Elliot Brown

Childhood

Elliot Brown's parents, poor dirt-farmers in the Myrken countryside, had three children, an eldest boy and two younger daughters. When the younger girl was two years old, his parents lost a fourth child due to an infant illness turning them off of the idea of having future children. Six years later Elliot was born. He was a mistake. That they had a third daughter a year after he was born showed that they were mistake prone more than anything.

Elliot was very much left to himself as a child. His parents and elder siblings were busy with the farm having had years to fall into routines without him. Mainly, he got in the way. He never got along with his younger sister who constantly had to compete with him for attention and almost always won. His mother parented through the use of old wive's tales which were meant to keep him on the straight and narrow. It worked to make him superstitious, not well behaved. Most of his childhood days were spent tagging along other, older children from other farms who tolerated him or trying to shake off clingy younger children who he could barely tolerate.

Knighthood

While Elliot isn't entirely sure how old he was when he ran way from home, it was somewhere around nine or ten. In 207, Myrken experienced its worst summer drought in ages and young Elliot, feeling himself a burden and with a few too many stories in his head ran away from home. He ran to the Chapter House of the newly immigrated Shepherd Knights of the Silver Staff where he was taken in and made a squire to a Sir Tyroc. Here he also worked whatever odd jobs he could to send money back to his family.

During the battle of Snowstill, Elliot was attached to the rear guard due to his youth. Before his eyes he watched his knights and fellow squires get cut down by the Ashfiend's undead forces. More horrifying by far was watching his fallen comrades rise up to join the enemy ranks as zombies. Not knowing what else to do, Elliot took a torch and rushed across the battlefield burning the bodies of the newly dead, a necessary act that would traumatize him for years to come.

Sir Tyroc died in the battle as did many of the other knights, leaving the Order severely depleted and with far more knights than squires. Elliot would continue to train as part of a common pool but he would spend less and less time at the chapter house over the next few years.

Niall

Also on the battlefield was a scarred, tattooed girl who did not seem much older than Elliot. This was Niall and the two soon began an unlikely friendship centered around their roles in the battle and a lack of having anyone else. She was an outsider to Myrken and to their society in general and he endeavored to teach her and help her find her place in a world that she did not make. When his Pa died of exertion in early 209, Niall came back with him for the funeral.

Elliot and Niall continued grow closer as friends, though not necessarily warmer, for the next year even as Elliot continued to train at the Chapter House. Then in spring of 210, in order to get leverage over her and make her more tractable, Glenn Burnie began to drug the shipments of the chocolate drink Niall was so fond of. She became more emotional and lighthearted. Around this time, she and Elliot, who often partook of the drink as well, started to wander around the forest and countryside. The combination of the drug and Niall's magic created for hallucinatory adventures where the pair faced off against giant shadow monsters and surreal magical beings. During this dreamlike time, Elliot also befriended Catch, looking to him as a wayward surrogate family member.

It was Catch who ultimately uncovered the problem with the chocolate, forcing Glenn to both remove it from circulation in the summer of 211 and pin the blame on Suede Roschen. Niall, now enraged and volatile, confronted the tailor but he managed to escape with his life. During their twisted adventures under the influence of the drug, Elliot had grown into something of a hedge squire, no longer living at the remnants of the Chapter House. He had also grown far closer to Niall, becoming fond of the emotional range she showed at the time and enjoying her presence in a world where every day was a fantastical adventure. With the end of the chocolate, she closed up again, becoming more hostile and angry and leaving him feeling increasingly lost.

Daggers

During this time Elliot drifted further and further away from Niall. He also spent more and more time at the Broken Dagger, being a loud and general nuisance. This had various repercussions. The first was being stabbed by Jirai. This brought him close to death and only Catch's timely intervention saved him. The second was having a dagger tossed at him by Solena. It was just a warning shot but he still picked it up and claimed it as his own out of pure stubbornness. By mid autum of 211, Solena had tracked him down and had begun teaching how to defend himself with those Daggers. He had forsaken his giant sword, dubbed 'the world' by Catch, as it had proved useless to him against someone as swift as Jirai.

At first, he simply learned how to use the Daggers. More and more, however, Solena began to teach him about balance and the beginnings of thievery skills. He still identified himself as a squire, so while the two were starting to open up to one another, his tutelage was still fairly narrow in focus. His self-identification was shattered in January of 212 when Marshall Renea Sundance refused to allow him entrance to the cell where she was watching over the imprisoned Catch citing his association with Solena as the reason why. Shortly thereafter, he started to allow the elf to teach him broader things, revealing a natural talent for lockpicking.

Nova

Throughout the spring of 212, Elliot grew more confident, daring and brazen in his actions. Being a thief allowed him both a financial and emotional freedom that he had never possessed before as well as a sense of security. At first it was all instinct and impulse but both his teacher and Suede Roschen independently worked to scare him straight and put a bit more sense into his actions. He also started to spend time with Niall again, still guiltily missing who she had been under the influence of the chocolate but now more confident and able to stand with her as an equal.

Around this time he met the peculiar girl named Nova, a magical entity bound to an amulet who possessed pale skin and a tail. As he was want to do, he began their interactions by being xenophobic and brusque but before long her positive demeanor and endearing mannerisms began to win him over. It soon became his quest to free her from the amulet. Unfortunately, Myrken Wood's established mages and great thinkers proved to be inattentive and unhelpful causing Elliot to become more disgruntled and rebellious. If the system wouldn't help him, he'd take what he needed and do what he had to. In this case, that was dropping his giant sword off of the dagger onto the amulet, shattering it and damaging the sword.

Although this freed Nova, it also weakened her significantly. Just as Cinnabar Calomel had warned him weeks before, he found himself supporting her while she healed. This need, along with his increased dissatisfaction with the establishment caused an uptick in his illicit activities, one that would last far past Nova's recovery. By now he had passed the point of no return and began to find pride, not shame in his actions.