Mom used to joke I had rust in my blood. At least I think she was joking, she might just have been talking about how the air in the family workshop wasn't filtered very well. She worked as a scavenger, picking bits and pieces out of the desert whenever there had been a fight involving the Coalition or the bandit groups, and selling on the good bits. As for Dad....well, never knew who he was. From what Ma says, I don't think I missed out on much.

Though maybe he did leave me something, since as I grew up and helped Mum on her salvage trips, I used to swear I could hear the machines whispering to me, suggesting clever things I could make them do. And when I finally made my first breakthrough and gave the guard dog a collar that turned him invisible, I realised I was onto something good.

Of course, magical talent is a mixed blessing when you live near Coalition territory, and after a way too close call with a Dog Pack, I came home to find a sharply dressed woman with two borged-up bodyguards waiting for me at home. She gave me a pep talk about how talents like mine shouldn't go to waste, and how she was prepared to offer me a job to support my family--and if I didn't want it, she'd be more than happy to simply leave me be, to avoid the Coalition on my own merits. And that was how I ended up joining the Black Market as a arcane engineer and courier.

It wasn't too bad. Sure paid well, and if I'm honest, I loved the thrill. The work took me all over the place--did some runs up to Tolkeen, Stormspire, even the City of Brass one time. Dealt with more shadowy guys in cloaks than I can count, had an affair with my overseer Dryden, outran an angry Simvan tribe, got hit on by a Lizard Mage....yeah, it was all going so well, right up to the point where I ended up helping oversee a deal with yet another "mystery client". Turned out my bosses were dealing with the Splugorth, and they were dealing in children. Of all the times to grow a conscience, that was probably the worst.

It was....a mess. Long story short, I ended up shooting Dryden (we've all had bad breakups, right?), making a whole lot of enemies, wasting a whole lot of money, and needing to relocate real fast. I ended up as far away as I could get, over in Texas. But....turns out that's not far enough to stay out of trouble, and when you're supporting two of the kids because you couldn't find a home for them, maybe you've just got to do something about it. And since I'm not that good at being a hero, I decided I'd just hook up with this Tomorrow Legion lot, see if they could give me some pointers.