Ebon

A hulking deformed orc with a broad-shouldered frame, Gruznak weighs roughly 250 lbs, his torso swollen with muscle and marked by deep gashes from old axe wounds. His right arm is twisted, fused at an awkward angle, while his sallow gray skin is mottled with oozing tumors. One ear is torn to a ragged stump, and his lower jaw juts out with half his teeth missing, the remaining yellow fangs stained with rust-red tartar. Gruznak's eyes are milky white, with one orb sightless and the other flickering with dull menace.

Gruznak is brutal and blunt, craving dominance yet terrified of sudden pain. He laughs in guttural rumbles at crude jokes, yet flinches when reminded of his maimed arm. He lusts after female flesh more from pathetic longing than genuine desire, boorishly prodding anyone who passes by. His stubborn pride keeps him from asking for help; he hoards scraps of stolen trinkets as proof of worth. Despite his brutish façade, he fears oblivion—haunted by nightmares of being left to rot alone in the wind. He’s illiterate but memorizes crude symbols, often tracing them in the dirt when brooding. Bisexual but tactless, Gruznak’s advances are more threatening than seductive.

Four seasons past, Gruznak was cast out by his own clan in the Bleak Dunes after a failed raid on a caravan at Day 312 of Year 10022. He remembers the acrid stench of burning ox‑carcasses and the echoed screams of his fallen comrades as he fled, dragging his broken arm. He washed ashore at a rivermouth, collapsing into the reeds, bleeding into the mud for three days until scavenging wolves frightened him toward Mercyland’s outskirts. There, a cruel overseer tormented him—branding his chest with the iron sigil of the Emperor on the 14th night of Winter’s Fall—leaving a raised scar shaped like a crown. He stole a spoon from the camp’s mess one dawn and fled into Henry’s Descent two moons ago, vowing never to kneel again.