Born to a typical light-wood elf family, Tom grew up in the safety of a sedate, remote village in balmy Estraude. They were far away enough from any major city that whatever happened in the world outside rarely made waves in their little bubble of forest. Being so rural, village life was very traditional and very physical. There were certain expectations of strength to be considered a valuable villager, and Tom was the opposite of strong - a small, wet bully magnet. His much rougher older sister took it upon herself to man up her wimpy brother - a well-meaning endeavour, but not particularly helpful. The result of their many bone-breaking escapades was not so much a manlier Tom as a Tom with a whole bunch of phobias. Caught between terror and a desire to please his idolised sister, he simply let her happen to him for the most part.

Eventually he got old and tired enough to make her stop, but then he found himself in another rut - he had no particular talent for the things his community valued. Try as he might, he found he was hopeless at the main occupations - too weak to be a builder, to cowardly to be a hunter, and no talent for magic, gardening, animal husbandry or sewing. Sure he could do some whittling and make cute ornaments, but it wasn't useful. Stuck with a menial future and the deepening despair of thinking he'd forever be burden than anything for his family, he worked it up in his mind until it became too much be bear and he fled the village in an emotional state. By chance, found passage to the nearest port town with a group of travellers and boarded the next ship out that he could - a cargo ship headed for Amedra. Maybe in a big city far away where things worked differently and nobody knew him, he could make something of himself.

Having come with very little, he took up various low-paying jobs to cover rent and food - and there were plenty in a city this big. Even a little skill at whittling could earn one some decent pocket change - but it never occurred to him to take it seriously because it wasn't a useful skill. So things remained like this for several years, just working to survive, until he ended up in a job as a factory maintenance grunt and discovered he was good at mechanical things - actually, legitimately good at something. To him it was a breakthrough - he felt he'd finally found his place in life, and the fact that the skill was esoteric enough that he started accumulating savings was the cherry on top. Now he wasn't just Tom the nobody - he could be Tom the mechanic.

It couldn't last forever though. As the small factory - already old and near end of life - began to wind down a few years later, he started picking up side jobs to fix bits and pieces for friends and acquaintances - broken clocks, flakey pumps, whatever they needed. If he didn't know how a thing worked he could learn it, and mostly his customers were happy to let him take his time with the low prices he charged. It was through this that he was introduced to and developed a fascination with guns - at first just fiddling with them, but it didn't take long for him to join a local rifle club and begin using them too. It was like a symbol of power for him, in a way. When the factory inevitably shut down, he followed a group of co-workers into courier jobs with Amedran Post. It paid less but with the irregular hours, it gave him time to develop his backyard mechanic/handyman side job - which really was what he liked doing most. He invested in an apartment in the Old Docks area, closer to the commerce centre of Amedra, with the intention of building on the little happiness he'd found.