Javed was born in Tusa as the illegitimate son of a wealthy Uslakh lady and a middle-class merchant man. His human father was head-over-heels obsessed with his dark elf mother and wooed her by wearing a glamour, borrowing large amounts of money and pretending to be a rich, dark elf socialite. For a while this succeeded, but when the pretence eventually and inevitably failed, their relationship broke down. Javed's mother, at the time already pregnant, cancelled their engagement and sought to terminate the child as well. Her family would not allow her to take the treatment's risk of infertility, however, as she was the sole direct inheritor of their clan name and fortune, so they pressured her into carrying it to term. The child, Javed, was dumped at his father's place immediately after he was born.

Javed's father, pursued by debt collectors and disowned by his own family for it, had already run away though and was nowhere to be found. After some wrangling, one of his father's spinster sisters took Javed in and grudgingly raised him instead. Her surly and hands-off attitude allowed Javed to spend a lot of time playing and exploring, unmonitored, on the streets of Tusa and, always bright and optimistic even as a child, he spent a decent early life like this.

When he was 9, Javed’s complicated lineage began to stir. Relatives on his father's side began to eye his mother's family's fortune, using Javed's position as their firstborn, if illegitimate, son for leverage. Ugly family politics ensued. Eventually, Javed was unofficially banished from Tusa – on the pretext of providing an education for him, his mother’s family sent him to live in Iadlain instead, as the apprentice of an old sorcerer who owed the Uslakh clan some kind of debt.

The less vibrant and more insular environment of Iadlain was difficult for Javed. As both an outsider and a half-elf, he was regarded with a variety of contempt and hostility by the locals around him. It was like this though that he met a fellow outcast child – Cassair – and became friends with him. Together, the two of them would sneak away from their overbearing guardians and secretly share dreams of becoming healers.

Javed's background caught up with him again when he turned 14. His mother's family had finally decided to get rid of him in a more permanent way and used the old sorcerer to stage a quiet 'accident'. Javed survived it by freak luck alone and, now badly frightened and painfully aware of how unwelcome he was to his family, he fled from Iadlain. With nowhere to go – he could not afford a trip to Tusa, both for lack of airship access and fear of being found by his family – he took the roads south along the Iadlish coast, intending to cut westwards across the mountains and take an obscure desert route to Estraude. He made it as far as the Vetmia – for all that he thought he knew how to survive in a desert, the actual harshness of it was beyond anything he had imagined. He almost died. Having passed out near an old waterhole-track, however, a travelling caravan came across him and one of their number, an Estran priest of Therras, took him in. Eventually Javed made it to Estraude with the priest and, for a few short but wonderful months, he lived in the charity of a church and set his heart on becoming a Druid.

He could only impose on the wood elves for so long, however; for all their practised tolerance, those who knew of his dark elf origins were not comfortable around him, so eventually Javed struck out west again, this time to the human city of Nisalvini. Here, he finally shed the troubles of his past and found acceptance as a simple immigrant. Thus he settled, safe to pursue his studies as a healer at last, and immersed himself in his new, peaceful life. 13 years of happily spending his days learning, researching and teaching about the two topics he loves the most – herbs and old stories, or more officially medicine and history - went past.