Æthelwulf was born on the 14th of December in a tiny settlement, in between the rivers Anduin and Erul, in Lossarnach, a few miles south west of Emyn Arnen. His father, Ingild was once respected, but became feared by the villagers, he gained a reputation for being sometimes insane and sometimes mischevious, he new strange languages, and claimed to have had disturbing premonitions and visions. There was some who rumoured that he was an Istari, and that he guarded the secrets of strange and ancient relics, but Æthelwulf has never seen or heard any evidence to back that up, he just had him down as "A raven haired lunatic". Æthelwulfs mother, Isha, who died of consumption when Æthelwulf was two, was from a family with a long, illustrious history of military service to Gondor with generations of soldiers and Rangers spanning back beyond the battle of Dagorlad.

Ingild, used to work as an academic clerk in Minas Tirith, before he was viewed to unstable and unpredictable by his peers, and the Stewards. He wished for his son Æthelwulf to follow in his footsteps and become an academic, and take up his fathers office.

Æthelwulf did show alot of the early promise that is often seen in a potential academic, but even as an infant he was often quick to anger and slow to calm down afterwards, he was terribly competitive, and despite his brightness would often resolve disputes with his fists. Ingild knew that even from this early stage that it was going to be a struggle to keep Æthelwulf on the path of becoming a scholar, and away from the path of soldiery.

Things was to get worse for Ingild when Æthelwulf became a teenager, his penchant for fighting had started to die down a little, but on several occasions during his early teenaged years Æthelwulf had taken some beatings from his father for constructing bows and practising archery, he was to take more for acquiring knves. Ingild was always worried that Æthelwulf had too much of his mothers side in him, and often warned Æthelwulf that soldiery was "a mugs game".

Ingild sent Æthelwulf to Minas Tirith for a Scholarship, but two months into his first year news reached Æthelwulf that his home village had been raided, and burned to the ground by a party of marauding orcs. Æthelwulf returned to the site of his home village to find it in smouldering ruins. He found his father, dead, along with every other villager, with three black feathered arrows in his chest. Æthelwulf cremated his father Ingild so that his remains wasnt dug up by some foul beast. He them searched the remains of his house for the sword Suthlarach his mothers hierloom, he finally found it along with a few coins and thought it strange that the orcs didnt take it.

For interminable Hours Æthelwulf, his face ashen and eyes blacker than any abyss, starred at the devastation surrounding him, while the enormity of his loss was agonisingly slowly sinking in, almost everyone that he ever knew was either dead or worse, the place that he grew up in, gone. His father who he had seemed to have incessantly fought running battles with was gone too. Grief and rage now coursed through Æthelwulfs sinews like an inferno as his eyes hardened even more, but this was tempered by something never known before by Æthelwulf, a coldly clear thought. He would cease his academic studies and then apply to join the Rangers. He promised himself that as long as he had an ounce of breath left in him he would fight to the bitter end to prevent others in Gondor from having to suffer the fate of his village.

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