Born in Brivey from a mother but not from a father. Whoever that woman would be, his first memories cannot go that far. Assaulted, robbed, and raped, she could only give little information about the infant, before leaving him in the care of a couple of healers, in a town not so distant than the one in where he was born. 'Olgan' and 'Yiva', two names spelled in a little piece of paper and with fire in his head. No identity, a bastard lacking of a name for his own. But living in a forest with his putative parents didn't require much of titles and explanations, nevertheless. Syd was all he was. And that little name was every possession he could aspire to. A boy risen to hunt and help, to be kind and soft. His very nature told him otherwise, but every show of his innate wild temper was properly stopped with the rage of his new father. Fathers are something Syd stopped to like in his young age.
And the time flew by, taking with it the battle, and even the forests and little towns were asked for help and new recruits. Young men and women were invited, some more subtly than the others, to join the ranks and fight against the corsairs. A good chance to have a different life, of course, and even being slim and weak, Syd boarded a ship being little more than a kid. A kid who forgot to tell his adoptive parents, but it only teared out a grin from his face. And that grin is the very same smirk he has worn since. A mark of his own.
Aboard the Lady Alessandra, a heavy escorting galleon for the Rhaedan flagship, many years shaped the little one to a more muscular build. Not in a position of responsibility, for cleaning the deck, charging the cannons, and assisting the sailors in the general preparation of the vessel, were nothing worthy of recognition. But the experience he got, and the good acquaintances he made, guided his steps in the rank's staircase considerably fast. The captain himself, Ned Varghem, trained him hard in the art of the blade. Swords and daggers were his companions, slowly replacing the brushes and ropes and helping the rest of the crew to raise a brow in natural envy. His proficiency at other areas didn't take long to be evident, finding himself as navigator in The Mourn of the Sea and shortly after as gunner in the Glory of Rhaedan. But war didn't last forever, and with less loot to be claimed and a more strict control for such practice from his superiors, as soon as Syd took a golden coin or perhaps some more from a surrendered corsair's ship, he was forced to leave the northerner navy in a little canoe.
Many thought the boy from Brivey died after that, and perhaps that was the case in more than a way. He reached the coast and enlisted briefly in many merchant boats, a couple of pirate ones, and just a few particular vessels. His duties varied from cook to carpenter, or sometimes just as advisor. Syd was not a boy anymore, and his rough expression made him appear as an older man. But the sea was now his home, the waves were now his muses and lovers. Seasoned enough and without the sanity to think it better, it was aboard the Scarlet Justice, a pirate brigantine, where he started a travel to the lost lands of Ellowe.
But that travel never reached a destination.
A storm like no other gave Syd his new name. The pride of being the only survivor had to wait until he woke up in the western coasts of the Haven. Luckily enough, remnants of the ship had been carried by the raging waters, and the golden coins he had from his service in the Rhaedan side of the previous battle, found equally golden companions from the ruins of a magnificent ship. This golden pieces, naturally, were too rare for a simple sailor to let him buy a vessel of his own in a respectable port. But asking the right people, frightening some others, and threatening a few more, the old but robust and still beautiful Stilltha's Dagger was offered for him to acquire. Many reparations were needed, of course, and a mad enough crew to follow such a captain was hired.
And, finding his one and true love, in the shape of a large sloop, Syd Stormpride, or "Cap'n Syd Storm" as his crew use to call him, a new life of honest trading and eventual thievery has started. They sail at night, and no one has saw them staying more than three days in the same port. At the third one, the two masts guide the Dagger into deep waters, and it is said the frantic laugh of a sailor can be heard in the coast.