Jakob Daud was unceremoniously born to the Daud family during the evening of the 51st Trial of Vhalar, 690. With no complications, he was brought into this world kicking and screaming. When the midwife handed his mother, Christine, a bouncing baby boy, she was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. His father, Marcus, was absent for his delivery, but not out of malice. It was mainly due to the fact that Marcus was busy working on the sledge-crew for a Viden Academy sponsered excavation. His mother was perfectly fine with that. She would be happy to surprise the love of her life with this new bundle of joy. After all, Jakob was not the first child of Marcus and Christina Daud, but he was definitely the only one that they had actually planned for. Jakob's siblings were all unplanned and happy accidents. Jakob's siblings were also all sisters, and Mr. Daud always wanted a boy. Marcus and Christina agreed that once the two bore a son, they would stop trying for kids. Luckily for Mrs. Daud, their first attempt was also their last. Jakob's name was in honor of Christina's deceased brother, who tragically passed in a mining accident in 688.
The last of five children between the two, Jakob was the biggest human baby that the midwife had ever delivered. This was the first entry into trend that followed Jakob all the way into his teenage years. As a toddler, he was the tallest and strongest among his childhood peers in the Tsavorite Prism. He hit puberty before any of his friends and grew like an unchecked weed. During his adolescent arcs, Jakob was the neighborhood tough-kid. His mother stopped trying to keep count of all the times she had to tend to the cuts and bruises that Jakob would accumulate through all the trouble he would get himself into. Much to the dismay of his mother, Jakob's only hobby seemed to be picking fights with kids and teens from both within and without of the Tsavorite Prism. He wouldn't read, draw, or even play sports. Yet by the time Jakob turned 16, he seemed to mellow out, and the amount of times he came home with a busted tooth or a bruised eye went down dramatically.
By the time he was seventeen arcs old, Jakob was cleared to follow the footsteps of his father as a miner. He didn't mind that hard labor at first; in fact, it was an absolutely refreshing avenue for him to channel his yet unspent energy. Due to his natural strength, Jakob was frequently put on the sledge-crew, one of the most physically strenuous duties that the miners of Viden are assigned to. While the composition of a sledge-crew differs depending on the assigned foreman, it is most commonly composed of four to ten individuals that are equipped with sledgehammers and hand steels, whose primary goal is to break up stone or smash through ice. They are often the ones that start the excavation of a mine, and are usually the ones called in to expand the mine if required. Due to this, the sledge-crew is often reserved for strong (and disposable) slaves or whoever the foreman didn't particularly like that day. Jakob and his father spent many arcs together on the sledge-crew. It was during this time that he had finally met humans that were by far larger and tougher than he was at his age, which was shocking to say the least.
Jakob Daud would spend the next eleven years working for various companies, nobles, and academics as a miner - rarely straying from his position on the sledge-crew. While he considers the work to be simple and sometimes even enjoyable, the politics that surround the never-ending desire for ore and salt has taken its toll on Jakob. He and his fellow miners have had numerous disputes with coin-clipping foremen, corner-cutting engineers, cut-purse brigands, unruly slaves, and outrageous Cyclical expectations from the Merchant's guild. While many of these disputes are quickly resolved by the Directorate, there are some that could only be resolved by a more hands-on approach. Whenever the miners would need somebody to stick up for them or apply brute force to get their way, it was often the sledge-crew that acted as their de facto champions.
Being repeatedly type-cast into the sledge-crew, Jakob's peers commonly elect him to be their muscle. The first time he was elected was after a mine-shaft collapse killed a handful of excavators. Before the tragic accident, the foreman complained to the lead engineer about the unsafe conditions that the team was working in. To retort, the lead engineer ignored his pleas, and eventually used some local muscle to press the miners into working. When the miners came to Jakob about being the instrument of their revenge, he outright refused. It was his father, Marcus, that eventually convinced Jakob that this was simply the way things were done among the miners when the guiding hand of the Directorate couldn't help them. A clash between the miners and the engineer's hired goons soon followed. That would be the first time that Jakob Daud would be the champion of the exploited. After that, whenever a situation requiring force arose, Jakob was their go-to man.
He doesn't like to talk about it.