Bertom was orphaned at a very young age, and grew up on the streets, he has no memory of his parents or any of his family, he's not even sure if Bertom the name they gave him, or just what people had taken to calling him. He survived with the help of a group of thieves that took him under their wing, and of course insisted he contribute once they decided he was old enough.
In time the group disbanded suffering pressure from larger gangs thankfully by that time Bertom had learned enough to get by on his own. Growing up without a family he often wondered what they might have been like, and what could have happened to them. He took to fantasizing that they were some kind of freedom fighters that were captured or on the run, and unable to take care him. Bertom took quite an interest in rebel groups, especially the Silver Ravens that seemed to be so mysterious, he knew the chances his parents were actually in the organization were very slim, but that didn't seem to stop him.
Another popular fantasy was that his family were nobles, and he had somehow gotten separated from them and lost. He would pretend they were out living the high life, and that they were still out looking for him somewhere. He'd follow various noble families and especially the local celebrities seeing their perfect lives he couldn't help but envy them. However one certain celebrity threw the view of the perfect noble life right out the window with her performances. Her life highlighted in a much more disastrous light probably should have ruined Bertom's fantasy of the noble life, but instead somehow made her more relatable, he could see that it wasn't perfect anywhere. He started feeling it wasn't so black and white, that maybe she wasn't so different even being a noble, and wasn't so out of reach as he had always assumed all nobles were. He became obsessed with the girl following all her performances, and watching from afar, he took to stealing small trinkets as souvenirs of the performances, and tried to find ways to work his way closer to his idol.
