Rainheart was born in a moderately sized mining town near the mountainous Western border of Renatus to affluent parents who sheltered him and his three younger sisters as best they could from the complexities of the world at large. He grew up an avid reader and an adventurous explorer with a willingness to take risks, much to the continuous worry of his family. After a roadside ambush by the Reivers claimed the life of one of his sisters, his mother traveled with him to the capital city, where she beseeched a visiting wood elf naturalist to take him on as an apprentice, in the hopes this would provide a safer environment. The elf asked Rainheart what he wanted, and was pleased with the young man’s response: “To be a friend to all creatures and all things that grow, to walk lightly in the sunlight and the moonlight, to sing and to hear singing, and to love whatever time is given to me to spend upon the world.” So Rainheart was taken away to study through his adolescence, to learn whatever tiny fragment of elven nature-lore could be imparted in a brief human life.
Far away in the elven country, he met an elf woman, and as is so often the case, he loved her far too much, thinking her fairer than all other things that were created, wiser than any mortal being, more worthy of love than poetry or songs. His apprenticeship was undermined, for he had no more heart to study anything which did not remind him of her. So, he left and went out into the world, seeking some fame or fortune that would make him worthy, in his own eyes, of her love. He knew a bit of mining from his youth, and woodcraft from the elves, and so out he went to search the ground and the trees to see what treasures there were in all corners of the world, knowing that he had already found a treasure without compare. He traveled far and wide, and learned many lessons that might have left him cynical, but in his heart he held to the image of his love, and though the world he explored was often hard or cruel, he did not grow hard or cruel himself.
