Dooley's Pre-Campaign History

This is a history, first of my Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Character, then of the adventures and misadventures of her adventuring group, the Heroes of Happenstance, as seen through her eyes. Glad to have you visiting.

What do I say about my past? That very much depends on who and what is doing the asking.
I am K'hal A'ahred of the People. The name means "black eyes," for so mine are. Do not trouble yourself if you cannot wrap your tongue around it; few can. Most call me Dooley, which I am told means "dark fighter" in a tongue I cannot speak. It suits me, for my hair is a dark red-brown, my eyes I have said are black, and black is the color of my school--the color I wear.
My homeland is the kingdom of Caeroch. It was a beautiful place, once. I grew up with the People, roaming yearly through a forest near Caeroch's boarders. When the First Choosing came, I became a child-hunter. I was good at what I did, though I doubt I would be so anymore, if it were for me to do. Which it is not.
When I was nine, I awoke one day high in a tree, where I had chosen to sleep. I looked down on a slaughter. The People were under attack by creatures almost human, but not quite. It was over before it began. I could do nothing. When the creatures left, there was no one still alive. I wandered the forest for days, alone and frightened. I feared to sleep, or the creatures might come back for me. When I finally did, I was so exhausted that I slept soundly, and didn't wake even when a horse stopped very near the bush in which I had hidden.
A man had picked me out of the bush and was holding me tight before I was awake enough to protest. He spoke in a strange tongue, and patted my hair, and gave me some water. When I looked up, I saw that he was one of a group of people, all dressed like him. The bodies of deer were tied to pack horses. A hunting party, then. This, at least, I knew. The man kept talking to me, questions in his voice, but I did not know the words. He motioned to putting me up on his horse. He wanted me to go back with them. I liked this man, and perhaps with these hunters I could learn enough to avenge the People, I thought. So I let him lift me there, and he climbed up behind me, and we rode into the first town I'd ever seen.
The group I was with came to hunt for their school, where fighters are trained. They took me back and made me one of them. I learned skill with weapons quickly. Language . . . not so quickly. Civilization, as they call it, took longer still. I learned that the creatures I described, those that had killed my people, were undead: unnatural things that should lie in the ground, their souls gone to the realm of the Old Ones. They did not. I learned also that even those last of the People had not gone to the place where their parents waited. I had been very lucky those who had once been my kin had not killed me in he days I wandered.
When I was fourteen, I took my first permanent position. I became the bodyguard to a mage called SkyFire. I served her, and served her well, for three years. Then one day, she called me to her. She said that there was another place, a place very far from here, that could only be reached by magic, with people in it who would soon need help. Help I could give them. She said she could get another bodyguard from the school for the time I was gone, but she knew me and trusted me. She asked me if I would go. I said yes. So she sent me, without delay.