Baraqiel had been born underground, in one of the mali'ker subterranean towns, whilst their mother had been visiting a family member with an important book that she needed.
You see, Karotli (Baraqiel's mother), had been raised in a strict playwright's family. She had been made to perform since a very young age, which resulted in any innate affinities for other skills being snuffed out in order to maintain what her own parents considered the most immortal form of storytelling - performance. They believed that their ancestors provided good fortune by watching over their performances from the ancestral plane. This is what they thought was most important. Rigorous hours were spent learning acrobatics and memorising lines, all in the name of maintaining the family tradition of retelling myths and tales of events that had happened to the Arnaz clan specifically. This is their form of ancestral worship. Due to the elves curse of infertility, offspring were a rare occurrence, such that slowly Karotli had developed a toxic mindset that had convinced her of the correct way to raise a child.
She had taken the tome of stories that contained every written documentation of what might have happened to her direct ancestors and ran away without telling anyone of where she was going. She believed that her own parents were behaving dishonourably towards their ancestors by forcing joy away from their children. She believed they could succeed so much more if they created a systematic method of assessing creativity to please the ancestors. Productivity breeds joy. For her betrayal, she was told to never come back to her family home.
In the new town she had found, Karotli had fallen in love with a scholarly man who was high elf in mentality but scorned from their societies for his mali'ker lineage. He considered their society beautiful and something to strive towards, but impossible to join and difficult to create in dark elf society. He was shunned by his family for discarding their creative practices. They considered him a failure when he chose to forgo the elaborate funeral for one of his family members.
Bitterness bred a difficult upbringing for Baraqiel, as there were complicated rating systems for everything that they chose to create. If they wanted to create a sculpture, it had to pass the durability, colour-rating, material, symbolism, and trusted people's voting tests. The same went for songs, dances, poems, anything.
That pressure coupled with their father's intense schooling on the history of the Mali and the enforcement of scholarly achievement (their father had his own scale for what he considered to be success) eventually drove Baraqiel to abandon their parents. As their only offspring, they had no other family to come to. They weren't aware of where Karotli's family was, nor did they have many friends due to the isolation from the rigid enforcement their parents made them commit to.
Both sides of their parental lineage had scorned them. Baraqiel had failed to develop the strong bond to family that others in their race would have. They felt alone. They read books and books of stories about mali'ker, about their origins in Luara's conditions. They found a small temple that worshipped Luara and stayed there until they reached the age of 18. Though their partaking in religious practices was scarce, they felt less out of place in the closed community in the temple than with their parents. They would exercise every day outside and watch the religious proceedings whilst doing combat and strength training.
A member of the temple suggested that Baraqiel seek entry into The Silver State, due to their studious nature. Perhaps they would find meaningful employ there.
