Growing up in a village outside Castle Haven Strydel's life seemed very mundane indeed. Destined it seemed to take up the plow, like every generation since his family first settled there, over a hundred years ago. His father was a simple man with a simple outlook on life and the world around him. He instilled in his son to look at the world around him and not focus on the woulda shoulda coulda's of life. Strydel's mother left them when he was very little, rumored to have run off with a traveling seller of cheap cures and potions. His father was never the same since. On his 12th birthday Strydel came home from working one of his father's fields to find their home broken into and his father missing. Blood stained the floor of the common room and there were signs of a struggle. The local magistrate ruled that his father had run off and ordered the lands seized and Strydel sent to live at the local temples orphanage. After many years of abuse and beatings at the hands of his peers and priests alike he escaped never to return. Strydel then met a man by the name of Garet Holdan. Garet took an immediate liking to Strydel and seeing that he did not have a home took him in as one of his own. Garet, Strydel learned, was a Master of the Blade, as he referred to it. And he offered to train him in not only how to fight with hit but how to become one with it. Strydel accepted the training with an eagerness that Garet had rarely seen. Together they traveled for Garet was a Sword Smith and often sold his wares in different towns in the region. His modest forge is where Strydel also learned to make blades and other various weapons. It was another tragedy for Strydel having just turned nineteen, when illness came and took his Master from him... It seemed no great surprise either when the Magistrate ordered the lands seized and he removed.... Packing his few belongings he now sets out for whatever the world has in store for him.