Grohl'Ban Xhanari

Physically capable, he grew up fighting with other kids.

Dark green skin, mildly hairy body.

Missing part of his left ear.

A large scar across his body, from his left ear to his right hip.

Right handed, powerful stance, Good posture.

Getting mad? Barbarian RAGE!

Poor, low quality clothes.

A pair of cestus, inherited from his mothers side of the family.

Grohl'Ban was born on the ale-stained floor of the Dirty Croissant on 43rd day in the Month of Winds. His mother and father were both shipwrights for the coinlord Niles DeVries, and consequently spent nearly all of their time working or sleeping. Their constant absence resulted in the small half-orc boy being raised by the family friend who helped deliver him into the world.   For the first few years of his life, his thoughts were simple and few, as is the blessing of all small children. He liked playing with Grandma and her Yellow Bird, and the rare, secret treats which she would sneak him. His favorite game was hide-and-seek, and he was particularly skilled at locating Grandma in her one dependable hiding spot under the stairs. He liked that she called him "Gro", instead of "GROHL'BAN" like Dad always did. Soon though he started to keenly observe his surroundings, and coming to realize at a very young age that the world is never quite all it seems. The first of his revelations came in realizing that a small rock he found was in fact a tiny turtle - a turtle which was promptly named "Snappy". Snappy was his first friend, and took comfortably to a life of travel within Grohl'Ban's shirt pocket. The second revelation was that Mom and Dad seemed to have disappeared at some point, and never come back. This didn't trouble him too terribly at the time; Grandma told him he was safe with her, and of course he believed her.   There were few children in the Landing, mostly the close-kept kit of those transient merchants who alight on Brigand's Landing for only a moment, and then depart, as the brilliant Plover bird picks its meals from betwixt the fangs of crocodiles. Those few younglings so unfortunate as to be born to the Landing were known to be grim and dangerous, and intolerant of weakness, much as the environment they were born to. And despite the best efforts of parents or nannies or Grandmas, the children would find their ways out into the overcast alleyways and soaked streets. The first time Grohl'Ban encountered these urchins, as he snuck from the confines of his home during Grandma's inevitable day-shift, a group of them were shouting insults at him from across the street, goading him with bigotry and insults to his orcish sense of honor. Unfortunately for them half-orcish children are stronger than they appear, and with one swiftly swung fist and the crackle-crunch of bone breaking bone, Grohl'Ban sent their leader tumbling, bloodied and stunned, to the rain-soaked street.   The young half-blood quickly rose in prepubescent infamy as he continually triumphed in frequent street fights, which he seemed to find himself embroiled in no matter where he wandered in the Landing. Grandma would scold him for tearing his shirt, and worry at the bruise or bloodied lip, but Grohl'Ban began to look forward to the times she was away, when he could leave their home and find himself a fight. It was only a year or two before the fights would find him, as he gained a reputation among the local youths as the best boxer in the Landing. Such a reputation earned him rivals and followers in equal measure; a pugnacious gang of hoodlums who considered him their leader. Foremost in their fervor was none other than the boy whose nose he had broken, an ugly elven orphan named Bilgaan. And though Bilgaan was the first to call him friend and leader, he was also the first in line to challenge Grohl'Ban to a rematch for the proverbial throne. These challenges came weekly at first, then dwindled until their only conflict became a yearly tradition. Almost a formality...almost.   By the time he'd turned sixteen, Grohl'ban had had his nose broken four times. His bottom-left canine, normally sharper and larger than a human's by virtue of his orcish blood, was chipped. He wore several tattoos commemorating his many victories, and a few heartbreaking losses, of females as well as fights. His knuckles showed an almost permanent bruise. And he was prepared for another fight tonight. Bilgaan's night, 13th day, Month of Reaping. Same night every year. The others were gathered - "the Lot", Grohl'ban called them, as in "Oi, you Lot," or "Fuggoff you Lot, Imma not drunk!" As Bilgaan strutted up the alley towards them, Grohl'ban noticed a man following some distance behind, at a leisurely stroll. No matter - street fights were common in the Landing, nobody's business but the fighters and those to whom the fighters owe money.   As the fists began to fly, wagers and predictions were bandied about, and the greater odds, as always, were in favor of Bilgaan's loss. The man's approach was hushed as the fall of dusk, not a soul noticed his black form until he made himself known. He stood mere breaths away from one of the young female spectators, savoring her aroma and the adrenaline of the crowd, as he always did for a few moments before their human scent became so tainted with fear as to be almost unbearable. Wearing a beautifully tailored suit of sable velvet, and in a voice which matched his clothing in richness and color he spoke, "My money says you all lose tonight!"   As the crowd balked at his sudden apparition, ravenous shadows emerged from the drizzling umbra of the alleyway and tore into the spectators with mirthful abandon. Their cackling laughter mingled with the shrieks of the dying to form a howling choir of woe, as those not yet slaughtered attempted to flee the bloodbath. More bespoke horrors dropped from rooftops to crush their victims from above, and Grohl'Ban witnessed Bilgaan claw at the rain-smoothed cobblestone for his last horrible moments as the boy was yanked by his frantically kicking feet into the stinking darkness of the Landing's ratway of sewers. With the sounds of tearing flesh and slurping blood, the Lot became the Few; and then the One.   The man in the black suit stalked towards Grohl'Ban, his movements unnatural and difficult for mortal eyes to track. In an instant he was too close, and it was only a boxer's instinct that spared Grohl'Ban evisceration. His body reacted with lightning speed, shifting back just out of reach and then exploding forwards to counter. The vampire was taken off-guard, and Grohl'Ban's fist struck the fiend's hissing mouth with crushing force. Though his knuckles were torn by needle-points, the strength of the half-orc's blow cracked the vampire's dagger-like fangs and sent it reeling, bleeding profusely from behind its lips. Seizing what he knew was his only chance of escape, Grohl'Ban bolted into the night, his breathing ragged and gasping, his heart pounding with terror in his chest, and the hideous, blood-soaked laughter of the vampires ringing in his ears.

---

The following weeks were marked for Grohl'Ban by grief, guilt and alcohol. His dreams were horror-shows of gruesome deja vu, and when he awoke screaming in the night he would drink himself back to sleep, hoping to succumb to the drink entirely and never awaken. Though Grandma cried at his bedside and comforted him as best she could, he spoke not of the horror he had experienced, asking only if she would refill his bottle yet again. This went on for a time, until Grandma finally refused him more drink and threatened to throw him out of their home if he would not tell her the source of his lament. Though he loved her with all his heart, the wound to his psyche was too great, and he soon found himself packing the few meager belongings he possessed and preparing to leave the only home he had known.   As he hesitated at the threshold, Grandma's tiny hand touched his shoulder. He turned and saw she had fetched a small bundle, wrapped in a threadbare patch of burlap. "Take these wretched things with you," she spoke softly, gravely, "Your mother fought and died for you, Gro. She used these in the pit-fights, trying to earn money to buy you a way out of here. She hoped you would be more than her." He took the bundle and unwrapped an aged pair of cestus, simple leather gauntlets with a solid iron weight around the first knuckles. "Perhaps someday," Grandma's eyes dropped, "you'll make her proud."   For a time he was lost, wandering the rainy streets of the Landing in a drunken fugue, his only companions the night's chill and a crippling sense of loss. The sting of Grandma's admonition still venom in his heart, he soon found himself penniless and drifting from flophouse to fleabox, and his once honorable boxing matches degenerated into the belligerent peacocking of a territorial drunkard. Despite his victories most every night, his fight winnings dwindled rapidly, and he found himself wanting for employment. And as countless thousands of broken men have done, and will do for as long as there are boats to sail, Grohl'Ban chose to flee from his problems on the open sea.   Though he had never set foot aboard a ship, he knew he could find a job on a whaling crew. Since the Whalers had started their war there had been a constant demand for able men, to fill the astounding demand of the Empire for oil. And, he smiled inwardly, you don't even have to stay sober on the job. He swallowed his pride and went to say goodbye to Grandma, who scolded him again and nearly disowned him, warning him that the rebel Whalers would surely destroy his vessel, as they had sworn to stymie and destroy all Imperial whaling efforts. For the second time, Grohl'Ban left his home with a heavy heart.   It took only his signature at the bottom of a very long and crowded document, signed in the half-light of a candle-filled basement which served as the only bastion of Imperial influence within the otherwise lawless morass of the Landing, and he was officially a crewmate, signed to the converted warship Ivanhoe, charted to depart on a one-year voyage that very night. As the sun set behind the perpetual grey skies of Brigand's Landing, robbed of its brilliance by the miserable fog, Grohl'Ban Xhanari disembarked on the first and last whaling voyage he would ever take part of.   The first days passed eventlessly. Though Grohl'Ban gaped at the lapis lazuli expanse of open ocean he soon grew tired of the unending labor, and the sluggish bobbing and rocking of the ship on the waves nauseated him. He began to wonder if he had made a grave mistake, until the first whale was sighted just past the rocky fangs of Barnum's Bay, and he became utterly convinced that he had.   The inexperienced whaler crew approached their quarry at too great a speed, and had to circle around as they watched the animal begin to dive. Shouts of dismay and rage were followed by harpoons hurled impotently into the sea. Grohl'Ban took an uneasy look over the gunwale, gulping nervously as he stared into the azure abyss beneath him. He squinted, sure that his eyes betrayed him, as something moved beneath the water. Had the whale begun to surface already? He had heard that the beasts remained below for hours at a time. He called out then, and men urgently crowded up, shoving him aside in their zeal to sight and slaughter the whale. Their greed was Grohl'Ban's saving grace as the water's surface was breached, not by a whale but, impossibly, by a ship. As the massive wooden vessel tore free of the oceans' depths and immediately loosed a thundering volley of cannon-fire, Grohl'Ban thought he must have gone mad staring at the sea. But the men who had shoved him aside were shredded by a direct hit, and the damage to the Ivanhoe was horribly real.   "The Whalers!" someone screamed, "Palaemon save us, we're doomed!"   The ship just seemed to splinter apart around them, and in an instant there were shattered timbers and tattered rigging raining down upon the shell-shocked crewmates on the deck. The Ivanhoe heaved violently to the stern, throwing several sailors into the churning water as a lethal wound torn by the Whalers' cannons loosed the sea into the hull, and the men who had been sleeping below-decks moments ago were drowned. Grohl'Ban was thrown to the deck just in time to avoid being tackled by boarders swinging over the gunwales on long ropes.   Finally, Grohl'Ban thought, a fight I can win before I drown here! If only he knew how wrong he was.   The boarders were dark, desperate men, their backs made broad and their sinews tempered by their years of nautical plunder. They carried strange weapons, unlike any Grohl'Ban had ever seen. They seemed to be spears made of glass, but that couldn't be so - he watched as the nearly transparent blades took effortless chunks from the wooden hull, and sliced mercilessly through the first and last of the Ivanhoe's meager defenders like a winter night wind through an orphan child's threadbare blanket. What manner of glass did not shatter against armor or timber? As Grohl'Ban leapt to his feet, fists ensconced in his mothers' cestus, he managed to deftly avoid the first arcing slice from one of his attackers, but the man shifted unpredictably like an ocean squall, and slashed again from the wrong angle. Grohl'Ban felt a lethal non-pain from his left ear to his right hip, he felt the blade pass through his bones with almost no resistance, slicing through his vitals as if they were the salty sea air itself. As he stumbled back a step and looked helplessly down at his wound, the bleeding had not begun, but Grohl'Ban knew he must be about to die. As the wound began to seep crimson, the blood pressure loss forced him back another step, he tripped over the gunwale and fell from the ship. He crashed into the icy water, and as his consciousness faded, Grohl'Ban was sorry he hadn't listened to his grandmother.   He awoke to pain. By dint of his quick-clotting orcish blood, Grohl'Ban had just survived the ghastly spear wound, though each twitch of his body sent icy lances of agony ripping through every nerve. Somehow, during the trauma-fogged chaos of the attack, he had managed to secure himself to a ragged bit of flotsam torn from the ship by cannon fire, and now drifted in and out of consciousness as the silvery ocean tossed him and his meager raft uncaringly. For days he was awash in the sea of salt and pain, as his strength inevitably leeched by the twin ghouls of dehydration and hunger. Finally his grip on the splintered wooden spar failed, and he sunk beneath the undulating surface of the briny deep.   Something moved, too close to him. Though the candle-flame of his life flickered madly, his body lurched instinctively. From below, he saw a huge shape loom up from the depths, and his legs flagged desperately though they were limp and numb from blood loss. His depleted limbs failed to propel him through the water, and as the monster closed on him Grohl'Ban shut his eyes, hoping only that his end would be swift as the exhaustion overcame him, and he fell into the darkness of what he assumed was death.

---

Unexpectedly, Grohl'Ban felt heat on his face. More than that - he felt warm, humid air. His lungs demanded breath and his body complied, inhaling deeply and desperately, still unconvinced that he had not drowned. The motion of his breathing tugged at the ghastly spear-wound which he had forgotten until now, and the recollection crashed over him in an avalanche of pain. The shock caused him to open his eyes, barely noticing his surroundings as he glared down at his own bisected torso. He beheld the work of an unknown nurse, who had wrapped his body in dark bandages which appeared to be woven from seaweed. As Grohl'Ban cast his bewildered eyes about the dim, stuffy room in which he awoke, he started as he realized he was not alone.   Seated next to his cot, so still and silent as to be almost invisible, was the biggest triton Grohl'Ban had ever seen. Though the triton was seated, his body was so large that Grohl'Ban estimated he stood at least seven feet tall. The fish-man's mottled blue skin glistened slightly where it wasn't reinforced by chitinous shell plating, and Grohl'Ban became aware of a briny scent emanating from his stoic rescuer.   "You are fortunate, little minnow." The voice rumbled up from the depth of the triton's cavernous chest, a sound like the collision of mountains underwater, "I nearly thought you lost."   Grohl'Ban attempted to raise himself into a seated position, but a strong blue hand on his shoulder held him prone.   "Do not move," his rescuer rumbled, "You have lost a great deal of red water. I have sutured the wound, but your body must mend."   As he tried to speak, Grohl'Ban realized his mouth was dry as the Purrish desert. His jaw worked and his tongue stuck to his teeth as he groaned inarticulately, but no words were produced. The triton stood and crossed to a small stove, from where he drew a dented black kettle which he stirred gingerly with a wooden spoon. Emptying the steaming contents into a bowl which looked tiny in his massive palm, he returned to his seat and offered a spoonful to Grohl'Ban. Though he was suspicious of the triton's intentions - conditioned as he was by his life in the Landing to question things which were "free" - the broth's nourishing aroma commandeered his willpower, and within only minutes he had devoured the bowlful. He asked for more, but the triton insisted that his body could only handle small amounts while it mended. Grohl'Ban felt then a deep and unavoidable weariness, as his body demanded more rest to repair the hideous damage it had endured. He tried to thank the triton as his consciousness slipped away, but the words were slurred and trailing.   Weeks passed in this manner - Grohl'Ban awakening, the triton tending him, and then a return to the healing slumber. Sometimes when he awoke, he noticed that the seaweed dressings had been changed. As his vitality returned, Grohl'ban took to feeding himself and sitting for short periods, during which he and the triton conversed. Grohl'Ban explained the events that had led him to his near-death in the Southern Sea, shamefully omitting the regrettable details about his only family. The triton in turn told Grohl'Ban of his duty as one of the Anchors, those implacable triton sentinels who had been employed by the Coinlords to patrol the open waters of Barnum's Bay against the Whaler guerillas. When Grohl'Ban realized that neither knew the other's name, he asked how he may address his savior. The triton made a strange snuffling, gurgling noise, which Grohl'Ban eventually came to recognize as laughter. The fish-man explained how the triton language could not be articulated above-water, and that his true name would be indecipherable to a land-walker; he was known in Brigands' Landing as The Fisher King. A tacit friendship was born between them, and the sounds of their disparate laughter became familiar as the days went on.   And then one day, Grohl'Ban awoke and found the woven seaweed wrappings had been removed. The skin beneath looked strangely foreign to him, as he had grown accustomed to the dark green-brown hue of the wrappings. A long, white scar slashed downward across his chest and abdomen, tracing the deadly path of that alien spear as it had carved through the meat of him. The Fisher King was there, frowning subtly as triton do.   "An honorable scar," the fish-man boomed, "But a cursed one. It marks the occasion when you proved stronger than death.   And death does not suffer challengers idly."

---

The rain was light and harmless as Grohl'Ban exhaled a clouded breath into the night's chill. The moon, shrouded by the Landing's unceasing cloud cover, shone wanly in the mid-night sky. Shadows black as pitch crowded each corner and alley, but Grohl'Ban felt only the comfort of existing securely in one's home. From his post outside the crooked door of the Dirty Croissant, at least the familiarity of the Landings' streets was his to enjoy. After the weeping, worrying, haranguing and scolding was finished, Grandma had forgiven Grohl'Ban his youthful brashness. She had thought him dead after hearing of the Whaler raid, and through her grief had come to terms with her surrogate grandson's natural ability as a boxer. She begged him not to return to the squalid street-brawls he had championed before, but to use his strength to protect his home and those who labored there against the drunken troublemakers who were their daily clientele.   As he stood alert, yet pensive, musing at the muted night sky, he was totally unaware of the eyes upon him. Eyes in which smoldered an ember of brooding, broken-fanged vengeance; eyes in which a man may glimpse his own demise, should he gaze deeply enough. And other eyes, not crude balls of flesh and nerve but the ethereal, inevitable vigil of Death, jealous of the soul that had been stolen from it.

---

Heterosexual male orc, in his virile and seductive prime

To take down the coinlords, but short of that, to make enough money to buy his way free of Brigand's landing.

• Really good with animals

• Really bad with directions and maps

• Loves Small animals

• Likes beer

• Dislikes eye contact with elves

• Hates Bullies

• Heroic

• Emotionally driven

• Honest

• When he drinks, he drinks too much

• Afraid of deep water

• He also believes that if he makes eye contact with an elf they will be able read his mind

• Clasps his hands together and stares at his fingers when he is nervous.

• He believes that all illness can be cured with eating your veggies, and will offer some, if he thinks you may be getting sick.

Grandma

Afraid of Volturnus

Idiotic and blunt

Loud and blubbering

Mud turtle he calls "Snappy"

Nearly everything he earns goes to either the coinlords or to cover the rest of the cost of living.