From a young age, Starla was afflicted with an unidentifiable, eldritch wasting sickness that defied all treatment. Her older brother, Trendal, saw his parents and their many friends frustrated repeatedly by the failed attempts to cure her, and devoted all his time and training as a young adult to assisting in doing so. After numerous adventures and misadventures in dark places, he was able to procure the ingredients for a nostrum at great cost and expense, and Starla's recovery freed him, in a strange way, for future endeavors.

Though she was verifiably on the mend, Starla's weak constitution mandated a transition to warmer, dryer climes somewhere south of the Dalelands. Leaving their practice in the temporary care of trusted allies, the family spent many months on the road, eventually settling in Freehold rather than Assur, after seeing how much help their skills could potentially be to the striving frontier town.

Left with chronic poor endurance because of her lifelong illness, Starla persisted as much through the signature willpower of the Kingshand family as through anything else, and kept herself occupied between bouts of bedbound fatigue by reading volumes of history, heroism, and romance. Inspired by her literary idols and determined to develop an independent existence for herself after being forced to rely on others for her very survival since childhood, Starla took a job as a serving girl at Vio's during the summer of 1373DR, after her brother departed with the first mine delegation.

She was well-liked there and remained at the tavern until the first Harvest Festival, when she accepted an apprenticeship with Shara Graye at the "job fair." Subsequently, she and fellow apprentice Kawashiro Katsura accompanied their teacher as part of the first caravan to Assur, braving enormous ants, Tlincalli, basilisks, a roc, griffons, and hill giants along the way.