Tarah has never had a place to properly call home.
Born to elven refugees around 4550 AR, she grew up on the road, driven from nation to nation as her parents sought to find a stable place to live. Life on the road was dangerous and stressful, and little Tarah learned fast how to handle weapons and flee from conflict. They spent decades as nomads, living a frugal lifestyle and making what living they could with trade, trinketry, and theft. Tarah found a knack in chronicling maps from their travels, and she was able to earn a little reputation as a reliable source for far-flung information and directions to their source.
Eventually, rumours of a haven spread, and in the late 4590s their little commune managed to make a home in one of the most prosperous and vibrant nations in the world: Cheliax. While not exactly embraced with open arms, their presence was at least not opposed, and Tarah was able to start formalizing her now long practiced affinity for cartography. Her parents were able to return to their trade as weavers, and her little brother Arvad was born.
Then 4606 happened.
In the violence as the Age of Lost Omens began, their commune was raided, and many were killed. Her parents were enslaved by Thrune loyalists, and Tarah ended up on the road again, this time with her baby brother in tow. Having to raise a child with nothing felt far harder than her own childhood had been, and Arvad has had to grow up without much of the community network that Tarah was graced with. Arvad eventually went his own way after a few decades; he's much less inclined towards being part of a community than Tarah is, and much, much less inclined towards a sense of honour.
Tarah has spent much of the last century scrounging an existence as a messenger and map maker. The new lands Beyond the Portal represent a new opportunity to make something of herself, and perhaps even find a place that might be called home.