Aldriona makes no secret of her past and tells anyone who would ask about it. 

Her family once lived in southern Gondor, in a small village named Feralath. Raids by nearby living haradrim tribes weren't uncommon, stealing food, valuables and horses. Eventually, people started to disappear during the raids as well, and one night her mother was among the ones taken.

A few months later Aldriona was born into the captivity and slavery that would be the only life she ever knew. She never met her father and brother, beyond the stories her mother would tell. She made the best of her life, helping her mother with work for the tribe as well as caring for the half brothers and sisters she eventually got. Boys born among the slaves were taken away at a fairly young age to be trained as soldiers for the tribe, while girls were kept as workers.

At sixteen Aldriona had her first child, as boy she named Nadir. As the years passed, she would have a daughter, Rami, who lived but a week, another son, Daman, and eventually a daughter that was strong enough to live, Tanuja. By now her mother had passed away, having eventually given up hope of being saved and the suffering of her new life becoming too much for her she started to fade away, growing weaker and weaker until she eventually fell ill and died.

Aldriona had rarely considered another life. Her mother's stories of Gondor seemed like little more than fairy tales, pretty things to soothe a sad child with. But as her younger son was also taken from her and she was left with only her daughter, she started thinking of escape. While she had no thoughts of changing her own life, the thought of Tanuja growing up the same was enough to push her into action. 

She managed to escape, killing a guard in the night and running with the girl in her arms. But from there on, nothing went as planned. She had never had to survive in the wilderness before, didn't have enough food and blankets or waterskins. They were already long past the point where turning back might have been an option when Tanuja got sick, and Aldriona could do little more than helplessly watch as her daughter got worse and worse and eventually died.

This, and the realisation that nothing remained of the village where she had thought she'd find her father and brother, left Aldriona alone and without a goal. She continued north aimlessly, stealing food whenever she could and without any idea of where she was heading. What felt like ages later, she arrived in Bree-land. She decided to use her last coins on a room at the Pony, not wanting to spend the night outdoors again. There, she met a man that claimed he recognised the necklace she wore, claiming that it belonged to his mother who disappeared many years ago...