Gertrude was born to Niklas Veith, the most prominent baker, and his Heartlander wife, a daughter of a blacksmith from the Sacrum Orenorum Imperium, in a village on the frontier of a Highlander fief. As Gertrude rose through the years of childhood, her mother began to teach her the customary skills and roles Gertrude was destined to uphold as a peasant girl. Early on, however, she discovered she loved to go outdoors and take strolls along the creek or walk through the hills looking for migrant deer to chase. Though she learned sewing and other feminine arts, Gertrude specifically took upon her father's proficiency for baking, having watched him every day of her youth. The proudest moment in her life was when she finished her first sweet cake according to her father's recipe; the look on his face when she showed him is one of the fondest memories she holds of her father. Her father managed to maintain a comely status during good harvests, but when the farmers of the village couldn't gather enough food due to the harsh northern winters, Niklas would struggle to put food on the table for his family. Gertrude's 14th winter was an extremely harsh winter, and she and her mother struggled to keep warm or scrounge together any scraps to eat from the stores. Niklas had to leave his bakery and work odd jobs around the village just to provide for them, and she resolved to never let herself or those she loved descend into such a helpless state again. After a particularly harsh Uruk raid that rampaged from San'Raakh all the way to the highlands during that winter, the village never fully recovered in manpower or wealth. It became even more difficult for Niklas to maintain his family's welfare since that event. Niklas grew older, and his heart held much sorrow. His wife became infirm and he had to take care of her, leaving his trade to devote his entirety of his time to her. Gertrude was a young woman at this point, and managed to take on Niklas' business, though never to the scale that he had operated. She would run the shop every day from sunrise to sunset, and managed to increase her reputation amongst the villagers as an honest baker and a good successor to her father. Eventually, during one of her operating days a man by the name of Falk Marius Hochberg had rode into the village with a wagon train of travelers, and visited the Veith bakery to acquire some bread for his long journey south. Gertrude considered this stranger an attractive man, and when he would come to purchase bread they would converse for an hour at a time. Falk had a charm about him, and he couldn't help but stay a few more days in the village in order to see Gertrude. During these days she learned that Falk was a commoner, a son of second sons and so forth. However, he ultimately claimed descent from a Teutonic Knight. He was a Hanset! His forefathers fought and tilled for the lands of Realm of Hanseti, and his father had named him after the first Hochmeister of the Teutonic Order. Several private walks along the river and a dinner with Niklas and his wife later, and they confessed their feelings to her parents. Gertrude left with Falk down south, not before Falk had agreed to give every coin and article of wealth he had to the Veith patriarch in order to allow them to live a steady life. With a long, heartfelt squeeze...Gertrude bid farewell to her father and left the only place she had ever known, a small wooden amulet of her father's that bore the sigil of the Church of the Canon around her neck. Now with no money to their names, Gertrude and her lover Falk adventure forth to find a new life together.
