Ademaro was born in a small village, surrounded by acres of wheat and potatoes. As a matter of course he learned to plant both of those staple crops in his youth and how to gather each from the fields, but before he had really learned the trade of farming he was sent to the nearest town, apprenticed to his father’s uncle, a local armour smith and his son, a farrier. During his apprenticeship he began visiting the local church, his faith in the teachings of the Canon growing stronger with each passing month, once taking a trip of several weeks to Reza to attend a service in The Basilica of Fifty Virgins.
At the end of his apprenticeship he returned to his home village, finding more trade in the work of a farrier than an armoursmith, but he remembered his skills, repairing the equipment of local guardsmen and levies. He fixed helmets and jack plates, sharpened and re-tempered blades, but most importantly to the village he made tools: Shovels, hammers, axes and horse shoes. He learned to use each of these in turn, when work was slow at the forge he dug ditches and helped thatch rooves, shoed horses and split firewood. By no means could he be considered a skilled labourer, but he could follow orders on any farmstead. At the age of nineteen he was called up to be trained in a local levy, three years later than most, but he had been away for that time and the local lord wouldn’t let any man shirk that duty. He was trained to march and menace poorly clad bandits with a simple pike alongside his younger cousins and neighbours before being released back to town, a sense of discipline within him for a short time. But in the end it just gave him the arrogance felt by many young men when they know they can outfight those around them and he has yet to have that beaten from him in a real fight.
Released from the levy and with a good handful of coins to get him where he was going he set out, hoping to find a smith’s shop somewhere that could allow him to make his fortune, or at least live a comfortable life. Afterall, he didn’t want one of the ditches he dug to be the one he died in. Perhaps the priests of a Canonist church would have need of a labourer, if no where else.
