Hashna's page

Hashna
Female human Un-Barbarian 1 (Invulnerable Rager)
18 Years of Age
CN medium humanoid [human]
Init +4; Senses Perception +5
--------------------
Defense
--------------------
AC 18, touch 13, flat-footed 15 (+5 armor, +2 Dex, +1 dodge)
HP 14 (1d12 + 2 Con mod)
Fort +4, Ref +2, Will +3
--------------------
Offense
--------------------
Speed 30 ft.
Weapon: greatsword, +5 attack [always be power attacking], 2d6+10 Damage, 19-20/x2 crit, slashing
Weapon: javelin, +3 attack, 1d6+5 damage, 20/x2 crit, piercing
--------------------
Statistics
--------------------
Str 20 (+5), Dex 14 (+2), Con 14 (+2), Int 8 (-1), Wis 12 (+1), Cha 8 (-1)
Base Atk +1; CMB +6; CMD 18
Feats: Dodge + Mobility, Iron Will
Traits: Robot Slayer, Wary of Danger [it's a Kellid specific Reactionary; +2 initiative]
Skills: Acrobatics +6, Climb +9 [1 FC point], Perception +5, Survival +5
Languages: Hallit
--------------------
Wealth
--------------------
Adventuring Gear: greatsword; club; javelin x2; dagger; scale mail
Other Gear: barbarian's kit
Weight: 65 lbs./133 lbs.
Coin: 68 gp
--------------------
Special Abilities
--------------------
Class: Fast Movement; Rage (6 rounds)
Racial: bonus feat; Heart of the Fields

--------------------
Obscure Features
--------------------
Heart of the Fields
Humans born in rural areas are used to hard labor. They gain a racial bonus equal to half their character level to any one Craft or Profession skill, and once per day they may ignore an effect that would cause them to become fatigued or exhausted. This racial trait replaces skilled.

Hashna is no sight for sore eyes. Rather, she is the visual ache presupposed by the idiom. A daddy-long-legs given human form, the young woman is an awkward assemblage of gangly limbs and stretched skin, tall and thin beyond any reasonable measure. Standing some 6’9’’, Hashna’s imposing height could have garnered respect among her fellow Kellids; physical prowess ranks highly among Kellid virtues. Paranoia ranks higher still, however, and Hashna is so far beyond the norm that some suspect her corrupted by the mysterious blight poisoning their land. While prodigiously tall, Hashna is no exemplar of athletic ability; too many harsh years replete with constant struggle for survival yet lacking in any steady diet have rendered her painfully thin. If beanstalks grew in barren Numeria, people would compare her thusly. Instead they reach for the stick figure totems employed by witches and shamans, finding ill omen in both.

Of course, tribal Kellids are similarly unfamiliar with books. As such, many have never learned not to judge a book by its cover. Because Hashna is strong, terribly strong, stronger than any draft horse pound-for-pound. Like whittling a branch into a club, the same harsh circumstances that have fashioned her into the almost sickly-looking creature she is today, have also conditioned her. On closer inspection Hashna’s limbs, while thin for the lanky frame, are corded over with lean muscle. No well-fed strongman, this is the musculature of a starved tiger, all sinewy cords under emaciated skin, almost grotesque in its transparency. It should then go without saying that Hashna has little to offer in the way of traditional womanly charms, even excepting her non-existent social graces. With no chest to speak of, sharp facial features, and hair haphazardly shorn with a none too sharp dagger, she is sometimes mistaken for a man.

Yet those brave few who look into the dark eyes find no animal cunning there. Although the brow above them is frequently found scowling - more so an involuntary defence mechanism than an expression of animosity - Hashna’s eyes are open and curious, even introspective, if dull with the determination of the simpleminded. They betray her young age where hard living has prematurely aged the rest of her.

Hashna opened her eyes. The sky above her was cold and dark. The earth beneath her was rugged and hard; something dug into her back. It was beginning to rain. But the ground was already wet. She raised a leaden arm. The blood encrusting it wasn’t hers. She was still alive.

Mind slowly catching up to reality, her breath came out quicker now, nostrils flaring. No. Don’t panic. Grum beat her when she was scared. Was Grum alive? The thought was sudden and intrusive as an arrow through flesh. No. No, she remembered now. He had led the charge against the metal beast. She had seen it shear him in half. A rain drop brushed her cheek. What was this feeling? Should she feel sad? Should she feel guilty for not feeling sad?

She turned her head with some struggle. There was a corpse beside her, the owner of the dried blood. A clan member of hers. She couldn’t tell who – too mangled. There were more lying beyond it. They were on her other side too, she knew, strewn about like so much cut reed. Her entire clan.

Of course, the so-called Flesh Tearers were no more a clan than a gaggle of crazed Mendevian crusaders were a church. Hashna did not understand this, but she knew – as children know – that they were different. A clan comprised a community, a family. It provided, built and empowered. It had a future. Conversely, Grum’s Flesh Tearers only killed, robbed and tore down, even among their own. They had no future. For theirs was a warband, plain and simple. Worse still was that they weren’t even a particularly good one. A band united only in spite against their respective clan elders, no one among the Kellid ever afforded them anything but scorn and rightly so, a tiny parody of a true clan. Elders projected that harsh Numeria would grind them down within the decade. Ten years is not a long time. But it is just enough to turn child into something approximating an adult.

This had been their eleventh year. And now they were gone.

Hashna felt a searing pain in her abdomen. She pulled back her other hand. She hadn’t realized she’d been clutching her side. More blood, fresh. She was bleeding. Her gut? She remembered the metal beast and its thundering cannons, the strange little steel bolts that felled warriors by the dozens. Had it shot her in the gut? She hoped not. That was an ugly death, a slow death.

She remembered telling Grum, many summers ago, that she wasn’t bleeding anymore. He didn’t understand what she meant. His piggish eyes had scrunched together; she knew to be wary at that. She explained that she hadn’t had her monthly flow for three months. Hashna was quite proud of this. The women told her that this wasn’t right, that a woman was supposed to bleed, but Grum had taught her that, “Spilling blood was the right of the strong.” The strong did not bleed. Only the weak bled. She hoped he would be proud of her. Instead he had beaten her. He pummelled her to the ground, stomped on her, all the while demanding to know, “what stupid boy she had lain with.” Hashna hadn’t known what this meant. He called her ugly words, words she didn’t recognize then. At one point she had cried out, calling him “da”, trying to make him stop. Grum hated when she called him that and beat her harder.

How was the girl to know that her body fat was so low and her diet so infrequent that it had halted her period?

She blinked at the rain drops. The sky was darker now, fiercer. Hashna recognized now that she was drifting in and out of consciousness; time was slipping from her. Where had that memory come from? She hadn’t thought of it in years. She maneuvered her head again, looking to her side: all one giant patch of blood. But not flowing anymore. Had it stemmed? Yes. The steel bolts hadn’t nested in her guts, instead passing clean through her side. She would live. Yes. She couldn’t die here. She had to live. She had to live because she was strong. And because she was strong, she would live. The circular logic made sense in her delirious mind. The young woman tried rising. Her limbs felt heavy as any of the metal men’s. And yet those automatons moved just fine. The thought spurred her on. The metal beast had spilled her blood. It had killed her clan. It was strong. She had to be stronger.

It took hours and another bout of unconsciousness before Hashna was standing again, and this on legs unsteady as a newborn doe's. She looked at the barren plain, at the remains of the only family she had known. Not knowing what to say, she said nothing. Instead she gathered what weapons and armor she cared to use off them. In pillaging their corpses, she knew what she had to do. She had to ensure nothing like this could ever befall her again. She had to prove herself to Grum, to her clan, to all of Numeria. She had to prove her pain worthwhile. She had to become stronger still, stronger than any metal beast. Had to – this was not a want or a yearning, but a need and a must. She had to stand strongest in all of Numeria.

Only then would her life have meaning.

This is the Hashna that days later stumbles into the Foundry, Khonnir Baine's tavern, battered and bruised to hear of disturbances in the town of Torch.

For someone with a stated goal as juvenile as ‘standing strongest in all of Numeria’, Hashna is strangely meek in demeanour. Of course, when coupled with her impressive frame many interpret this diffidence as some sort of stoic hardass attitude. In truth, the young woman is an introspective soul, not revelling in strength or violence, but rather using it to validate her own existence. Life hasn’t been kind to Hashna. Whether she becomes the greatest warrior of all is the difference between all her hardships having been worth it, or whether she is what she suspects deep down: just the result of an abusive childhood. Not being able to accept the latter, Hashna goes with the former, no matter how infantile.

Single-minded goals like these tend to pair poorly with the simpleminded, and Hashna is no exception. She is driven like few others, knowing no other purpose in life. As such she has little to no interest in lofty ethics, gods, philosophy or other fanciful notions people cleverer than her subscribe to. She is, however, a Kellid. Honor being a chief virtue among the clans, Hashna tries to be fair and decent to – once again – an almost childlike degree. After all, every Kellid is kin to some degree. Foreigners are another matter, but even so she keeps her promises, and is loyal to a fault.

All this said, the young woman doesn't know herself especially well. Her upbringing not having given her much in the way of social graces, she can be comically serious at times, missing social cues entirely. While self-aware enough to feel awkward at this, Hashna tells herself - against her better judgement - that she will find self-fulfillment only in being the strongest in Numeria.