Marena grew up roaming from place to place, she was born in Haelun'or but moved shortly after due to her mothers death and her fathers fear of ostracism. She spent a lot of time in her youth learning to cook and bake various things, as there wasn't always a merchant nearby and her father never fully learned. Her mother was a wood elf, not loved by her father but seen as beautiful by him nonetheless, they didn't expect Marena to come out of the deal. Her father was fully ready to abandon Marena to her mother, but with her untimely passing he had to take on the burden. Growing up hearing about her impurity and her fathers racist remarks toward wood elves left her feeling part of neither world. The wood elves are obviously silly lesser people, and the high elves mean persecutory ones. She developed a dislike for elves in general tolerating dark and snow elves. Similarly politics and national wars seem silly to her, the past of the elves turning her off wholly to nationalism and patriotism. However baking and cooking beckon her, as the joy she gets from sharing food and making new things helps her forget her fraught life.
In her youth she and her father mostly traded with human villages and the occasional orc. She gained some social and trading skills from this, which helped her not become the social pariah she could have been. Her father insisted to everyone they met that she was just a human kid he had adopted out of the kindness of his heart, and her skin being lighter than a wood elf but darker than a high elf, as well as the natural brown color of her hair helped aid in the charade. He also changed her name after her birth so she would seem more human, her birth name was lost with his death. Her father was a rude man, and he gained some enemies. He ended up being partially crippled from a wound obtained in a fight, and Marena was forced to take care of him for many years. Finally he died from sickness of all things, and Marena decided that she would set out to try to make a life for herself in Sutica.
