Born to Erilla Rerra, a barmaid at an Osteriam tavern with a well-known side job as a wench, Gella Rerra should have just been another orphaned child of an elven whore who'd gambled with a passing criminal and lost. His mother ran off with his father's gang as soon as Gella could walk, leaving him in the care of the owner of the tavern she'd worked at. He wasn't treated as a child though, rather a servant. For the sins and choices of Erilla had left her son cleaning plates and mopping the floors seven days a week.

Gella was shown no love and given no rest. The old hag that ran the tavern worked him to the bone, and as days turned to years, the young Half-Elf felt his hatred and disgust for the world around him fester; when he wasn't working, he was being punished, as the hag would scold him for insubordination by maiming his hands, cutting the webbing between his fingers, pulling off his fingernails, carving deep cuts into his flesh. As for the city he lived in? He was stuck, with no escape and nothing to do but to watch criminals and gangsters drift through the little tavern that was his home, every time killing or stealing away more people, every time getting anything they ask for from the town out of fear.

Oddly enough, it wasn't with disdain or disgust that he viewed these criminals.

It was with jealousy, burning, and furious.

He wanted that. He wanted to be given what he asked for when he asked for it with no exceptions. The tavern hag be damned, this entire city be damned. The night finally came when he made the decision, when he was to be flogged before a public audience for missing a room of the tavern during his cleaning. Concealing a knife before meeting with the hag for his punishment, what was going to be a public dominance of Gerra became a public statement from him. He slit the bitch's throat and held her head high above him, bathing himself in her blood while proclaiming himself the new proprietor of Osteriam's most popular and profitable tavern, henceforth to be known as The Hag's Head.

The lawless nature of Osteriam meant that there was little punishment for Gella to be faced with for his transgression, and indeed he began to run the tavern himself. However, whereas it had once been a mere hangout for criminals, The Hag's Head became a base of operations in and of itself for criminal operations.

Every time the gangs and outlaws that would frequent the tavern showed up in The Hag's Head, Gella would offer them all a spot working for him. The idea of getting a cut of profits from the only tavern in a city full of drunken miners and crooks was a tempting offer, and many took Gella up on this. Those who refused? Gella had his new hires dispose of them as an 'initiation' process.

It was from this that the group known as The Jagged Emeralds was born. Operating out of The Hag's Head in Osteriam, the whole town suffocates under the black shadow they cast. A shadow born of a jealous whoreson's dream; Now, if Gella wanted it, Gella got it. If Gella liked you, good things happened to you. If Gella didn't like you, you'd better leave Osteriam in a hurry if you didn't want to end up like the lady he'd named the tavern after. You want drugs? Sex? Want somebody dead? It's all available for the right price, and The Jagged Emeralds make just as much money off of such vices as they do the fearful residents of Osteriam drinking from the glass.

Now, The Jagged Emeralds grow bored with their relatively small town. Under Gella's direction, they seek to expand to all corners of Arethil.