Thinkin' about Karlach's parents, Pluck and Carelach - and how much they loved their little mite (here about three or four.)
Some head-canons:
I think of Karlach's parents as both being tieflings.
Pluck and Caerlach adored each other as much as they loved Karlach, which is saying a lot.
Pluck's hair is sunbleached from his travel as a porter.
Caerlach keeps her claws filed to not snag on cloth at her job as a laundress.
Karlach had more red in her hair as a child, and takes a bit more after her mother, appearance-wise (she still has horrendously sharp little baby claws here).
Pluck and Caerlach changed the spelling on Karlach's name to make it seem more 'Bauldurian' and to try to eliminate some of the difficulties Caerlach had with people saying her name wrong.
Pluck and Caerlach lived in the Tumbledown area outside of Baulder's gate until just briefly after Karlach was born, when they were able to save up enough to rent a tiny place in the Brampton district near Cliffgate. (Pluck and Caerlach took on the last name of Cliffgate when moving to the city, having had both painful relationships with their own families, more below, under the cut.)
Unlike Tav’s huge, predominantly tiefling family, both Pluck and Caerlach had human parents and come from backgrounds much harder on their tiefling nature. These sorts of stories are familiar to a variety of tieflings throughout Faerûn – even if Karlach and Tav have escaped that narrative themselves through their own family’s love.
Pluck was abandoned by his family as a child, somewhere between about five and seven when it seemed nothing would ‘beat the devil out of him.’ At that time his family simply left him in Scornubel (where they were passing through), continuing on without him, no further word or explanation given. This was probably for the best in it’s own terrible way, as any much longer with his biological family and he likely would have suffered worse and possibly lethal abuse. He ended up running with a little gang of street kids who looked after each other with almost nothing to their names, taking up whatever labor they could find to earn enough to eat. Scornubel is a constantly shifting city, and fortunately the kids managed to survive there through whatever means they could. The group changed over time, with members coming and going as their fortunes changed, but they looked out for each other. Pluck was old enough when he was left to never really shake the feeling of being unwanted, but he learned to be strong, shrewd, and clever for those around him.
Caerlach was raised by her mother alone, her father having left the family at her birth, believing Carelach to not be his own child owing to her 'devilish' features (although she was, and it is from his line of the family they derive, though he could not have known this). Her mother was distant to her, poor from lack of familial support because of her daughter (she was disowned by her family for the same reasons her former husband did), moving frequently to try to improve her station, and when Carelach expressed that she was ready to make her own way in the world as a teen, eager to see her out the door. While she did not suffer as much as Pluck growing up, that was a low bar to clear, and she knew herself to be a problem that made her mother’s life difficult (though she would come to accept it as no fault of her own.) They had a strained relationship of limited contact after Caerlach left, and Karlach never met her grandmother.
Pluck and Caerlach met in Scornubel as teenagers working odd jobs and immediately hit it off. It was a bit of a whirlwind romance, but everyone that knew them would have described it as idyllic. They never stopped ‘courting’ each other, never failing to jump at the opportunity to make their affections known in whatever way they could with their limited means. They were married just at the start of their twenties, and were going to stay where they were, but Carelach’s pregnancy came as something of an… accidental surprise. It didn’t take the two of them any time at all to decide to go through with the pregnancy and keep the child – while young, they were still eager to start a family, and to try to give the best start to it they could, they left for Baulder’s Gate, to give their kid everything they possibly could. They were good people, and even though they made it to their 40s, their lives were tragically short.
They poured all of the love they were denied into their very much beloved daughter Karlach. They may have been poor, but they kept a roof over their heads and food on the table, even when it was a narrow scrape and there was nothing else to be had. Karlach never wanted for a feeling of safety or affection, and while sometimes work meant her parents had much to do, they gave her all the attention they possibly could. She was their pride and joy, and she misses them sorely.
