Elway Kidd

Elway Kidd was born the bastard son of a nobody sailor. He was raised almost entirely by his mother, Mitzere, a hedge mage who made her home in the northeastern forests of Rulathar, near the coast. His father was not present for his birth. He had left on his ship days before, and never found his way back. He wasn't spoken of at length by his mother, but on the few occasions that she did speak of him she held no resentment for the man who had left her alone with child, calling him brave and charming. She would say this with a smile, and not an ounce of regret. Elway never asked his mother about his parents relationship, deciding at a young age that he didn't hate his father, but he certainly didn't care about him, and so the time they spent together before was never of any interest. Elway and his mother did fine without him, living quite alone in their tiny cottage surrounded by the trees. The home was meager, with a fireplace and a small table in the corner by a window where the sun would shine beautifully onto its roughly shaped top.The only other room was his mothers study, always in a mess with papers and objects and symbols strewn about in the sort of orderly chaos that his mother kept them.

Elway grew up there, his mother keeping them alive by hunting and trading with locals at the tiny village many miles from their home. She would trade the pelts and meats of animals there when they needed anything that wasn't readily available from the forest, which wasn't very often. She taught him what magics she could, and he was a particularly astute student given what small knowledge was available to her to teach. When Elway was old enough, his mother taught him to hunt. They would take bows and knives, but Elway couldn't recount even one arrow being loosed between the two of them. They hunted with magic. She told him how the world treated people like them, and said the weapons helped to make them seem "normal". She would narrow her eyes in disgust when she said that word, a look that would be adopted by her son to an uncanny degree with time. He learned of the Weaver, and the Weave which it protected. He learned to pretend to be ignorant in the ways of magic around others, and the pretending became second nature. Their secrets were never discussed outside of the cottage.

They had one true friend that was trusted among the two of them, a man who was as close as a father as Elway could have gotten, a pirate known as Surly Jep. Jep had known Mitzere for a time and was privy to the truth. Anyone who his mother trusted was trustworthy in his eyes, and Elway always loved hearing of Jep's adventures on the high seas. The pirate captain would take Elway and his mother upon the boat and tour them around in the waters on occasion, and later into his life Elway learned how to manage the ship himself, becoming a capable sailor in his own right. It was Jep who taught Elway to live, not just survive.

It was during a hunting trip to the northern parts of the forest that Mitzere almost lost her life. Elway was with her when it happened, but was helpless to stop the attack. They had tracked a deer far from their home during a particularly cold winter. In need of food and furs they desperately followed this lone animal for much too long. In the night they lost track of it, and while his mother bent over the tracks to study them, she was beset upon by a creature. It was panther-like, impossibly in two or three places at once, and had tails on its head. It was nearly invisible in the dark. Neither saw it coming. His mother fought tooth and nail while commanding Elway to run, which he begrudgingly did. She fought with the beast until it pushed her to the edge of a cliff overlooking a waterfall. With no other options she waited until it lunged, and used a spell to push the creature over. She went with it. Elway found her beaten, broken, and nearly dead on the bank of a small river in the mornings light. He helped her with the brews she had taught him to make, finding things among the forest floor he knew could heal her. By daylights end, her wounds were closed. However, when Elway helped her to stand, she cried out in immeasurable pain. Her legs gave out beneath her and she collapsed, unable to walk. It took the better part of three days to drag her slowly back to their home, and she never recovered.

Elway took care of his mother, now bedridden, until Surly Jep once again visited their forest. Jep helped Elway construct a sort of chair for Mitzere to get around the house. They discussed seeing the healers in the village, but both knew they would never help someone of their ilk. At best they would be turned down, at worst tied to stakes and murdered. So Jep suggested another idea; Elway would travel with him on the seas to acquire the currency needed to support her needs, returning home with months of supplies at a time. And so, for the last six years of his life, Elway has lived among the pirates, trading blood for coin, coin for medicine and food. His studies of magic behind him, he learned instead the ways of the blade, doing whatever was necessary to care for the woman who raised him. He learned not only to pretend to be cruel, but to back up his acting with actual ruthlessness when intimidation failed. He became the kind of man that as a child he would have feared, sometimes surprising even the saltiest of sailors. With time it very sadly became normal. He never forgot to be kind and honorable like his mother had taught him, but kindness made no gold and honor paled in comparison to his ambitions.Only one thing truly mattered anymore, and nothing would stand in his way for very long.