"With the death of Henrik II, called The Wolf by his magnates for the firm justice of his reign, the land descended into disorder. It was said that the Lord slept and left his people to their fate in so cruel a time - knights and lords disobeyed the king, their retinues and mercenaries plundered the peasantry, and all law and peace burned"
-The Chronicle of Witsaend, entry of 1105AE

You were born in the waning years of the reign of the Wolf, and have grown up amidst all the cruelty of this starving age. Castle-men despoil the land, beasts and dark things lurk at the edges of the wood, and the throne is contested between claimants. In this age the greatest barons and lords of the realm carve out kingdoms for themselves, and drench the soil with blood. In all your years you have seen few good harvests, and much death. Famine, plague, war and ruin stalk the land, and neither knight nor baron stands for ought but himself.

Your father was little different.

>Who was your father?
>A foreign mercenary in the royal army of Henrik II, granted the manor of a rebel. A hard, bloody man who raised you in the grim martial way of his trade. You were born a foreigner, and a third son, but you were well blooded by your fifteenth year.
>An impoverished nobleman and minor baron, presiding over a mud-soaked village in the fenland. You know a little of stewardship, and none can doubt your lineage, but you are poor and no great warrior.
>A northern lord of Karhin blood, who took to bed a captive giantess - an ancient tradition among the northerners, which has left you a brute in strength but forever attainted by the foulness of your parentage, let alone your bastardy.