Living life without friends and family may seem a lonely existence, but not so for Sigmar Darastrix. Sigmar can't remember ever feeling lonely, despite longing for such a state. After all, one's never alone when you hear voices in your head.
Sigmar grew up in New Stetven, capital of Brevoy and former seat of power for House Rogarvia and their dragon servitors. Or so he assumes. The young man is only twenty, yet has no recollection of roughly half his life. From what he can gather he was dropped off at the orphanage some ten years ago in an odd state. His caretakers described him as delirious and assumed him... 'simple'. By his pampered soft skin and round well-fed cheeks, they judged him some nobleman's bastard dumped at their doorstep to avoid any public embarrassment. Still, the boy was awfully old for that. Perhaps his mental imbalance had only just come to light and had proven too shameful for his parents?
Cerebral failings aside, Sigmar grew up well enough, reaching six feet before his sixteenth birthday. The orphanage could have made use of someone with his frame, but, frankly, the caretakers wanted him gone as soon as possible. The young man was clearly not right in the head. Not only did Sigmar talk to himself incessantly, he was prone to violence. Sigmar feels great shame thinking back to those days now, despite acknowledging that his boyhood self could hardly help himself. What was a boy to do against a foreign presence inside his head screaming at him to harm others? Booted from the orphanage, the teenage Sigmar tried to stay afloat via menial jobs; he had stopped talking to himself (or rather to the thing inside himself), and was older and more disciplined. He didn't want to listen to the voice telling him to hurt people. That was evil and he wasn't evil. He didn't want to be evil.
But the more he defied it, the louder the voice grew. There were days when he would wander about practically deaf, unable to hear anything other than the presence screaming for bloody murder. And the only way it abated was by giving in. Those were dark days. Days nearly ended by his own hand. Over the years Sigmar adopted a gruff demeanor, as might be expected for one so disturbed. He shunned others out of fear, fearing that someone might learn of his madness and being equally scared that he could someday hurt someone he truly cared for. Sigmar eventually found work as a mercenary. It was not a vocation he took any pleasure in, but he had the strength for it, and it allowed him plenty of opportunity to calm the voice. Thankfully, all it demanded was violence; it did not care who Sigmar mowed down with his sword. This at least allowed him to attempt to be a sort of ethical mercenary. A ludicrous idea, yes, but he tries to avoid any job pitting him against anyone who doesn't deserve a good thrashing.
Sigmar is a troubled man, and more worryingly still is that he's recently started giving in to the voice in combat, entering a sort of berserker rage at times. Now he finds himself on a bandit clearing mission to the Stolen Lands, secretly happy to be away from civilized lands where he could hurt someone innocent. Surrounding himself with brigands and monsters is, somewhat ironically, the far safer option.
