ForeignBeef

I was born ages past, a child of celibate, pauper parents’, in a now forgotten ghetto. I was sold for a few coins and raised by a group of itinerant soap makers. They taught me their trade-ways and a few secrets. While under their tutelage I became an Adept and celebrated my coming-of-age in due course. I earned my solidarity and immediately set out on pilgrimage. Leaving behind the nomadic tribe that fostered me I sought to master the ways and manners of letters and numbers. Ere long I reached a great center of learning and applied to become a student of an elder teacher. I gained only rudimentary understanding of those mysteries before misfortune stuck thrice in a fortnight. My teacher was slain by poison, the city was besieged by an unclean horde, and I was shanghaied by eastern gypsies. I awed them with talents I possessed in things both magical and mundane and so earned some trust. During this time I continued my studies in secret while reluctantly serving my cruel and boorish captors. We traveled vast expanses of lands unseen by any white-man, encountered beasts both real and imagined, and held intercourse with all manners of men. I was steeped in many strange traditions and religions. I sought to learn and was rewarded. I practiced the mental and physical esoterica of many and diverse sects. Over time I gained a measure of spiritual awakening. I trained the mind and body and gained knowledge and ability in the applications of martial traditions, both pugilistic and personal as well as the tactics and tenets of leadership and command of troops. I earned much respect at the cost of lives and spilled blood even as I made a reputation for myself. After a time I made my escape and wandered for a score of years trading in knowledge, petty wares, assorted sundries, and trinkets of dubious worth or value until securing enough silver and gold to buy passage homeward. It was during these times I came to unravel the mysteries of numbers, mastering angles and the riddle of the circle. Many stories could be told of my travels homeward by so many circuitous and hazardous routes. Know only that in this time I came to know a woman who I took as a mate and who bore me a strong and hale son. I returned at long last to the country of my birth having surmounted many obstacles and endured many travails while mastering many arts and seeing a great many things. No longer the man I once was, yet destined to become the man I will be, I secured a modest property and a tractor, became settled in due manner, and established a home of a sort where I make soap.