Dettert was born in Gulderham Flas, a farming village in the Crownlands, to a wealthy sheep farmer named Harmat and his wife, Drusilla. He has one younger brother, born two years after him, called Bruno. His childhood was haunted by his alcoholic and debt-ridden father, who lost a great deal of the family wealth, and at the age of 11 Harmat abandoned his family. Little does Dettert know, but his father was being followed by a knight to whom he owed some considerable debt, and was killed in the next village along. Dettert and his brother were forced to take over the family business at that young age, and together they kept it afloat and did not have to resort to selling the farm. At the age of 20, Dettert promised to marry his childhood sweetheart, Roslinde. Alas, it was the time of the War of the Two Emperors, and he was conscripted into a Josephite army. After the war, he happened to travel through the village where his father had been killed, and learnt the true nature of his abandonment. Overcome by a desire for revenge he made an oath that should he ever come across the knight who did it, a certain Ser Eric of Tosvig. He has always had an ambition to start up a brewery, and the shock of learning his father’s true nature drove him to leave Gulderheim Flas, and travel to Johannesburg to realise the dream. His lack of education and travel, outside the army, means he knows little about the world he is entering, but he is ready to accept what comes his way.
