A scar fades but the flesh remembers. This is the first lesson every child of Gaoia learns. Hardship. Pain. Adversity. These are the forces that temper us and make us stronger; the fire that burns away impurities and the hammer that forges the chain that binds. Never be the weakest link. This is the Gaoian way.

If life is an education in scars, then few scholars are more accomplished than Sten. His back knows the ache of breaking salt in Halkoran, his feet remember the cold of the Bjorken fens, his fingers have been licked by flames in the foundry at Girghet, and his shoulders bent beneath the weight of Grandfather Lint's offering at Gak'Ven. Sten's life is a tapestry of scars writ large across his flesh, but none run deeper than the first.

Sten was born scarred - not in the usual way of the cripple or the idiot for the Gaoian know what to do with those infants. Sten's scar is in the blood. A scar of shame. Unlike a scar upon the flesh, shame is a kind of scar that can descend through generations and stain an entire lineage. For the transgressions of his ancestor, Sten, like his immediate forebearers before him, was born into bondage.

Sten's familial debt is held by chieftain Rábaiamon, and only Rábaiamon can release it. As the eldest child of the third generation since the debt was incurred though, Sten has an opportunity to do what none of his forebearers before him could. He can resolve the debt.

But first, he must prove himself worthy...

---

A youth spent in toil has aged Sten beyond his years. His body is as broken as it is toned by years of hard labor, and his eyes hold the weight of a much older soul. He wears his hair shorn at the sides and long at the back, in a tight braid in the custom of his kinfolk. Tattoos are common among Gaoians of age, but no respectable artist would ink the skin of the scar-born youth so he carved the image of Grandfather Lint into his own shoulder with the blade of a hot knife. To this day the scar burns angry and red.

To his abiding shame Sten lacks the raw physical power necessary to wield the basalt mauls of Gaoia's mightiest warriors, like the Wrathguards in Karvosti, but what he lacks in stature he aspires to make up for in fearlessness and determination. As a man with no means and no station he wears simple clothes of leather without adornment or decoration. The only possession of note he carries is a bear's claw pendant on a simple cord worn round his neck - a reminder of a promise made.