Image © Leonid Kozienko.


History:
Kane de Skellig was born the illegitimate son of a sailor and a dockside prostitute in the city of Killarney, Eire (present-day Ireland). His father disappeared from his life before he was even born; for him, Killarney was simply one more stop in a lifetime of seafaring, and he could not have known he had a son any more than the boy's mother could have remembered his name the next week.

Life was not easy as the son of a tramp, but it was not without its comforts; they had enough money to survive, and Aine, his mother, cared deeply for her boy. It is somewhat ironic that she died of a disease she caught from one of her clients, a horrible sickness rumored to be spreading in the European mainland. His mother dead, a young Kane was able to live off what little was left to him for only a short time before the streets became his home. It was there that he learned to survive at all costs, and to take what he could. The other orphans rejected him at first; in their eyes he had been a spoiled brat before being cast out. Soon enough, though, they learned that he was quicker-witted than any of the rest of them, and he had a penchant for theft that made the rest of them look like fumbling old grandmothers; in truth, though, they never understood his abilities, nor did he offer to teach them. Nevertheless a small circle began to associate with him, and it gradually grew as he did. By the time the boy was ten there were whispers in the streets of Killarney of a group of savage children that had learned to strike down even the halest men if they would but stray foolishly into the shadows and alleys of the city.

But there came a day that Kane simply disappeared from the city of Killarney; some said he had been killed. The boys he had been with on that fateful night knew nothing, and they assumed the same. The truth was, though, Kane had finally chosen the wrong person to attack - a Wizard going about his business. That man, Corcoran, had recognized something in the boy that nobody else ever had; he had magic. His compatriots Obliviated into confusion, the boy went, albeit unwillingly, with his captor. From that day on, Kane became a Wizard's apprentice.