Born in 7 BIA the bastard son of Graf Hugo von Tiliman (a Minor Allergonian Nobleman) and a maid, Gerhart was raised by his mother with a small amount of unofficial support from his father. Enough to get him him a basic education, some basic training in arms and to let him have a childhood which was reasonable by the standards of the day. He would have been taken on as an Armsman in the household forces, which was quite a normal fate for boys such as him in the Empire, if it was not for Hugo's death in 6IA. The fief was left to the husband of the Graf's daughter who saw the boy as a threat and him and his mother dismissed and expelled from his land. With little to their name but the clothes on their back they marched off to wander the roads for several months but while his mother could find less prestigious work as a scullery maid for a minor merchant the prospects for young Gerhart were limited by the fact that sometimes the paranoid of noblemen liked to eliminate loose ends. As such, he decided to sign up with a mercenary company at the age of 14 on the grounds that he had basic swordsmanship and fieldcraft down, it would take him well away from the new Lord Tiliman for a while and any footpad hired by his half sister's asshole husband trying to attack a few hundred armed would not have an easy time of it.





He joined up with the Greenhound company because they were recruiting in the area at the time and soon found his place. He started off as trainee/errand boy but soon enough he was in the line with his brothers in arms. He had a good grasp of swords, shields and halberds and rudimentary horsemanship, but soon enough added axes, maces, formation fighting and arquebii to his skill set before he became a full fledged member of the Company in 8 IA. A couple years latter a new change came as Arquebuses fell out of favor for rifled flintlocks firing new rifle bullets with bayonets slung from the barrels. The Greenhounds were not the first to convert to these new weapons, but it was clear to their leadership to adopt them quickly through purchase, conversion, salvage or theft. Gerhart took to gun combat well while the few holdouts of the old ways were cut down. In the Company's loose rank structure Gerhart rose fairly quickly. First through good times in the early phases of the Rifle Wars as they had the skills with this new method of warfare before most others. Their bank accounts filled and their numbers grew through acclaim. Then through the leaner times when countries began raising more armies or riflemen of their own. Rates got lower and losses went up. By the time that Gehart became captain in 35 IA and took the Company's lone remaining suit of Runic Three Quarter plate with it's official floppy eared helm of office it was a shell of what it once was getting by in on minor security jobs.





The Fidelium Contract was an offer that they couldn't refuse. His first though was that steady employment with both security and training fees would the company alive for at least long enough to let it rebuild itself into something reasonably strong. When more details came to light about their benefactors and to whom they were providing security for, his response was on the whole very positive. He was raised in the Empire and as a child heard the usual stories of Drow and the heroes who'd beaten them back and you'd be hard pressed to find a human which did like them even in the places where they did do their business. Even so a Contract was a Contract and the Ashen Bastards were in the habit of upholding contracts with their catspaws. But that aside there was also potential in the place that they were guarding. When they arrived it was a camp of ex-slaves and making it into a village was hard work, leaving aside the Barbarians of the region. Few of them knew Allergonian or Venoan and learning the slave dialect was hard work for the Greenhounds. Even so, he saw in these hot grasslands and hills and this collection of Dark Elven castaways on the bottom of the world a future for himself and his men. Especially with some of the clauses in his contract.

