The youngest of twenty-three brothers and sisters, Lyssa was always overlooked and forgotten. She did not help matters in that regard for she learned at a young age the skills of coming and going unobserved. With twenty-two siblings, that was not an easy task.
She decided on her thirty-first birthday to set out on her own. It was weeks before her brothers and sisters even noticed she was gone. Fascinated all her life with tales of the city, she set out for Reme—the great port city to the north of her homeland. Lyssa took two things from her family background: her parents' (obvious) devotion to Freya, goddess of love and fertility; and her uncanny marksmanship with the crossbow, practiced whenever she could sneak away from chores (i.e., fairly often).
In the city of Reme, her first stop was the temple of Freya. Coming in the Autumn as she did, it was harvest-time back home and time for coming indoors and spending the long winters in close company, both for intimacy and, for select Freyans, martial training. Her lack of strength and stature were handicaps in the latter, though she continued to practice with her crossbow. In the former, though never a priestess, she was able to serve as a focus of ritual with Freya-worshippers of the smaller, fecund races.
In the Spring, it was time to move forth from the temple and go out into the world. She took the name Storm for herself to reflect the time of year she began her new life. With a small store of money earned in her temple duties, she was visiting the Starving Stirge, where she noticed several other individuals examining a posting on a wooden piller. After reading it she decided then and there that a life of adventure that would take her away from Reme was exactly the way to pursue her goddess' goals.
