Linus Tartaen was Born in Fenn in 1712 of the First Age. He lived with his Mother, Father and younger Brother in the old city before the last cataclysm brought on by the Inferi. As a child Linus learned about the concept of alchemy through books that he borrowed from the library in his free time. When he wasn’t reading books, Linus was doing one of two things, either helping his Mother at home (who is the parent that Linus favoured most), or out in the woods conducting his own makeshift experiments with whatever he could find out there, but to no avail.
As Linus grew older he got more and more dangerous with his experimentation. One day whilst out in the woods Linus found a metal bowl, and decided that it would be his personal mixing pot. That day he went to a specialty dealer that he had been talking to in order to acquire some materials for his alchemy endeavours.
The dealer brought out a very volatile and rare metal known as boomsteel. Linus had been saving up for this material since he had overheard some people talking about it. After buying some boom steel for the hefty price of 1165 Mina from the dealer, he headed towards the woods for some experimenting. On the way there, he stopped past his dad's tannery to grab a leather apron just for a layer of protection, as Linus had heard how dangerous boomsteel was.
Linus enters the woods and begins walking on the route to his favourite clearing for experimenting. As he walked, Linus had both the boomsteel and metal pot in one hand, and a walking stick in the other. With each step the boomsteel and metal pot clink together dangerously. He jumps over an exposed tree root and the pot and boomsteel bang together, causing an explosion that destroys the pot, sending shards of metal into Linus’s side.
As the metal shrapnel flies towards his abdomen, the leather apron caught the smaller pieces, whilst a couple of larger pieces cut straight through it yet slowed down enough to lodge themselves deep in his lower chest, and upper midsection, rather than cut straight through his body. While attempting to leave the woods to get medical help, Linus notices that he is bleeding very heavily. His only thought is to get out alive, so Linus pulls the straps tight on his apron to attempt to slow the blood flow. He manages to crawl his way out of the woods and towards his house, where a passerby notices Linus crawling through the mud, covered in blood and in complete agony. The passerby takes him to the nearest doctor where they quickly get to work on keeping him alive.
When Linus comes to, he feels a tight pressure around his chest and abdomen. When he looked down he saw lots of bandages pulled tight around his torso, with blood spots showing through the otherwise white bandage. The doctor comes in and explains to him that they were able to remove most of the shards of metal, but two were too dangerous to get back out. This meant that Linus would have to live the rest of his life with some metal fused into his body, dangerously close to a couple of his very important organs.
As he progressed in life, the shards caused copious amounts of pain and suffering for Linus. This constant pain forced him to slouch to relieve the pain from the deepest pits of his body, which slowly resulted in a permanent hunchback. Due to the lack of mobility, Linus was unable to exercise and keep on top of his weight. This led him to go from a once tall standing, slim and respectable looking man, to a now overweight and short slouching bum, completely consumed by learning the skill of alchemy very intimately.
