Shartha’s first few years had been happy and secure. But when she turned fourteen, things started to change. Her parents began to argue — mostly in private, or so they thought. However, their quarreling increased until it no longer seemed unusual. When she finally asked her beloved mother about it, her mother told her not to worry, that her father was going through a difficult period, and that things should go back to normal very soon. But that didn’t happen. Her father’s mental and emotional state only got worse as the months passed. That’s when rumors drifting around her hometown made it known to her and everyone else that her father had gambling and alcohol addictions. Apparently, he was losing too much money at the card tables. The more he lost, the more he drank, and his losing streak only continued. Eventually, her father started borrowing money to support his gambling habit. And worse, he started signing IOUs to dangerous people. This continued even as Shartha’s mother became sick with a disease the family doctor couldn’t cure. By the time Shartha neared her sixteenth birthday, her mother was bedridden and growing weaker by the day. That’s when everything in Shartha’s life changed. And that change turned the next four years of her life into a living hell.
* * * By the end of that shameful, disgusting period, Shartha had all but given up on her desire to stay alive despite the tortures she endured. While suffering a beating that would certainly leave her dead in a dirty back alley, a young stranger rushed to her aid and saved her life. And that became her first meeting with Rucker and his small fellowship. So, out of obligation, Shartha joins their party and flees town with them before she and her new friends can be captured and executed for killing her violent abusers.