Race: Half-Orc
Class: Druid
Pronouns: He/Him
Description
Gel Kerak is 5’9” tall and 185 pounds. His face is very orc with a wide mouth, protruding tusks, and an upturned nose. His body, however, speaks of his human heritage as it’s very lithe for an orc and he has little in the shoulder area. His skin is dark gray, almost black in some spots, and very weathered from a life among the mountain peaks. He started his journey covered in a pile of furs and cloaks, the standard traveling outfit of his people, but he has recently traded some of them in for some more humanoid clothing now that he’s in a more temperate area. He’s currently wearing an ill-fitting outfit of a red tunic, tan pants, pointy boots and a black cloak. He also bought a very tall pointy hat as the stories of the human lands the orcs told always had the mighty wizards in tall pointy hats.
Biography
Gel Kerak was raised by a mountain-dwelling tribe of orcs far to the north. This tribe, the Te’na, is very removed from normal politics and wars of the world and has maintained a tribal life-style for the past few centuries. The Te’na worship the power of the mighty winds that buffet about their mountain home. The chief wind goddess is called Vaal, and her totem is either a zephyr or a feather of an elder Arrowhawk. The Te’na occasionally clash with some of the dwarven cultures that lives beneath them, under the mountains, but conflict is rare as the orcs have no desire to claim the tunnels and the dwarves have no desire to claim the surface. Gel Kerak’s parents both thought they were full blooded orcs, but after his strange appearance at birth the tribe’s diviner determined that Gel’s mother’s grandmother was actually a human. The recessive human traits set Gel apart from the rest of his kin and peers. Gel’s father disowned him and his mother was cast out of the tribe. Gel was supposed to have gone with her, but the diviners who discovered the truth also saw that Gel had a deep connection to Vaal and could become a mighty shaman of the wind goddess. Though he was treated as an outsider by the children, he was loved and cared for by the elders and the chief shaman, Zunguri. Zunguri raised Gel like her own son and encouraged him to use his gifts only as he saw fit and not to listen to the taunting of the rest of the tribe. Gel was thick as a brick and slow on the uptake, but had great insight into his lessons once they finally sank in. He eventually mastered Zunguri’s teachings and graduated from his apprenticeship. On the day he was declared a full Wind-Speaker Vaal sent a gift to the tribe in the form of an elder Arrowhawk. This tribe roosted on the tribal chief’s hut for seven days and nights and protected the tribe from a mighty snowstorm that threatened to freeze them all to death. On the seventh morning she flew away leaving only an egg that called to Gel. Gel cared for the egg and was as proud as any parent when the baby hatched and Skree was born into the world. Gel stayed with the Te’na for a few years after that working as a shaman and hunting with Skree, but has recently been beset by troubling dreams about the lands to the south and a strange pair of fellows. One looks like an elf but has jet black skin, and the other is obviously an ogre, but in his dreams has ethereal tattoos marking him as a chosen of Vaal. Gel and Skree have set off on their journey to find these two, and discover how all their fates are intertwined.