An ignominious birth heralded Surya into this world, resulting from the pairing of two separate and ultimately incompatible castes of people in the case of his moderately well-born Kunnic father with an indigenous citizen of his native island of Auehana. The consequences of this unlikely relationship followed the deeply troubled young man throughout the rest of his days, for it did everything it could to make the years of his youth the most uncomfortable times that he could remember--and could not forget.

Therefore his birth and the rearing into adulthood was a hard one without the creature comforts of his father's estates, nor the family he could have found in the tribes of the Aul-Pulah. His mother was too proud to accept the assistance and friendship of the latter and too much bad blood between these two castes made the former impossible, as even a city-bound woman of the Aul-Pulah was seen as untrustworthy and ultimately found to be dangerously unfamiliar with the courtesies and customs required for easy social mobility between the two. Caught between two worlds in a city that neither accepted nor offered a future for his kind, Surya's soul suffered deeply, perhaps even irrevocably.

His mother was an exceptionally adaptable woman, however, and so his opportunities were not entirely nil and neither did he lack for love in the little time they were able to spend together. Too little as it happened, and she certainly did not have enough time to raise a boy with all the proper virtues between the several odd-jobs that their lacking funds dictated that she must have.

This meant that the streets raised Surya more often than she ever could, and taught him things that she never would.

An explanation for much of his later life, as it came to be. He found that his abilities were rarely appreciated in honest work, and even then nobody could honestly say that they'd choose a life toiling in the fisheries or the tin mines until their backs were broken by the weight of the only jobs permitted for the lower classes. Thankfully enough for young Surya, there was much more latitude in the alleys he ruled and trampled around in like some western potentate and he did not lack for his own career opportunities.

He too turned to odd-jobs like his mother, though they were unburdened by the same moral conventions and thus did he find himself in the world that'd shape his career for decades to come, and where he discovered an unlikely companion and friend in Melua Ha'alal Piliqoa (stylized as Melu). A student of a seedy ship surgeon who did not think to blanch at paying the boys good coin in recovering fresh cadavers for practice underneath both his scalpel and that of the unsuspecting universities that he did business with from time to time.

There was no little element of squeamishness in digging up the occasional grave or fishing up bodies of the drowned in the multitude of the city's canals, be they man or woman or dog, but they soon got over the moral implications. It was pay they could not turn down, and neither would they have wanted to, for the surgeon was as generous as he was unprincipled.

All good things must come to an end, this was an inevitable fact that was no less true of Surya's prospering life in a city that once had rejected him but now seemed replete with chances that he was now able to seize, in lieu of being granted them on account of his birth. He never did explain the reason for his hasty departure and all the prodding in the world would not have made a difference in that. His lips were sealed and so was any explanation for the expat's flight from his island, but those that knew him once before did not miss his new demeanor--nor did they miss the pendant he now obsessively wore around his neck, to keep it close.

His adventures into the occult began around the same time; no mean coincidence. There was never an idle moment now as Surya travelled across foreign country, even borders and seas, learning everything he could about some select subjects. Sometimes he even dispensed some of this attained knowledge of trinkets and charms and curses, though not often, and never without monetary benefit.

He was at times even forced into conflict with the unknown behind what some of these trinkets were meant to keep away, and even if he was a fighter when need be, the reality was that the pen was mightier than the sword in many occasions--or the knowledge of the supernatural, of cryptids, and of whatever else slithered in the primordial ooze of a much more ancient time in history. There was one such teacher by the name of Jakub Corvinus, a man whose ability permitted him to learn a few of the tools and tricks of an obscure trade, mostly in the way of runes, but all information was helpful to this suddenly impassioned young man--and Surya listened attentively to everything, missing nothing.

Paths were meant to be crossed, and they never did intersect for long, much in the case of another one of his many teachers. He and Jakub parted on uncertain terms of where either path was destined, though at least Surya was certain that they would meet again.

Ayl-Kahlna Suryana Amajdyn yet wanders, escaping from and finding himself drawn by whatever was in his past. He scams and employs himself in every town he stumbles upon in equal measure: good advice, bad advice, an oracle of the fates in a boiling pot of oil, or a liar who'd tell you whatever you wanted to hear. He was ever the same man of two contrasts and will doubtless remain that way.