So, you are curious about Mr. Krowley, are you? Who he is, where he comes from, what wheels turn with the seasons inside this devilishly handsome head?
If not, 'tis unfortunate, as I intend to tell you regardless. Or at least some of it. After all, I would be the first to admit that only a fool guards no secrets.
Speaking to a wide audience as I am, I shall be as blunt and to the point as I can manage. So let me begin with three assertions-
1) I never knew my father. He left my mother when I was too young to notice. Then he died. It was only later in life during my travels to discover the wretched lout's hiding place that this fact was illuminated to me.
2) I have nothing worth saying that might recommend my mother, save that among all of the things that she was and despite all of the things she was credited to have done, I prefer to tell myself that she was probably not insane- only foolish or desperate. I've yet to invent any good reasons to hold that opinion, but even a mage is entitled to his pet delusions.
3) I have no siblings. Should I discover that I do, however, there shall be fratracide afoot.
Making a very long and rather irrelevant story into something even the simplest minded of orcs can digest, points one and two colluded into the one childhood event that I recall with any measure of vividness: that of my matron, swarmed by a pack of gibbering murlocs, laughing maniacally as they tore the flesh from her bones.
I can only make my second assertion based on the fact, the very vague but entirely definite fact, that she was seeking something near that fatal lakeside on the eve of this event. Her inappropriate laughter, though, is always the first and last detail that I remember about the event.
The rest of it, the shouting of a mixed patrol of undead and orcs, the melee that ensued, the skinning alive of at least a dozen murlocs- those are fuzzier memories to my mind. The event (I have thereafter felt compelled to refer to that day as 'the event'), though culminated with my temporary sequesturing in a small chapel near Brill wherein I was kept in the care of several...nuns, I suppose they could be called, and an up and coming friar who insisted on going by the nom de guerre of "Psylich" .
The nuns, they came and went, and had a strange tendency to disappear. But the friar was often there, his experiments in alchemy cut short only for forrays into the wilderness for herbs and plants. On occasion, he would enlist me as a test subject for some of his experiments. Being the helpful lad, I of course obliged. While some of these concoctions did not seem to work as the friar planned in their entirety, no significant or lasting harm ever befell me. I do believe that hazardous experiments were reserved for whatever or whoever inhabited the heavily barricaded and barred cellar beneath the chapel.
Over the short time that I was there, some months, perhaps, this Psylich and I became only superficially aquainted. He seldom spoke, and never revealed his 'prebirth' name, as he called whoever he was in life, to me. But I did find a certain admiration for the tottering old bag of bones and suspected a strange sort of tolerance of me on his part.
On occassion, another of his most fascinating race would visit. This was a female who called herself 'Sharkfyn'. When she appeared, Psylich would often disappear with her to places unknown for days at a time, usually returning with bags of gold or gnomish body parts or unidentifyable, squirming somethings hidden in burlap sacks that were hauled to the cellar door and tossed unceremoniously into that mysterious room beneath the chapel.
Sharkfyn, she seemed aloof to me. She seemed so to most everyone that I saw. Only once did she take particular interest in me during my stay at the chapel- this would be the time that curiosity got the best of me and I attemped to pick the lock to the chapel basement that I might see what they kept down there.
I was not much of a tinkerer, so my efforts were fumbling and noisey, but I suspected that I was almost finished with my task when two glowing yellow eyes suddenly peered out at me from the shadows of a nearby corner.
"If you try to open that again," I heard her rasp, "I'll open you. Nuff said?"
Naturally, that was the end of that.
A few days later, I was informed that 'my people' had been contacted via envoy, and that I was to be transported to a wizard in Silvermoon City, in order that I might serve an apprenticeship. It seemed that the old lout had recently slain his previous apprentice on suspicion of necromantic practices and of dabbling in demonology. When I first heard this, I thought the punishment overly harsh, but the intervening years have demonstrated to me that this wizard, who I do not name for reasons that shall remain mine and mine alone, quite likely had little choice in the matter. It would have been most awkward and potentially hazardous for him to have one subject to daemonic pacts dwelling in his household, after all. Even worse that such an individual might have access to his ongoing research and artifacts.
So I undertook this apprenticeship. Time passed. All that I was certain of at the end of it all was that I intended to return to the lands surrounding Brill. I never understood exactly why this was, but I had no loyalties or ties to mine own people as a youth. This situation, as I grew, did not correct itself.
When I was able to leave Silvermoon, I went looking for the only...perhaps not 'friendly', but the only amiable being I knew in those lands: Psylich.
I found him long before I arrived at Brill, as events transpired- in fact, I found him just outside of the gates to the Undercity. He was tentatively prodding the corpse of a rather messily dispatched gnome with a large stick, while Sharkfyn, kneeling nearby, daintily sucked the marrow from a chubby little finger.
He stopped poking, and Sharkfyn stopped slurping. He looked at me, and she looked at me. He seemed rather surprised, and she still appeared rather hungry.
"Well," he said without any sort of formal greeting, "look who's slumming."
And that was it. I knew he harbored no particular affections for me, despite being my patron for many months in those strange days of my youth, but I still admit that I had expected more in the way of a greeting than that.
Then Sharkfyn rose from her...lunch...I suppose, and stepped uncomfortably near to me. She poked my chest with a single finger, cackled in that raspish way of the Undead, and turned to Psylich.
"E's grewn up all nice an' pretty, 'e as. Whatcha want ta do wiff' em?"
One of the many facts concerning the undead that shall always disturb me is the extreme uncertainty involved in the reading of emotion in either their faces or their voices. I almost got the impression that she was being whatever she would consider to be 'playful'. But then, I wasn't willing to wager my life on that.
So I looked to Psylich. The seasons had apparently brought him a measure of wealth and ...perhaps not sophistication...but certainly the trappings thereof. Their garments, while still tattered and ratty in the invariable undead fashion, were stitched of enchanted leathers and embued cloths. Their weapons were gem-encrusted, and glowed faintly in the moonlight. I couldn't know what they had been up to during my education in Silvermoon, but I suspected that I was either at the door to an opportunity or the lid to a coffin.
I freely admit that I was quite relieved when Psylich gently pulled Sharkfyn away from me, and spoke.
"I admit that I'm surprised to see you again, Krowley. I imagined you would have burrowed your way into Blood Elf society, by now."
Bah. As if he had the faintest inkling of the travesty that 'Blood Elf society' truly was.
"They are misguided," I replied. "I wish to continue my studies, but I also wish to offer my services to those wise enough to use them properly."
Sharkfyn looked at Psylich sideways, but the old friar...apparently clad now in the Priestly garb of some obscure religion that I had only touched upon in my studies...only gazed intently at me. I supposed this could be the undead fashion of expressing interest, so I continued:
"Of course, I have certain...requirements. I have studies to continue. I will need outfitting. Living expenses. To be blunt, Your...(this, I recall, was an exceedingly long pause)...Holiness...I am in need of a patron. But I am a more than worthwhile investment."
Sharkfyn leaned in close to him, a strange sort of leer spreading across her face. She whispered something into the old priest's ear, and casually tossed the gnome's finger into the dust at my feet.
"Go to Brill, and book a room at the Inn," Psylich said. "I will contact you within a day."
With that, Sharkfyn vanished as if before my eyes, and the old priest wandered, absently, down the road.
And this is what I am willing to tell you of the beginning.