Role

Chapter 1

Ydane grew up on a farm near one of the villages that exist within the
larger penumbra of Voralian City. Her father was a farmer and her
mother kept house and saw to their animals. Milking the cows, feeding
the chickens, etc. As a child Ydane was esepcially adventurous, often
spending entire days exploring the pine forests that surrounded their
farm. This was a source of consternation to her parents, who saw the
forests mainly as a source of danger, whether from the wolves and other
natural creatures or, worse, from the orcs that occasionally came down
from the mountains.

Except for this recuring conflict, Ydane's early childhood was mostly
benign. Unfortunately, around the time she reached adolescence, a
series of events would combine to change this forever. The first was a
succession of growing seasons in which her father's crops failed,
severely stressing the family's finances. While the proximate cause was
drought, her father's poor land management practices had rendered
their farm particularly vulnerable to the dry conditions.

Sometimes her father would blame the gods and curse them by name, while
other times he would blame the land itself, as if it were conspiring to
ruin him. Once he even blamed their neighbors, who, having been wiser
about managing their land, were not as severely affected. The one
person he would never blame, though, was himself. Instead he turned to
the drink, which exacerbated both his anger and his ineptitude while
further depleting the family's meager finances.