Xernoa. Land of cold and hot. Barren and lonely.
Xernoa. Accursed land. Rent asunder by arcane chaos.
Xernoa. Home. Forevermore unattainable.

Wander was born to a south-eastern Xernoa village existence. A feeble child, sustained by the desperation of a mother and the fraying diligence of a father. Whilst the mother scrambled to make ends meet to care for a sickly child, to whom death whispered in the nights, the father toiled in the fields for a meagre crop. He did as his father had done and his father before him, for what else was there in this land for an honest man to do? They were not warriors, nor merchant-folk, and the suspicions of their neighbors were hard-pressed to find fault in the Kenku community of the village.

The crop was weak. Weaker than usual, at least, and the father was pushed to wit's end. The night's were long, the cold of winter deep and malicious, and in the howling winds of the night dangers whispered from far away. The Prairies made for poor farmland, the frosts made the harvest year short, and the wildlife made the people hard.

Wander's earliest memory is of his father's decaying sanity, strained by the hardships of his upbringing. By the time Wander could talk, he had witnessed his father awake late into the night with ink and quill working at parchment. Words flowed from the farmer-bird like a torrent of endless muse, and the sight of it had inspired Wander with a dreadful and terrible desire.

The next morn, as father went to market (secreting away his scrawlings amongst the harvest) and his mother gathered with the womenfolk to do the laundry, Wander lit a candle and unrolled one of the scarce sheets of parchment his family possessed. Secreting his father's quill and ink, excitement burned within the Kenku as the limitless possibilities of storycraft bloomed within his mind...

He set quill to parchment. And it was like this, ink dripping onto the page, Wander's body frozen in a rigid and motionless state as his eyes bored into the page as if seeing the core of the world beyond it and the floor and the earth itself, that his mother returned that afternoon. He had remained motionless there for hours, screaming at his body to move, to write even just the first word of the dream he bore.

A Kenku boy awoke one morn
Wings no longer torn
The Fates gaze forlorn-
No more!
Their eyes a-shine and a-gleam
As Kenku boy danced upon tower's beam
Wings a-flutter and a-feather
chained by his terrestrial tether-
No more!
The sky itself would be his home
Darkness and cold would be forgone
The sun itself would gaze ere long-
Upon the Kenku boy's heralding song.

The words, so clear and burning bright within his mind, turned to mush and fled his body as he translated thought to action. He worked himself into a frenzy, feathers soaked in sweat and frayed from maddening effort, as he tried every trick he could conceive. Start with one letter? His mind knew he meant to form the words, and something deep and rooted halted him there. Jumble the words? That worked, a page of meaningless words was his reward. Change the words? No, no, that doesn't work-

As his mother's hand rested upon his shoulder, he wept. In her embrace he felt her weeping as well- as any mother would, when she witnessed her child's first true encounter with the curse of his people. The voiceless existence had by now come natural to the Kenku; the flightlessness become a dream and ambition to chase...

But the Divine Curse of Creation plagued them still. No less in Wander's case. The desire, the inclination, to create art- to produce inspiration and muse- to go beyond their station and express their creativity in its truest form!- was forever unattainable. He wept in his mother's arms, and perhaps the fates saw fit to guide him on that day to another life. One within his grasp. For, on that day, the day he wept over the plight of his ancestors and the plight that would some day belong to his children's children...

The world ripped asunder in the center of Dalhurst, the village he called home near the border with the myriad unclaimed lands. The screams he heard, the chaos he witnessed, and the everchanging world he barely escaped would change him and bestow upon him a countenance most severe. Witnessing the arcane chaos grip his mother- seeing feathers turn to scales then back again in an instant, seeing the kind and frightened woman suddenly beset by a dark creature who rose from the shadows- pushed him into despair. Despair into terror. Terror into the wilderness.

And it was in the wilderness that Wander survived for the next several years. This time of his life was formative, and filled with the petty dangers of wild lands and harsh predators, but also with the hopeful growths of the feeble into the capable, and the childish into the mature. He never returned to the ruins of Dalhurst, instead he made his trade as a guide and naturalist through the cold lands of Xernoa. He could move as shadow, stand as still as stone, and in the wild places he felt, after years of fear and terror, at home at last. His dealings with the cities were in the shadows of their walls, in the light of the moon, and in the company of smugglers and thieves whose trades he learned well.

But it was when he witnessed the Red Wraiths at work that the Fates smiled upon him yet again and dictated that he change his path once more. Whilst carrying forged documents- as he came to learn his father had before him- through to the Xernoan border keep of Ifracombe on behalf of a smuggler caravan he got to witness the wrath of Runaish firsthand. Algonne had long ruled his life, spiting and cursing Wander, but on this auspicious day of days he saw a path where, just maybe, that young child inside him who never got to truly have a childhood could dream of spreading wings once more.

Ifracombe stood fast, the landscape around it shifting and changing as another swelling of Arcane Chaos gripped the lands. Wander raced to the shadow of its walls, seeking the safety of its shelter. The gates opened- but not to let him in. Sallying out came the Red Wraiths. Wander cowered, seeking refuge within the walls- but he witnessed them in action that day. Slaying foebeast, braving the warping world- and emerging, wounded but alive, with peace restored. The balance maintained...

Discovered by the guard of the fortress, he was searched. His forgeries discovered. And his punishment decided- but through the mercy of the Red Wraiths, he was given another choice. Stay and face dungeon rot in this barren border keep, or put his skills to use in service of a higher power and a greater purpose. He had, apparently, impressed them with his ability to survive in the wilds alone and the tenacity with which he sought survival whilst in the chaotic storm.

It was the easiest decision of his life.