Born Thoramond of Embli, to the Village of Embli in dread Etovia, Rheksas was the only son of the witch Hwynnvis and the product of a Cursed Joining. A Cursed Joining is when a witch, often an influential priestess reigning over a given village, chooses to copulate with a criminal damned for death before he is sent to the gallows or exiled into the deepest swamp with nothing but a knife and the clothes on his back. This is typically only done when the criminal in question is a man of great physical standing. He is then stricken from all records, so nothing about Rheksas' father is officially known.
Rheksas belongs to the tribe of the Zolerai, the dominant peoples of Etovia who have long protected it and the rest of the world from the evils that dwell within. As with all Zolerai children, he was given a birth name (Thoramond) and a secret name known only to his mother. It is understood that this secret name is in fact his True Name, and keeping it as such helps guard the child against curses and foul sorcery.
To Hywnnvis, young Thoramond was more an experiment than a son. When he could not meet her high expectations, she relinquished him to the commandos of the Order of Salt and moved on to another project. It was there, starting at the tender age of nine, that the boy learned what warfare truly meant to his people. He developed into a masterful ambush predator, conducting lightning fast raids against rogue factions and the occasional foreigner until war itself arrived at their doorstep in the form of a three-pronged invasion.
The War of Three saw Thoramond become Rheksas, a title which literally translates to mean Red Destiny. Thusly empowered, Rheksas gathered the support of the Tribunal (the ruling government of the Zolerai) and organized the greatest defensive entity the continent had ever seen. Years would go by before they had repelled their enemies and Rheksas went down as one of the most influential political and military figures in their history.
The civil unrest was not so easily quelled. Well into his forties, Rheksas enjoyed a tenuous stint at retirement. All the while, the dissenters he was thought to have crushed were gathering their strength. An unexpected attack prompted the Tribunal to pull Rheksas out of retirement and, at age fifty-one, he waded back into the fray, only to sacrifice his life to see peace returned to Etovia.
It was then Hwynnvis decided on her next project of interest: bringing him back to life. It was with this in mind she gathered her eight most skilled subordinates and recovered his body, setting forth to resurrect him using an old ritual she had learned from the Forbidden Archives. Something went wrong during the casting, causing it to backfire onto the nine of them and force their life energies to act as fuel for the spell. As a result, Rheksas' soul was broken into pieces and stuffed haphazardly into his body, twisting him into the monster he is today. But he had returned, after a fashion, to find naught but the ashes of his would-be saviors.
By that point, Rheksas had essentially lost everything that was dear to him. Most of his comrades were dead. He had no family to speak of, save for scattered, illegitimate children he had no real connections to. And he could no longer look to his people for comfort, for they now feared him. His only succor came when the Tribunal took pity on him and decided to employ him indefinitely. While he could not continue his role as an official commando of the Order, he was given license to leave Etovia and help police the world outside. This eventually gave way to him travelling the planes on this same holy mission, defeating the forces of chaos and disorder wherever he found them..... when he felt like it.