly a pleasant affair. For anyone.
Cause Fear—Boo! This spell-like ability is actually surprisingly potent in this era. Liriel shares with the subject her ordinarily ignored intimate perspective of just how terribly fragile life is, and it insinuates to the forefront of awareness to quite possibly become an all-consuming, shattering terror before the victim regains their wits.
Ghost Sound—What's that noise? Life coming into existence has a profound metaphysical significance to it so fundamental that it's hard to understand even when so obvious, and this spell-like ability is an example of such. Liriel perceives a considerable difference between these powers aligned with necromancy and her innate fire magic, coming just as easily, sure, but... different; where with her fire she just has to do fire, want to burn and blaze, Ghost Sound is more like remembering, and perhaps simply being, both at once, and she gives life to something that was not alive, something that didn't exist until she brought it into the world. It comes as sound, and she can get fairly creative with it, able to bring to life practically any sound she can imagine people making to the extent of several people together.
Touch of Fatigue—Dying... is effortless, just a matter of giving up and letting it happen; it's living that's hard. This spell-like ability has only a modest effect on those full of the vigour of life, but Liriel impresses upon the subject in mind and body the forced realisation that... it's just hard to be alive. The subject can get over it after a while, but Liriel knows the profound difference of being dead and the continuous effort to be alive that ordinarily becomes so routine as to go unnoticed.
Beyond that, though, and possibly magnifying it, Liriel was born dying.
Being impaled and ripped from Sosdrielle's body will do that.
Liriel had a clever idea, perhaps a bit too clever for her own good, maybe. See, the nature of a being as they are born is that that very act of coming into existence indeed quite literally defines them; an aspect of this is the question of what counts as the being's home plane of existence—that's why fiends can be banished back to wherever they came from when they are summoned up or invade some world other than their own, and why many entities cannot die a true death unless slain on their home plane. Liriel, however, saw this as an intriguing logic puzzle, because she remembered an intriguing magical item, typically made as a ceremonial scepter or rod, that is imbued to be very "very" of the plane of existence on which it is crafted, capturing that plane's essence such that a being holding it counted as being on their home plane and thus unable to be banished "from" a different locale... so what if a person was born under the influence of two of those? And that seemed to fit with an informed theory she built reflecting on what she knew of the quasi- and para-elemental planes defined by non-definite boundaries with the four elemental planes proper, the nature of the interaction with the Plane of Shadow with the deepest reaches of the Lowerdark, and what she remembered of canon when in that timeline serious shenanigans occurred that made the Underdark and the Abyss bleed together enough for demons that should be unable to enter the mortal world to cross that gradient anyway. What if a person was born where one plane and another somehow mingled and coexisted in the same place, rather than just being coterminous like an overlap of one only atop the other?
Dual-citizenship? For Lolth, a fell goddess with many a demon servant and always ever more being birthed from the souls of her wicked followers after their mortal lives, it was an intriguing experiment to consider for her too, well worth trying out.
There's just the small matter of subjecting the unborn individual to those twin influences.
Rather the traumatic experience for everybody involved, yes. Lolth, Liriel, and Sosdrielle for how much she was actually there did not have a good time.
Still, even that did itself contribute to another aspect that Lolth and Liriel wanted to try. At least more than they wanted to not do it, anyway. Liriel drew inspiration from a variety of sources before she was born, and though she was uncertain about Pathfinder elements, well, from her perspective, some things might be worth a try; everything should be okay with a literal goddess invested in making things work out in the end. Two items she reckoned might be deliberately arranged were the Traits Sacred Conduit and Sacred Touch:
Sacred Conduit
Your birth was particularly painful and difficult for your mother, who needed potent divine magic to ensure that you survived (your mother may or may not have survived). In any event, that magic infused you from an early age, and you now channel divine energy with greater ease than most.
Benefit: Whenever you channel energy, you gain a +1 trait bonus to the save DC of your channeled energy.
Sacred Touch
You were exposed to a potent source of positive energy as a child, perhaps by being born under the right cosmic sign, or maybe because one of your parents was a gifted healer.
Benefit: As a standard action, you may automatically stabilize a dying creature merely by touching it.
Your birth was particularly painful and difficult for your mother, who needed potent divine magic to ensure that you survived (your mother may or may not have survived). In any event, that magic infused you from an early age, and you now channel divine energy with greater ease than most.
Benefit: Whenever you channel energy, you gain a +1 trait bonus to the save DC of your channeled energy.
Sacred Touch
You were exposed to a potent source of positive energy as a child, perhaps by being born under the right cosmic sign, or maybe because one of your parents was a gifted healer.
Benefit: As a standard action, you may automatically stabilize a dying creature merely by touching it.
Under more ordinary circumstances, Liriel being speared through twice over and ripped from the womb would have been a thoroughly fatal experience for mother and child. With a goddess possessing Sosdrielle, though, in the very center of her power, it was a simple matter for Lolth to flood Sosdrielle's body with enormous healing energy during the process. As a result, Liriel's nature in that morphic moment of definition is reflective of it, and she is a wellspring of a tingling, almost electrically energetic power of life inordinate to her form and spilling out of her like her own body heat. These qualities are not spell-like abilities, just her nature, albeit a supernatural nature somewhat warping the strictly literal sense of the term.
Beyond that, though, Liriel indeed had pondered greatly over the mutability of a person being born and ways that a person so being born might be influenced to become something more. Within that, her considerations about feats led her to inspiration from 5e ones. Fey Touched, Shadow Touched. Your exposure to the Feywild's magic has changed you, Your exposure to the Shadowfell's magic has changed you... Exposure?
Liriel and Lolth conspired to arrange and prepare for her birth. Faerûn has not been in close planar proximity to Faerie for some time, but only by mortal standards, and Lolth is an old existence who remembers much and has done more. Not too dissimilar to those other items acquired for Liriel's birth describing the interior of the mausoleum as both part of the Abyss and Faerûn's mortal world, Lolth was convinced to take not inconsiderable (but reusable) efforts to acquire two different crystals: one an old, old gem suffused with the energy of the Plane of Faerie, and another a dark sliver hailing from the Plane of Shadow, both themselves warped reflections of the mortal world in their own ways. In addition to making Liriel more more—+1 Cha, +1 Cha—the exposure resulted in the following innate magics:
Misty Step—This spell-like ability is only theoretical. Liriel has not dared to test it, though she is more confident than not that it should be possible. She is also confident that it would be a Bad Idea to employ a magic that is supposed to work by taking a shortcut existing more in Faerie than in Faerûn where they overlap yet do not directly corelate (take a few steps in Faerie along a shorter path that ends in Faerûn many steps from where she started) when both the two worlds are far apart presently and the part of Faerie that connects to Faerûn's Underdark is not a place she wants to visit. Faerûn's own Underdark is a dangerous place, and the Feydark is an all the more exaggerated version. Perhaps she is paranoid, but she does not care to risk the attempt when she has other avenues for what is effectively short-range teleportation; trying to take such a shortcut might fail completely, or work too well.
Charm Person—Isn't she just charming? Actually, Liriel might be perhaps too charming; this spell-like ability is indeed a spell-like ability, a natural innate magic, not a more deliberate act of touching upon the Weave to yield a mostly-predictable effect as a cast spell. It convinces the subject that she's a friend, and gosh, that Charisma score... It's very easy to like Liriel when she wants to be liked, so easy that the subject just might find themselves liking her even if Liriel both wants and does not want to be liked, where one may outweigh the other more than she consciously realises. It doesn't help that Liriel didn't choose this magic as the way that exposure to the ancient jewel's influence expressed itself, just gained it as the most natural consequence of who and what she is. It is also worth noting that in this age the mental beguilement may last a long time, too, depending on the subject's ability to properly grasp that they are being bewitched and shake it off... though they may have a hard time wanting to do that. The enchantment is however limited in target type and perhaps thankfully is not very effective against her fellow drow.
Invisibility—There's nothing there... right? There may in fact be an invisible monster about to eat your face. The Plane of Shadow is all about almost-possibilities and undefined insubstantial nothing that isn't nothing, negative impressions that have whatever meaning is given to them. Liriel is somewhat averse to touching on shadow magics because she actually knows more than a little lore about such power and the consequences for her should she deliberately or not brush against the goddess Shar's Shadow Weave, but whatever confluence of her understanding and the energies of the crystalline splinter bleeding darkness that presided over her birth, Liriel grasps how to pull about herself an illusion formed by tucking away her image in nothing-space between here and there. The magic of this spell-like ability is rather simple, really, and in some ways superfluous when she and near any drow wears the ubiquitous piwafwi offering its own invisibility with but the lowering of a hood, but all the same, it's invisibility on demand, and unlike her piwafwi, she can just as readily steal away the image of other things, not limited to her own person.
Phantom Threat—They are out to get you, it's them! Not all illusions can be seen. Some are all in the head, and the combination of factors in Liriel's birth appear to have resulted in a reflective result in this spell-like ability, which afflicts the subject with a mental phantasm blurring the line between enchantment and illusion; an individual afflicted by this magic feels a sharp, gripping paranoia of omnipresent danger, and thus can readily end up quite discombobulated and off balance, trying to react to threats at once ephemeral and larger than life. That can make it quite hard to simultaneously deal with any true threats in their midst... though it could potentially also provoke something drastic.
Though Liriel herself is not actually aware of it, Lolth took it upon herself to attempt an additional element of exposing influence that Liriel had noted as a plausible option, yet personally judged not worth the modest possible benefits when it might well interfere with much more promising prospects or simply not work. Lolth disagreed, and their little project together was as much for her own interest as their mutual benefit, and so Lolth, herself far more versed in many ways than the however insightful unborn child collaborating with her, introduced in the mausoleum a seed. She did not deign to tell Liriel of where she got it when Liriel needn't know anything at all, but it could hardly have come from a purely ordinary tree, and if Liriel was aware of Lolth's little duplicity here, she might grow suspicious over what she knows of a fallen and banished goddess's now haunted dominion in Arvandor, where the elven pantheon preside. After all, the secret addition had to be something to fit the passed up reference from another Trait of Pathfinder:
Green-Blooded
You are touched by the supernatural essence of nature, marking you since birth as something other than purely mortal.
Benefit(s): Choose a single 0-level druid spell. You can cast this spell once per day as a spell-like ability with a caster level equal to your character level.
You are touched by the supernatural essence of nature, marking you since birth as something other than purely mortal.
Benefit(s): Choose a single 0-level druid spell. You can cast this spell once per day as a spell-like ability with a caster level equal to your character level.
In truth, it worked, though, as in fact predicted, it didn't actually do much, exactly, beyond assuage Lolth's curiosity and yet grow it further.
Heat Water—Something something fire burn and cauldron bubble, but hold the fire. It is difficult to say how much of this spell-like ability is a product of Liriel being subjected to something suffused with the essence of nature at birth and how much is due to her own nature being that of fire, or if there's much of a difference, and it isn't helped by the fact that Liriel doesn't understand this magic in the first place even as she knows perfectly well that magic in general can be enigmatic and weird, but... Well, Liriel has found that, sometimes, things just get hot when she wants them to. Semi-reliably, she can make her tea scalding and bubbly, just the way she likes it. It sort of makes sense?
3/day:
Ghost Sound, Heat Water, Touch of Fatigue, Cause Fear, Charm Person, Phantom Threat, Invisibility, Misty Step
That could be argued to be it for the individually big things about Liriel's nature—for now, anyway, until Liriel manages to move plans further ahead—but she and her goddess engineered a considerable number of more minor alterations and enhancements to their design for her. Foremost is one that is only minor depending on how it's looked at.
Yet further drawing inspiration from feats that were intended to describe the nature of a character, Liriel postulated that, for the conjunction of other factors with her being so undifferentiated newly born, so born in the body of an elf, and bathed in Faerie's influence, it might take only a very slight nudge by someone with great power and a long memory of the ancestor's of the modern day's elvenkind, when they had not yet left the intense and less grounded Plane of Faerie for Faerûn. The very term "eladrin" is a terribly vague and unhelpful categorisation for scholars because many elf and elf-like beings take it for themselves, yet for good reason, even as some of them are undeniably more fey than others. Liriel and Lolth managed to almost not even truly change her at all and none the less see her quite different than she might otherwise be. For doing almost nothing, and for a price Liriel considered a scam tattling about Eilistraee and her special sword to be collected regardless of bonus payment, it made her more of what she is, or perhaps merely uncovered it. In effect, it is that which would be expressed by the feats indeed intended for flavouring a character as extremely strongly influenced by a fey heritage more or less fully realised: Fey Heritage, Fey Power, Fey Presence, Fey Legacy, Fey Skin, resulting in the following:
Disguise Self—Fey glamour. This spell-like ability is a staple of many feylike beings, a minor illusion, but one that allows the user to assume practically whatever likeness they please, even fudging height to what is often a surprising degree for those duped by such magic. In Liriel's case, it may be debated to be somewhat superfluous when the power of Lolth allows her Alter Self at will, but in Liriel's clandestine experience, if her shapeshifting has the capacity to emulate clothes and other affectations the way that some other shapeshifters manage, she has yet to figure out how, whilst glamour makes it easy to fake it. She is also of a mind that layered duplicity may trick people with a disguise within a disguise should the suspicious find what they seek in illusion and cease looking deeper for physical transformation.
Deep Slumber—Go to sleep... sleep, sleep, and set your worries aside to rest your weary head untroubled. Liriel has limited practice with this spell-like ability when she doesn't get out much in the first place and drow are unaffected by such magic, plus she has found it tricky to differentiate this magic from Suggestion, but like that other spell-like ability, she has learned to lace her words with a hypnotic quality that in this case ensnares the minds of those around her to immediately fall into an enchanted slumber. She surmises that it should be perfectly possible to work the effect without needing to verbally entice subjects—and she knows that they needn't even truly understand her enchanting words—but she has yet to figure out how.
Charm Monster—Aye, she is terribly charming indeed. This spell-like ability is akin to Charm Person, but where that magic is limited to "people-y" sorts, this can beguile the minds of nearly anything with a living mind to be effected. It's very easy to listen to her and think well of her. Besides, why not?
Confusion—Wh-What is going on?! A further mental bewitchment, this spell-like ability has a passing duration, but can be a doozy while it lasts, especially for the difficulty to resist. It wraps the thoughts of subjects caught in the effect in acute insanity causing almost completely random behaviour as their minds reel in abject turmoil unable to properly interpret reality. It has considerable trouble latching onto drow, but such a magic should sink its hooks in, the result are bound to almost inevitably incite violent mayhem of one sort or another.
Dimension Door—Over there is better. Somewhat limited compared to many other translocation magics, this spell-like ability none the less offers meticulously precise short-range teleportation, that even works blind, able to reach an arrival point relative to the known departure point in a way that some of those other translocation magics can't... though they also don't have risks in such maneuvers that involve terms like "telefrag" and "shunted into the Astral Plane" (that is to say, it can make a blind jump, but it will make that jump whether or not it's a good thing; safe teleportation is line of sight teleportation). The actual spell version of this magic more typically creates a doorway wormhole sort of thing, but in Liriel's experience, she can just very deliberately step where her stride should not be able to take her and yet does anyway. She can also take things with her for the trip, though if there's a way to overcome the disorientation that comes with it, she hasn't worked it out yet.
Summon Nature's Ally V—Call for aid, and maybe a bunch of horses do answer. This spell-like ability is one that Liriel is still exploring, because she's pretty sure that this sort of magic is the kind to always have more to understand. The possibilities are almost open-ended, and therefor potentially quite powerful or highly useful for a given situation, but whatever the specifics it involves summoning something that just fits in the natural order of the world. Or possibly several somethings. In practice, Liriel is fond of calling up elementals, though she's careful to employ this magic judiciously.
Other fey qualities as a result of engineering something akin to an ancestral throwback include a knack for mind magics in general and a superior ability to throw them off even by elven standards, and a fair ability to just shrug off that which does not have the bite of cold iron. Crunchy form: +3 bonus to Will saves versus enchantment, +1 to Caster Level and Save DCs for her own enchantment magic, Damage Reduction 5/cold iron. Lolth finds it amusingly ironic that for all that Liriel tries to set herself apart from Lolth's other servitors, Liriel and demons alike both share that vulnerability to cold iron.
Additionally, though the emphasising of fey heritage was considered an exceedingly excellent mere slight touch needed for considerable results at a bargain expense, Liriel personally had a thought to perhaps take it a step further, even with diminishing returns and additional bartered costs. Drow are themselves highly magical, more so than other elves; it is likely, she has surmised, as a result of environment, as denizens of Faerie so emphatically suffused with magic were and are indeed considerably more, well, magical than their counterparts who have long naturalised to the Material Plane in which Faerûn resides, even as local elvenkind steadily diminishes in the long term as this world's magic is progressively weakened more and more. Her theory fits solidly within what she knows of the nature of magic, such as why Thay has so many wizards in it because a big floating rock under Thaymount drenches the whole region in heightened magic; the faerzress in the Underdark has a lot of mystical effects, and the drow are practically swimming in it. To that end, Liriel bargained with twin similar viable plans for significantly diminishing the personal power of Ghaunadaur and—if desirable as a bargaining chip with other parties—the demon lord Demogorgon—for a boon from Lolth to so much poke her trying to make something happen along the lines of Innate Magic feat, but directed and guided towards a specific intention. The result:
Prestidigitation—Magic tricks! This somewhat quirksome spell-like ability is a magic easily learned but difficult to master because, at least to a minor degree, it can in theory do practically anything. Though a little nothing of a cantrip, it is one she is amused to think of as "Least Wish" after the far greater magics for that unstructured versatility. Fundamentally, it's less like a spell as training wheels, in a sense, enhancing an individual's ability to more easily grasp and direct magical energies for a time to do... whatever they try to make them do. That's why it was thought to be easily done and why Liriel wanted to acquire such a power; it's excellent practice, aside from admittedly also convenient a lot of the time. Liriel is aware of many possibilities, but it's almost too open-ended. Presently, she has managed to figure out how to make things clean, and to temporarily colour things gold. She also once amused Sosdrielle intently focusing on a fork to slowly put a bite in her mouth with no hands after a lot of covert prior trial and error, but she has since stopped that line of practice.
Possibly or possibly actually not unrelated, Liriel's highly fey incarnation coupled with hopeful deliberate effort and maybe Lolth secretly putting her thumb on the scale has also resulted in her achieving an attempt to make realised another point inspired from Pathfinder Traits, where there is listing in Nature Magic of the possibility for a person "to use simple spells by drawing on nature's raw majesty", corelating with more informed supposition about the nature of druidic magic, how Eilistraee learned the moon magic her priestesses now use, and explanation by Ed Greenwood, "Magic is a shorthand for harnessing the natural forces of the world. Tidal, convection, kinetic like avalanches and landslides, the winds, magnetic, the flowing water. All the natural forces of volcanism, all of that stuff. Magic is a way of harnessing some of that energy and getting predictable or semipredictable results out of it." It gives her the impression that maybe she has caught a clue about why a lot of elves sneer at humans not really understanding magic just for studying a bunch of musty old tomes, even if they are great and mighty mages for it. It also has enabled a small but no less real measure of magical ability to do with that:
Know Direction—Exactly what it says on the tin, again. Quite simply, Liriel doesn't lose track of which direction is which. This spell-like ability is constant, and by her reckoning is less a magic that she does, per se, and more a matter of perspective, having a sense of the world around her. Certainly, it's quite possible for Liriel to get confused as to where things are relative to one another on a small scale, with the twisting labyrinth of the Underdark making it easy to forget a path in abstract, the same as a person might mix up any other jumble and forget things, but the world around her is in its orientation and she knows her own orientation relative to it. North is north, and so on.
Naturewatch—What is there to see? This spell-like ability... may or may not actually be a spell-like ability. Liriel isn't sure. She's leaning towards thinking that maybe it's something perhaps so fundamentally ordinary as to actually be special, because she has found that, sometimes, if she just... just looks, really looks and pays attention and tries to understand what she's looking at... she does? Is that magical? She suspects that anyone could do it if they really tried, but then she also knows that the stone beneath her feet could tattle on her if she sticks around long enough for the slow attention and that trees talk to one another, but most people can't understand without a spell even as some don't need it. Whatever the case, it's good for checking up on her little spider buddies to see how they're doing.
Notably, though, as these latter magics are not a part of her, to thus subject to the compounding benefits of the Magic in the Blood quality that has practically turned what runs in her veins into the mystic equivalent of pure oxygen, nor provided by Lolth and subject to Liriel's pact with the goddess, this latter nature magic kind of lags behind by comparison.
Constant:
Know Direction
3/day:
Prestidigitation, Disguise Self, Deep Slumber, Charm Monster, Confusion, Dimension Door, Summon Nature's Ally V
1/day:
Naturewatch
Keen to amass as great and as many advantages as possible, and with a perhaps too enthusiastic of a goddess collaborating Liriel also bargained, argued for, and simply had pressed upon her a number of more minor boons and blessings. Many of these were drawn from references that stood out to Liriel as more likely for Lolth to grant than others, or especially useful relative to the cost for Lolth and herself. Some benefits were also less granted by Lolth as simply possible because of her if but Liriel pursued them, if anyone did for awareness of those possibilities.
Significant amongst the relatively not so significant benefits Liriel acquired is the gift of foresight. She is of a like mind to her father in that knowledge is the most potent power of all, and from reading two different entries in the time before her elven incarnation, she thought it entirely possible to hold it twice over in complementary fashion, in a way that might well save her life even without input on her part.
Predict Outcome
Sometimes you can learn the outcome of a situation before it happens.
Prerequisite: Cha 13+, Wis 13+
Benefit: Once per day, you can cast augury as a sorcerer of a level equal to your character level. This is a spell-like ability.
Seer
You receive flashes of insight from your god.
Prerequisite: Charisma 13, Divine Fervor, patron deity
Benefit: You gain a +1 luck bonus on Listen, Search, Sense Motive, and Spot checks.
In addition, you can call upon your god once per day for limited information about the future in general, though this usage of the feat temporarily depletes your capacity for divine insight. The effect is similar to that of an augury spell, except that there is no material component and you can see only about 10 minutes into the future. This usage of the feat is a spell-like ability requiring a full-round action. Once you have used the feat in this way, the luck bonus it normally provides is negated for the rest of the day.
Sometimes you can learn the outcome of a situation before it happens.
Prerequisite: Cha 13+, Wis 13+
Benefit: Once per day, you can cast augury as a sorcerer of a level equal to your character level. This is a spell-like ability.
Seer
You receive flashes of insight from your god.
Prerequisite: Charisma 13, Divine Fervor, patron deity
Benefit: You gain a +1 luck bonus on Listen, Search, Sense Motive, and Spot checks.
In addition, you can call upon your god once per day for limited information about the future in general, though this usage of the feat temporarily depletes your capacity for divine insight. The effect is similar to that of an augury spell, except that there is no material component and you can see only about 10 minutes into the future. This usage of the feat is a spell-like ability requiring a full-round action. Once you have used the feat in this way, the luck bonus it normally provides is negated for the rest of the day.
Augury—Is that a disturbance in the Force? This spell-like ability is a queer thing to Liriel. It is probably complicated by the fact that she can in a way sort of do the same thing two different ways, except doubling up on the foresight has probably resulted in something indeed both together and neither one alone, even as part of it is from her and part of it is from Lolth... except the difference between her and Lolth is also complicated. Or maybe reading the future is just weird and often unhelpfully vague? Whatever the case, Liriel has learned to... just sort of think, except differently than normal, and... it works? She needs to grow into a much more learned wizard before she can explain very well a lot of what comes almost instinctually (or not even almost, sometimes), but it does work, and she can get an at once vague but concrete insight into aspects of the future: is something specific she thinks about going to be good or bad? Something exactly specific, though, which itself might be good or bad depending on how careful she is and what knowledge she already has to work with. Of course, even without trying to figure anything out, she can still sort of look without looking. ...the whole thing's complicated.
Indeed, Liriel is all sorts of complicated, and more than a little of that is her own fault.
Divine Fervor—Become greater. This is a supernatural ability, not a spell-like ability, though the difference is somewhat academic (save for all those brave knights who mistakenly believe that enchanted armour that resists spells will save them from dragon fire). It also isn't something Liriel entered into any sort of pact with Lolth for or the like, and nothing that she is aware that Lolth has dropped onto her of her own accord either, just something that Liriel can do, draw upon divine power to make herself a little stronger, or a little faster, a little more more. It lasts for about a minute and a half by her less than precise reckoning, and has slightly worried her for a lot longer.
Liriel... might have succeeded too much in her attempts?
A further item Liriel and Lolth agreed upon, one in which Liriel thinks the got the better of Lolth and isn't sure if Lolth doesn't think she pulled something on Liriel herself, was inspired by something for Krynnspace where Lolth's has little influence, but could manage this perfectly well when it is so on theme for her: Divinely Favored, "A god chose you to carry a spark of their power." The blessing gave Liriel additional aptitude for peering at the future, able to wield her Augury spell-like ability all the more, but also an additional magic.
Protection From Evil—Deny the wicked. This was a gamble on Liriel's part, but a calculated one. In the timeline that would have occurred for the other Liriel, the many children sired by Bhaal, Lord of Murder, had very real power thanks to their divine parentage, half god, half mortal, but just how exactly that power expressed was very pointedly shown to be highly dependent upon who they were despite it's blackest origins that tempted but could not truly force them to evil. Liriel, who already held great power as a Chosen, pondered the possibility of a comparatively far lesser investiture, but one more hers rather than something she, in a way, sort of just held onto as a vessel for it. It is a small spark, a spark, no great flame, but it is one that, indeed, she has made her own. This spell-like ability now a part of her is a ward and imposition against the evil, helping protect her from those who work it and the works themselves of such a nature, and it rejects outright the touch of those truly defined by evil in their essence. It also inhibits the effects of mental influence, despite not actually affecting the cause.
More concerning for Liriel, however, there are a couple element for which she holds uncertainty, one thought neatly mutually beneficial and one that by her judgement corelates to something from Pathfinder that she had reviewed in her early brainstorming with Lolth, but dismissed as undesirable and irreconcilable:
God Touched
Your deity has recognized your devotion and gifted you with a small spark of divine power.
Prerequisite: Patron deity
Benefit: Once per day, while performing an act related to one of your deity's portfolios, you can call upon your deity as a free action and gain a +1 luck bonus on any one die roll. For example, a character devoted to Moradin (whose portfolios are dwarves, creation, smithing, engineering, and war) could gain a +1 luck bonus on any attack or damage roll, a Craft check, a Profession (engineer) check, or a Knowledge check relating to dwarves or dwarf history.
The benefit of this feat cannot be used at the same time as the benefits from the Divine Fervor, Divine Fury, or Divine Fortification feats.
Minor Miracle
You can call upon your deity for a minor miracle.
Prerequisites: Wis 12, Knowledge (religion) 5 ranks, alignment must match that of your worshiped deity.
Benefit: Choose two domains associated with your deity (if you have access to one or more domains already, the chosen domains can be the same ones you already have access to, or different ones). Once per day, by presenting a holy symbol of your deity and calling out in supplication, you can cast the 1st-level spell associated with either of the two chosen domains as a spell-like ability. You choose which domain's spell you cast at the time you use the ability. Your caster level for this effect is equal to your total Hit Dice, and the saving throw DC, if any, is Charisma-based.
Your deity has recognized your devotion and gifted you with a small spark of divine power.
Prerequisite: Patron deity
Benefit: Once per day, while performing an act related to one of your deity's portfolios, you can call upon your deity as a free action and gain a +1 luck bonus on any one die roll. For example, a character devoted to Moradin (whose portfolios are dwarves, creation, smithing, engineering, and war) could gain a +1 luck bonus on any attack or damage roll, a Craft check, a Profession (engineer) check, or a Knowledge check relating to dwarves or dwarf history.
The benefit of this feat cannot be used at the same time as the benefits from the Divine Fervor, Divine Fury, or Divine Fortification feats.
Minor Miracle
You can call upon your deity for a minor miracle.
Prerequisites: Wis 12, Knowledge (religion) 5 ranks, alignment must match that of your worshiped deity.
Benefit: Choose two domains associated with your deity (if you have access to one or more domains already, the chosen domains can be the same ones you already have access to, or different ones). Once per day, by presenting a holy symbol of your deity and calling out in supplication, you can cast the 1st-level spell associated with either of the two chosen domains as a spell-like ability. You choose which domain's spell you cast at the time you use the ability. Your caster level for this effect is equal to your total Hit Dice, and the saving throw DC, if any, is Charisma-based.
The former is a shoe-in for taking up, essentially business as usual for a god and just more so; when also to Lolth's benefit as much as Liriel's, it was an easy, token price to pay to get Lolth to provide it, glad to see it used. Was Lolth perhaps more forthcoming than she should have been, though? And to her knowledge, Lolth plain never provided the latter, period, and it shouldn't work... probably—but she also can't rule that out when she distrusts Lolth and much of what a given person can manage that has to do with a god is indeed because a god is involved making it work—and in the end, she, who has in fact never needed a holy symbol to channel her clerical prayers in the first place, can enact two different magics for which she has no other explanation, and which fit domains of godly purview associated with Lolth:
Protection from Law—Liberty unchained. Similar and yet so very different to Protection from Evil, this spell-like ability is a power that comes unnervingly easily to her if she lets it get to her. Perhaps she is just projecting or something due to her feelings about working under Lolth, and maybe she has gotten unreasonably impassioned by her own philosophical musings a time or two, but if she embraces the feeling she sometimes gets, lets it fill her when she just can't stand the very idea of oppression and subjugation anymore, it spills out of her as something made manifest.
Cloak of Dark Power—Metaphorically literal. The other spell-like ability that has Liriel unsettled, this power is in many ways all a drow could want if they actually had any limits, despite it actually being a quite modest magic. Liriel has but to want, and the power within her responds with a wreathing shroud of twisting unlight as if she simply isn't as illuminated as everything around her, which is actually much the case, as even the direct noonday sun or even magical light a fair degree more potent than the cloak cannot pierce it, less a shadow or a black darkness as not shone upon where light cannot touch. Though she has never had need of it—actually an intellectual curiosity when the Demonweb Pits are not the Underdark—she is aware that it should also shield faerzress-wrought magical items from the sun as well, and empower her clerical authority over undead, whilst also putting spiders at a disadvantage even if they do somehow try to act against her. It would just be nice if she understood why she can do this, because it's actually a small comfort to her that she cannot wield both spell-like abilities together when her attention can't help but be drawn to the fact that deities are supposed to be able to naturally wield all the magic expressed by their domains.
More on the topic of divine magic easily cast, Liriel and Lolth have come up with several ideas that Liriel likes to think of as a business plan. One of which was inspired by the Minor Divine Spellcaster feat, which is a pittance for Lolth to provide, barely the slightest expansion from what she does normally already, and blesses an individual to wield power much the way a novice entering a clerical order might possess before learning to handle "real" spells... but the capacity to enact a partial handful of 0th level spells is also only something that Lolth has to bestow once, and then usually has people praying to her a whole lot more and a whole lot harder for upkeep, because it's just proactive marketing, really. Liriel is a beneficiary of this pushed to its limit; whether or not that's saying much is debatable, but it does allow her to cast seven different orisons, collectively up to six (which is actually twelve) times daily, and it's in addition to her normal spellcasting, though it is indeed standard spellcasting, not a big batch of spell-like abilities. Liriel's chosen minor prayers are thusly:
Cure Minor Wounds—This channels a bit of positive energy to heal. It's almost nothing, but still indeed something. A little can also add up.
Petition—This beseeches Lolth to nudge things a little for her. How much is a result of the magic itself and how much is Lolth's favour may be difficult to discern.
Disinfect—Though not actual healing, exactly, this spell is adjacent, and allows injuries to heal as if ideally taken care of mundanely. It's also just generally good for sterilising things.
Remove Pain—Severely underrated, this is also sort of adjacent to more thorough magical healing, but it also really helps.
Preserve—It keeps stuff fresh, also underrated, especially for someone looking to become a wizard always needing all sorts of spell components. Also especially for, y'know, anyone who eats food.
Consecrate—Not to be confused with a more potent prayer, this generally blesses stuff, and is actually great for enhancing spell components.
Incense—Another thing Liriel expects to need a lot, this can take any slightest remnant of whatever smelly stuff and make it anew.
Petition—This beseeches Lolth to nudge things a little for her. How much is a result of the magic itself and how much is Lolth's favour may be difficult to discern.
Disinfect—Though not actual healing, exactly, this spell is adjacent, and allows injuries to heal as if ideally taken care of mundanely. It's also just generally good for sterilising things.
Remove Pain—Severely underrated, this is also sort of adjacent to more thorough magical healing, but it also really helps.
Preserve—It keeps stuff fresh, also underrated, especially for someone looking to become a wizard always needing all sorts of spell components. Also especially for, y'know, anyone who eats food.
Consecrate—Not to be confused with a more potent prayer, this generally blesses stuff, and is actually great for enhancing spell components.
Incense—Another thing Liriel expects to need a lot, this can take any slightest remnant of whatever smelly stuff and make it anew.
Somewhat similar, Lolth also provided Liriel with another blessing sought by a Pathfinder reference deemed realistic, actually twice over:
Magical Talent
Either from inborn talent, the whimsy of the gods, or obsessive study of strange tomes, you have mastered the use of a cantrip. Choose a 0-level spell. You may cast that spell once per day as a spell-like ability. This spell-like ability is cast at your highest caster level gained; if you have no caster level, it functions at CL 1st. The spell-like ability's save DC is Charisma-based.
Either from inborn talent, the whimsy of the gods, or obsessive study of strange tomes, you have mastered the use of a cantrip. Choose a 0-level spell. You may cast that spell once per day as a spell-like ability. This spell-like ability is cast at your highest caster level gained; if you have no caster level, it functions at CL 1st. The spell-like ability's save DC is Charisma-based.
Firefinger—This spell-like ability is very similar to the indeed similarly named Flamefinger. It also, though, was something that Liriel could actually consciously choose, and... Lolth may have been more accommodating than perhaps expectable in order to get the girl desperate for fire magic to at least hopefully be a little less inclined to commit suicide because "it'd totally be okay!" and a Ring of the Phoenix would let her come right back able to shoot fireballs and control fire. Instead (or in the meantime), Liriel can use this magic to spout off small but surprisingly intense jets of fire. It has been tricky for her to differentiate similar magics, and she's not convinced that there actually is a difference, but she has figured out how to pretend very hard to be a fire-breathing dragon, and very promising and exciting are her experiments to see how she can better manipulate this magic inspired by what she knows is possible with Darkness, to sort of combine multiple uses together for not so small, surprisingly intense jets of fire.
Summon Spider—Initially unbeknownst to Liriel, Lolth simply bestowed Liriel with this spell-like ability without prompting and of her own accord, "whimsy of the gods" indeed. As a minor little cantrip, it's an unimpressive working, and simply snatches up some ordinary little spider from somewhere in the broad multiverse to bring to Liriel. Still, there's actually some variability in where it can be summoned, anywhere in her immediate proximity, not necessarily in her hand per her usual practice, and combined with some of the other things Liriel can do with spiders, there's understated potential with creativity. It also is simply appropriate by Lolth's reckoning, and unbeknownst to Liriel, she fairly often does similar things from time to time as that aptly described whimsy finds her.
Lolth's capriciousness is considerable, however. Liriel's thoughts prior to her birth on how she might gird herself for the future were many and varied, and had Lolth reading over her shoulder, sometimes literally. In Liriel's memories, Lolth's attention caught on a delightful section dubbed "Dark Gifts", for gaming intended for the Demiplane of Dread, but thematically all too appropriate for the Abyss as well. She also was rather fond of a character Liriel spoke of in one of the book series she used to read (Nicodemus Archleone, of The Dresden Files, just Lolth's sort of guy), and confronted Liriel with a choice, to pick what Dark Gift Lolth would "grant" her. Liriel reluctantly selected the one she thought least bad, as Lolth knew she would:
Living Shadow—Liriel's shadow is a thing its own. Often it follows Liriel and emulates her as a normal shadow ought, but... often it doesn't, as well. Liriel's shadow sometimes takes it upon itself to move independently, and almost seems to take a sly amusement in instead acting as a shadow shouldn't be able to, growing despite illumination not changing, casing itself in the opposite direction, or such. More significantly, Liriel's shadow can also do things that are less contrary and more supernatural, interacting with the physical world as if that which casts the shadow rather than the shadow itself, and even occasionally lifting straight from its surface; this also means that indeed it can do things with people, and Liriel's shadow has been known to react violently towards others enough for it to matter, strangling people of its own accord with more than insubstantial hands or tripping them. Liriel is unsettled however by the prospect that just maybe her shadow doesn't have a mind of its own with a will to be an inaccurate reflection of her, but might simply be... freer, maybe. Perhaps more disturbing for other people, though, is when Liriel and her shadow actually cooperate, because Liriel can control her supernatural shadow as well, and exploit its unnatural abilities and link with her to act through it to deliver touch-based magic or to reach from afar. Related, this also allows Liriel a capacity to make a completely detached shadow hand, though Liriel does not know if there may be any interaction between this Dark Gift and the influence of the Plane of Shadow presiding over her birth.
Mage Hand—Telekinesis-lite. This spell-like ability is derived from the power of her living shadow. The same magic that enables her shadow to be much more than any shadow should be also allows her to deliberately cast a shadow of her hand where none should form, and to use it to reach out and manipulate things with the disembodied floating shadow hand as if it were her own, albeit without her strength... though still indeed more than a mere shadow and one without an attached arm should manage.
At Will:
Mage Hand
6/day:
Augury
3/day:
Firefinger, Summon Spider, Cloak of Dark Power*, Protection from Law*, Protection from Evil
*mutually exclusive
Lolth has invested Liriel with great power, but Liriel has also initiative of her own to acquire greater means, or in some cases at least to make realised greater means that could be argued to be provided already. One of which was to essentially do what she was already doing, but more, and so benefit much as she already was, but more. Lolth enabled Liriel to be a sorceress, and with the intended role for Liriel as a weapon against her enemies. Liriel, thus, thought it quite appropriate to indeed take up that mantle and be a Sorcerer much like a Cleric in a way known to her, a way she already knew Lolth would allow despite their differences.
Divine Sorcery
A deity, probably the patron of your race, grants you power usually reserved for his divine followers.
Prerequisite: Sorcerer level 1st, alignment within one step of patron deity.
Benefit: You gain access to a cleric domain, giving you the domain's granted power. Each day, you can add one spell from the domain's spell list to your sorcerer spell list. You cast the spells made accessible by this feat as arcane spells.
You do not have to choose a domain you already possess from levels of cleric (if any). If you don't have levels in cleric but later gain them, you do not need to choose the domain gained from this feat as one of your two cleric domains.
A deity, probably the patron of your race, grants you power usually reserved for his divine followers.
Prerequisite: Sorcerer level 1st, alignment within one step of patron deity.
Benefit: You gain access to a cleric domain, giving you the domain's granted power. Each day, you can add one spell from the domain's spell list to your sorcerer spell list. You cast the spells made accessible by this feat as arcane spells.
You do not have to choose a domain you already possess from levels of cleric (if any). If you don't have levels in cleric but later gain them, you do not need to choose the domain gained from this feat as one of your two cleric domains.
For this, Liriel wields the power of Destruction. Liriel's sorcerous talents are limited in scope—indeed, that's one of the main differences between a sorcerer and a wizard, even when they aren't just beginning to learn the art of magic—but Lolth's fury is within that expanded scope; in so actively trying to be a sorceress like a priestess, it... just sort of clicks in her head, and makes sense how to do it. Do what a priestess would do if a priestess was a sorceress. Part of that is also the act of bringing to bear divine power aligned to Destruction:
Smite—SMITE! Liriel can smite. This supernatural power cannot be used so frequently as many of her spell-like abilities, but also probably doesn't need to. For all that she is a tiny little girl of five, she can wield the power of Destruction to strike with an intense and brutal metaphysical weight behind it utterly beyond her physical form. It's called smiting for a reason. Many of Lolth's priestesses can do it to, and she could have herself as a priestess if other aspects of Lolth had not resonated with her more first, but few people expect it from so small a figure, and fewer expect it twice.
As a priestess of Lolth, however, to her, what it meant for Lolth to be Lolth was Pride and Trickery, and Liriel's philosophical approach toward her relationship with her goddess reflects that in consequential ways. Her connection with Lolth through the lens of Pride grants her a corresponding domain power that in crunch terms would mean that Natural 1s on saves are retried, and in actual effect... sort of means that she just doesn't ever have a bad day. On a good day, could a foe take her? Maybe, maybe not. A foe on a bad day would do worse, and it'd be bad for them if she was on a good day... but they're just not going to get her doing her worst, because it doesn't happen. She's above it, won't allow it of herself, and has divine energy coursing through her to force herself to live up to her own higher standards. It's a subtle thing in the narrow focus, but hard to miss in the big picture.
Trickery, though? Even more than Pride, Liriel really gets Trickery, and in her eyes, it's essentially one and the same as simply being smart, being normal. Liriel is of the opinion that everyone is always trying to influence and manipulate everyone, and that though the drow sometimes make it easy to think otherwise, it isn't some bad thing, just communication. Want to get an idea across? That's influencing them, doing something with the deliberate intention of making them thing something; the act of talking is to follow the principles of Trickery, for good or ill, and most people just do it without giving it much of a thought. Liriel embraces it. Consequently, she has Trickery's domain power, which gives her an outright more than normal sense of how to shape thoughts and perspectives and fit within them—Bluff, Disguise, and Hide are considered class skills by crunch terms, a fact of life the way they might be for a Bard or a Rogue. Liriel's perspective on Trickery—perhaps also enabled by foreknowledge or expectation that might also be faith—also allows her to do more though:
Simulacrum—Are you sure you see what you think you see, because you might actually be less and more right than you think! The expression of the Trickery Devotion feat, this supernatural ability uses divine power to bring into existence something between an image and a force in Liriel's likeness which in truth is no more and no less than an extension of her. Right now, she can only use it up to five minutes and it's closer to an illusion than "real enough", but as her power as a priestess grows, the difference between her and her simulacrum becomes less and less relevant.
Divine Intercession—Actually, you missed. A more forceful expression of Trickery, this supernatural ability uses quite a bit of divine power to allow Liriel to play Schrodinger, blurring the difference between her being in one place and another nearby to allow Liriel to flit through that ambiguity in a form of short-ranged teleportation. If Trickery Devotion lets her be glad that no one who gets the reference can here her think Kage Bunshin whenever she does it, she thinks Divine Intercession as her budget Izanagi. She is curious just how "budget" it may be though when she's philosophical about Trickery and the Buddhist view that what one makes of reality being real enough and untrue enough to also matter. Liriel has mused before that if she had somehow incarnated in Kara-Tur instead of Faerûn (or technically the Abyss), maybe she might be a xianxia protagonist following the Dao of Trickery... and if maybe she is anyway.
Liriel has also been pretty busy since she was born, too. Further, she has spent the last five years with honestly a pretty serious idea of what to do or what could be done, after having done a whole lot of planning about it. She has been paying attention, often with little else to do in the first place, and the combination of both being a nigh helpless infant and really, really wanting to pursue magic as much as she absolutely possibly can... that has had an impact. There are some 5e feats that she thought intriguing, a variety of them that follow a general trend of being designed to flavour a character as someone of a particular class or inclination but also managing to dip their toes in other areas and pull it off without it being any great imposition or needing to actually commit to some alternative path. And amidst that, Liriel had Ulviiravin and Lolth as the main people she interacted with outside of her mother.
Stick a nanny right in front of a bored, terribly restless, and desperately yearning Liriel, and make that nanny a Bard who can literally sing magic into existence?!
In Liriel's head:
Magic Initiate
Choose a class: bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, warlock, or wizard. You learn two cantrips of your choice from that class's spell list.
In addition, choose one 1st-level spell to learn from that same list. Using this feat, you can cast the spell once at its lowest level, and you must finish a long rest before you can cast it in this way again.
Your spellcasting ability for these spells depends on the class you chose: Charisma for bard, sorcerer, or warlock; Wisdom for cleric or druid; or Intelligence for wizard.
Choose a class: bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, warlock, or wizard. You learn two cantrips of your choice from that class's spell list.
In addition, choose one 1st-level spell to learn from that same list. Using this feat, you can cast the spell once at its lowest level, and you must finish a long rest before you can cast it in this way again.
Your spellcasting ability for these spells depends on the class you chose: Charisma for bard, sorcerer, or warlock; Wisdom for cleric or druid; or Intelligence for wizard.
Magic, magic, magic! Get! Ulviiravin was living the example right in front of her! The magic of music, something so intimately tied with emotion and idea as to almost be one and the same as magic, and maybe is magic in and of itself in this world! How could Liriel possibly not try to grasp that? When she had an informed reference point in the first place, she succeeded. She isn't a Bard, but, well, her nanny did indeed manage to raise her, more than Ulviiravin and Lolth actually would have preferred, and so Liriel has a limited but genuine grasp of how to work magic in such a fashion:
Lullaby—"Hush, little fire-baby, don't burn it up..." Elves are not subject to sleep magic, but a soothing ensorcellment of calm and drowsiness is not the same thing (though it's still trickier with elves to pull off mind magic generally). Liriel has a lot of experience with this sort of magic, enough to pick up on the melody herself. It's an actual spell, rather than a spell-like ability, but Liriel isn't sure if there's truly much of a difference fundamentally.
Message—Oi! This spell is another that Liriel has seen done in front of her a great deal, and before Ulviiravin caught on that, indeed, Liriel actually was learning what she was doing, the demon nanny actually delighted in carefully demonstrating to show off for the easily amused and terribly pleased child. Give Liriel a bit of copper wire, and she knows how to shift her words to carry what she says to where someone listens.
Focusing Chant—Clear your mind... It's a meditative chant, one of Ulviiravin's very commonly used spells, especially since she often uses it to help Liriel in her studies with her. Liriel doesn't know how to do whatever Ulviiravin does to impart the guiding focus to another, but she is very familiar with the spell, and can perform the meditative chant herself. Ulviiravin is of conflicted opinions when it is deemed a distraction from Liriel's studies as a priestess that she uses for such; Lolth is herself displeased with Liriel being sidetracked but deeply amused by her handmaiden's plight and Liriel's capacity for causing trouble.
Ulviiravin is not the only demon Liriel has made a concerted effort to learn from, though. Lolth is a goddess. She was not always such, however. More specifically, Lolth is herself a demon who has managed to attain divinity, and more specifically still, to regain divinity, as she was long ago stripped of her godhood by Corellon Larethian—king of the gods of the elven pantheon, who had elevated her in the first place—and banished to the Abyss, but since manage to work her way back to becoming a goddess in her own right. The fact that she is a demon and just one who is also a goddess, though, is important in Liriel's thinking. Liriel had given thought to warlocks and how they develop their powers, and, indeed, Lolth is a demon.
In Liriel's early considerations for paths to power and avenues for accomplishing things, several points stood out prominently: many options that in game terms were encompassed as Classes seemed to fall into two distinct categories, as what a person simply was, and what a person did. She could not somehow make herself into a Sorcerer, but had to be born that way or otherwise somehow or another just happen to end up that way due to whatever causes outside her control, but she could dutifully undertake martial training as per a Fighter, or study like a Wizard, or such. She also reckoned, however, that sword-swingers standing shoulder to shoulder with those who worked magic really was only a game mechanic; a cut throat was a cut throat, regardless of "HP", and there was a reason why the real movers and shakers of the world able to get things done as individual, personal powerhouses were almost exclusively magically powerful. Thus Liriel's choice to take the path of a priestess to get Lolth to give her mystical might and of a wizard to learn to work such forces more directly, aside from convincing Lolth to so make her a sorceress. But there are considerable parallels between a Cleric and a Warlock, and Liriel was already tied to Lolth anyway, so... Eldritch Adept.
Liriel has not diversified her attentions to focus heavily on how to work magic as warlocks do, but Warlock is a very tempting forth choice down her list that just misses out because other options are all the more attractive. She has not ignored it entirely, though, because she indeed recognises that it's something that she can do that can—and does—bring results at a high return for her investment. She is a priestess of a goddess who is also a demon, and the great and mighty rulers of the Abyss are amongst the most common backers of warlocks; for her, it's an obvious option, and something she brought up with Lolth as part of her "business plan" ideas—Lolth is something of an exception amongst the great powers of the Abyss in not making an outreach toward mortals to serve her as warlocks because priestesses are analogous, but she could, and indeed just recently has expanded that outreach, under the raised consideration that, as it happens, many mortals (particularly non-drow and on the surface, where Lolth seeks to expand) may in fact be more open to that kind of relationship than worshipping her as their goddess, and yet the two are closely analogous regardless of the particular flavour of mortals' opinions.
Bestow Curse—Liriel has learned from Lolth a limited ability to work certain dark energies so easily accessible to her as Lolth's Chosen. Though she could expand upon this field and experimented a little bit previously, figuring out some more potent invocations as she grew, she had to focus on one at a time exclusively when the power escaped her novice skills when she tried to make it do multiple things, so she settled fairly quickly on a particular invocation, learning to weave curses. Limited though her warlock skills may be, she has gotten good at curses. Turning that ready malevolence into curses is something that comes easily to her as silk spinning, and given Lolth's nature, Liriel figures that the two might well be in fact interrelated. Her one warlock invocation is a spell-like ability that she can lay with a touch—or her shadow's—and she has made use of this skill to such an extent that it almost becomes rote and thoughtless, leading to her leaving about cursing energy almost as much as her hair and cobwebs get everywhere, making Ulviiravin often chide her as "such an untidy child".
In terms of things closer to her actual classing, Liriel has also picked up what could be described by the feat Divine Spell Power as something she learned for herself. In effect, though, it's actually quite straightforward, with her simply doing what she already knew perfectly possible and just using divine power to make her spells stronger; in crunchy terms, it raises the caster level of the so boosted spells. The most basic, classic use of divine power as employed by clerics against undead is something she hasn't ever used in actual practice, but she knows the theory well enough and figures that she has ample power to spare to make it work should the need arise. She instead is currently trying to figure out all that "metamagic" goodness and pursue ideas about wielding divine spells as arcane and vice versa as per the practice amongst priests in Mulhorand, attempting to use her sorcery as a basis, but she hasn't made much progress there when she has been quite busy with all sorts of other things as well, particularly her innate magic and ways it can be wielded differently and combined together.
To that end, Liriel's magic as a Divine Soul Sorcerer is actually somewhat behind in breadth compared to depth (though given the similarity between spell-like abilities and sorcery, one might argue that the progress is simply expressed slightly differently). Thus, her arcane repertoire:
Cantrips
Cure Minor Wounds—This channels a bit of positive energy to heal. Yes, Liriel made a point to work out how to do with her sorcerous talent what she could already do quite well with clerical ability. Yes, Liriel is paranoid.
Light—This is the generic spell of bringing forth illumination. It's one of the most basic tricks there are, but that also made it something Liriel could work out for herself easily, even if she's not a fan of it.
No Light—Not darkness, but a lack of light, because the two really are quite different things. This can still counter equivalent minor light magic, and Liriel learned this spell and Light together as opposites.
Scorch—It's her magical microwave spell. It literally does to the target what a microwave oven does, sans all the electromagnetism considerations, and can actually be surprisingly destructive without any true fire involved.
1st Level
Magic Missile—This is the classic basic magical attack, stabbing bolts of energy that don't miss and actually aren't all that minor for anyone vulnerable to magic on the receiving end if they don't think getting shanked is minor. Liriel can shoot two at once.
Benign Transposition—This minor teleportation allows Liriel to switch places with a willing nearby ally, but a spider under her thrall counts as willing. She's glad no one knows that she is cringe for getting inspiration from Naruto.
Cure Light Wounds—This channels a modest but appreciable degree of positive energy. Liriel is pretty sure she's going to need a lot of magical healing at her fingertips in the days ahead, and the past already suggests she's right.
Cure Minor Wounds—This channels a bit of positive energy to heal. Yes, Liriel made a point to work out how to do with her sorcerous talent what she could already do quite well with clerical ability. Yes, Liriel is paranoid.
Light—This is the generic spell of bringing forth illumination. It's one of the most basic tricks there are, but that also made it something Liriel could work out for herself easily, even if she's not a fan of it.
No Light—Not darkness, but a lack of light, because the two really are quite different things. This can still counter equivalent minor light magic, and Liriel learned this spell and Light together as opposites.
Scorch—It's her magical microwave spell. It literally does to the target what a microwave oven does, sans all the electromagnetism considerations, and can actually be surprisingly destructive without any true fire involved.
1st Level
Magic Missile—This is the classic basic magical attack, stabbing bolts of energy that don't miss and actually aren't all that minor for anyone vulnerable to magic on the receiving end if they don't think getting shanked is minor. Liriel can shoot two at once.
Benign Transposition—This minor teleportation allows Liriel to switch places with a willing nearby ally, but a spider under her thrall counts as willing. She's glad no one knows that she is cringe for getting inspiration from Naruto.
Cure Light Wounds—This channels a modest but appreciable degree of positive energy. Liriel is pretty sure she's going to need a lot of magical healing at her fingertips in the days ahead, and the past already suggests she's right.
Of these, her most recent personal endurance test puts her at being able to churn out nine cantrips in a row, and seven 1st Level spells in a row purely with sorcery, a testament to both her enormous force of will and experimentation upon her in the womb that significantly strengthens her sorcerous abilities, as well as a boon bought with insight into Mystra and where her tolerance and intolerance lay. The experimentation was pioneering work that Liriel merely surmised should probably be possible one way or another based on references she didn't consider actually reputable guides in a very direct sense, but the idea behind a link between inborn sorcerous aptitude and influenced natal development made sense, separate from the fact that Liriel knew that her counterpart just really had a gift for wizardry in a way that she herself presumed to and could likewise be so blessed to have such a gift for sorcery, the Spellcasting Prodigy feat twice over in different ways and benefits inspired by what Liriel had read in the Ghostwalk sourcebook. In effect, crunchy terming is that Liriel treats her Charisma as +6 higher than normal where spellcasting is concerned (and Intelligence +2 higher as well where wizardry is concerned, thanks to what she and her counterpart indeed both got from Gromph).
Recap summary:
Liriel Baenre, Lolth-Blooded Fire-Souled Drow Chosen of Lolth
Cleric 5/Sorcerer 3/Wizard 1
Str 8, Dex 18, Con 11, Int 17, Wis 16, Cha 34
Constant:
Know Direction, Speak with Spiders, Immunity to Adherence, Improved Spider Climb, Charm/Control Spiders
At Will:
Mage Hand, Spidereyes, Alter Self, Spider Form, Spider Strand
8/day:
Clairvoyance
6/day:
Augury, Web, Dispel Magic, Suggestion, Detect Lie
3/day:
Detect Magic, Dancing Lights, Faerie Fire, Fire Eyes, Firefinger, Flamefinger, Ghost Sound, Heat Water, Prestidigitation, Summon Spider, Touch of Fatigue, Cause Fear, Charm Person, Cloak of Dark Power OR Protection from Law, Darkness, Disguise Self, Phantom Threat, Protection from Evil, Ray of Flame, Invisibility, Levitate, Know Alignment, Misty Step, Deep Slumber, Haste, Charm Monster, Confusion, Dimension Door, Summon Nature's Ally V
2/day:
Detect Undead
1/day:
Naturewatch
Elf Qualities, Light Sensitivity, Divine Grace, Lolth's Favor, Poison, Web, Fire Subtype: Immunity to Fire and Vulnerability to Cold, Inspiring, DR 5/cold iron, Sacred Conduit, Sacred Touch, Seer, God Touched, Divine Fervor, Living Shadow, Destruction Domain Power, Pride Domain Power, Trickery Domain Power, Trickery Domain: Simulacrum, Trickery Domain: Divine Intercession, Divine Spell Power, Empower Turning, Enhance Turning, Extra Turning, Heighten Turning, Ignore Turn Resistance, Improved Turning, Intensify Turning, Planar Turning, (Greater) Enhanced Sorcery, Spellcasting Prodigy: Sorcerer, Spellcasting Prodigy: Wizard, ...demon ninja maid nanny & watching Lolth
All told, Liriel has accrued a ludicrous degree of benefits and advantages. She was born utterly beyond anything remotely normal and beggars belief as a mere five-year-old. And yet, she considers this to but be hitting the ground running, and has much more in store for the future.
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