Idries, the only child born to Hansuke and Paris Tanarra in the farming community of Ichohuate on Chotann was precocious and dutiful. Before he could assist on the farm, he took a keen interest in his father’s morning and evening ritual of exercise, consisting of martial arts forms drawn from various sources. When he was old enough, he studied martial arts under his father, who created a style designed to counter and attack the most practiced styles, but his father emphasized duty and responsibility over personal pursuits. Accordingly, Idries became diligent and focused in his farm and school work to give himself more time to perfect his fighting skills.

At the age of eleven, Idries won Chotann’s thirteen and under freestyle martial arts tournament and was recruited into Insam’s Advanced Minor Academy, his parents received two farming students as compensatory assistance. At the academy, Idries was a popular young man due to his good looks, farm boy charm, and planetary fame as a martial artist. Of course, that fame also got him into a lot of fights with older boys anxious to put the young master in his place. The Insam AMA was not a normal school, fights were not carried out in private behind the buildings, they were formally arranged and officiated. With little additional training by age thirteen, Idries became the undisputed champion of the academy including students up to the age of eighteen. However, life at the academy was significantly different from life on the farm; Idries was both inspired and overwhelmed by the variety of people he met.

Idries’s fighting proficiency got him noticed by Insam’s Covert Operations Management and he was entered into the Covert Operations Program. The COP taught him how to live a multi-layered life of lies as well as all the skills necessary to be a highly proficient operative and analyst, including how to juggle multiple relationships simultaneously. The ability to separate his true self from his public persona gave Idries a sanctuary from the myriad demands placed on him by life off the farm. Almost perfectly suited to be an operative, Idries’s personality had one small but disconcerting vulnerability: the desire for roots, a family, and a home.

When he graduated from the Academy, Idries was the highest rated operative they had ever produced by all physical and mental measures, but his personality flaw, no matter how small, left concerns about his ultimate suitability. Over-Minister Constantus Hadremoff felt confident in his ability to guide young Tanarra into his new life as an operative and requested Idries for his cabal on Ganoten. Hadremoff created tests and assignments to stress Idries’s personality flaw and develop him along a particular path. The first set of those tests and assignments are chronicled in The Assassin’s Cradle.