Kyrus Leafstrider has lived in Daggerford for his entire life, as has his family before him. His mother was a waitress working in the Lady Luck tavern for years, and she always regaled him with stories of his father’s many adventures. There was hardly a night when he wasn’t talked to sleep with the tale of the brave elven warrior who has traveled the lengths of the River Kingdoms slaying monsters and saving people from the dangers of the wilds. The image of the great hero became Kyrus’s idol and he swore to himself that he would be a great warrior one day. This dream helped him a great deal as he grew, for Kyrus always felt a bit… odd. Not simply due to his elven ancestry (he was hardly the only half-elf in town) but because something about being within the walls of the town seemed to grate on him. He was far more comfortable running through the fields and forests outside the town than he ever was within. Nature seemed to call to him, even when he was warm and safe in bed.
Unfortunately, his small family life was not to last. When he was thirteen, his mother fell ill with a particularly virulent disease that even the priests could not cure. Despite their efforts, she became worse and worse over the next weeks until finally she was on her death bed. Kyrus sat by his mother’s side through the night and she shared with him one last story. In truth, she and his father had not shared some whirlwind romance. Rather, he had been the result of a single night together when his father had passed through on his way to parts unknown. While he had indeed been an elf of some skill with both blade and magic, the tales she’d told had been meant to inspire him and give him a good father to look up to rather than adventures that he had shared with his lover. Kyrus forgave his mother for the deception and she passed away in peace.
Kyrus was taken in by Darryl Orcslayer, his mother’s employer and a close family friend. He spent the next half a decade raised beside Darryl’s son and the two lads became close friends, and remain so to this day. Yet, Kyrus seemed to drift even further from civilization. With his mother’s death, it seemed that his balance was lost. His nights were filled with dreams of running with beasts and hunting through the starry forests and he found himself spending more and more days learning the skills needed to be a woodsman from anyone who would teach him. In truth, it was the Church of Erastil that finally brought some semblance of balance to Kyrus’s wild heart. The idea of the successful hunt brought back to hearth and home seemed to resonate with the young man and helped him find a little ground to stand on when his spirit was called to the wild again.
As soon as he reached manhood, he found a small home of his own near the edge of town, though he rarely uses it. Instead, he’s often found sleeping out in the wood, tracking some animal or another to bring home to his foster brother’s tavern to add to the menu for the hungry adventurers to indulge in while the spend the night sharing the tales of their own adventures at the Lady Luck. When he has a particularly good haul, he sells the fresh kills to the other taverns in town, or even at a small stall in the market when he has some good venison to trade for good coin.
