Hunter Richards was born to poor serfs for a cruel lord on less than ideal land.  The harvests were usually poor in spite of the work required to produce it.  His father was an abusive alcoholic, forcing his son to pick up the slack from a very young age.  When he was five his mother became ill with the pox and his father's help lessened even more as he grieved until the illness finally took her.  Afterwards his father was a changed man, drinking more and borrowing coin to do so he knew that he could not pay back while his son continued to toil, under the whip at times.

His earlier years were filled with hard work, leaving preciously little time for friends and 'being a kid' but he did manage to make and keep one good friend from those years and his name was Woefiji.  A fellow son of a poor farmer with big dreams the two formed a solid friendship based on mischief and escape from their miserable lives.

In his early teenage years he left home without a word, giving up on his father and hoping to prove to the world, as himself, that he could do me and become better in every way.

He started, like many, at the bottom for a merchant specializing in managing imports and their distribution and while normally not a bad job his boss was, to put it kindly, an arrogant prick.  He squandered his time and money, forcing more work on those under him and complaining when he did not make the money he thought he should make from their labors.  This first experience left a sour taste in Hunter's mouth and after several years of what seemed like indentured servitude he had scraped up enough to start a venture of his own.

While not an 'evil' man Hunter is not above getting his hands dirty for what he believes to be worth it in the end.  It was by this that he hired a local thief guild to plant forged documents leaving part of the company's holdings to him and assassinate his former boss.  Considering the success of the thieves, the fact that he still worked there and similar 'uncharacteristic' donations of parts of the property to other employees and the city itself noone looked twice at what happened and was happy to be rid of such a blight on the community.

Starting off things went well and Hunter began to see a turn on his investments, not specializing in one craft or the other but rather the procurement and middle-man negotiating between other companies.  Business was good until a commissioned shipment of precious metals was set upon and looted by bandits, forcing Hunter to reconcile the debt from his own holdings.  In these hard times Hunter turned back to the thief guilds, offering side deals to make some of their actions seem legitimate -- scalping prices, forged merchant documents and even the occasional bit of information on a shipment in exchange for a cut of the loot.  Business was once again thriving with this new influx of capital and over the years a decent number of contacts from the underworld were acquired.

It was during this time that he came across his childhood friend, Woefiji, who had become a notable craftsman with higher aspirations.  The two maintained contact and even had some business dealings though the other man never formally became employed by the company

In spite of this success some years later the companies actions shifted and then halted all together, being broken down and through clever manipulation of paperwork and words with the right people re-emerged as the freshly branded Heavy Trading company.  It was at this point that Hunter began to express his interest in politics and power, putting his resources into realizing this ambition and soon after an expedition was put together to found an independent city-state and once launched the company itself seemed to disappear, though it's mark can still be seen in the new, budding community it founded

A short while after the founding of his city Hunter got word to his old friend, seeking someone he could trust in this new endeavor.  Woefiji agreed and soon thereafter could be seen working alongside the others of the fledgling community