Altan’s Pre-Game History
Altan was born in one of his people’s temporary camps somewhere the southern region of the Wolf Nomads’ lands nearly 18 years ago. According to Wolf Nomad custom, at birth he held a different name – Gal Erdene, which means “Fire Jewel.” His mother named him “Jewel”, but “Fire” was a joke of his father’s in recognition of the way his face turned bright red whenever he cried. He was the fourth child of six, but the only son of his clan’s spiritual healer and wise man (sometimes insultingly called a “witch doctor” by outsiders). As the only son, Gal was expected to follow his father’s calling, and because his father was a prominent figure, he was expected to excel. Accordingly, he became an early aspirant to the most prized of masters, a foreign shaman. So it was that at the tender age of 7, Gal left home to begin training under Minin Ormas, a shaman originally from the Bandit Kingdoms who had settled on the Perrenland border nearly a decade ago.
Though Gal became an aspirant at the earliest possible age, he spent a practically unheard of 4 years in that role before finally achieving sufficient mastery of the single spell that would boost him into the apprenticeship ranks. At age 11, after finally achieving his first Conjuration, he underwent a purification ceremony that was his first step toward achieving full manhood. First he spent a week ceremonially fasting, avoiding sleep, and indulging in herbal hallucinogenic drugs in order to bring on the visions that would identify his totem, his spiritual guide and a reflection of his inner self. What was revealed to him was the dragonfly totem, a symbol identified with avoidance, refinement, and tenaciousness.
That Gal’s totem was the dragonfly was no surprise to his master, who had long maintained that the young man’s slow progress was a result of a firm stubborn streak – one of the dragonfly shaman’s most salient features. Gal was true to the type; very reluctant to change his approach, even after it was proven time and again that “his way” simply didn’t work. To find his totem was the dragonfly was a deep disappointment to the new apprentice; the dragonfly is not the most respected of totems.
Regardless, as an official apprentice, Gal was finally able to shed his temporary babyhood name in favor of his permanent adult name. Following tradition his master, Minin Ormas, was given the privilege of naming him, and lost no time dubbing him “Altan Harun,” – which means “Golden Donkey” in Flan, Minin Ormas’ native tongue – in honor of his rare blond hair and stubborn temperament.
It was very likely this stubborn streak that brought about the premature end to Altan’s shamanist training. At age 13, more than two years after the ceremony, a time when most apprentices are well on their way to becoming journeymen, Altan had achieved only limited success at viewing the Astral realm, but had still not significantly improved on his previous triumph with the Conjuration spell. Indeed, his greatest success was in picking up the Flan language, Minim Ormas’ native tongue, in which the master taught all lessons.
The lack of magical success was devastating to Altan. Stubborn he may have been, but he was not stupid, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that as a shaman, he was a bust. Altan knew his father would lose status in the clan because of the terrible shame of his son’s failure, and he did not want that on his conscience. Instead, he staged an “accident” involving a black bear and a pig carcass. Better, Altan thought, that his family believed him dead, rather than failed.
Less than a month later, Altan entered Schwarzbruin. He liked the choice. Not only did it hearken back to his chosen method of disappearance (Schwarzbruin translates to “black bear”), but it was also the largest city in the area – a place Altan could disappear into without fear of discovery.
Still, a rurally raised 13-year-old with no money cannot disappear for long in a big city, and it wasn’t long before he had a new sponsor, Uunis Bataar the master thief. Uunis had a gift for recognizing and exploiting a person’s particular form of disenfranchisement, and was particularly adept at being able to turn his novices’ petty grievances to his own advantage. In Altan, he found a young, resolute lad almost desperate to prove himself. Accordingly, Uunis set the young man down on the path of shadows, a path that appeals particularly to the young, offering quick reward for minimal effort. The fact that that path also offers a quick death on the streets or at the end of hangman’s noose matters little to those to whom life means little, and death is only a vague notion anyway.
Under Uunis, Altan quickly picked up several skills very useful to those operating outside the law-abiding community – stealth, picking locks and pockets, scaling buildings without the use of a ladder or rope. These, combined with Altan’s natural ability to see well in the dark and studied ability to see the Astral realm (which allowed him to spot magical protections and traps and the like), made him a standout among aspiring housebreakers.
Over the next two years his burgeoning thieving abilities and the fact that the teenager was alone in the world – his gruff manner ensured that he did not make friends particularly easily –made him the favorite of his new master, but also began to catch the eye of the more senior Thieves’ Guild leadership, who started appraising Altan’s progress with a very proprietary eye.
At their insistence, Uunis began to teach the young man to defend himself with a dagger, and placed him in the care of a Guild martial arts instructor. Here Altan’s ready facility with languages again served him well, as Ferko Namindson only spoke Perren, a language Altan could by this time communicate in reasonably well, having lived in Perrenland for some time.
At 16, Altan was experienced enough to notice the attention he was being paid by the Guild leaders. This gave him, for the first time ever, a sense of self-validation. He began to grow confident, an attribute that quickly grew beyond the actual level of his skills. Now, little more than a year later, he is a teenager on the verge of manhood, with a wide (though shallow) repertoire of skills, the attention of his Guild leadership, and an overdeveloped sense of just how good he really is. Truly he is on the path to achieving great things… or earning an early grave, but that chapter has yet to be written.