From the vault: Teal Darkling, my D&D character from 1987-89

A few years back, I found a folder with my college Dungeons & Dragons character. Teal Darkling was a Drow Elf ranger with impossibly high stats and the kind of legendary gear available only in games run by the friendliest of Dungeon Masters.

When I shared this find with some friends in the gaming space, more than one wondered if R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt character was an influence. I can’t say that it was. My “chaotic good” Drow ranger was mostly influenced by Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I thought that if a Klingon can be on the bridge of the Enterprise, then the classically “evil” and super-cool-looking Drow elves could be good.

Teal’s magic shirt had a pocket-dimensional portal which would hold his pet pseudodragon because of course it did.

Despite my poor spelling (“experiance”), I was editor of my college paper and I used our cutting-edge Macintosh SEs (with 9-inch-diagonal screens and B&W bitmap resolutions) to create my character sheets. So much Zapf Chancery!

I don’t remember the storyline but at some point Teal became Teala.

The pronunciation guide for Drow (Drō) was part of a long-running and low-stakes feud with a fellow player. He thought the name of these badass onyx-skinned elves should rhyme with “cow” whereas I thought it should rhyme with the similarly hued “crow.” For the record, he was officially correct but only because official D&D is dumb. 🙂

My art is obviously cribbing my favorites at the time: George Pérez, Jeff Dee, José Luis García-López, Paul Smith, and John Byrne. Teal’s costume is essentially that of Dr. Strange, and the name of his pseudodragon is that of Kitty Pryde’s dragon in Uncanny X-Men. I was wearing my influences on his sleeves.

Though I’ve been playing the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons since 2020 – and the game’s principles remain largely the same as the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons we were playing back then – a lot of the stats and language above make little sense to me. 🙂

That said, I think you can see I loved D&D and why I still do. What other game let you create characters like this?

In that same folder, I also found my D&D version of Captain Kirk. I’ll share that at some point. 🙂

— Steve