Abandoned at a monastery after his birth, Kowaru had a restless childhood. Raising a child in the serenity of a monastery is never an easy task, but doubly so when the child was the product of a forced union between a human maiden and a rampaging orc. The boy often tried to assert dominance with the monks who raised him, and occasionally ran away - these attempts always ended in failure. The monks thought him unreachable until an itinerant monk from a different temple, Master Ping Xiao, visited. Kowaru attempted to raise a fist against Master Ping, but the visiting monk used soft arts to dance around Kowaru's clumsy blows. Kowaru quickly tired, quite confused on how this weak little man could outlast his young limbs, and as he pondered this, Master Ping swept Kowaru's legs out from underneath him. The young half-orc looked up at the wisened man, panting and out of breath, and only after a moment registered the hand Master Ping was offering to him.
He accepted Master Ping's hand. After that, Kowaru's life changed.
He began to study the ways of the Lotus style - that all life is connected, that the internal is the mirror of the external, and that to master the turmoil within one's soul is to master the universe. Under Ping's tutelage, Kowaru at last began to learn to calm the heart that beat within his savage breast. He learned how to fight, but - more importantly - he learned how to avoid a fight, and the best warriors do not kill their enemies, they turn them into allies. The pair were not welcome everywhere - beggar-monks were often viewed with scorn and derision, especially when one of them was a half-orc - but Master Ping used those times to teach Kowaru self-control.
After several years of travel, Kowaru was gathering wood for a campfire for the pair one evening. When he returned, he heard a pair of voices in the clearing with Master Ping. He crept up behind some trees, and was shocked to see that a battle had occured while he was foraging. Six men laid still on the ground around the campsite, and Master Ping was among them. The two that were left were heavily injured, and were cleaning blood of their shortswords and leaning heavily against treetrunks. Kowaru dropped the wood, and marched straight into the clearing, a loud growl in his throat. He set upon the pair with a clarity of purpose, and though they got their licks in, Master Ping had badly injured them already, and Kowaru was able to prevail.
Kowaru was ready to kill these two for ending his master's life, but one look at the old man's still form stayed his hand. To kill these men would mean that his years of study had been for nothing. Instead, he tied them up, and interrogated them. He found that these two (and the other five) had been paid to attack an old man on the road. They were to meet a man in a nearby town to collect payment once the old man and his ward were killed. Kowaru followed this lead as far as he could - he still has no idea why someone wanted the two of them dead, but he recently caught a break. In a seedy tavern (the name escapes him, as one seedy tavern is much like any other), Kowaru discovered that the man who wanted Ping dead had passed through Falcon's Hollow. He gathered a basic description of the man, and then struck out for Andoran.
He's not exactly sure what he will do once he makes it to Falcon's Hollow - he will look for the man that wants him dead, but what happens when he finds that man will be a more interesting question. He meditates often on that, hoping that niggling doubt will be smoothed away to help him find peace.
