Didn't The Drifter also get close to a child in the Dark Age and saw her as almost his own?
Yes! That's why this whole thing with Eido and the other Eliksni kids is really getting to me. The whole story of Eaton and Yu in particular literally kills me every time.
For those that don't know: back in the Dark Age, when Drifter was going by Germaine and living in the village called Eaton and hiding his Light, he was basically babysitting a little girl called Yu. It was a kid from a family that lived nearby. She was 9 years old.
Yu was nine cycles old and visited often. She and her family lived next to Judson, and sometimes they sent her to Germaine when their boisterous neighbor was too belligerent. As he was today. Germaine didn't mind.
Judson was just some dude that hanged around with Drifter and was known for using phrases and speech that we know Drifter for. Example:
"How you livin'," Judson greeted the Risen, holding his finger high.
"Didn't see you there, brother," Judson growled low...
At the time, an Iron Lord called Dryden visited Eaton and gave them supplies as an exchange for a place to stay and to be able to use Eaton as bait for a Warlord he was after. Eaton had to accept because they were literally on the brink of starvation pretty much every day. Yu told Drifter that Judson said they shouldn't have let the Iron Lords stay and that it's dangerous and Drifter was trying to comfort her:
He laid another card down. "Appreciate what you get. Your parents were skipping dinner so you could have yours. The Risen solved that for us. For a little while. We have to let them stay."
She stopped pacing to consider it, and looked up at the sheet metal ceiling. "I don't want to die."
"You won't," Germaine said. "Why don't you go see what your parents are up to? I'm a little beat."
This was very upsetting to Drifter:
"OK," she said, shrugging. She left.
Germaine opened a small box of water from the pile of ration packs and poured a tin-full. Yu hadn't noticed because it was difficult to see in the flickering lamplight, but his hands shook.
It's a small detail, but he tended to get shaky hands which is one of the reasons he's fidgeting with a coin later on in life. He usually does it when he's stressed out and to hide that his hands shake.
Judson attempted to flee the village before the Iron Lords show up again, but he's caught by the Warlord and brought back. Warlords rolled into the village and killed Yu's father while waiting for the villagers to tell them where are the Iron Lords. Soon, the Iron Lords showed up and all hell broke loose when they started fighting.
While the fight was going, Drifter's Ghost saw the following:
Through it all, the Ghost saw one of the men emerge out of the discharge of an errant explosive device, cradling the body of a child. He moved to relative safety behind one of the shacks and knelt down, holding an ear to the child's face. She was trying to speak.
That was Drifter trying to protect Yu with his own body. Ghost asked him about it later:
"The child. Yu," Ghost continued.
"Stop talking," he replied.
"What did she tell you? You were speaking to her at the end."
He didn't respond. It would be lifetimes before he told Ghost the answer. But he would remember.
One of the reasons Drifter doesn't like his Ghost is that his Ghost was insisting that Drifter could've helped everyone in Eaton. Which is very unreasonable to think; there were six Warlords and unclear number of Iron Lords. And even the Iron Lords couldn't stop the six Risen without heavy casualties. Drifter couldn't have done much on his own. He was helping the villagers in his own way, using his Ghost to track animals for food to help the local hunters. There wasn't anything else he could've done, especially when you see that the Iron Lords couldn't have done anything either, not without risking everyone in the village and themselves.
One of the reasons Drifter was hiding his Light was because other Risen would challenge him otherwise. While he was hidden, Risen would just treat the village as any other settlement and mostly left it alone. If he'd been open about his Light, they would've treated him as an enemy Warlord and that would've directly endangered the village. But Drifter's Ghost considered him a coward for not fighting and for not being a "proper" Lightbearer. It's one of the reasons why Drifter's relationship with his Ghost is strained.
Drifter found Judson alive in the debris of the village and tried helping him by cauterising his wound. Judson blamed him for the attack, but ultimately died. Drifter's Ghost insisted more about how Drifter could be so much more as a Lightbearer but he didn't budge. His final line is him adopting Judson's speech pattern:
"How you livin'?" he said, and gave a smile to the heavens that ended at his eyes.
Drifter buried everyone in the village. As was stated previously, it took him centuries to tell anyone what Yu said to him before she died. Drifter told us in one of the tapes he left for us:
My neighbor's kid told me something that still bounces 'round my head to this day. Right before the light went out in her tiny eyes, she whispered, "I can't feel anything." Yeah. I couldn't either. That's all I got. Cut the tape.
He never got over this trauma. This child died in his arms while he desperately tried to save her and he had to be there to hear her final words, while he was able to just walk up and live again. It's a huge part of his disdain for the Light and the Traveler.
A lot about who he is was formed in Eaton, including the way he talks which is something he adopted from a friend that died. It's very interesting to see how he ended up becoming the man he is today. This lore book I linked is absolutely a fantastic read. Here's a fanmade drawn cutscene about this.
Drifter also later had a bar beneath Felwinter's Peak. He specifically wanted to get in contact with Felwinter, which wasn't easy without revealing he's a Lightbearer. Took him a while to get there, but eventually he managed to get a meeting with Felwinter. The purpose of this meeting? To report Lord Dryden, the Iron Lord that fought the Warlords in Eaton.
See, what Lord Dryden did was against the Iron Decree. It states that Risen should never involve mortals in their battles and Dryden specifically paid off villagers in Eaton to set them up as bait. But nobody knew about this because everyone in Eaton died. Except Drifter! Who was a secret Lightbearer. So he went to Felwinter and reported it, using the footage of the event from his Ghost as proof. Additionally, Dryden lost all other Iron Lords he led in the attack and also committed final deaths against the other Risen, then proceeded to hide the entire event and was still serving as an Iron Lord without repercussions.
Felwinter agreed to help because that's what he does. He also asked:
"Eaton. Who were those people to you?"
"You want revenge for people you care nothing about?"
Drifter avoids answering and never says anything more about it, clearly still heavily traumatised but unable to properly explain how and why. He just avoids the topic. But nobody would spend hundreds of years trying to get revenge for the villagers he buried with his bare hands if they were "nothing" to him.
For what it's worth, Felwinter did not waste a single moment. He told Drifter to leave and:
The Exo parted his coat and drew a long, bronze shotgun from his side.
"What do you think?" his Ghost asked.
"Call Lord Dryden. Prepare my Iron Banner arsenal."
Eaton was avenged and Drifter's long stubborn quest to get that revenge worked. But that didn't help him get over the trauma of Yu and what he had to witness.
On one hand, I am kind of disappointed we didn't get Drifter in Season of the Haunted because his Nightmare would've obviously been Yu. On the other hand, I am glad we didn't because I don't think I would've been able to handle that. And Drifter knows this, which is probably why he avoids the Moon like the plague.
I feel like this whole part of his backstory is super important to understand why he is so eager to be close to Eido and why he's protective of her. Including why he's so good with other Eliksni kids. It makes the whole thing very bittersweet. He definitely has a soft spot for kids. I'm glad that he gets to spend time with them now.
