The man now posing as Doctor Cornelius Fodd was in fact born under the name Christoph Derander. Born to a single mother in desperate poverty, and possessing a superhuman appetite even at an early age, life was hard on Christoph. It became even harder when his mother offered him up as sacrifice to a witch's coven, out of pure desperation. The experiments the witches performed on young Christoph were abominable, but they produced one positive result - the ability to shapeshift into a half-human, half-wolf hybrid, at will. This transformation, though...unpleasant to go through, awakened a fierce desire for independence in him. He planned his escape from the coven's clutches for months before setting his plan in action, but he still bears some of the scars from his escape, hidden now under his many layers of clothing. Wounded but free, and with the rage of the abandoned witches howling at his back, he set out into the world. He was determined to live on his own, but possessing no friends and fewer social skills, he was not successful in carving out any success for himself. He sank into the same poverty that afflicted his mother.
It was then that Cornelius Fodd, famous adventuring alchemist, happened to cross his path, while Christoph was sweeping a chimney for pennies. Seeing the man that so closely resembled him, obviously living a life of comfort and ease, made him seethe. He resolved to steal the Doctor's life, identity, and therefore success, lifting him out of the life of poverty and desperation he had always known. One thing the jobless man had plenty of was time - and he used it well, studying not only Doctor Fodd's mannerisms and body language, but also his profession, developing a keen interest in alchemy in the process. His teachers were hedge-witches that performed minor magic in back alleys, or what few books he could steal from Fodd's extensive library. When he felt he could slip into the other man's shoes well enough to fool even his family, he struck, sneaking into Fodd's house and murdering him in his sleep.
Everything went so well at first. He even maintained friendships with the men that Doctor Fodd had known, such as the old gnome, Sanji Hancock, and his young ward Chimp. It all came crashing down, however, when a winsome young alchemy student named Esmerelda Faribault furrowed her brow in consternation one day, and observed to him the newly changed color of his irises. No alchemy experiment caused permanent iris discoloration, she said. It was one of the base truisms of the craft...how had he done it? Derander cursed inwardly, and debated murdering the student, but decided that a hasty lie and a new life of adventuring was the better way to go. He's on his way to Crasmere to start a new life, using Fodd's resources and identity. He now goes so far as to think of himself as Cornelius Fodd, even when alone, nowadays.
