orn in the year 2996 of the Third Age, Cynewulf has only the memories of infancy from his early life, scarcely-remembered stone walls and motifs. At the age of five, his family was brutally murdered by unknown raiders in a wave of attacks that struck the region during a festival which drew away the majority of guards at the homesteads. Left for dead, and scarred for life, the boy-child was recovered from the wreckage the following day as dawn came and the smoke from the burning homes was seen across the plains and hills of the ‘Mark.

A humble couple adopted Cynewulf, naming him and raising him as one of their own. His adopted father a jeweller, and his mother unable to bear children of her own, they came to be a very close family indeed, and the boy enjoyed a happy childhood, oblivious of his origin.

His youth was spent with a friend, one that became nothing short of a brother to him, not least because their collective parents and guardians were also as close as siblings. The father of Thengstan was a weaponsmith, who subsequently taught the trade to Cynewulf by way of apprenticeship, just as Thengstan learned the trade of the jeweller from Cynewulfs adopted father. Thengstan was inseparable from Cynewulf as they learned the way of the horselords together from their kin. Many long, balmy summer nights they ranged on horseback from one boyish adventure to another.

ne fateful day, however, the two boys watched Cynewulf’s adopted father work on jewellery when he let slip that he was not Cynewulf’s father by blood. What followed was a tumultuous reshaping of Cynewulf’s world that threatened to unhinge him and shake him loose from all that he had come to know and love. Immediately, Cynewulf seized upon the slip and challenged the man he had called father. Setting aside his tools, he disarmed Cynewulf’s ire masterfully and set him at peace, explaining what he could.

It was Thengstan that pursued the matter, unsatisfied with the placation of Cynewulf’s adopted father, he found in himself a questing nature that has not allowed him to rest since. Before long, he brought his suspicions to Cynewulf and they fought. Already young men, they were armed in the tradition of their people, and were a very real danger to one another, though Thengstan was not willing to harm his friend. Cynewulf, however, was possessed of a dark rage that surprised and disarmed Thengstan, he went too far, and the men have not spoken since.

hen called upon by the Rangers, the halls of Edoras brought together many of their young men to investigate dark tidings in the West. It was an easy decision to send the darkly brooding young Cynewulf as one of those to leave the halls and go into the West to answer the call. Cynewulf was deeply reluctant to leave his homeland, but with the dispute with Thengstan still fresh in his mind, it was only a matter of time before he would have to wander anyway, and so he agreed to go.

 light came into his life in Bree-land, and he found a love of ages. Nadryna Sweetblossom of Rohan was there, and in her Cynewulf found everything he needed to found purpose and meaning in his life. Making sense of his mysteries, she had trials of her own in her past. The two are now joined, though not yet in matrimony, but in a bond of love and of companionship rivalling that of any of the most hallowed weddings sung of in songs of legend. This joining is forged in countless battles at one another’s sides, bound by wounds and pain both of the flesh and of the heart, and sealed in quiet contemplation and gentle moments under the stars of many night skies and warming sun alike. Henceforth, the two confront all challenges that may come, aspiring to take Hope and Love before the very Dark Lord himself and to defy him to his face side-by-side or to die trying.