• Spends more time traveling than at home, but deeply loves his village and his family. Makes a point to take a couple months every now and again to go home and relax for a while
• Only he and his mother remain of his immediate family, but he has numerous cousins, aunts, and uncles within his village and the entire village is quite close-knit
• Mostly either sends his income home or uses it to by practical things, but likes to collect small mementos of his travels from the various places he goes

Crellin lived his youth and early young adult years in a moderately-sized village of Avariel, and from a fairly early age expressed an interest in going beyond his home and into the wider world. The village was made up entirely of his own people, and essentially functions as one massive family. Like all other children in the village he was largely raised and taught by most of the present adults, learning various skills and crafts over the course of his childhood and teenage years. He was most interested in many of the things that took him outside the village, and gained a good deal of skill in hunting, navigation, and desert survival.

Given his interest in travel, he was often taken with some of the older Avariel to trade with other communities in and around the desert. He was painfully shy as a youth, though, and was never able to manage the casual talk, business skills, or talents of persuasion required to do much trading of his own. Most of his time on these excursions was spent simply watching the proceedings, and he was never comfortable participating in such negotiations. It was during these travels that he learned guides and guards were often in high demand for those traveling through or near the desert, and began to consider trying that instead of trading. Few of his people spent so much time out of his village as he would need to for such a career, but upon discussing it with those closest to him and considering for some time, he left for the city of Akhir to try his hand as such work.

He had to sign on with larger groups at first, until he was able to make a name for himself. His first couple of attempts at guide work were stumbling and awkward, and he learned very quickly that nothing would make him communicative or talkative, even if he was doing work he genuinely enjoyed, but he also learned that most of the people who hired desert guides and caravan guards wanted such people for their expertise and often didn't care a great deal about making small talk. He began to seek those sorts specifically for his clients, especially once he built up enough reputation and skill that he could afford to be a little more choosy about who worked for.

He certainly had his share of difficulties getting his business going. His stoicism rubs some the wrong way, and he's had a few clients over the years that he did not get along with, and as a result travels with those clients were difficult and fraught and, once or twice, almost ended badly. He's had a number of bad encounters with raiders, some of the monstrous creatures that live in the desert, and the weather and difficult conditions of the desert itself, on occasion resulting in harm to himself or his clients, but he's successfully kept everyone who ever hired him alive, and by this point in his life has worked out a good system for what he does and strategies for how to deal with any sort of client he's likely to encounter. He has gained enough of a reputation that he can choose more selectively who he works for, and often will not take on clients if he believes there will be strong conflicts of personality, or if he finds them in some other way overly objectionable (for instance, he won't work for slavers).

His work keeps him from his village most of the time, but he always takes a couple of weeks here and there to stop by and visit at least a couple times a year. Most of the money he makes goes to his people, and he makes an effort to bring useful goods back to them, as well as interesting trinkets. Those and the stories he picks up over the course of his travels make him a favorite of the village children whenever he visits. He intends one day to return to the village for good, but he enjoys what he does and the experiences it gives him, and plans to continue doing it for a good while longer before that day.