The Riven Lands

A stocky, powerfully built human with permanently blackened hands, fingernails, and beard from coal dust that no amount of washing can remove. His mining helmet bears the dents and scars of two decades underground, with a dim lantern that casts eerie shadows on his weathered face. Deep lines around his eyes speak to years of squinting in darkness, and his persistent cough echoes with the rattle of damaged lungs. Wears practical mining clothes reinforced with metal plates in vital areas.

Bitter toward authority but fiercely protective of working people, Korgan sees himself as fighting a class war against exploitative guilds. He maintains detailed grudges against specific guild masters and takes particular satisfaction in operations that embarrass them publicly. Despite his criminal activities, he follows a strict code about worker safety and fair distribution of profits among his gang. His anger runs deep but controlled, manifesting as cold determination rather than explosive rage.

Born to a family of miners stretching back five generations, Korgan worked the deepest, most dangerous shafts from childhood. He rose to foreman through sheer competence and concern for worker safety, implementing innovations that reduced cave-ins by half. When a greedy guild forced dangerous excavation against his warnings, the resulting collapse killed seventeen men including his younger brother. The guild blamed Korgan for "poor supervision" to avoid liability, stripping him of position and pension. Now he targets the same guilds that betrayed him, viewing theft as reclaiming what was stolen from miners' families.