Abwan "Valorstride" Blue-Bear

[Krilari]

Full name: Abwan “Valorstride” Blue-Bear
Age: Fifty-Eight
Race: Half-Orc (Uthgardt-Iceshield Heritage)
Sex: Male
Date of birth: 12th of Hammer, 1301
Place of birth: Stone Stand
Alignment: Neutral Good
Patron deity: Tempus
Profession: Adventurer; Hobbyist Carpenter
Classes: Barbarian 26; Fighter 4
Primary language: Common
Secondary languages: Orcish (Fluent); Elvish (Passing); Dwarven (Exclusively Insults)

Physical description:
With all of the grace of an aged mountain, its gnarled peaks scraping against the heavens, Abwan towers above the common man with commendable 6’’ 9” height and a hulking, muscular frame. His complexion is a stark, ruddy brown interspersed with a roadmap of intermingling scars that lighten or darken his flesh in uneven portions, and altogether the earthen hues compliment the dense mixture of compacted muscle padded by a fine sheen of fat. Beyond the tangle of general body hair - thick as it may be - Abwan’s mane is a salt-and-pepper mix of onyx cables stubbornly giving away to graying age, worked from side-shaved scalp down to mid-neck. In the vacancy sprawls a series of faded, runic tattoos detailing both his membership and exile from the Blue Bear Tribe of the Uthgardt territories. Altogether along with a withered placidity frames a set of verdant eyes bore with a measuring wit not oft thought possible of the brutish half-kin.

Despite what is an at-best tumultuous relationship with his progenitor tribes Abwan dresses akin to the shamanistic berserkers of the Uthgardt, specifically and iconically crowned with a sprawling mantle of dark brown Dire Bear hide. The fur drapes over head and shoulders before settling down his back, and in the process covers a robe-like chestpiece wrapped in simple cloth and leather binding in the ankles, knees, wrists, and waist. Few as they may be he does carry a few iconic trinkets, most particularly of which is a trinket of an ursine visage carved from dark oak and given emerald gemstone eyes.

Psychological description:
Half-Orcs aren’t often reputable for their emotional complexity. Intensity instead replaces the notion, giving their expressions an often straightforward yet passionate display. Abwan is by no means immune to the influences that lead to this common-held belief. Given age and experience he beholds the world with a full-hearted sincerity which can at times lead to blunt declarations, both for better and worse, though it is often that he tries to soften the latter with questionably-good humor. For those that find themselves growing close they find more and more paternal airs dressed around the old warrior. He’s frequent to impart fatherly simple-wisdoms, advice, or to even so much as simply lend a shoulder through difficult circumstances. While his answers are not always perfect, nor his company always ideal, he is unapologetically tenacious and stalwart before the face of hardship no matter the size of his adopted family.

In pleasures he is simple: food and fighting; carpentry and copulation; dance and drumbeat. He holds true to basic pleasures, indulging some more often than others, yet all with a full-hearted mirth that often lights his eyes and shakes his belly with a deep, basso chuckle. On the exterior it is easy enough to enjoy each of these acts in their own right, but to Abwan they are just as much vessels for his contemplation as thought oft runs through his mind, always considering what has been and what has yet to come - a persistent though understated anxiety.

Religious views:
Tempus does not personally care for Abwan, nor does Abwan personally care for Tempus.

What the Half-Orc would call his “relationship” with his patron deity is a mutual understanding about the nature of being: That conflict is inherent and inevitable. Wars are to be waged. Battles are to be fought. To deny this is folly, though this is the extent by which they agree. Abwan bears no kinship with the clergy or fellow worshipers of the brutal War-God, nor shares in any of the particularly brutal ravings, genocides, or unmentionable acts best associated with the more single-minded worshipers.

Ultimately Abwan sees his worship as one of mutual convenience and does not shy from the potential of a more worthwhile patron to one day reveal itself.

Family
Yrsa Blue-Bear - Mother, Alive - Once a mighty warrior of the Uthgardt now laid low in death after constant contest with the rivaling tribe of Iceshield Orcs. Being the only parental figure for Abwan imposed a great burden upon her; yet she bore it with bravery and kindness even in face of the discrimination her son would inevitably face even amidst their own tribe. Having lived well beyond her halcyon days in the company of Elves she is now turning to wilt and wither in venerable age, however Abwan continues to carry a wood-carved totem of the Bear as a constant reminder of her nobility.

Lephia Ruil - Stepmother, Alive - While Abwan would never attribute much of a close relationship with this aged Elfin matriarch, he nonetheless respected both the power of her druidic craft as well as the reverence by which she wields it. Enjoying a venerable rest in the boughs of the High Wood, she spends her days amidst a company of lovers, Yrsa chief among them.

Mol’groth the Stonespine - Father, Alive - While his identity would never be known to his son, his heritage as a wild and passionate warrior would inevitably be inherited by the barbarian, lending him the potential for both great cunning and great brutality. Having lived long past his hayday, Mol’groth now wanders the world apart from kin or friend, searching for a warrior worth dying to.

Siblings - Varied - While none of them have ever made themselves known to Abwan, nor he to them, there are few chances that he was the only child born from his father’s recklessness.

History
Before all else there is brutality. It is a way of life in the North; a means by which the weak are whittled away and the strong are left to prosper amidst limited resources. It’s what drove the Uthgardt tribes to ravage as they had, and what drove the Iceshield Orcs to inevitably oppose them. With the two forces intertwined in their blood-flecked rivalry no small count of unmentionable circumstances have befallen the feuding barbarians, of which Abwan was but one of many.

Girded by their hatred many of the Elders of the Blue Bear Tribe would’ve seen the boy thrown out to the mercy of Wolves, but Yrsa - his mother - remained stubborn in face of outside pressures. Abomination or not by the eyes of her kin, she would raise her own son and raise him well with the nobility that her people had evidently forgotten. And so she did. From their ancestral mound and tribal ground in Stone Stand, located deep within the High Wood, he would learn to fight, hunt, cook, whittle, carve, as well as many other talents all alongside his lonesome mother who had since earned a broad berth from the community around. That much wouldn’t keep Yrsa from fighting in their name, even if it would be to her fault.

The Iceshield Orcs crashed upon their age-old rivals as surely as waves crash upon the shore, and Yrsa nearly found herself taken in the tide. Quick to answer the call to battle and to count among one of the last to leave it she emerged from the warfare damaged, deeply wounded in her right arm with a crippling pain - one that the shamans could cure, but wouldn’t. Convenient excuses as it was at the time the Elders, backed by vehemently xenophobic warrior-kin, took Yrsa’s wound as an excuse to exile her along with her bastard son. She accepted her punishment with a brave face, took her son as well as what belongings they could carry on their backs, and embraced exile.

By the time Abwan had grown into his adulthood he and his mother had wandered the High Wood for the better part of a decade, making friends among those who could spare the trust and enemies amongst those who would break it. For it they had made a modest homestead near Reitheillaethor, as Yrsa herself made companionship with one of its Wood Elven residents - a local Druidess by the name of Lephia Ruil. While a certain contentment had struck young Abwan to see his mother safely in the hands of another who would love her well, he himself had become subject to yearning - curiosity pulling him beyond the high boughs of the forest by which he had spent all his life. With blessings of his mother and the gift of a prized greataxe by her consort, he would venture out into the sunlight and the spanning world beyond.

Having grown up on tales such as the empirical sprawl of Kara-Tur, the mystic deserts of Zakhara, and the temperate wonders of Faerun, Abwan sought to explore it all - and so he did! Or at least to the best of his ability. Naivety was his ally as he wandered many plains he would not ever be able to remember or towns whose names he never properly learned, all along with companions who he would likely never meet again. These were the good times - the growing times - where Abwan learned more of the world, and perhaps more importantly, the world’s view of him. Orcs had done well to spread their reputation throughout all of Toril both as fearsome warriors and uncouth brutes, meaning Abwan had spent no small count of days sleeping out on the borders of towns he had either been rejected from if not outright chased out of by pitchfork and torch. No matter how many companions would come and go throughout his adventures, he would always be alone by the end of the day. This was pointedly evident when he arrived in the coastal port town of Hillsfar not as a free man, but as a slave.

Plucked right from the roads and into the clasp of irons Abwan was abducted from the road in his more lonesome travels, added to a cadre of eclectic faces - an expected mass of Tieflings and Half-Orcs for which most the world would never blink an eye over their disappearances. As a part of this newfound family he was often beaten, thrown into a bloody and heartfelt rage in accordance with his blood, and thrown into the arena to fight with all his stirred passions for a crowd of jeering onlookers. It was a role he played all too well, and by the end of the night he was thrown back into irons to repeat the cycle anew in the next day. The only respite he would find from the physical agony and the mental-emotional trauma would be in the company of a figure he would only ever know as ‘Cipher’.

They were an eclectic figure of peace in an otherwise chaotic setting, rarely protesting and even more rarely acting out against the abuse of their abusers. They were a Human of no clear features or sex as he would ever know, lithe yet muscular with an agile strength often attributed to the monastic monks and their varied orders. Just as well, they were pretty much the only person that Abwan couldn’t beat. Having shared nearby cells the two passed the evenings considering the closest equivalent to whatever philosophies they were aware of, during which Cipher frequently referred to lands far off with names he couldn’t recall in all of his travels and organizations he had never heard of. The grand implications of the planar scale often went over Abwan’s head, but the companionship was in itself a wealth of gold to chase off the insanity of solitude, not to mention the wealth of lessons pertaining to fate, self-actualization, and the power of unadulterated action over clouding thought.

Within the month of Kythor in the Year of the Worm, 1356 DR, a now-aged Abwan would look to the sky from the midst of his practice rounds to witness a winged behemoth plummet from the sky. A Flight of Dragons had plagued the region in recent times with all too little care from a man who couldn’t even concern himself with his own freedom, yet as the city fell into chaos beneath assailing dragons he found his one opportunity for freedom - an opportunity he along with many of his fellow captives would take. In the resulting madness he had beaten no small count of guards and freed no small handful of his fellow gladiators - of which Cipher was of course included - and in a final surge fled from their prison as free men and women, some for the first time in decades.

Tired yet listless, worn yet hopeful, Abwan wandered from the Moonsea Coast out and onto the familiar roads, treading the path back to hearth, comfort, and home. Yrsa had grown gray in her age, but no less spry and no less loved by the Elf she had taken for wife. He lingered for a time in much-needed respite, but it would not be many months before Abwan set back out into the world, his soul wholescale consumed by wanderlust and wonder for the world he had not yet seen in full.