Kazallin is a man who has seen an inordinate amount of death in his time.
One night, the daughter of a pair of hard-working potters in a tiny village called Greenbough, in the northeast of County Varno, went for a walk in the moonlight. She did not return that night, nor the next. Her parents were frantic when she was found on the morning of the third day, lying by the side of the road in her slip, shivering in the cold, and unconscious. Bringing her home, they noticed two small wounds in her neck, and being natives of Ustalav, they immediately summoned the local priest. He, fortunately, found no signs of corruption or necrosis in the girl's body, but the parents kept a tight watch on her regardless. She woke the next day, and, though she had no memory of her missing time, she seemed well, only weak. The parents were overjoyed; until, two months later, it became clear that the girl was pregnant.
Kazallin's birth killed his birth mother, despite all the attentions of the local midwife and the priest. His grandparents, distraught over their daughter's death and enraged that they had been unable to save her, left the child to die on the hillside during the next moonless night. Fortunately, the village priest took pity on the boychild, and delivered him to a pair of peasants, Andro and Milla, who lived several miles away, on the outskirts of Redleaf. There Kazallin grew up, the couple's only child, tilling the land and enjoying his life, planning no further than taking over the family farm.
It soon became apparent, though, that Kazallin was no man. In addition to his practical immunity to normal disease, he realized in his mid-30's that he was not aging the way his peers in the village did. His hair showed no traces of gray, and his features were not beginning to sag or wrinkle. When his adopted parents died, five years later, Kazallin sold the farm and, seeking answers, made his way east into the River Kingdoms, eventually finding himself in Sevenarches. The priests in the church of Desna there were able to tell him what he was, to his horror; but they also offered him a way to reject his ancestry, to do some good in the world, and to strike a blow against the forces of evil that begat him. So it was that Kazallin began his training as an inquisitor of Desna.
It was during these later years that Kazallin first met Professor Lorrimor, who lectured at the temple for three days during the festival, and whom Kazallin found deeply impressive. Almost hero-worshiping the man, and with his formal training almost at an end, Kazallin decided to leave the temple and travel with Lorrimor. They traveled for a year and a half together before going their separate ways, Lorrimor back to Ustalav and Kazallin out into the wide world.
It has been many years since their travels together (Lorrimor was only just into middle age at the time), and though Kazallin is used to his human friends dying on him by now, the news has come as a blow. But he owes the Professor's memory much, so it is with heavy heart (and some foreboding) that he saddles his faithful horse and begins the trek back into his abandoned homeland...
