When I was born into a blonde-haired and blue-eyed family, my mother’s husband knew at first sight that I was not his child. It was in a dingy Stonegate inn that I made my first appearance, or so I was told, while my parents- messengers in the king’s court- were there on business. Likely the same place I was conceived, come to think of it. They say I lived in Ulaid with my mother and so-called father until I was two, when I was sent away to be educated. My first memories are of my studies of magic at the academy. I proved to be hopeless with enchantments, portals, and the like, and so I was placed instead under the watchful eye of the master necromancer. And there, I flourished.

I had no friends at the academy, by my own choice. I have always preferred the company of books to people, studies to conversation. I was eight the first time I participated in a necromantic ritual. I was offered as a living sacrifice of sorts, as the most innocent of those assembled. I lost a piece of my soul to the experience, and I have not felt anything like love or compassion since. They are but ever-fading memories in my mind.

I returned to my family in Ulaid at the age of fifteen, having learned all that the academy had to teach me. I spent the next year on my knees in the palace kitchen, spending long hours scrubbing at the cobblestone floor and sweeping soot from the massive fireplace. The other scullery maids disgusted me. All they wanted out of their lives was to one day carry meals to the king. I never even saw the man, but I didn’t care. I’ve never had much use for nobility.

During this time, tensions with my family grew more and more severe. Father and I fought constantly. He constantly reminded me how grateful I should be that he took my mother’s bastard child into his care. After hours slaving away in the palace, I came home to be his servant, unquestioningly doing all that he asked of me out of fear. My sisters also resented me, and made a daily effort to remind me how ugly I was. And my mother, the only one who ever seemed to love me, still believed that the best thing my life could amount to was that of a lowly palace maid.

When I was sixteen, my parents and four beautiful sisters died under… shall we say “suspicious circumstances?” I was sent to the sanitarium. That’s where I am now, the place from which I pen these words. They’re releasing me tomorrow, on my eighteenth birthday. I will be formally banished from the city limits of Ulaid. After that… well, the raven only knows.

Signed, Anstice Garou