The Fearless Leader
The man who would become the Fearless Leader was once just a man, a resident of the Southern Wastes.
One day his village elder came to him and charged him with an important mission. The village water supply was drying up, and a new water source would need to be found. The man packed his meager possessions and headed out into the Wastes, leaving his family and loved ones behind him.
He traveled from one side of the Wastes to the other. It was no use checking what remained of the old scorched Elvish lands; everyone knew they were doomed to extinction. The Human cities he found were resolutely against taking in a horde of refugees. Finally he came to an oasis in the Southeast area of the wastes. It had a good source of fresh water and would support his village nicely. The man returned to his people and gave them the good news. The entire village packed everything they could carry and crossed the Southern Wastes.
Casualties were high; the Wastes do not suffer travelers lightly. The man's own wife and child fell to dehydration and sickness. Finally, the bedraggled survivors arrived at the site of the oasis and were shocked by what they found. A town had sprung up, a town named CrestGrath, led by some prick called Dagger.
The man swore his revenge, and led his surviving people deeper into the surrounding Wastes, determined to find others like him to help strike back at those who had taken what he'd claimed. As the man’s travels continued he found, to his horror, that all such oasis's for hundreds of miles around had come under the banner of the nation to which CrestGrath belonged.