Alren never seemed to be the best at anything he applied himself to. He was never the strongest one, never the good looking heart throb in the bar, never the wealthy merchant selling his good, and certainly not from any distinguished bloodline. He wasn’t stupid or ugly, but just had never excelled in an area to the point of being known for it. “Horse threw a shoe? Go see Sam. Need help finding a rare text? Susan over at the library is great at picking them out, even if they’re lost in the back,” people would say. But never gave Alren any credit, or reason to be consulted.
As a result, the mage learned to self promote. He frequented the taverns and meeting halls of his youth and learned how to make contacts. He learned how to piece together groups of strangers towards a common cause. More often than not in the small town he grew up in that cause was profit.
Alren’s hometown was located at the base of a mountain range. Traders would stop to rest there and try to resupply before attempting the dangerous mountain sloops. Alren lived there with his mother, who had raised him solely by her fierce force of will and dedication. Alren’s father was a mage who was never around much at all. He was always off trying to find some new artifact, or travel to a distant library in search of a lost incantation. Occasionally he’d stop by Alren’s small house in a flurry of activity. Barking orders to his mother, and ignoring him completely.
Why she put up with him, Alren never could figure out. The only kind act that the man had ever done for him was to teach him a small lesson on the use of magic. Since he could remember, Alren had been plagued with pounding headaches. On one of his father’s whirlwind visits, he uncharacteristically showed some compassion to the boy and asked why he was wincing. He then proceeded to teach Alren a ‘magical mantra’ that would ease the pain of his head. With it he told a grandiose story of how he discovered it, and the trouble it had caused him. Alren ate it up, and it even seemed to work for the boy. It wasn’t till later, when he began studying magic himself that he realized that it was all gibberish. The lesson learned was this. Magic is what you make of it. Even mundane things can be used to extraordinary results if you play things correctly. Much of Alren’s personality can be reduced to the determined caring of his mother, and the watchful indifference of his father. Like two sides of a coin they seemed at war within the man, who would flip from one to the other readily depending on the place and circumstance.
There were two others that played a role in shaping the person that Alren is today. His uncle, who taught him how to be a scribe, and his first love. His uncle was a quiet man that would from time to time visit his sister and Alren. Unlike his father’s visits, Alren’s uncle always showed courtesy and respect towards his mother, and even some to the boy. From him Alren would learn compassion, and that people should not be used, but should be treated with dignity and respect. He spent much of his visits lecturing on the importance of man, and how to take a thought and give flesh and bone to it. He was a practical man, and Alren always looked forward to his visits.
His uncle however stood in contrast to his first love Sahra. He met her in the local tavern one night. Red curls, smiling red lips, and a classic hour glass figure drew his attention as soon as his foot fell in the door. She was a new hire bar wench who knew how to flirt with the clientele to increase her tips. As a young adult, the two of them would have an on and off, open and closed, relationship. Never fully committed for long, never able to stay apart from each other for long either. Sahra believed in money, in power. She believed in manipulating, charming and scheming whoever she had to in pursuit of it. In more than a few quite conversations with Alren over a drink, she told him that he was too weak. That if only he’d use some of the trust that the people he knew placed in him, he could be rich. He could end up running their small town. Alren would just smile at that. He had grown to look at the woman as something that he could have seen himself turning into if he was born a woman. Other than that one difference, the two were rather alike in their ability to quickly size up someone, and agreed on most other things in life.
The night that Sahra disappeared was a long one to Alren. She had found some rich lonely merchant to take her out of the small town he’d grown up in. With her gone, Alren became restless. The conversations at the tavern were always about grain, and harvest time. Or about some oddly dressed merchant passing though. Life became dry and bland to the man. He began to doubt himself. Perhaps Sahra was right. Perhaps he was underselling himself. The first thing he needed to do was get out of town. Put some distance between him and the memories of those deep red curls and soft doe eyes. He had heard of a place to study magic, a place called Unigo, from one of the traders passing through town. After a few weeks of preparations, the man left home and his past behind to move towards an uncertain future.