1019 AC Background
An old friend of the Dmitrov family, the Master Wizard Admonar the Great and Powerful sent word across the land that he would take apprentices to train in his tower in Specularum. Relatively young for a Master Wizard, Admonar achieved such mastery travelling the world and seeking out knowledge from all magic users he came into contact with. He hopes to instill this approach into all his students. Admonar values loyalty, trust and the importance of coin. Tall with an intimidating face, he gives the air of a powerful patrician and is welcomed into the nobility by the Dmitrov family.
Yakov is a weak looking thing by comparison. Average height but underweight, he would have been bullied if he grew up on the streets. A constant disappointment to his father for not growing up to be a mighty cleric, Yakov preferred to keep out of the training courtyard and instead kept his nose in books in the vast Dmitrov library. Despite his tireless work ethic for book learning, he is not a gifted scholar and manages to get by more on innate luck and natural charisma. Being not blessed with good looks, Yakov developed more of a silver tongue to survive the rigours of magic training.
Yakov knew he had to find his own way in the world feeling ostracised by his family and unlikely to inherit any land from the Dmitrov holdings. As the youngest son of an offshoot of the Dmitrov line, Yakov is very far down the line of succession. Usually this would mean he would become a Fighter or Cleric and make the family proud but he always shied away from combat as a child. Yakov has three older brothers (Ivan - tall strong Fighter deserving of his father's name, Savu - broad-shouldered Cleric always looking for a bar wench to warm his bed, Vlad - Fighter dumb as a bag of doorknobs), all strapping young men off making Ivan the first, their father, proud. Each brother is creating tales of valour in other adventuring parties across the land. Yakov didn't spend much time with his brothers growing up and always thought of them as dumb brutes constantly fighting and praying, praying and fighting.
Yakov does not know this but his father pulled a large number of strings to get him the apprenticeship under Admonar. He thinks that all he has done has been achieved by himself and might not have accepted the position if he knew its origin, due to his fraught relationship with his father.
Yakov had an equally difficult relationship with his mother Elena who, despite loving him very much, always seemed to take his father's side in disagreements. Kind, compassionate yet timid, Elena always tried to make peace between Yakov and Ivan but never quite managed it before Yakov left. Always afraid of upsetting her husband, Elena is from a minor house in Karameikos, married off to further that houses' aims of trade agreements.
Yakov grew up following the tenets of law and order, going to the family's altar daily to pray. However, Yakov found a different way in the books in Admonar's library and in his teachings. Tales of societies in forests living in harmony with nature and villages thriving without noble rule made Yakov yearn for more change to the system. The teachings that had helped Yakov understand the world growing up were now more of a prison of the mind helping to keep the status quo (hence why he is more Neutral than Lawful). Yakov's long term desire is to achieve great power so that he can bring about this change with his own holding in Karameikos.
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