Karklos ir’Ilsir became an overnight sensation in Sharn when the production of his play Throne of Angels opened to rave reviews. His plays continued to astound audiences and draw standing-room-only crowds for two years following. Theater fanatics waited with bated breath for the release of each play and worshiped the playwright as if he were the son of the god Olladra herself.
The worship bolstered Karklos’s urge to do more than just satisfy his audiences, driving him to challenge them instead. By his third year as Sharn’s favorite playwright, his work took on a decidedly political tone. At first, King Boranel ir’Wynarn and the Brelish court turned a blind eye to treasonous underpinnings in his work, in recognition of the playwright’s obvious brilliance. However, when Who Mourns? opened at the Sharn Opera House and riots broke out in the streets, King Boranel exiled Karklos.
Karklos found a new home in Aundair under the patronage of Queen Aurala ir’Wynarn. However, when his play Wine, Magic, and Moonlight opened with descriptions of the debauchery of “Queen Arielana’s” exiled son “Jurianos,” Karklos found himself on the run again. The playwright eventually stumbled onto the docks of Stormreach.
No one patronizes his work now, and he toils in a cramped room in Respite, not far from the Drowning Sorrows Tavern. His plays see production on occasion but rarely draw a crowd.
In the past few months, a mysterious woman named Sarquala has taken an interest in Karklos. Her blazing red hair, cool emerald eyes, and elegance immediately captured his heart, and the two are nigh inseparable now. Sarquala whispers in the playwright’s ear as he works. As a result, he has written obscure plays about the wrongful imprisonment of a pantheon of immortal kings and their glorious return. Perhaps this is a harmless fancy of hers. Or perhaps she is an agent of the Lords of Dust or a devotee of the Dragon Below, and she is tailoring his works to glorify her fallen masters. Unfettered by mortal conceptions of time, rakshasa and illithid have both foreseen that Karklos’s works will someday be the most performed plays in human history.