The name Mereholm has earned Mycroft the right to wear a beard, and little else. The second son of a noble family whose significance has diminished into nothingness, his surname feels more like an epithet than a source of pride. When Mycroft was still a baby his family was unable to support it's sagging swamp-bound estate and were forced to abandon it. to live on the kindness of strangers in Oppara.
Eventually his father's politely horrified political allies arranged for him to serve as part of a trade mission in Absalom. There the family has remained. In an attempt to still appear to be nobility the Miremanor family has lived far beyond its means, and its finances have become a house of cards cobbled together from loans, political favors and arranged marriages with Mycroft's only sister married off to a wealth, but common merchant.
Stung from and early age by his family's fall from grace Mycroft spent hours leafing through books throughout his teens, pursing rumors of Azlanti blood in the family. He was forced to reluctantly conclude those rumors were wishful thinking, but in the process he became a very well learned young man.
Eventually the house of cards came down. The debt collectors could not be fended off any longer, and it became clear that both his father and older brother were involved in significant financial malfeasance. Absalom had run out of patience with the shifty destitute Mereholms. Mycroft's father was arrested and placed in the custody of the Taldan diplomatic mission, where upon he was shipped off to a distant post in the Mwangi expanse. His brother evaded arrest and slipped off into the night. His penniless mother was taken in by his sister's family and he was left with nothing but the few books he could stuff into a pack before his family's assets were seized.
