Ederun's father, Dolgrin, was from the city of Rolgrimmdur in the Five Kings Mountains, the second son of the head of the Ironbeard Clan, whose ancestors are said to have discovered the spell that bears their name. Seeking to expand his clan's name and create a new branch of the family legacy for his own children to inherit, Dolgrin, along with his younger brother Rogar, purchased a portion of the military academy and mercenary company he had been a part of all his life from his father and moved to the Sky Citadel of Janderhoff in distant, conflict-ridden Varisia. While Janderhoff was very different from Rolgrimmdur, Dolgrin and Rogar were able to leverage the famed military prowess of their home city, their clan's pedigree, and the skill of the mercenaries they brought with them to make a place for themselves in the Sky Citadel, building a successful military academy that specialized in training existing units, called Ironbeard Academy, and bolstering their own mercenary company's ranks by offering free training and outfitting in exchange for three years of service with the Ironbeard Company.
While his brother Rogar left after a few years, joining up with a group of mercenaries headed to Lastwall, Dolgrin remained dedicated to his venture, building the business and his reputation over the course of a decade. It was then that his father, who had thought the idea was a passing fancy at first, began to send messages demanding that he return home. Dolgrin firmly but politely refused every time, even when his father informed him that he had arranged a marriage with the eldest daughter of the Granitebrow clan, famous warriors whose ancestors were reputed to have invented the dwarven boulder helm. When they sent the woman herself, Paldna Granitebrow, to try to convince him to return, both families were shocked when she chose to stay in Janderhoff and marry Dolgrin there. Paldna, a cleric of Torag, used her ties with the church to help expand the business she now ran alongside her husband, and a few years later their first child, Ederun Ironbeard, was born.
Ederun grew up among soldiers and mercenaries, inheriting stubborn determination, martial talent, and hard-headedness (figuratively from his father and literally from his mother) from both of his parents. He always loved when Uncle Rogar would come to visit, telling stories about fighting orcs in Belkzen, driving back demons near the Worldwound, and about the faithful of Gorum, the god of war whose faith he had taken up in Lastwall. Young Ederun's insistence upon mastering the ancestral weapon of his mother's clan lead to repeated blows to the head that some say may have contributed to his being somewhat thick of wit and tongue as well as of head, but none can deny that it was Uncle Rogar's stories of Gorum and his followers that inspired him to don spiked armor and pledge himself to Our Lord in Iron instead of the Father of Creation.
While his parents initially tried to direct Ederun down a more traditional path and discourage him from listening to his uncle, they eventually realized that it wasn't Uncle Rogar's influence, but rather the independent spirit that had lead both of them to defy the wishes of their families, that drove him to find his own way through the life they had given him, and so they gave him the freedom to make his own choices and go his own way. He grew up hearing the phrase "Everyone should be free to make their own choices, learn from their own mistakes, and reap the results of their own decisions," and he took it to heart early on and never looked back.
Ederun's mother passed the spark of divine magic on to her child, and that spark seemed to manifest early, as he would manifest a subtle glow when angered that seemed to steady his mind and help him focus during combat, and he would often seem to snatch success from the jaws of failure at the last second. When asked how he knew when to move, where to look, or what to do, he would often simply say "The armor told me," and walk away.
