Ihran Aeldan lives alone as a hermit on a small farmstead some ways south of Haense and southeast of a bend in the river flowing from the city of Fenn. The man's father (Uther Aeldan) was a Hanso-Siegradian immigrant to the Southern regions in the mass emigration following the Greyspine rebellion, while his mother was of Raevirian descent. Ihran, however, largely inherited the features of the latter, considering himself largely Raevir as opposed to his father's ethnicity.
The pair settled in the wilderness, having five children (two having died in adolescence), the eldest of which was Ihran. In the years composing the now young man's adolescence, his father Uther deemed it necessary for him to take apprenticeship to attain a broader set of skills should the farmstead the family had established fail.
It was at this point that a young Ihran traveled to the City of Haense and took a smiting apprenticeship with his Uther's former acquaintance, Coralaun Kovachev (a former smith of House Kovachev), remaining there from the ages of thirteen to twenty and completing the traditional seven years he would be bound to his instructor.
It was in this time that he met a young Haensetic woman by the name of Eleanor Muriel, whom he took to wife the next year. The happily married couple decided to make the journey south and return to Ihran's home, where they found that Uther's wife had since passed in childbirth and all of Ihran's younger siblings had since left for new opportunities. The couple then settled on the farmstead, and, within three years, bore a single child, whom them deemed Maryam Aeldan. In the child's tenth summer, the aging Uther Aeldan followed his wife into the afterlife.
From that summer onward, Ihran and his family had nothing but harsh luck.
A famine struck in the winter of 1668. In the year that the Regency Council of Hanseti-Ruska was established, many leagues to the south, a family of three began to starve and freeze.
The fall and summer of 1669 brought a crop failure, meaning that Ihran now had to make regular trips to the north to buy their food from merchants who would intentionally hike up the price.
Following hardship after hardship, in the fall of 1670, Eleanor and Maryam Aeldan were struck with a disease of the lung. The two died within the month of cold, hunger, and lack of resources.
Since this time, Ihran had become rather reclusive. He lived alone on the farmstead, providing for himself and only making trips out just before winter to purchase whatever supplies he might need for the following year.
In the month of the Deep Cold of 1671, the Aeldan Farmstead was burnt to the ground. Upon investigation, it was theorized that the flame had been caused by means of an accident. The body of Aeldan the Hermit had not been found.
However, if one were to speak with the locals in the area, one might find a few who could have sworn they saw a silhouette of a tall Siegradian man vanishing into the woods as the farmstead burnt behind him.
And thus the journeys of Ihran Aeldan began.
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