Hurom Ullah's page

Hurom Ullah is a child of the desert. Born to half-elf merchants newly arrived in Katapesh, his family soon moved to Selkelhas on the edge to the Katapeshi deserts. From a young age, he showed an aptitude in navigating the oppressive heat and shifting sands of the desert, and he often would disappear for weeks at a time on solitary sojourns into the wastes. As a young man, he gained employment guiding the merchant caravans common to the region on their circular routes to and from great Katapesh itself.

His talents for pathfinding soon caught the eye of a factor of one of the merchant guilds of Katapesh. He was recommended to the Zephyr Guard and soon found himself scouting for Guard parties and merchant guild mercenaries policing the lucrative pesh trade. The Zephyr Guard and their Packmasters patrons had a keen interest in monitoring the goings-on in the desert lands where pesh was grown, intercepting illegitimate cargoes and torching unauthorized farms. Not violent by nature, the relentless pace of raids, the tracking of guild fugitives, and the bloody work of rooting out desert troublemakers soon began to wear on Hurom. Sullen and withdrawn by nature, the grind did no favors to his already pessimistic view of human nature. After a particularly violent mercenary raid in which the commander ordered three entire families put to the sword, he resigned his brevet commission with the Guard, forswore future mercenary work, and cursed the Packmasters who seemed at best oblivious and at worst approving of the dark side of the pesh trade.

He withdrew to a family holding at Tiven's Reed to walk the badlands and contemplate his future. Soon bored with the monotony and with no interest in joining his family's business dealings, he returned to Katapesh to seek new work as a desert guide. He found the reception chilly; he had apparently been blacklisted by the merchant guilds that run the city for "breach of contract" and was unable to find work. At the end of his wits, one day he overhears talk of a village named Kelmarane....

At turns solemn and taciturn, Huram's recent work on behalf of Katapesh's merchant guilds and as a sometimes agent of the Pactmasters has left him feeling even more disconnected from human society than normal. Although he always rebuffed his parents' effort to get him to connect, to the human society in which he lived, or with the elven legacy of his past, deep within Hurom does feel the need for acceptance, to be part of a group and working towards a common end.

Lonely but not lonesome, this desire is what drove him to start helping caravans navigate the sands of the Katapeshi deserts, and often looks back fondly at those days, when as a lad he was among the most valued of the caravans' traveling companions. In his socially halting way, he is looking for another such shared experience. He has never had a close friends, and no companions he would call lovers. But, when entrenched as part of a group, be it hapless caravaneers or cold-blooded Katapesh mercenaries, he will struggle to his body's limits to achieve their shared goals.

Regardless, he lives by his own code, and has done some things he is not proud of. Only with much prompting will he speak of his past work as a agent of the Katapesh authorities. His love of the desert extends beyond his skills as a guide. He enjoys the ebb and flow of the dessert tribes' music, the taste of their cooking, and rhythms of a night's camp under the stars. Some might call him a gentle soul, but he has always show the ability to lock down such emotions in favor of a brutal pragmatism toward his work.

Hurom stands tall and thick, and the desert sun has beaten a ruddy complexion into his naturally fair features. Long in the face, with light brown hair pulled straight back and cut short, his slate-gray eyes center a face rarely given to smiles or grins. The faint mark of a tribal-tattoo, one of his mother's bright ideas to help encourage him to him "reconnect" with his elven heritage, runs down the left side of his face and is now mostly a faded black.