Hordrall was born to a human and their lycanthrope spouse. Who they were or which one was the lycanthrope, he doesn’t know. His parents couldn’t afford to keep him around, lycanthropy being a dangerous thing to flaunt needlessly, and flaunt it he did, his broad, rough features evidently denoting his lycan blood.

Through infancy and childhood, Hordrall passed through many different hands, first to the wagon driver who found the swaddled babe, then to the highwaymen who attacked the wagon driver, then to the illicit merchants who bought him off the struggling highwaymen to use as an alibi or other excuse to get their smuggled goods through the checkpoint easier.

During his stint with the smugglers, they’d often handle less savory goods; foul unmentionables and eldritch artifacts. Things that a young boy should never get their hands on, let alone a boy with roiling shapeshifter blood in his veins.

It was one such artifact that awakened his shifter blood, a feral beast of his very own organs given separate life by the sanguine magic unleashed when curiosity overcame caution, ripping free of his chest but tethered to Hordrall by anatomical limitations.