⚔ Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ ⚔

Tak-Tak stands nearly seven feet tall, his granite-toned skin streaked with old scars—claw marks, bite lines, one jagged slash across his back that never healed right. His frame is barrel-chested and corded with muscle, more tree-trunk than man. His black hair is matted into thick braids, bound with copper wire and tiny bones. One tusk is chipped, the other twisted from an old hammer blow. His eyes are small and dark, deep-set under a wide brow and always watching. He wears a patchwork of swamp leathers, bark plates, and rust-bitten chain—armor made for slogging through brambles and biting insects. A crab-shell pauldron sits unevenly on his left shoulder, etched with faded warding glyphs he can’t read. His scent is bog-wet earth, sweat, and smoke. When he moves, it’s slow and deliberate—until it isn’t. In a fight, he becomes all fury and motion, but afterward, his hands shake. When not fighting, he’s often seen stirring stews, carving bone trinkets, or brushing mud from Alo’s boots.

Tak-Tak speaks little, and only when he means it. His voice is deep, slow, and careful—like the marshes he comes from. Most people see a brute: scars, tusks, bulk, and a predator’s stillness. But those who linger find an unshakeable calm, a tenderness in his silences. Tak-Tak believes people are like wounds—some need pressure, some need air, some just need time. He doesn’t try to fix Alo. He cooks her meals she barely eats. He listens when she rants and stays nearby when she storms off. He knows what it is to feel broken. His own pain is buried deep, wrapped in a patience learned through grief. He’s no stranger to violence, but only raises his axe when words fail—and they rarely do with him. He treats animals better than people, fears cities more than monsters, and holds a quiet hatred for those who exploit the weak.

Tak-Tak was born in the border swamps between Amn and Tethyr, in a nameless hamlet swallowed long ago by marsh and silence. His mother, a retired caravan guard, taught him to fight; his father, a brewer of swamp spirits, taught him patience. Tak-Tak spent years in the deep bogs trapping razor-turtles and culling blink-midge swarms, surviving by wit and brute strength. After losing his brother to a troll raid and his home to a flooded trade road rerouted by Amnian tax barons, he wandered east, carving a life on the fringes of civilization. It was in the Murkmire wilds he found Alo—half-buried in a crater, muttering in sleep, clutching a glowing locket. He carried her back without a word. Since then, he’s watched over her like a quiet sentinel. He doesn’t ask who she was. Doesn’t care. All he knows is the girl needed someone, and so did he.