Dragan Torlay is the eldest son of a reasonably powerful and wealthy Tarshite lord who, having become widowed when Dragan was younger, has recently married into a very influential noble family to better secure his position in the Provincial government. However his new wife also brought a son to the marriage, and an older one than Dragan. To Dragan's extreme disappointment, his father agreed under the terms of the marriage to nominate his new step-son Herlakavesh as his heir, thus cutting Dragan off from the position of community leadership and responsibility that he had been raised to inherit. What's more, his step-brother is an insufferable boor, a bully and no doubt will in time become a tyrant. Dragan was intemperate enough to challenge his father, with the result that he has been banished from his presence and the family estate with no more than a small entourage of slaves and a pitiful, barely adequate allowance.
Dragan is a Provincial Petty Noble, and a lay member of the Seven Mothers cult. He wants above all to regain the place for himself that he has lost, but being prideful will not apologise to his father or beg for scraps from his table. His only apparent choice is to make something of himself as an adventurer, and become so glorious in his own right that the people - *his* people - embrace him for his own virtues.
Meanwhile his natural dislike of his odious step-brother is rapidly turning into bitter resentment, and may bloom into hatred some day, above all if Herlakavesh proves to be as dire a leader as he suspects. He cannot find it in his heart to forgive his father's choice, though he wishes he could, and he just plain hates his new step-mother Kassia (and mistrusts her family and allies' intentions).
He is also blissfully unaware that his new step-family are *not* the important but impoverished gentry that they claim to be, but are in fact trickster-thief cultist con-artists duping the noveau riche of Tarsh?