Vaark Khan

Born to a fierce Orc huntress and a reclusive human healer, Vaark often felt conflicted over which of his parents' teachings to follow. He grew up in the outskirts of a human village with his pacifist father, who taught him the healing arts and nurtured his capacity for forgiveness. From his father, he learned how to nurse his own wounds and concoct medicines to cure others. His Orc mother, proud and beautifully bold, taught him to honor his Orc heritage with his strength and cunning. She carried him on her shoulders and told him grand stories about their brave and ferocious ancestors. She also taught him how to hunt and kill after she heard about the village children's cruelties. Between his parents' two polarizing influences, Vaark often struggled to find a balance.

He was an ugly runt as a child. His greenish skin, protruding teeth, and diminutive size often made him the butt of jokes among his human peers, but it was the disdain over his 'tainted blood' that always made him lose his temper. He fought even when he knew he would lose. His childhood was spent being the target of ceaseless taunting and playground brawls, but he was a stubborn, scrappy thing and often went home bloody but victorious.

By the time he reached the maturation age of his kind, he could no longer be considered a runt. He towered over the tallest men in the village and could wrestle the best of them into submission. He grew reckless and arrogant, despite his father's constant reminders to be careful and to always be mindful of his strength. And so, his mother took him away to be trained among her people. It was there that he saw the weaknesses of Orc society--the same lust for war and blood and dominance that he had begun to see in himself--and it was there that he learned how to temper his own boundless energy with rigorous self-discipline.

Inspired by stories of legendary half-Orc adventurers, Vaark set off on a journey to see the world and make an adventure of it. But he was not quite prepared for the open hostility he faced in the world outside his home. Thinly-veiled threats and jeering faces followed him whenever he visited urban centers. An unintended benefit of his circumstances was that he often met other half-Orcs, some of them well-established in the cities, who sympathized with him and gave him free lodging and food in exchange for small favors.

One such sympathizer offered to accompany him on his journey. Olgard Arkur was an easygoing mercenary with deft hands and a certain roguish charm. They sparred together, drank together, and on one memorable occasion, danced naked in the woods together to celebrate an obscure holiday in the midst of winter. They sealed their bond by scarring their eyes and henceforth called each other brother. And so, when an ambush caught them off guard and Vaark's selfish choice to attack rather than heal his brother resulted in Olgard Arkur's untimely death, Vaark was consumed by a sense of guilt so potent that he wandered the wilds grief-stricken and lost for months before he was found by members of the Order of Helm. The priests took him to their temple, where he found a new purpose. Vaark felt that the only way he could redeem himself for the death of his brother was by saving innocent lives under Helm's guidance, and so he did. For a while, the distraction worked. But Olgard appeared to him in his dreams, in the faces of strangers, in his own reflection, and guilt continued to plague him, until he resolved to find a way to revive his dead friend.