The Bard was born to a working class family in a small country village one year after the new millennium had turned. His parents, Edmund and Adelaide, had married two years earlier, while Edmund was suffering from an ailment that was spreading throughout the globe like a plague. Many believed this "plague" was the means to the end of the world because of the new millennium approaching, but as it turns out, everyone just had a touch of the flu. Later doctors would refer to this flu as The Millennium Virus.
The Bard was a good baby, but had an unusual infatuation with rattles. Because of this, he developed quite the knack of conning other babies out of their rattles. "It was amazing," his mother would say. "Every week he would have upwards of twenty rattles in his possession." He spent his formative years attending school and working on his parents' grub farm, neither of which seemed to inspire him, although it did inspire townsfolk to stay downwind.
A turning point in the Bard's life was his first exposure to live music at age 12. While on an errand to fetch a bucket of lard for the week's meals, he was lured to the town pub by the melodic sounds of plucked strings. He watched wide-eyed through the pub window for a good hour before a barmaid yelled, "Get away from my dressing room window, boy!" He then moved down to the window the music was coming from and listened with rapt attention while the band played to an appreciative audience. Periodically patrons would toss coins into a worn hat at the foot of the stage and the Bard couldn't help but notice that the lute player's hands were actually clean, unlike his which were the color of grub excrement. That alone was incentive enough for the Bard to become a musician. As the band stopped playing to enjoy a round of ale, the Bard's eyes locked on the beautiful Isabel, the daughter of a nearby farmed, who was now the bar's serving wench. It was at this very moment the Bard understood his true calling, prompting him to run back to the window of the barmaid's dressing room. The very next day a black-eyed Bard rummaged through some wood scraps and constructed a crude, one-stringed instrument and learned to play the big hit of the time, It's Bad Luck To Be You. To earn money and to gain a musical education, he performed off jobs at the pub, suck as killing rats in the cellar (or the barmaid's dressing room), and made friends with the traveling musicians who filled its stage.
Near the conclusion of his schooling the Bard felt he had no choice but to leave school and his village. This was of course because the school and the village asked him to leave. It seems the Bard had made a pass at every lassie in town and actually was in the process of starting the second pass. Also, his past caught up with him when classmates in his Warlocks & Witches class (the first year the class went co-ed) conjured up a spell to release blocked childhood memories. One by one, many of the Bard's classmates began remembering being conned out of their rattles when they were small children. The Bard barely escaped with his own rattles that day.
On the outside the Bard's parents were bitterly disappointed in their son, but deep down, well...they were bitterly disappointed in their son. "I don't know what is worse," his father complained, "that he is so incompetent that he can't even take over the family grub farm or the sounds that come out of that blasted lute of his!" His first journey took him to a neighboring village where he became an apprentice to a barrel maker, enabling him to earn some money to pursue his music career at night. While making barrels his mind drifted off to throughts of music making and women, or was that music and woman-making? At any rate, his lack of focus at work resulted in some shoddy barrel making which would soon come back to haunt him. His nights were filled with visits to the town pub, plying his preferred trade of music for a flagon of ale and hopefully the favor of any lasses who might be within earshot.
His tenure as a barrel maker came to an abrupt end when his barrel mentor Henry, the proprietor of The Barrel Barn, ran him out of town for producing barrels that shattered with a mere whack of a sword. "A key won't even be safe in these things!" Henry screamed while chasing the Bard down the street with sword drawn. Out of money and out of women, the Bard officially entered his career as a roaming musician and adventurer by wandering the land, every day looking for a way to secure a bed and a plate of food. His progress took him northward hoping to find new pawns in new towns, those unfamiliar with his trickery of seperating them from their silver. With all the Bard's wits and all the Bard's talents, he was able to get by. He couldn't eat, and had to sleep on the ground, but he got by. Just when he was about to give up and head back to the grub farm, fate stepped in...or actually kind of slithered in.
During an extermination session, to the Bard's amazement, a rat spoke to him in an elegant English tongue and pleaded for his life. He wasn't really amazed that the rat was speaking to him, but that it was speaking to him after only two mugs of ale. The rat eloquently told his story-he had been a talented bard himself once, a refined gentleman actually and a bit of a gold-digger, when one of his conquests, a distruntled mistress, turned out to be a sorceress. She exacted her revenge by relegating him to a life as a rat-a permanent reminder of his true nature. After the Bard heard this, he only had one question. "Her name wasn't Sheila, was it?" After being relieved his previous night's conquest wasn't the same woman, he then questioned the speaking rat as to why he should spare his life. The rat explained that he could teach the Bard a tune that, when played, would magically summon him out of midair, a talent he once had when in human form. He went on to explain that only the most talented musicians can work such magic, and he had witnessed the Bard's talented play. "Who knows," he said to the Bard, "You may be able to use me as a ruse to earn a few coins." With the thought of riches rushing to the Bard's head, a beautiful partnership was born between the rat...and the little rodent creature. The Bard had one simple request of his new friend the talkative rat: speak again, and he'd die before he could finish the sentence. "I agre..." responded the rat.
The Bard continued his trek through the countryside, using his now-silent rat to disturb patrons at local taverns and pubs and subsequently dissipating him for a modest reward. Searching for new towns to ply his trade took the Bard across the sea northward to the Orcades Islands, a mystical land storied for its unusual creatures and potent brew. After touring several settlements the Bard found himself in the village of Houtin, outside the local watering hole The Drunken Rat, and that is where our story begins.

Greens: Coin and Cleavage.
Reds: Save the World. (And all other stuff.)