Growing up in the nomadic and matriarchal Lapvona tribe that traveled around the Bloody Crescent and other parts of Arethil, Vikesh was well aware of life and the absence of it. Lapvonas were performers, often stopping in cities to share in the arts and, more often than not, lingering in the foulest of places as they were slow to kick them out. Lapvonas were known for their talents in dance, song and acting, almost as much as they were known for being a bunch of inbred degenerates with little rules and little talent to control their impulses. How much of this is believed is dependent on where one is in Arethil, but no one can deny how much the Lapvonas look alike: all gray eyes, too-fair skin, too-white hair, round faces, thin red lips, and often bearing the same strange skin condition of rosacea.

Except for Vikesh. His deeper skin tone, dark hair, and unique facial features didn’t match his Lapvona brothers and sisters. His only tie to his mother were their matching gray eyes. It wasn’t uncommon in their nomadic group for women to lay with men from the places they visited. Vikesh learned as a young child when his mother would wrap him in thick, heavy blankets and tell him to be quiet to hide from the monsters that she was earning coin two feet away from him in their thread-bare tent.

As Vikesh grew older, he began to spend more time with the men, all of whom he called his brothers. He learned the necessities of life on the road, how to hunt and forage, how to dance and smile, and how to fight and protect. Every year that passed, Vikesh grew bigger and broader and was quick to put on muscle. He began winning fights against those older than him and it was decided when he was a man (at age thirteen) he would not lay with the others but instead protect them.

He had felt envious then, being denied the simple pleasure everyone else got, but he took the job seriously. Especially when the nomads began their trek back to the Bloody Crescent. It took them five years to get within Campania’s borders and the Lapvona were attacked when Vikesh was eighteen. When the Lapvona were attacked, there was little he could do against the raiders. He was but one man amongst his slothful sisters and lustful brothers. He watched the violation and murder of his brothers and sisters and prepared for his own demise.

It didn’t happen.

A regulator from Gild intervened, because the raiders were human, they were monsters. He had never met the fledging thralls of a vampire, and yes, they had looked weird and seemed too strong, but his mind had been scattered and Vikesh did not have the experience to piece things together. The regulator and the accompanying men with him quickly took care of the vampires— and those still alive and who had been bitten were taken care of as well. Vikesh was next to be inspected, and it was with this inspection that the regulator got a chance to look over him completely.

Vikesh was the spitting image of the regulator’s father, Bayer Ayaz Sahinal. There was a likeness in the men, although one was much older and lacked the luminous gray eyes. He took Vikesh with him, telling him he wasn’t a prisoner but not quite treating him like a brother either. With the Lapvona nomads essentially wiped out from Arethil, there was little for Vikesh to do. He was young. He had no experience. And he, too, was curious of his heritage. He had begun to call his savior, Emre, his brother. Emre would only offer a smile, neither confirming or denying.

Ayaz Sahinal was not pleased to see Vikesh. In fact, upon seeing him, he drew his sword (an axe by the dwarven blacksmith Celebrom Sarval was too good for Vikesh) and attempted to murder him. Whether it was because Vikesh was able to dodge the first blows or because Emre stepped in before things could get worse, Ayaz did halt his plan in getting rid of the young man that revealed a ignominious secret.

Vikesh was indeed Ayaz’s son. He had committed a grave sin: breaking marriage vows, paying a kujar prostitute and laying with her for a week, and somehow, the worse part of it all was how vehemently he fought against the illegal prostitution that was somehow found in Gild.

He would not see Vikesh as his son. He was a kujar, and from a nomadic tribe of inbreds known for their sinful ways.