Half-elven and border-bred, Johnny came up in Helmstier — a small mountain town pressed against the edge of Raelion — where he ran The Last Stop, a bar whose name did double duty as both a traveller's landmark and a closing-time joke. His path to Iconoclasm was eased by an existing familiarity with Smiler and more than a few prior visits to the Undertable, though what he carried with him from that mountain threshold was something quieter — a melancholy poem he composed for Anzu, about a blackbird making its life inside a library.