Zar'thex was raised in the githyanki fortress-city of Tu'narath in the Astral Sea, trained from birth to be a warrior in the eternal crusade against the illithids. She excelled in both martial combat and the rudimentary arcane arts that githyanki knights cultivate, rising quickly through the ranks. But during a raid on a mind flayer nautiloid in Wildspace, she witnessed her commanding officer slaughter an entire ship of freed thralls — innocent people whose only crime was having once been enslaved by illithids. Something broke in her loyalty that day. She killed her officer, seized the nautiloid, and fled into the vastness of Wildspace with a handful of like-minded defectors. Now she sails the crystal spheres as a freelance captain, taking contracts that interest her and avoiding both githyanki hunting parties and mind flayer slavers.