When he was just a small dwarfling, a band of marauding Orcs attacked Khalei’s family’s convoy on a journey from Ghomal, the Blacklock capital city, to the Iron Hills where they were going to settle. The Orcs slaughtered everyone, but not before Khalei’s mother, as a last act of love, pushed the dwarf toddler into a barrel, hid him in the back of one of the wagons, and told him to stay quiet and out of sight. Khalei still has the mental scars from hearing the screams of his family, the screeches of the Orcs and the sound of everything his family had owned being ransacked and torched alight, the smell of smoke filling his nose. He must have blacked out due to his fear, but when he came around, he was being pulled out of his hiding place not by an Orc, but by a dwarf. 

Akhsan Boljazi, a famed Stonefoot warrior residing in the Ironfist Halls, and his company of goat wainriders who were escorting a party of miners on route to the Iron Hills themselves, had come across the ruins of the family’s camp. Cradling the dwarfling to him, he took him from the scene, and vowed to shelter and raise the child as his heir. Khalei remembers little of living in Ghomal with his Blacklock mother and Firebeard father, but from then on he was part of life in the Ironfist Halls of Nazbukhrin, the largest and grandest mansions of the dwarves of the East. His other father, Lord Âr, met Akhsan during the founding of Erebor, where Âr had been the head of the Iron Hills cavalry. The pair took the finding of this small dwarf as a sign from Mahal and despite the horrors of his early years, Khalei’s subsequent childhood was comfortable, if strict. 

He learned to race down the wide halls on goats from a young age, and was instructed in the art of the blade, of shooting, hunting, and fighting. A quiet dwarf lad, he often felt that he had a lot to live up to with two illustrious parents who had many a great deed to their name. During his adolescence, he took himself to Ghomal to explore his ancestral roots and to study battlefield surgery in the capital of the Blacklock dwarves, who are famed for their medicinal knowledge. However, he returned to Nazbukhrin when Akhsan was gravely injured during a riding accident. That was the second time in his life that Khalei felt a deep, visceral fear - he had gone through losing his parents once, and the thought of Akhsan now dying was too much to bear. However, Akhsan recovered, and Khalei resumed his station as a goat-chariot rider in the mounted regiment of Nazbukrhin, throwing everything he had into becoming a warrior, to spite the Orcs that tried to destroy him and to spite the dwarves who said he would never live up to be his fathers’ son. 

Khalei’s confidence has always been his Achilles heel, and something which has held him back in the regiment. Despite this, he’s made fast friends, including Varhi, who is older than he is, and is protective of Khalei as his shield-brother. Khalei loves to adventure and to spend time discovering the hidden places of Nazbukrhin - its depths, its channels and waterways, its great heights with wild mountain animals roaming the craggy faces. He draws what he sees there: wild plants, the phases of the moon and the strange stars, and copies down passages from books he’s managed to sneak from Nazbukhrin’s library from under the noses of the guards. Despite his love of reading and stories, he’s not sure he’s made for scholarship any more than he’s made to be a warrior. In Ghomal, much to Akhsan’s hesitance and Lord Âr’s scepticism, he dabbled in a little dwarven magic, boarding with a dwarf named Axil, a Stiffbeard rune-diviner who was also in the employ of the same hospital as Khalei. Akhsan believes that any form of magic is off-limits until Khalei is older (“how much older?” is the question which never seems to be answered) and Âr would have prefered to keep any sort of Eastern ‘nonsense’ out of his household - being a little scared of it and much preferring to settle matters with an axe blow. 

On a late Spring morning, the next phase of Khalei’s life was decided for him, as much of his life was. Fearing for their son’s lack of focus, Âr told Khalei that he was coming westward with him to Ered Luin and to join the regiment of Durin’s Folk as a soldier. A chance to prove himself, to make new allies, and to live on his own, with Âr spending two summers there before returning to Nazbukhrin. Akhsan was on a diplomatic assignment to Khand, but he had given his son his blessing, and said that he would try to visit, but that his new life would do him good. 

Khalei landed in Ered Luin and has tried to settle into life in the regiment. Secretly, he yearns to follow his parents’ advice - to make them proud of him, to progress through the ranks, and to hone his skills as a fighter, whether he becomes a leader or not. He also hopes the new, strange mix of dwarves this side of the Sea of Rhun will introduce him not only to new comrades, but perhaps, just perhaps, a future husband. Unlucky in love (with one failed relationship with a Firebeard dwarf named Bjar under his belt - which ended up with one of his fathers shearing the miscreant’s beard from his face), he is aware that in only a few years he is expected to be married and to find his own way - maybe having to guide a child of his own through the dangerous world. However, for now he is content to get out on some new adventures, explore the world, and try not to get caught up in anything he can’t handle...