Niamh is the second generation of half-elves in her
family, but thanks to her unusual heritage she has retained more of her elven blood than she ought to have done.

Her elven ancestor is unknown, but from her colouring and complexion it is supposed he is/was a gold elf. What is known is that he did not support Sorcha Ni Braonain when she was thrown out of her tribe in the Spine of the World for consorting and making love with a non-human rather than her erstwhile ranger husband Seamus.

Sorcha made her way to Waterdeep, where she bore a child Aisling. Aisling, Niamh's half-elf mother, was apprenticed to a mage by the resourceful Sorcha, who possessed no powers but her charisma and had become a Waterdhavian courtesan thanks to her rugged northern beauty. During the beginning of the chaotic magic flux of the Time of Troubles, Aisling was dismissed from her hard-hearted tutor when she accidentally torched his curtains while trying to master the art of identifying magic items. She fell in with a fellow outcast barbarian, Feargal O'Connell, one of her mother's clients, who had become a cleric of Bhaal and was active in the Zhentarim. Needless to say, Bhaal was attracted by her mother's beauty accentuated by her elven blood, and Feargal sold her to Bhaal's avatar as a concubine. Distressed when she found herself pregnant, Aisling escaped south to Baldur's Gate, where the clergy of Helm protected her and contacted Candlekeep, where she went to bear her child (she knows full well that she would bear a Bhaalspawn, having been let into Bhaal's wish to secrete his essence throughout Faerun).

Gorion was charged with bringing the child up, and although the traumatised Aisling died in childbirth, Niamh followed in her mother's wizardly footsteps while at the same time getting the Candlekeep guards to train her in the way of the warrior. Luckily she was old enough in time to face her half-brother along with her motley bunch of adventurers, the Rashemi Minsc and Dynaheir, her childhood friend Imoen, the sprightly Coran and the fellow "warrior born" cleric Branwen, with whom she gets on like a house on fire despite Branwen's reluctance to concede that what is needed is a righteous path, although she found travelling with Ajantis rather stuffy and restrictive for her chaotic, impish inclination.