Kellan's life was almost chosen for him... Growing up in a small quiet farming village, his world was turned upside down when most of the village was plundered and burned to the ground by nomadic raiders. The few families that survived moved on, but with his mother and father killed in the chaos, Kellan was left with nowhere to go. On his own, foraging for scraps from the little that was left behind, he was eventually taken under the wing of a group of soldiers following the path of the raiders to stop them. Young Kellan not only saw this as a possibility for revenge, but saw the soldiers as the proverbial "knights in shining armor ." He romanticized them in his young mind to be the saviors of the land and decided from that day that he would be a great soldier to stop anything like this from ever happening to anyone again. As time went on, Kellan did indeed become an elite soldier, but he also became disillusioned. The idealistic views he had of military life as a boy gave way to the reality of a seasoned veteran of war that soldiers were all following kings and that in many cases, kings were just as selfish and power hungry as the raiders from his youth, if not more so. When the opportunity came to leave military life, he began a search to find a village like the one of his youth where he could settle down for a quiet and peaceful life, leaving the horrors of war behind. However... try as he might to keep to himself and stay out of other people's problems, it seemed that no matter where he went there was someone in need of help, and far too few who were willing to give it. Although he has developed a very cynical view of the world, some part of him still sees glimmers of goodness and he can't help but defend that goodness when no one else will.