Kern was no stranger to persecution or loneliness. As a half-elf he was ostracized by the other human children, and due to having drow blood he was never accepted by the elves. He never knew his father, and his childhood was spent in lonely nights at home while his mother worked to try and make enough money to support his studies in the hopes that someday he would rise above his destitute upbringing. He channeled his loneliness into a love for reading and collecting objects of historical and personal value.
One night when Kern was just a young man, his mother did not come home. She had never explicitly told him what she did to earn her coin or obtained the books and objects that he loved so much, but he had often suspected it was either prostitution or theft. The next morning he left their apartment in search of her. Although he never got a complete answer as to what had become of her, through the neighborhood rumours he came to the conclusion that she had been caught attempting to steal texts and heirlooms from a noble house and had been killed in the process.
Kern was filled with guilt that his love of objects and books had caused her death, as why else would she have been trying to steal those things? He swallowed his feelings and tried to find a way to support himself and continue his studies in her honor, but he was unable to find employment due to his drow-ish features, and he was reduced to menial tasks and crime just to survive.
Over time, his guilt started to become replaced by a hatred for Talingarde itself, as they were the ones that took his mother from him and ruined his life. If the nobles did not so zealously guard their texts she would have had no need to steal them. If the guardsmen were encouraged to be less heavy-handed when dealing with the lower classes she might still be alive. If the city was not ruled by religious bigots he would be able to earn an honest living despite his coloration and heritage. This hatred grew and began to affect his studies.
He spent all of his free time with the tokens that his mother had obtained for him, and he began to channel new abilities as he obsessed over several of them. A finger bone from one of the local nobles who had had his hand mauled in a duel and the ornamental dagger that she had obtained from one of the Mitran churches began to speak to him, and his studies began to concentrate on how he could use these objects and other similar ones to fix things.
His studies had taught him of Talingarde before the rise of the Darius family and the monotheistic Mitran government. He could only believe that if the Mitrans were brought down that the end of their rule would end the injustice that had permeated his life. His hatred continued to grow along with his knowledge of how to utilize differing implements in ways that might help him overthrow the Mitrans.
He eventually learned that underneath one of the Mitran temples there was a room where relics of other religions were kept, supposedly to "protect" the people from their "unholy" influence. Feeling that obtaining some of these items would increase his power to the point where he could start planning his campaign to bring them down, he enlisted some of his acquaintances from the streets to try and get into the temple, promising them any loot that was found other than the relics.
The night of the heist went extremely well. They got into the temple basement safely, found the hidden room, and loaded up their bags. Upon leaving they found a squad of guardsmen and priests waiting for them. The guards had been watching him over the last months, and they had been overheard in their planning. The heist had only been so easily completed as the damned Mitrans wanted to catch them red handed.
Kern's compatriots were separated from him. As the most intelligent of the group and the only one carrying heretical relics, he was easily identified as the planner and organizer of the group. The others were taken to be interrogated in the local jail as simple thugs and thieves, but Kern was informed that his plans of heresy and sedition were known...and now that they finally had caught him in an act of high theft he could finally be taken to Branderscar where he belonged.
