Alan was born and raised on the streets of the City of Gold and Shadows. An urchin orphan as far back he could remember; he carved out a living begging, palming trinkets, and running messages for whoever would pay him. As he grew older, it became more and more difficult to get out of trouble when he got caught. A stern word turned to a slap across the face or a punch in the gut. Without a patron, life for a pickpocket was hard in the City of Gold and Shadows. Although with each defeat he got a little bit quicker and a little bit more clever; it would not come soon enough before he ended up in a dungeon. For a time, he wasted away there with little food or drink for weeks though soon enough Alan's sentence was bought off and he was used for a noble's game.
The nobles took him bound and gagged outside the city proper and cut his leg bindings free and ungagged him. They ushered him on by hound and flintlock. Starvation was no stranger to Alan however long he spent in the dungeons, his body did not fail him in his flight. By a stroke of luck, he backed into some brush to hide and fell into a hollowed out knoll within a tree. Within this secret place, he found a crude shrine to the goddess Xan-Yae. He did not know at that time of her existence nor the proper praises that should be given. Alan fell to his knees before the shrine and sobbed like he hadn't since he was a child. The hard life of a homeless child had long since robbed him of his tears, but the sheer exhilarating relief and gratitude he felt at this moment making his heart pound.
He waited in that place until hunger came like the rapacious beast it was. Though it took some time, he arrived back in the city a much different man than he was before. In time, he regained enough confidence to steal again, but right before he could palm an expensive looking vial of alchemical origin, a heavy hand dropped onto his shoulder. The elderly patron of the Alchemy Shop stared at him with pitying eyes and did not turn him into the guards. Instead he put him to work, taking him in as his own. In time, Alan learned the man's craft...or atleast a rudimentary grasp of it. Benjamin Tanneth had worked his craft for the greater portion of his life in indentured servitude for the Lord Harkniss. At one time he had a wife, but she passed a number of years prior. His wife had been ill, but the Lord's family demanded she work through the pain until eventually her body could no longer keep up and she passed in the night.
Bitter though he may be, Mr.Tanneth never gave up. He desperately held onto the shop he built and the memories it held with his wife. In the years, Alan spent with the old Alchemist, he discovered the lord was essentially robbing all hopes of profit from the old man and never intended to release the man from his contract. Alan was enraged and argued with Benjamin to act against the noble, but the old man begged him not to do anything rash and forbade him from interfering. And so Alan bit his lip and did everything he could to help Mr.Tanneth around the shop to ease the man's burden.
Eventually a day came where the aging alchemist did not wake in the morning. When the noble's collectors came, they found the shop aflame. That same day, John Tanneth's narrowed eyes stared down a cornered Thieves' Guild associate and demanded to join by crossbow point. A cold flame burned in his heart. Alan survived for it's own sake. Living life day to day without a care for the next. John would not allow himself to die until the debt was settled. Coin by coin and life by life.
