Born to Serenla Faretto and Kriegen Faretto, James Faretto is the second child and second son of the couple, behind his older brother Cletus and before his younger sister Catherine. For most of his childhood, he was left mostly to his own devices. This was due to his parents dealing with the attention-craving Catherine and the unruly rebellions of Cletus. His childhood was relatively quiet and uneventful, until his brother ran away from home. His parents looked far and wide to find Cletus, but he seemingly fell off the face of the planet. After a few months of restless looking, Kriegen managed to convince Serenla that Cletus was most likely dead at this point. From there, their attention began to fall very heavily on James, now being the only son in the world to them. Instead of embracing this situation, James decided to instead turn inward and focus on what was happening around him. He would think intensely on what was taking place and weighing his options before he did most of anything, which ultimately made him a shy person. In his heart, James still believes Cletus is out there, somewhere.
Before long, James grew into a man himself. Kriegen expected his son to take up the family practice of worshipping the All-Father and perhaps learn a trade. He decided that the knowledge that could be gained by following the All-Father was a worthy reward for the price to be paid in servitude. He wasn’t so narrow-minded, however, to know that focusing on one trade would help him. Instead, he decided to set out to gain knowledge on multiple sources and wells of knowledge to broaden his horizons. He was cleansed in the name of the Paragon Snow Volaren, the Flamesinger. With that, he packed his things, said his goodbyes, and left home.
He wandered the roads for years after that. He quickly discovered that one needs more than just the spirit of adventure to actually get anything done in life. He ended up becoming a lone drifter, never in one place too long. He grew tired of walking the roads with time, and his mind would turn to the lands of his ancestors time and time again – to Norland. His dreams would come crashing down with Kind Edvard’s writ of dissolving, making Norland a place he would never return to ever again... But he was a drifter, and drifters hear a thing or two. He heard the Norlandic people that were displaced from his ancestral homelands had taken up refuge in the remote reach of Pinemarch. With courage in his heart and the sun on his back, he turned once more on the road, towards home with a smile.
