Harlag is the third son of a Hanseti farming family of long experience. His father, Havard, did everything he could to prepare his sons to work their own steadings, and his mother, Silgird, taught her daughters to tend to livestock, to cook, to mend clothes and wounds, and to manage a household of their own. Both parents made certain to raise their children to be faithful, loyal, honest, and god-minded souls. For simple folk living on the often harsh land, strength, effort, and resilience would see them through good times and bad.
Harlag made friends with the children who lived on other steadings, and when all the chores of the day were done, he, his brothers, and the other boys of the fields would run through the golden afternoon- playing soldiers, throwing rocks into the pond, climbing the mighty oaks that stood at the crossroads. Sometimes they would follow the stream down the meadows. When their home was hidden by the hillside, the thrill of the world, wide and mysterious, touched each boy’s heart- Harlag’s, perhaps, in particular. His wanderlust would not fade..
.. Even when a startled snake bit his youngest brother one day, as the boys wandered through tall grass one crisp autumn evening, and its venom carried him to death with choking foam at his lips. Harlag wept bitterly. The other boys wept as well. That winter, little Snorri slept beneath stones, and Harlag’s dreams carried him through peaceful, empty barrows, their weathered masonry glistening with wet mold and the echoing drip of silent water. Harlag’s spirit never broke, but he was perhaps more somber for the ordeal.
There were also girls in the village. At first, when he was youngest, Harlag often played with them, playing chase or hide and seek. As he grew older, the other boys stopped playing with them, and so Harlag did too, though he did not understand the reasons the boys gave. But- a few short years later, Harlag found that he wanted to do much more than play with the young women of the village. Sigijura, who’d been Harlag’s friend since their earliest days of childhood, was the one who asked first. For three years, they had a secret love.
And then Havard died, and Sigijura’s parents betrothed her to another boy from a village far away. Heartbroken and mourning for both losses, Harlag sought out a man of the cloth- finding his reassurances in the words of an old Flamenist who watched out for the village. Harlag’s grief and anger and loss of direction would be remolded, focused, inspired into the commission of good works. Taking short stock of his belongings, he leaves his home behind, seeking out a way in which he can do good deeds.
