Eafa Deahln
The enigmatic Eafa, better known as Weasel to many, was brought up in Tepid lakes in an unloving family of siblings that were highly competitive and a father who had some talents but was disinterested in his children.
His relationship with his mother was also cold and the young Eafa left when he was a teanager and travelled to find work. When he returned some years later he was told that his mother had died.
It became apparent at an early age that Eafa had inherited perhaps some talents from the family and he was able to use them to Find missing objects for neighbours. His siblings christened him the Doomed Wizard of Tepid Lakes but his younger brother mistook the word Wizard for Weasel and the name stuck. As his great nephew commented centuries later, the real puzzle was why Eafa continued to use such a silly name.
Tepid lakes was an extremely conservative region of the continent Heinelina that would later be known as the Prelates, and anything seeming to be "magical" was dissaproved of. Some felt it was a sin and as Weasel commented in later life, magicians such as he were in permanent open season. He left the region and headed north where he met Mab-Aneirin and they both worked at the mines.
It was during this time that he and Aneirin realised that the young Eafa was considerably more talented than perhaps one would expect of a Finder and agreed that his talents should be kept very low key. Eafa himself could see little use for anything he could do and was not keen that they should define his life. The most useful of his talents were an ability as he grew older to fly at extraordinary altitudes which allowed him and his close friend Mab-Aneirin the luxury of travel that would be out of the reach of other pairings.
Mab-Aneirin, heavily influenced by his long-lived father of the same name, was painfully aware of the growing gulf between humans and the dragon peoples. This had been a process of some several thousand years, but now there was a move by dragons to distance themselves from further human contact. Many felt that with the larger human population, though it had declined in recent centuries, dragons would never be able to truly compete.
Mab-Aneirin and Eafa argued that it should not be competition for the world but a complimentary sharing where each benefitted the other. It would be an argument that would last the next eight hundred years and only would start to see some change at the time of Farthing.
When Eafa and Aneirin were into their sixth century, they met the young Be-Eirol. Aneirin and she very quickly paired and took the titles Bren and Fren. The three of them, now firm friends, took the argument to the Neuath on Taken and for the next hundred years argued bitterly with the likes of Bren-Diath. Very sadly, after just a hundred years as a pair, Bren-Aneiran died leaving both Fren-Eirol and Eafa devestated. They took comfort in each others close friendship and Eafa tried to continue the argument at the Neauth, mostly on his own. It was doomed to be a failure and he eventually left the island.
During this fraught period, Eafa argued with Fren-Eirol that there had to be a better way for humans and dragons to fly. Mab-Aneirin had worn heavy leathers that had straps that Eafa used, but Fren-Eirol only wore decorative silks and prints. Although because of the shape of her back, it was not hard to stay on without straps, Weasel believed they could do better and suggested a saddle. Fren-Eirol, at a low ebb still, was furious at a suggestion that made her sound like dumb horse.
The argument quickly subsided as their friendship was very strong, but somehow the story of the saddle became known and Bren-Diath and others used it as a way of ridiculing both Eafa and Fren-Eirol and, probably even worse, the memory of Brwen-Aneirin who was highly respected by many. The resulting confrontation split the Neuath and Fren-Eirol turned on Eafa, blaming him for leaking the story, which he hadn't.
Eafa, embarrassed at his own idiocy and angry with Fren-Eirol left Taken completely and did not return for three hundred years.
In the following three centuries, Eafa, now never using his real name, travelled both The Prelates and Bind on horse and foot, earning small amounts as a Finder, but most often as either a hired fighter or general labourer.
He has described his meeting with Farthing and the subsequent reconciliation with Fren-Eirol as the most important moment of his life, but also the hardest.