Turok Tombstone

[Darradarljod]

First Name: Turok
Last Name: Tombstone

Appearance: A sooty skinned duergar with a surly demeanour and a furrowed scowl. He is shorter and broader than most grey dwarves. A rothe horned helmet caps his shaven head which is lumped and scarred. He maintains a suit of solid plate mail, but his upkeep never extends beyond serviceable condition. He cherishes a war axe kept at hand, and a round shield is slung on his back.
Race: Duergar (Grey Dwarf)
Age: 88
Height: 4'0''
Weight: 240
Eyes: Firey Amber
Hair: Shaved to the skin
Facial Hair Style: A foot long beard the shade and texture of filthy spider webs. He does not groom it and it is riddled with lice.

Personality Profile: Turok lacks the industrious work ethic of his kin - he is lazy, disinterested regarding regular toil. What drives this duergar is his soulless avarice and love of violence, both of which lend him a seemingly uncharacteristic persistence to see his heart's desires to their fruition.
General Health: A solid constitution affords goodly health to this fiery grey dwarf.
Deity: Deep Duerra, Laduguer
Initial Alignment: Lawful Evil
Profession: Currently employed by a certain drow
Base Class & Proposed Development: Fighter, moving to Duergar Defender, finishing with Weapon Master (Dwarven Waraxe)
Habits/Hobbies: Turok has a private fascination with educating himself. He is a lover of the written word, history and lore. Turok is also a heartless bully, thriving off of intimidation.
Languages: Undercommon, Dwarven, Gnome
Weapon of Choice: Dwarven Waraxe

Background: The Tombstone clan was most renown for designing and engineering labyrinths for evil wizards. This respectable trade ended promptly with the most recent patriarch, Turok's father. The Tombstone patriarch forsook the generational craft for a new and bold venture. Once a year, he would take Turok and all his brothers on excursions into the Underdark, intercepting drow slaver convoys travelling around the Araumtcos. Live cargo, once liberated, was promptly returned to Gracklstugh and sold on.

Over the years, the harassed slaver caravans strengthened their security and began co-operating together. The Tombstone clan was dissolved bloodily in a single battle when outflanked in a great fissure by slavers and a party of drow blackguards. The patriarch fell in battle. Every male of the clan fled, died, or was enslaved themselves - thus leaving all their sisters, wives and daughters at Gracklstugh to be married on to their rivals.

With his clan dispersed and name forgotten in Gracklstugh, Turok's interests have become decidedly more selfish. He remains obscenely proud of his heritage and a defender of the duergar way of life.

Goals: To become a greater warrior than his father, and to get filthy rich in the process.
To exalt the duergar race over the drow, and settle historical scores with the surface dwarf kingdom.
To visit some of the cities he has read to exist on the surface, including Baldur's Gate, and see the Sea of Swords.

Possible Plot-Hook Ideas and Misc Facts:
Recent employment to a smooth talking drow merchant comes with lucrative dreams and schemes.
Turok's three wives were claimed by his rivals after he failed to return to Gracklstugh.

[DM Gogo]

Reviewed/rewarded.

[Darradarljod]

Wingless imps, bring me gold
under the gully where the water's old
Gracklstugh, O Gracklstugh
deep secret, strong and dark

Bury me alive where the mushrooms grow
A broken neck for the bridge troll's toll
Barakuir, O Barakuir,
How fare thee, Barakuir?

Bright moss glows where dark elves hide
Stabbed your back and skinned alive
S'shamath - a stinking black elf hive!

AND VOZDROL IS A BLUDGING CHARLATAN!


The last line of the block script is punctuated with an aggressive jab of the inked quill, which is promptly thrown across the unlit chamber to disappear with a clatter somewhere behind a pile of pack-lizard saddle-bags in the corner.

The frustrated young Duergar rises from the desk and pushes it away from himself all at once, blaspheming the name of that drow as he paces the room like a rothé in heat. A strong stomach bulges over his baggy silk trousers, his hairy body glistening with perspiration in the heat of the small, filthy rental apartment.

Now he stands at the warped glass of the window where the prismatic light of S'shamath filters through the shutters to line his hairy, bare upper body like inverted tiger stripes. Thick sooty fingers divide the black wooden shutters to glare through them with an equal dose of loathing and suspicion.

"Wealthless lotus-chuffer," his milky amber eyes peruse the life trickling through the streets below, easily spotting drow males but unable to distinguish what are to him their vaguely differing features - indeed, he could barely have told his employer apart from any other black elf. To Turok, they all looked the same.

"I'll kill him before he kills me," the suspicious abundance of Turok's pessimistic heart overflows like a dirty river breaching an already crumbling dam - such transparency was reserved for solitude, "crucify the black-elf on a green tree and watch him sizzle in the sun. That'd sober the crack-head," the muttering master turned away from his brooding at the window and resumed his desk with an exasperated sigh, looking over his poem with a critical scowl.

Two strong hands took the parchment and crushed it into a ball, tossing it over his shoulder. A fresh sheet was spread out in its place. This was followed by a long moment of stillness, his head in his hands.

To an artistically minded outsider, Turok may have appeared as if awaiting the lightning strike of inspiration and creative epiphany.

In truth, he was only coming to realise he knew not where, in all this mess of belongings, his wrathfully discarded quill had landed...

[Darradarljod]

The Duergar Dwarves of Northumberland

"With our very mixed ancestry British folk legends borrow from many cultures, not least the Norsemen who once held large tracts of the land, and terrorised more. The Vikings had scary folk tales of supernatural dwarves, and the Northumberland Duergar legend is surely linked to them – the Old Norse for dwarf was dvergar.

In Northumberland the duergar haunted, or haunt still, the Simonside Hills above Rothbury. It was their delight to lead travellers and shepherds astray when the dank mists fell on the moors, their ghostly lights leading the unwary into bogs to struggle and even drown.

There is a story of a cynic who didn’t believe the tales, though when he went to investigate the area to disprove the legend he took the precaution of bringing a hefty stave. After wandering in vain he thought to trick the creatures by pretending to be lost, and was immediately rewarded with the sight of a faint light leading him on. The cautious cynic narrowly avoided a dunking in a pit, but lobbed a rock in the damp ground to fool the duergar. He soon found they were sharper than he expected, a crowd of the devilish things attacking him, his stave wielded to little effect. When the bruised and battered man woke at dawn he swore never to doubt the duergar again; and never to return to the misty hills."

Thanks to http://www.information-britain.co.uk/lo ... .php?id=60 , from where this was retrieved to share.