The son of beggars, Jimmy grew up in the slums of an obscure provincial port, amid crates of salt and barrels of herring. He would probably have ended his life in the local slum districts, if he had not been saved by Ethan, his best friend, who managed - shortly after their tenth birthday - to bring them both into the service of Lady Velahna, a former Laelithian courtesan turned antiquities dealer. She knew how to take advantage of their flexibility and their nimble fingers to steal many treasures from the heart of forbidden palaces and temples. Ethan had no equal in disarming traps, and Jimmy moved silently under the nose of guards and other gorillas. That's why she respectively nicknamed them “Lightfingers” and “Lightfeet”.

In exchange for their precious services, she provided them with lodging and food, but above all, told them of her memories of Laelith. In the evenings by the fireside, the two accomplices sat with delight on either side of Velahna and listened open-mouthed to her tales of picaresque adventures in a somewhat romanticized and idealized Laelith. Ethan and Jimmy secretly conceived the project of one day leaving together for the Holy City to make their fortune there.

Alas, fate decided otherwise. During the robbery of the temple of the blind god Ytiss-Tzaboor, at the source of the sinister Black River, Lady Velahna perished at the hands of the high priest Tathenos and Ethan was captured by his dark servants. Jimmy tried in vain to find his friend, but Ethan was promptly embarked on Tathenos' galley to an unknown destination.

Jimmy was 13, and he suddenly found himself alone in the world. His skills as a thief allowed him to survive and even to make a certain reputation in the region. For three long years, he went from port to port trying to find the trace of Tathenos and his galley. One evening in his sixteenth year, a toothless sailor told him that the high priest had decided to move his cult to Laelith. So Jimmy decided to go to the Holy City to find and free his friend.

It took him more than two years to reach Laelith. Using wisely the secret information once revealed by Velahna, Jimmy made contact with the Academy of Fine Arts and met Dame Elloryne, a courtesan who fell in love with him and helped him in his research, in vain until now. After three months, she asked him to join the small group of adventurers that a friend of hers, Akélanos de Boer, was gathering around him. She described him as an ambitious (but manipulable) young priest of the Firebird Temple. Jimmy accepted her offer.

For his part, Akélanos set out to find an honorable fighter (and unrelated to the Firebird Temple, to avoid any leaks about his project…). He set his sights on a paladin attached to the Nebula Temple, Sir Galladon, who agreed to join him to see some action. Akélanos, who thought four was a good number to start with, stopped his search there. To exercise his activity as an adventurer, he thought it best to leave the accommodation offered within it by the Firebird Temple. He opted for a suite at the Plump Loaf inn, 173 Bakers ladder (at the expense of the temple of course), large enough to stay there with his three companions (and even a few other if the group were to grow). Good for him, because barely had he moved in when he was contacted by Eledhwen, a mysterious elf magician, who offered him her services on the sole condition of being able to regularly have time for herself without anyone in the group trying to find out what she would do with this time. Akélanos and his three companions agreed to her terms and Eledhwen joined the party.