Dimitri was born the pure Human child of two Dhampirs, brother and sister in the service of their vampire father. As punishment for giving birth to a normal human, his parents were branded as vampires and summarily dropped off bound and gagged in front of the town hall building of a clan of vampire hunters. He almost did the same to Dimitri, when he noticed that Dimitri, even at a young age, had managed to take control of one of the skeletal horses that were pulling the vampire's carriage. Realizing that such a necromancer would be a handy secret weapon against his rivals in the region, he set about training the boy in the arts of unlife.
Thus began Dimitri's education at the hands of a 700 year old being: he learned to read by age 4, and learned to control his ability to reanimate dead flesh by age 7.
For his part, Dimitri viewed the vampire, who referred to himself as Lord Myang, as his father. The vampire was the only person that Dimitri ever saw.
Thus went their existence until about two years ago, when at the ripe old age of 16 Dimitri entered his father's library to look for a book and ran across his father's journals (his father had been fastidious about documenting everything). His father was away from the castle, and Dimitri had grown bored of rereading Tobin's Spirit Guide. He desired something not related to the undead to read.
Intrigued, and against his father's specific instructions, Dimitri pulled down the first volume and began reading. After approximately two days of nonstop reading later, Dimitri reached the story of his parents, and learned of their fate. He read, in black and white, his father's own opinion of him: that he was nothing but a weapon to be wielded against his enemies.
And so it was that Dimitri went to the road and lured a small family with a boy about his size into an ambush by his undead. once the family was dead, he animated his parents and marked the boy in the manner the aforementioned clan of vampire hunters would mark a Human servant of vampires, staged the body in his own room, and then set the castle ablaze.
He then picked a direction at random and set off on a skeletal horse, commanding it to ride and not stop, then promptly cried himself to sleep.
Finally waking, he had no idea where he was, but he saw that there was a trade village near by. Dismissing his horse, he walked his way into town and tried to find something to eat.
Entering the village, he was met by a single man, a courier who knew him by name and appearance. The man explained that he had a message from a school for people who have gifts like his. He then handed him a sealed dark blue envelope which contained both a coin and a letter of recommendation.
It was at the school that Dimitri discovered just how limited his education was: he was an expert when it came to knowledge of undead, but he did not understand commerce at all, for example.