Bataar Rogozin was the bastard son of a Kandori miner's wife and a passing Fal Daran merchant. His parent's marriage hadn't been a healthy one and he'd been resented by both his mother and his "Father". At nine he was old enough to start working in the gem mines outside Canluum. And that he did, for years.
At the age of sixteen his adoptive father disinherited him and he found lodging with the town guard. They began to train him as a scout and fighter as every young man in the borderlands should be. To pay for room and board Bataar continued his work in several mines.
In his early twenties the blight had started to become more active than normal and attacks from shadow spawn came more quickly. Bataar increased his mine work. Trollocs and Fades, and other manners of unholy abominations were enough to give him nightmares. He hoped they had no interest in rocks under the ground.
At twenty one, while scouting the a new vein, Bataar was caught in a cave in and trapped under ground in a little visited part of a small mine. As panic set in his mind rushed with the facts. There could be after tremors, a day at most of air. Frantically he tried to dig his way out. For hours he labored, crying out for help, crying in general.
Dirty and tired and about to give up. Bataar had all but resigned himself to his earthy grave, when a new threat made it's presence known. His candle was low, but he began to smell a rotten smell, natural gas. His fear returning at the prospect of being blown up or burned alive, he blew out his candle and started to dig again. This time, in his panic, he was shocked to find that he seemed to swim through the stone as if it was a viscous liquid. Exploding from the ground he breathed the cold air of the borderlands and felt his relief turn to terror. He was a channeler.
Borderlanders know enough about the power and deal with the White Tower enough to know a bit more about it than an average Midlander farmer. Bataar knew what he was. Returning to his hovel only to grab his meager belongings, he fled to the wilderness.
Living off the land and stopping in villages for only a day or two at a time. Bataar over the course of a year encountered what he had taken to ground to avoid. Incursions of Trollocs. He hid when he could, fought small parties with his sword, but several times, his fear had overtaken him and he had fought them with the power. Working to discipline his mind, over the course of that year in the wild, he learned to face his fears, overcoming his block and learning to channel at command. Now more than Trollocs, he feared death at the hands of Red sisters, or really any civilized nation who discovered his secret. He found himself in Fal Dara now, rumor was that the dragon was on the march. As far as Bataar was concerned that was the only place he could be safe from all but his own encroaching madness.
