They say I was born on a ship. In the middle of the great oceans of the world where the sea was blue and the fish plenty. It was during an awful storm that my mother gave birth to me, screaming louder and louder with each lightning strike or crash of thunder.
When the ship ran aground I was the only survivor. A babe in wrappings, I was found by a kindly farming couple and they raised me as their own. On my sixteenth birthday they told me this story, and the very next day I thanked them for all they had done – my mum and dad – and left with nothing more than patchwork clothes and an old hatchet axe.
That was three years ago. I found it hard, very hard at first, having to resort to things I would not normally do. Stealing to survive, to live while living in the larger towns are cities of the land.
Now though I am a mercenary, a warrior for hire. To defend wagons or people as they travel the world. Now I have arrived here, in this city – where recently a gate to some distant plain of evil was opened. I house myself now in the warrens of the city, and abandoned place of beggars and rats – rats that seem more intelligent than most rodents, but at least they leave me be.