Born and raised in Zhufbar, Ragnar was always quick with his wits and quick on his feet. Given his distaste for fighting, he chose to focus on developing his dexterity and found he had a taste for tinkering with machines, always trying to improve them or change them in some way. Over the many years, his fellows got used to his demeanor and accent which were always a bit softer and bit weirder than everyone else. In his 90th year, he decided to take his wife Janna and son Gottri with him to Ubersreik to pay his respects to his cousin Korden and to see if he could find someone with whom to apprentice his growing engineering skills. Shortly after arriving however, he discovered that his cousin had fallen and bequeathed his powerful hammer to some religious umgi. Furious with himself for having waited so long to come, and while drowning his greif in a tankard of stout (like any good dwarf would), he met Brannok Balgerson who took him on as an apprentice.

A few months went by and he learned his trade well but one night, Gottri had gone out and left the dwarf quarter after a pretty epic night of drinking. In his inebriated state, he failed to see/hear the theif that followed him and Ragnar found his son bleeding out in the streets in the early morning hours.

In the days that followed, Janna couldn't even bring herself to look at Ragnar and finally, maddened by her grief, she left without telling anyone where she was going. Ragnar, maddened by his own grief, woke up the next day and found that he simply couldn't feel any emotions anymore. Try as he might to make himself feel something (saddness, happiness, etc...) he finally realized that he was just broken inside.

Recognizing the signs of a budding sociopath, Brannok encouraged Ragnar to take up a new career as a bounty hunter. After all, Brannok reasoned, if he's going to start being violent, he may as well have a direction to take it in... one that would also profit Brannok.