Pyckle arrived in the valley with little more than a pack on his back, a walking stick, and a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He told the locals he came from “somewhere far enough away that no one here could point to it on a map,” and that was about all he said on the matter. Whenever someone pressed for more, he’d shrug and say, “The past is a long road, friend. I’m just looking for where it ends.”

He grew up in a weathered stretch of coast where the sea and sky seemed to blur together, a place where ships came and went, and people measured time by tides, not calendars. His family were wanderers of a different sort: traveling merchants, storytellers, and sometimes scoundrels, who traded what they could and made friends where they were able. From them, Pyckle learned that survival meant adaptation, and that a sharp tongue could open doors faster than a strong arm.

He spent years drifting between towns and trade routes, working whatever odd jobs would keep him moving. He’s been a cook in a caravan camp, a courier through bandit country, and a fiddler in dim taverns where no one asked names. Each stop was temporary, each farewell easy, until one day it wasn’t.

Something happened back home. A mistake, a betrayal, a loss, Pyckle never says which. All anyone knows is that he stopped speaking of the coast, and when he looks out toward the horizon, his eyes harden like a man staring at ghosts. Now he travels inland, determined to start again somewhere his past can’t follow.