Kagan Stronghand's page

1st:Fighter (Unarmed Fighter); unarmed style (Dragon Style), enforcer

Kagan Stronghand was born a few day’s ride north of Ragos, in the forest outside a small rural village. The village was only a few households, and they were all orcs. His father, Drogann Deerslayer was a hunter, trapper and furrier. His mother Fechtalda was a witch. She served as the village’s healer and shaman. Kagan was their only living child. He would have had an elder sister and brother, but his sister died of fever and his brother was killed while serving in the wars of expansion in the south before Kagan was born. Kagan’s parents were old enough that they had no expectation of another child, but he came along anyway. They were overjoyed to have another chance at raising a child, but worried that they wouldn’t be as good of parents since they were no longer young.

Drogann and Fechtelda had little to fear. The orcish race is strong, and not so many generations ago was feral and savage. Orc babies can fend for themselves far better than the children of weaker races. They didn’t need to keep up with him. Kagan’s mature parents had a patient love that provided him with a safe place to rest when he wasn’t out adventuring in the forest. Many days, Drogann took Kagan hunting, but Kagan showed little interest in the trade. He liked it much better when Drogann would teach him how to fight. As a young child he often wrestled and fought with the children from the village, who mocked him for being the son of the witch.

Despite this mockery, he was intensely interested in the magic his mother worked with the aid of her viper familiar. He tried to learn from her but he found that the complicated arcane chants were too much for him to remember. He was strong of body, but Kagan’s mind was not the fastest. The older he got, the more bored he got of their little hamlet. It didn’t even have a proper name. Even though his brother had been killed in the wars, Kagan dreamed of joining the Ragesi military and serving under the great Emperor Coaltongue. He loved the stories of the ancient orcish warrior-shamans his mother told him of around the fire on winter nights. He wondered if he would be any better at divine magic than he was at arcane. Kagan decided that when he grew up, he would do whatever it took to become an Inquisitor.

When Kagan was still an adolescent, Drogann came down with pneumonia and was too old and weak to fight it off. He passed away, leaving Kagan and Fectalda all alone. They struggled after that, as Fechtalda’s income was not much. She lived another couple of years before also passing away, when Kagan was fourteen and a half. With nothing left to keep him in the little hamlet, he set off to follow his dreams.

He made the long walk to Ragos over the next week, sleeping in the open and roughing it. By the time Kagan arrived in Ragos he was not a pretty sight. Coated in mud, bruises and other bits of nature’s detritus he made his way to the closest recruiting post. The sergeant wasn’t impressed with his appearance, but he could see the iron in Kagan’s country-bred musculature. Kagan signed up, and applied to train for the Inquisitors. He applied himself as best he could, and was accepted into the training - barely. He completed basic training and began his education as an Inquisitor. Kagan struggled to keep up with the other candidates. It wasn’t long before he discovered he wasn’t any better at praying than he was at chanting long arcane phrases. Kagan was unable to cast a single spell, and he washed out of the program. He was placed in an auxiliary unit to the Inquisitors. His unit were scouts who went ahead of the Inquisitors and did recon and prep work for their missions.

Kagan was disappointed that he wouldn’t be an inquisitor, but at least he was a soldier - a soldier who got to help the Inquisitors even. Only a few months into his service, he was on the southern border with the Inquisitors responding to a border raid. Kagan was ordered to infiltrate a village and locate any arcane spell casters, targeting them for assassination. He did as he was told, going into the village disguised as a traveler and looking for anyone with the ability to weave spells. The village was nearly the same as the one he’d grown up in. Kagan felt wrong going into this place of innocents and blaming them for the attack on Ragesia. Worst of all the only spellcaster in the village was a boy of around the same age as Kagan himself had been when his parents passed. Kagan was suddenly filled with loathing for the Inquisitors, and could not bring himself to follow the order. He fled the army, becoming a deserter.

Kagan spent the next months in near starvation traveling through the wilderness, stealing food from farms and scavenging to survive. Many were the days he wished he’d paid more attention to Drogann’s lessons. He was heading for the free city of Gate Pass, but Kagan was unsure if he’d live through the long journey. His situation grew more desperate until he found himself walking day after day on the verge of starvation, tongue often swollen with thirst. The journey plumbed the deepest depths of Kagan’s reserves of strength, and taught him how tough he really was.

One day while walking through a forested valley in the foothills of the mountains, he heard the sound of snarling combat up ahead. Creeping forward on his belly through the bushes, Kagan came upon the most unexpected of scenes. Half a dozen wolves were circling the carcass of a freshly killed elk, snapping and growling at a great brown grizzly bear which was standing on its hind legs roaring at the canines. Kagan watched in wonder as the predators joined in combat over the bloody prize. Two tons of roaring muscle slashed and bit at the six darting shadows that leaped about nipping at it. Back and forth across the clearing the mass of scrambling animal flesh rolled, crushing undergrowth and fallen branches. The bear rapidly killed the wolves, crushing the throat of one in its jaws, and tearing open the bowels of another. Kagan continued to watch as the bear crushed its lesser foes, but not without cost to itself. Soon its shaggy brown hide was slick and crimson with its own blood. In a matter of seconds the combat finished. The last two living wolves fled into the forest, yelping, with their tails between their legs. The bloodied bear roared after them in defiant triumph.

Kagan watched, salivating, as the grizzly bit into the elk’s carcass, gorging itself on the raw meat. He looked down to his only weapon, a dagger now dulled from days of hard use as a tool of survival. It’s now or never, he thought to himself. I can die starving or I can die fighting... After a moment of summoning his courage, the delirious orc leapt from the bushes roaring and brandishing his six inches of gleaming steel. The bear looked up from its meal, disbelieving that yet another creature would dare challenge it. Kagan rushed forward with the strength of the desperate and leaped onto the bear’s back, jamming the knife over and over again into the back of its neck. The great ursine beast roared in pain and frustration, shaking Kagan off and pinning him to the forest floor with one giant paw. Kagan roared back, thrusting his knife up over and over into the bear’s face and throat. The grizzly reared back, surprised by the painful fury of its would-be prey. A swipe of its razor-sharp claws opened Kagan’s face and nearly took his right eye. The orc tottered, barely conscious. The bear was likewise staring death in the face. The ground around the two savage creatures was slick and crimson with their blood. They rushed together in one final, fatal clash. Kagan thrust his blade into the joint under the bear’s arm and into its heart at the same time that the bear bit down on his shoulder, dislocating bone and mangling muscle.

Kagan fell back, crushed under the corpse of the bear, into the darkness of unconsciousness. While he was out, Kagan found himself standing there looking down at his own body as if he were dreaming. Another orc stood across from him, on the other side of the bear. The orc was old, and dressed as a shaman like the ones in his mother’s stories covered in skins and fetishes. The old orc looked across the pile of fur and blood at dream-Kagan. ”To bring down a bear with naught but a knife. This is an act of strength. An act of power.”

”Who are you? What do you mean? Am I dead?” Kagan wondered.

”Not yet, Stronghand. You are just barely alive. There is still much of your destiny before you. You want to be like me, I can see it in your heart. You seek to wield the magics of strength like our people did of old.” The old orc certainly looked like a warrior. He was covered in scars and had a wicked-looking falchion strapped to his back.

”Yes...?” Kagan asked, unsure of himself.

”Then wake up. Take a trophy from this kill, and remember its power. Take trophies from all your acts of strength and endurance. Honor the heritage of our people and we will come to you in your dreams. The elders - those who have walked this path before you. We will teach you the ways of power.” The spirit of the ancient shaman reached out across the still forms below. Kagan reached with his own hand, and clasped forearms with the ancestor spirit.

The next thing he knew, Kagan’s eyes were fluttering open to a world of pain. He managed to shove the bear off him, and crawl over to the elk where he feasted on its flesh before passing out again. He woke again when some ravens landed nearby, cawing and hopping forward to peck at the feast of carrion before them. Kagan didn’t know how long it had been, but he felt stronger. He struggled to his feet and scared the birds away, working to quickly skin the corpse of the bear. Wanting to get away before the kills attracted more predators, Kagan took the bear’s hide and as much meat as he could carry, and stumbled off into the woods.

By some manner of providence Kagan stumbled upon a cave next to a stream, where he was able to get a small fire started. He scraped and prepared the bear hide for curing as best he could, before wrapping it tightly. Over the next couple days Kagan feasted on the elk and bear meat he’d carried with him, and regained much of his strength. As soon as he was ready he made the rest of the journey to Gate Pass.

The big city was a shock to Kagan. It had been so long since he’d been in one, and Gate Pass was quite different from Ragos. The country orc found himself a bit lost, and unsure what to do now that he’d finally arrived at his destination. He followed his nose to a tannery, and offered to work there in exchange for tanning the bear hide and giving him food. He was in luck and the tanner needed some extra hands during a busy couple weeks. Kagan worked there for a few weeks until the tanner didn’t need him anymore and kicked him out. During that time he’d gotten noticed around the neighborhood. It was obvious to the locals that he was no stranger to violence. The thieves’ guild representative in the neighborhood offered him work as a debt collector. The previous occupant of the position had recently been murdered. The pay the guild offered was good, and Kagan had no other prospects, so he turned to a life of crime. Usually he would just have to intimidate people to get them to pay up. More rarely, he needed to smack people around either to motivate them, or to make a lesson of them. Killing people was bad for business, so Kagan never went too far.

With the recent death of the Emperor, Kagan’s thoughts have turned to what this means for Gate Pass, the city he now calls home. He doesn’t like his job that much, but he is free to pursue his destiny in Gate Pass. With every job he does for the guild he takes a trophy, and adds it to the fetishes dangling from the bearskin cloak slung over his broad shoulders. He continues to follow the way of strength, and hopes that one day soon the ancestor spirits will make themselves known to him again, and teach him how to work magic. Then he will lead his people back to the path of strength and honor that Leska and her Inquisitors want to steer them away from. He wouldn’t allow his home to fall to her wicked ways, nor to the haughty, alien elves. He will fight for his city, and then when that’s done, fight to free the Empire.