About Grok the WrongedBackground, Short Version:
Grok was born to an enslaved human mother and an unknown orc father, and was himself enslaved. He was taken from the group where he was born by a larger, but still small and brutal, group, who eventually broke his right hand and prevented it from healing properly. He grew up enslaved but treated slightly better than other slaves, learning how to swing a sword and shoot a bow, before the group of orcs who enslaved him broke apart, at which point he began to protect the other prisoners and suffer their punishments. Eventually they escaped, and he helped them get to Truanau, but did not enter the town. Instead he spent four years hunting down and killing the group which had enslaved him, in the process saving the widow of a man he had seen killed. They journeyed back to Truanau together, and live in the same house, although their friendship is platonic. Background, Long Version:
Belkzen is a bad place for a human with no more ambition than to survive and no desire to do harm to any other. Yet it was Belkzen they were forced to start a farm, a young couple newly married and without children. It was a long, blue first winter, forcing the husband to hunt or die. In the snow and the cold there was little game, and nothing large enough to feed them for a winter, but there were predators more terrible than humans, whose green skin and fell tusks bore savage signs of battle. On the snow his blood pooled and spread before freezing. They took his widow as a slave, and for her it was not easy to live. Beatings were common, food was plenty but withheld, and only the barest of shelters was allowed for her use, In which she found her rare and brief respites tempered with grief. She died in childbirth after her first year, cursing both life and death. It was under this omen that he was born. The orcs did not care for him, and he would have died if not for other prisoners, who divided their already spare rations and took surprising risks to keep him alive. The first year of his life was the easiest, but he could not remember it, and did not know it existed. The orcs called him Grok, and after a time they began to give him his own food, and his own tasks. It was a hard life, hard as his mother’s, but in it he began to grow. When Grok was five years old the small band which had captured his parents proved too small to be stationary, and was overtaken by a much larger group. The new masters had their own slaves and their own orphans, and a particularly cruel habit. They would shatter the bones of a prisoner’s right hand and then constrain them so that they be twisted and mangled terribly. This marked one as a slave, but it was more terrible than this, for it also prevented many tasks which would be needed for a civilized person, and left prisoners capable only of swinging swords. One day Grok’s fortunes improved, for he was shown favor by one of his captors. He learned to fight and grew strong, and by the time he was ten he was strong enough to shoot a bow fit for an adult human, though he had to learn to draw it by himself, for his fingers had little strength in their tips. He never knew why he was being trained to fight, and never asked, but if he had he would have received one word as a response "Giants". This training, and the extra food that came with it, set Grok apart from the other slaves, for in truth he was not quite a slave. Between categories, always an outcast, treated poorly by the masters and with contempt by the prisoners. Eventually the large group of orcs in which he had grown tore itself into small groups. Grok ended up in one of the more brutal, with but were twelve orcs and four prisoners, who were weak, and Grok, who was strong. He could have stolen their food and their blankets, and trodden on their fortunes, but instead Grok did the opposite. When a prisoner was found at fault, Grok would try his best to be beaten in their stead. When they were short of food, he went hungry for them. And when they eventually escaped, they looked to him as a bulwark, though he was still young even for a half orc. And bulwark he was, shielding them thanklessly from every danger. He and his four companions fled to the mountains, for though they knew of Freetown and Trunau as havens they were too far, and they could be seen by neighboring tribes as slaves because of their broken fingers. So it was that they had to survive a hard winter in the mountains. But with the first blooms of spring they made their way down, and passed with speed to the very outskirts of civilization, coming within a mile of Trunau’s walls. Then Grok made a decision. He had never lived in society, and his mangled right hand ached for revenge. He would live in the wilds for four more years before he spilled the blood he sought. His winters were spent in the mountains honing his skills, his summers in the lowlands looking for vengeance. Sometimes when he was awake through the night for fear of freezing to death he would find himself wondering if he had made the right decision. He didn’t know if he was chasing ghosts or if the twelve who had broken more bones than he had counted for offenses so slight as words out of turn were still wandering the wilds. When he finally found what he was looking for he knew he had chosen the right path. A man, driven by the winter to hunt, trapped by four he knew were his prey. The man was wounded already, with arrows in his chest, barely holding a short sword out for his defense. Grok’s arrow’s flew, his sword rang, his cries were heard and his blood shed; he made the only thing his mangled hand would let him make: he made corpses. The man’s wife was grateful, but the arrows had been in him too long, and too much blood poured onto the snow. Grok stayed to help them bury his body, then burned his eight remaining foes as they slept, shooting those who fled and stacking their heads in a pile. Grok returned to the widow, who was still living at the camp he had found her. It was then that she noticed for the first time his broken hand. He told her that it had been broken when he was a child, that his captor’s were bad, that it was fit for one purpose. He saw then something he had never seen before, something in her face; it was pity, pure and simple. A pity which showed that the woman realized how wonderful her life had been up to that point, how much worse off she could have been, and on her face Grok saw the unending awfulness that had been his life. Tears rolled down his face, and they sobbed together, her for her husband and Grok for himself, and for all those he had never looked at like that woman looked at him, though he had seen more than enough. They made their way to Trunau then, he and that woman, who he learned was named Ariel, and had been a member of a cara
Crunch:
Male Half-Orc Ranger 2 CG Medium Humanoid(Orc, Human) Init +2; Senses: Darkvision 60ft; Perception +6 Defense AC 19; Touch 12; Flat-Footed 17; (+2 Dex; +6 Armor; +1 Shield)
Offense Speed 30ft (20ft in armor)
Statistics Str 16, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 8
Other Gear: Backpack; Trail Rations x1; Water, 4 lbs; Wool Blanket; Bedroll; Lamp Oil, 4lbs; Silk Ropes, 50ft, 2; Traveler's Outfit, Crowbar 11 CP, 31 SP, 83 GP, 13 PP, 124 party GP, 2 MWK Greataxes Carrying: 40+8+71+1+3+5+5+5+3+5+5+4+1+2+5+24=122 lbs Spent GP: 2+2+75+75+1.1+10+.1+.5+.5+.1+2+59=227 GP |
