Character Biography
General Information:
Full name: Jeyid al’Donovan
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Preferred Pronouns: He/Him
Nationality: Arafellin and Andoran
Place of Birth: Shol Arbela
Current Residence: Baerlon
Clan: None currently
Title: None currently
Marital Status: Never married
Siblings: Calum (deceased), Zal (30), Nelia (27)
Children: None
Physical Description:
The man standing before you has short, tousled brown hair and bright, emerald-green eyes. He tosses a roguish grin in your direction while idly fidgeting with a dagger, and he has an air of adventure about him.
Background:
Jeyid’s father, Laerim, was a gemstone miner and traveling merchant from Watch Hill in the Two Rivers. As an intrepid adventurer and entrepreneur, Laerim left the Two Rivers and made the lengthy trek up to Arafel, known for its gemstone mining, especially firedrops. There he met Jeyid’s mother, Morena, an Arafellin woman from Shol Arbela. Jeyid was their secondborn son and second oldest of four children, including his older brother Calum, his younger brother Zal, and his younger sister Nelia. Jeyid spent a large part of his childhood in the crucible that is the Borderlands.
When Jeyid was still a boy, his father and older brother were killed in a Trolloc raid on their village where they lived in the outskirts of Shol Arbela, the City of Ten Thousand Bells. As a native Borderlander, Morena was no stranger to death, yet these traumatic losses left a dark mark on her spirits, making her bitter and despondent. It was during this time that Jeyid learned to raise his mother’s spirits by creating grand, imaginative stories or uplifting songs to distract her from her grief.
As Jeyid grew, his mother decided to honor her late husband by moving their family south back to Andor. They settled in Baerlon, where she established a new life as a farmer. When Jeyid came of age, he longed for adventure and a sense of purpose beyond being a simple famer, and he enlisted in the Queen’s Guard. His younger brother became a miner, while his sister took on a role assisting with their farm.
Jeyid served for over 12 years with the Queen’s Guard in service to Queen Morgase and House Trakand, eventually advancing to the officer rank of Bannerman. Shortly after becoming an officer, however, he received an urgent letter from his sister Nelia informing him that his mother had been injured during a Darkfriend raid on Baerlon, and that she was stubbornly refusing to accept Healing from any Aes Sedai traveling through the area. Overcome by a sense of duty to his family as the oldest surviving son, Jeyid made the difficult decision to resign from the Queen’s Guard and retired from his duties as a soldier.
While caring for his mother as she recovered from her serious wounds, Jeyid rediscovered a joy of storytelling. His mother also gave him a family heirloom from his late father, a flute made of silver and gold, and told him about his father’s love of music, including stories about how he used to play songs at inns while they were traveling. Jeyid felt inspired by these stories, and finding himself with idle time and no current employment, he began to teach himself how to play the instrument, which helped him to feel closer to his father than ever before.
Jeyid found himself in an unusual position, without employment or contracts, and he began to feel a growing sense of wanderlust. As his mother gradually recovered, she encouraged him to consider a different lifestyle, to pursue a latent dream that had begun to awake in him: a desire to bring joy to others through song and story.