Vexatious Rein is the youngest scion of the famous Rein family, a prominent house of airship merchants descended from Ignatius Rein (Vexatious’ great-grandfather). Ignatius was one of the first people to realise the potential of the airship as a cargo vessel for high value or time sensitive cargo- previously airships had been considered inferior to ocean vessels as cargo carriers due to their very high cost and much smaller cargo capacities. Ignatius determined that though the airship was indeed much more expensive to build and run it's far superior speed and ability to take cargo anywhere regardless of terrain made it suitable for specialist cargo or fast packet mail where speed and security were of the essence. He was able to scrape together enough to buy a small airship by borrowing heavily, and soon made his money back running high end courier services and by virtually monopolizing the premium first crop of tea from Lindow. In time he prospered and was able to have an airship built to his own specifications. This ship, the King Jason's Defiance* was, some say, the fastest ship aloft thanks to remarkable aeronautical architecture and some say due to black magic (Ignatius was rumoured to have made a pact with some spirit of storm and wind to lend speed to his ship, which is of course preposterous).
 
Three generations later the Defiance passed to Temperance Rein, who had followed in her grandfather's footsteps and become a famous and respected airship captain. She married Royston Hermes, himself a renowned pilot and navigator from a long line of explorers. In time they had their first and only child, Vexatious. Vex was literally born in the sky, during a storm the likes of which neither of them had ever seen; ice and hail drove nearly horizontal in near gale force winds, the gunwales grew slick with frost and the ship herself seemed to grow frozen and slow. As the crew fought for their lives against this unnatural storm their captain fought to deliver her child despite the violent rocking of the ship and freezing cold that seemed to defeat all attempts to keep it out. With her husband playing the midwife she triumphed against the storm, and thus Vexatious Rein came into the world. The troubled circumstances of his birth gave him his name, as well as a strange feeling of cold no matter how warm others feel (the doctors say it's probably just a circulatory disorder), and a massive fractal birthmark of a snowflake that takes up most of his back.
 
Vex spent most of his childhood aboard the Defiance, raised by his parents and a dozen or so deckhands who taught him everything there is to know about airships and sailing. His parents tried to make sure he received the education appropriate to a young man of his station who would one day run a multinational shipping company, but even from a young age that Vex cared for little beyond the sky and the joy of sailing it. The only passion that came close was magic, for which he shared his father’s talent and under his tutelage he soon developed a burgeoning talent for sorcery. It seemed that Vex was a chip off both of the old blocks, though with a worrying lack of capacity for finance, management and other such things.
 
As he grew into his teenage years Vex became bored with the relatively uneventful and sedate pace of a cargo airship. Chafing for more action and adventure he resolved to leave the ship to join the Gridalian Military, which he had heard was assembling an airship fleet. Ignoring his parents admonishments that his leaving would only lead to heartbreak for all of them and that he would come to regret it in time, he packed all his most essential possessions into his sea chest and made ready to leave at Castrum Withercross. The crew lined up to see him off at the gangplank, and he was surprised to see both his parents standing at the front each carrying a sword in an elaborate scabbard. Each of their families had an ancestral sword that had been passed from generation to generation, and since it seemed unlikely they would have any other children they had resolved to pass both to Vex. He was setting off to make his own way in the world and they would not be there to protect him, but they could at least give him the means to protect himself. As they parted with teary eyes, he could not have known this would be the last time he would see either of them alive.
 
Upon enlisting with the Gridalian navy Vex found himself fast-tracked to a special unit of airborne mages tasked with rapid reaction monster defence. The youngest person ever to be assigned to the prestigious unit, and one of the few to be assigned straight out of training, Vex faced a lot of hostility and resentment from his comrades but his gregarious nature and natural aptitude for the units duties soon wore away their reservations and he settled into the group with a minimum of trouble. His frequent letters home to his parents were full of tales of derring-do, of monsters slain and crises averted thanks to the speed and skill of his comrades and their ship, the Belerophon. The speed of their ship allowed them to react to threats far faster than conventional units, and their magical skills allowed them to punch far above their weight in dealing with dangerous beasts and hordes of goblinoids. Their specialty was attacking large monsters- they would use their magic and fieldcraft to lead the creatures into prepared trap, then when the monster was disabled they would circle around it peppering it with shot and spell until it was weakened. Then they would drop from the airship onto the creatures back, cutting their way to it's heart, brain or equivalent and bringing the great beast down for good. It was dangerous work, but they had the skills for the job, and it was far more satisfying than running tea and noble gossip magazines. Vex excelled among his comrades, and in time the Commodore promoted him to Lieutenant, executive officer of the Belerophon. However his joy in his promotion was short lived, as not long afterwards he received terrible news- his parents and the Defiance were lost at sky, swallowed by a terrible and unnatural storm that seemed to come from nowhere before overtaking the ship with terrifying force. No wreckage was ever found, but they were never seen again and are presumed dead. The lack of wreckage and conflicting accounts complicated the settling of affairs, and there was no insurance payout (nor will there be one until his parents are declared legally dead Vex’s parents had left the ship and all their wealth to him, but most of their personal wealth had been tied up in the ship, and the company was mostly owned by various shareholders. Complicating matters was the pre-nuptual agreement the Reins had insisted upon to ‘protect’ their fortune from the less well off Hermeses (hence why Vex bears his mother's name but not his fathers), which had the two families at daggers drawn over the matter of inheritance. Ignorant of such matters and refusing to heed advice from Ms Elayne Kevarian, his parents legal counsel and personal friend, Vex found himself devastated both emotionally and financially by this sudden tragedy. Seeking someone to blame he came to resent the authorities in Gridal for what he saw as their failure to protect his parents and other airship traders (quite how he expected the military to save his parents from a magic storm is a subject best avoided if one wishes conversation to remain civil), and so embittered and grieving was primed to make a monumentally bad decision when it counted...
 
His first action as XO of the Belerophon was the defence of Redwell from a rampaging Behemoth. The Belerephon had been seconded to an army unit under Zephyr Highwind, and a plan had been drawn up- a trap had been laid in a nearby gorge where the mages magic would trap it and the Army soldiers could attack it from the clifftops while the red mages engaged it from within, and orders were to hold off engaging until the creature entered the gorge in order to minimise casualties and allow the best chance of neutralizing it quickly. This meant allowing the monster to maraud through the nearby village of Redwell before it could be trapped, and therein lay the rub- the village was meant to have been evacuated, but either the orders had never made it through or the creature had advanced too quickly to allow the evacuation. Whatever the reason, the village was still full of civilians defenceless against the gargantuan creature bearing down on them. After some hesitation, Zephyr Highwind decided to disregard orders and engage the creature before it reached the villages, consequences be damned; Commodore Arnold Gamwich was minded to ignore the young political appointee, confident in his seniority and connections at the Admiralty to weather any fallout from disobeying what would surely be suicidal orders. However Vex, his parents death fresh in his mind and eager to prevent any more innocent deaths, argued eloquently in favour of joining in the attack, appealing to their duty to defend the defenceless and their undoubted prowess at killing giant monsters.
 
The results were disastrous. The monster was eventually killed, but the casualties were considerable; dozens of soldiers were killed, part of Redwell still suffered damage, and the Belerephon was smashed from the sky by the Behemoths massive claws. Vex went down with the ship and suffered catastrophic injuries- he would surely have died if not for Kupo, a local white mage who happened upon the dying Vex and nursed him back to health over several weeks as the group of three travelled together. The only other survivor was the Commodore, who with no-one to contradict him had thrown Vex under the bus at the resulting court martial, claiming Vex had mutinied and assumed command before the Belerephon engaged.
 
In a rare fit of common sense, Vex decided that discretion was the better part of valour and swiftly left the way he came in before he could be laid by the heels and brought before the court. Kupo, Vexacious Rein, and Zephyr Highwind set about commiserating and decided to stick together for now, then began to plot their next move...
 
*King Jason is a mythical king from Gridalian folklore. The Hubris of King Jason is a common children's tale that tells how King Jason, obsessed with speed and racing, demanded that as king he should be able to outpace any in the land. Though all of his subjects obeyed and allowed him to win all horse and sail races he was still not satisfied, as no matter how fast he rode or sailed the wind was always faster. He summoned wizards, horse-breeders and shipwrights from all across the land and offered a vast sum of gold and silver to whomever of them could give him the means to outpace the wind. One by one they tried and failed, presenting him with eight-legged horses, wax wings, chariots pulled by the sun etc, but no matter what they tried the wind was always faster. Then at last the wizard-shipwright Balshazam gifted the King a magic galleon of treant-wood, with sails woven from mermaid hair and a rudder made of clouds. The king set sail in his fabulous ship and with a strong following wind ordered it's crew to lay on every scrap of sail. The ship went faster and faster, the waves and cliffs seeming to blur with the speed until the ship seemed to be on the verge of overtaking the drops of spray carried on the ocean wind. But just as it seemed the King might finally get his wish, the storm god laughed and whispered in the kings ear “You may be King upon dry land, but I am King upon the sea.” The sails tore, the ropes snapped, and the hull sundered with the strain and the ship came apart in an instant, sending all aboard to a watery grave. King Jason was never found, though his crown washed up on the shore some days later where it was found by a shepherd boy watering his flock.*/