Ebon

A gaunt defomed orc weighing 190 lbs, Tharka’s spine arches unnaturally, with vertebrae protruding like broken stakes beneath pale, stretched skin. His limbs are gangly, sinews taut over angular bones. Several ribs on his right flank bear jagged knife‑slashes now crusted with dark scab. Veins stand out in pulsing cords against ash‑white forearms; his fingers end in overgrown, cracked talons. One deformed eye bulges beneath a sagging brow, irises so pale they reflect the storm above. Patches of his scalp are bald, the rest crowned by greasy, matted hair streaked with dirt. A twisted horn‑like growth sprouts from his shoulder blade—a fluke of the Empire’s breeding horrors.

Tharka is cunning in his stupidity: a self‑described “brainiac” who speaks in broken syllables, misusing words to comic effect. He’s cowardly under his facade of bluster, quick to flee at the first roar of thunder yet the first to snarl at a passing traveler demanding passage. He worships Henry’s legacy—keeping a rat‑gnawed fragment of an old ledger as a sacred relic. Food‑obsessed, he hoards scraps of meat under his hut’s floorboards. He craves approval from Gruznak and the others, desperately seeking camaraderie through crude jests and half‑baked schemes. Secretly bisexual but ashamed, he darts glances at captive women then curses himself for weakness.

Born during the Scouring Year of 9999, Tharka remembers only the iron chains biting into his wrist as a child in Vorlund’s Exiles’ Camp. He recalls the stink of rot‑gray soup and the hollow clank of hanging nooses when another child tried to escape on Day 18 of Winter’s Wrath. Sold to an Orc‑breeder in Hen Livon, he endured twisted rituals meant to “enhance” strength—growing his spine’s horn‑growth. On the eve of his tenth cycle, he fled a slaughter pit, scrambling through caverns until stumbling onto Henry’s Descent in the 6th fortnight of Spring.