Shalluk's page

​It is hard to ignore Shalluk’s size - a feature always and immediately obvious regardless of his dress. Six and a half feet tall and wide in the shoulder and hip, Shalluk would be scary if he didn’t keep his posture slumped, unaggressive at almost all times. Only when he’s working is he confident enough to be standing up straight.

Shalluk’s skin a deep red, an instant hint as to his infernal nature, with thick patches of red, scaled skin a shade darkers where other humanoids would grow body hair - chest, back, forearms and lower legs especially. If that wasn’t enough to make his heritage obvious long black horns jut from his forehead, sweeping back over his head and the dark hair on top of it and back, turning into upward points just behind the back of his head. Shalluk’s jaw is heavy and powerful, and his eyes are bronze and slit sideways similar to a goat.

It is rare to see Shalluk out of a long, black coat with a large and heavy hood that manage to cover his horned head. The hem of the hood surrounds his head, making it difficult to look under the hood. His thick-fingered, calloused hands are gloved, but his feet are usually bare or wrapped in cloth, as they are too oddly shaped for normal shoes, with dark black nails that tends to be hard on leather.

The Tiefling has a deep voice in the baritone range, but speaks quietly and softly in most situations. He tends to smell of soap with just a hint of seared wood, for reasons he’s never been able to explain but assumes is another wonderful ‘gift’ of his bloodline.

Shalluk is a kindhearted, generous man who truly wishes to help the community. Although not the most personable person ever and not naturally likable he’s gifted at talking, and whenever possible he talks his way out of his problems. Despite his skills in terms of violence he prefers to settle things with words. Of course, at least part of why he can settle things with words is because he has violence to fall back on.

He’s also a broken shell of a creature, haunted by his own weakness, his failure, his inability to do what he needed when he needed to. His weak will leaves his feeling hollow, and anyone who talks to Emerik for a long period will realize that he has a deep melancholy, a deep desire to repent for his failures and to make things better.

His faith is strong - at least in his Goddess, friends and family. His faith in himself is, at best, limited. He struggles to believe that he has the capacity to do more good than he has done harm. That he can ever truly make a difference.

But he desperately wants to.

Have you ever wanted, desperately, to be something - anything - other than what you were born to be? That would be an accurate summary of Shalluk’s early life. As a Tiefling, Shalluk was cursed from birth. His mother loved her child, but his father claimed that - clearly - such a creature could never have come from him. The village he was born in certainly didn’t want to leave any reason for the things father to return, and when the rough music came for them, it was led by Shalluk’s father.

Shalluk grew up watching his mother do anything she needed to do to keep her son alive, take any job that paid in coin, food or shelter. Shalluk’s appetites were larger than his frame, and while he constantly tried to hide it, his mother knew that her son was always hungry. Sometimes, that meant she didn’t eat.

The pair constantly moved, and Shalluk’s mother tried to hide what her son was. Potions, skin dyes, anything that might help. The horns that grew larger as Shalluk grew larger and larger made that difficult. His eyes, bronze and slitted, made it harder. Shalluk spent a lot of time indoors, and when they were found, they moved.

Shalluk was the size of a man when his mother grew ill, and it was his turn to take care of her. He was not the age, of course - he still had an impressive amount of growing to do - but he decided it was time for him to find work. The medicine his mother needed, or the magical treatments when she was especially bad, were not cheap. Sadly, the more pleasant parts of the town had no wish for a devil in their midst, and the only ones willing to take Shalluk up on his request to work were the darker, shadier and more criminal elements.

For the rest of his childhood Shalluk worked, taking whatever jobs he could, learning to handle the simpler of weapons and use his fists to his advantage. He developed an appreciation for potions, alchemical agents and the drugs, spending a lot of his coin on them to help his mother. But death comes for us all, and so did Shalluk’s mother pass.

The Tiefling blamed himself that she worked herself until she was sick, and then was never strong enough to recover. More specifically he blamed his tainted blood. He decided that he would purge the taint from his blood with alchemy.

Shalluk had no training, and little real inclination for such work, but he did have a large number of leftover medications and time. He spent months reading any treatise on alchemy he could get his hands on, never finding what he needed but getting hints it could be done. Eventually, he had his potion. And he took it. What emerged in the mirror was quite the opposite of the goal. His size and frame grew bulkier, his horns longer, thicker and glowing. Fangs formed as Shalluk began to black out. What he had purified from his blood was the humanity.

Shalluk has no clear memory of what happened next. Violence. Destruction. Hunger. When he came too again the town was empty, the people gone. The only ones left behind were dead - very dead. Shalluk dropped the blood coated sword he held, fleeing from the destruction he assumed he had wrought in his potion addled state. He assumed the worst had happened. Perhaps it had.

Feeling sick whenever he so much as touched a weapon, Shalluk instead worked as a laborer, and learned how to work with building homes. His huge strength allowed him to haul tools and timber that two men should need to do. He found a certain peace in the work, and people tended to overlook his skin when he was helpful. It was…calming. And then someone called his name. Shalluk looked, and saw someone from the town. The town he had killed. And Shalluk fled.

Fleeing his sins and there ghosts, Shalluk applied to the expedition across the seas. His massive size and his skills as a builder made him a shoo in, and few people seemed to care what he was. Perhaps, across the ocean, Shalluk could find peace.