"and i am coming home to you//with my own blood in my mouth"

etoile, in their former life, was an outcast shooter, working as a smuggler to get weapons and tech out of the capital and into the hands of rebels and other outcasts. their closest, and essentially only, friend was a burly crafter named branton who worked as a gem carver when he wasn't helping etty run guns, or keeping them from getting into worse than usual trouble. during a trade gone wrong, both braun and etty are killed by shooters. 

an indeterminate amount of time later, etty wakes up in a swamp with a gaping hole in their chest and their torso stitched back together, along with a distant fuzzy memory of heavy orange claws scrambling towards them. 

as a robber, etty remembers they have a previous life, but not anything about it. they know they feel deeply wronged, and they know they lost something, but the aimless drive to find something they don't remember weighs on them. etty wasn't a great coper in life, and undeath doesn't prove much different. while wandering the wastes for something to do, they fall in with a crowd of partiers and run into an old friend. their memory jogged, etty's friend helps them get their shit together, at least a little. after a night of partying to sat good bye,  a vivid, unsettling dream ensues, where helgin's voice leads etty down a winding mountain path towards a vague orange silhouette seemingly juggling its own head. 

when etty wakes up, they follow a hunch to a traveling circus of robbers in the oriens, and join their ranks as a performer.