Aaron Rubedos was born in a remote northern settlement of Störheim, a small vassal community loosely bound to the influence of Bekkrheim yet distant enough to feel forgotten by its stone-hearted grandeur. His parents were simple folk, tied to a harsh life of ice, rock, and survival, and like many in such peripheral places, they sought to give their son purpose through service in the Wolfpacks of the Berserkr.
From an early age, Aaron was trained in the ways expected of his kind—steel, endurance, and obedience in a world where weakness did not survive the winter. He learned the Angrkharn and Veikr like any warrior of the north, yet unlike most, he never fully surrendered himself to the frenzy of the Väki. Where others embraced the blood-madness of the Berserkr, Aaron remained measured. Over time, he became something uncommon in his homeland: a disciplined soldier shaped not only by battle, but by restraint and an inherited sense of order.
He served under a rising war-leader of his Wolfpack, a man once respected across the foothills of the region. But in time, that leader changed. Whether consumed by the whispers of the Väki or broken by years of war, he began to see omens where there were none. Discipline collapsed into fanaticism. Orders became purges. Raids became massacres. Loyalty became blind obedience.
Aaron endured longer than most. Until he could not.
It was during this unravelling that he found something he was never meant to have—a bond with a woman who showed him that strength did not have to mean cruelty. Her origin, her path, and her loyalties remain her own story, yet she became the reason Aaron began to question everything he had been taught.
When he finally turned his back on his pack, it was already too late to undo what had been done. He fled with her across the frozen reaches of Störheim, pursued by those he once called brothers. Their journey carried them for weeks until they reached the coast, where they boarded an overcrowded refugee vessel bound for unknown shores.
But fate proved indifferent. The ships were scattered. Aaron and the woman were separated—each carried away into the vast unknown, neither knowing if the other had survived the voyage.
Aaron eventually washed ashore upon the distant continent of Azuras and was lead to the Empire of Man. There, amid an unfamiliar world and strangers whose ways he does not yet understand, he began his search—not as a Berserkr, not as a son of any great hold, but as a man holding onto the only oath that still matters to him: to find her again, no matter how far the world must be crossed.
The traveller has just arrived in a small town. As they look around, their gaze is met with run down houses and shops. They duck into one of the shacks, illuminated by a series of candles suspended in the air. At the back of the small room, an old hag raises her head, “What brings you to this dingy town?" She begins, then pauses to study their face—”Ah, it’s you. I’ve been expecting you. Sit,” she gestures at a chair, “Where do you come from? What do you hope to make of yourself?”
Aaron's hand snapped to the empty space at his hip where his sword used to hang. His fingers curled briefly before he forced them to loosen again. For a moment, he stood still in the dim light of the shack, the candle flames flickering across his face as he studied the old woman. Only after a pause did he lower himself into the offered chair, though his posture remained rigid, ready to rise at any moment.
“I come from a faraway place… Störheim.”
A brief silence followed. His eyes stayed on her.
“It does not matter.”
His jaw tightened slightly as he exhaled through his nose.
"I am looking for someone.” A short pause. “A woman I lost.”
His hand balled into a fist in his lap before going still once more.
“I was told you might know where to begin looking.”
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