Origin

Arbane was born in the city of Demophon in the Seraphiim Dominion (3880) to Sharad and Coralee Lorquen. He had an older brother, Rhikar (3875), who he always looked up to. Both boys had a minor talent for working magic, though Rhikar was far more proficient at tinkering with it.
 
When he was of age (3893), Rhikar sought a commission with the Seraphiim military and shipped out to the Eastern Marches to attend academy. Years later (3898), Arbane would follow suit and pursue his officer's training as a recon sniper. Though they were forbidden from serving in the same unit, the two brothers kept in contact with each other and met up on leave whenever possible.
 
Rhikar had been promoted to Major and was running an intelligence division with the Seraphiim Army when war was declared on the Mismatean Empire over the murder of Princess Selena (3901). Arbane, a veteran lieutenant, was commanding his own scout platoon. Both were active duty and saw immediate action in the opening salvos of the war. As Mismatean forces began to entrench more firmly and stall the Seraphi advance, casualty rates on both sides started to balance out and then skyrocket. After two years, the entire warfront had become contest of trenches and attrition, with neither side seeing much gain over the other. When either side did succeed, they seldom kept their gains for long. Things began to muddy together into a gray fog of continual assault, retreat, entrench, repel, and bury the dead.
 
Arbane was passed over for promotion, and he stuck to the men of his platoon for years, going on scouting expeditions to probe for weaknesses in the enemy lines, often at night. It was during one such foray, after years of seeing the precious intel brought back squandered on hopeless assaults that were reversed within weeks if not days, that his unit met with disaster. Initial reports of a small village near the front behind enemy lines, host a supply depot with few guards, had seemed promising, but had been completely untrue. After discovering the enemy had a large garrison embedded there, he ordered a withdrawal. They were noticed, however, and trapped inside the village. Fighting their way ahead of pursuit, building to building, Arbane ordered his men into the sewers where they split up. The lieutenant got turned around in the ensuing chaos as the Mismatean soldiers dropped in after them, and he lost his unit. Wounded, and wandering the sewers for days, he eventually happened upon a Mismatean border family that did not kill him on sight. Instead they nursed him back to health and kept him hidden from the soldiers who came looking. When they saw him off, he swore that he would return their kindness. Someday.
 
Back behind allied lines, he found out that he was the only one to make it back alive. Disheartened and wondering where to go from there while he recovered in medical, it came as a dull shock when he heard the news that the outpost where his brother had been, had been shelled several nights prior and was no more. His superiors did not begrudge him his resignation within the month.
 
Taking Rhikar's bow, the one he had tinkered and modified himself during his early days as a recon sniper officer, one of the few possessions Arbane had from his brother now, he returned home to Demophon. Their father had died of a heart complication during the war, but his mother was there to tearfully receive her surviving son. His uncle too, Captain Elam Sagiv of the largely defunct Crimson Guard, made overtures of sympathy as he had just recently been told his own son had died at the front.
 
(3905) Things had changed back home over the course of the war. It struck Arbane hard after not seeing his home for years. Demophoenia, always the slum of the city, now was rank with corruption and petty crime bosses. Homelessness was everywhere. With little else to do with himself, now a warrior without a war, he decided to see what he could do to help out and clean up the streets. Unsure of where to apply his efforts, though, he eventually settled on a little rundown soup kitchen in The Narrows where he could help out the homeless, serving in the line. He made some friends there and took a keen interest in the patrons after realizing that a number of them would be abused by local gangs or even the garrison. So he experimented with putting his soldier's trade to use at night, meting out vengeance and scaring off the criminal bullies that preyed on the weak whenever he could.