When Shawn Shatum was child, he spent a lot of time wandering the hills and woods around his village, getting to know the lay of the land quite well. Teasing and the increasing threats from the village children caused him to spend more and more days alone. On his eighth birthday, exploring the caves to the east as he often did, he happened across an orphaned worg pup. He cared for the young dire wolf, visiting the cave every day with game and fish he caught that morning.
The day came, a couple of years after he found the puppy, that Shawn’s cousin on his stepfathers side, Lin Magad, was leading a hunting party and encountered Shawn riding his now grown worg. Lin was enraged by the sight of this unholy freak riding such a monster. He ordered his dogs and fellow hunters to attack! The worg quickly killed the smaller dogs but Shawn was thrown and the worg killed by the hunters arrows. Shawn was chased down and beaten nearly to death by the young men of his own village. In fact they would have killed him if not at that moment an orcish shaman cast a series of spells that saved his life. He witnessed the powerful shamans act and before he passed into unconsciousness, Shawn realized that he felt more than just hatred for orcs: That this orc at least, had saved his life. The last thing he heard was a thick orcish voice uttering “Oc Ashagâ€. This would become his new name. He awoke alone in the woods with his wounds bandaged and realized that he could no longer live in his village. Waiting until nightfall, Oc Ashag, with a new sense of destiny, crept back to his mothers house.
After explaining to his mother what had happened, she gave him a large sum of gold and directions to the school, Ecol, where he would spent the next ten years of his life. He had her assurance that she would tell no one of his whereabouts and would allow the others in her village to assume that he had been taken by the orcs and probably killed.
Lin Magad, who had survived the orc attack, is certain that he saw the shadow of Shawn Shatum sulking out of the village under the cover of darkness. His fear and hatred of his half cousin and of all orcs greatly intensified.
Oc learned many things during his years in Ecol. He had an affinity for magic and swordsmanship as well as a natural skill with animals. In the months before he was required to leave the school, he began to develop a keen interest in learning more about orcs and their ways. He learned that his name comes from an ancient mystical orcish dialect not known to exist in the new territories. It is a reference to a mythic shaman/warier and literally means “Worg Riderâ€.