A few years of living in this place called Lothering, and then this thing called the Blight happened, and there were darkspawn - some sort of evil monsters - descending on our village. We escaped, thanks to this dragon woman named Flemeth, and went to a place called Kirkwall, where I worked off my family's debt for a year or so with this elven woman.
She really was a quite interesting employer. Her tongue was sharp and she was extremely clever, but also dangerous enough that I'm certain she'd have stabbed me if I'd betrayed her.