Graaki Thundersoul

Race: Half-Orc
Class: Hybrid Sorcerer/Warden (Stormheart)
Role: Primal/Arcane Defender

Alignment: True Neutral/Neutral Good
Deity: Kord
Background: Auspicious Birth

Current Sheet

Snapshot: Offbeat vision, creative 'out of the box' thinker, bold, impulsive, impatient, brusque but rarely rude, action-oriented, highly inquisitive, strong bond with certain aspects of nature, unusually people-oriented for a half-orc, places high importance on self-control, rarely voiced disdain for the stereotypical brute types of her race, lacking in tact, adaptable, often unwittingly intimidating, sometimes deliberately scares people into letting her help them, astute observer, not at all verbose, has a temper but views losing it as a display of personal weakness, very visual thinker.

Appearance:
Graaki is, in all likelihood, somewhat less than fully half-orc, given her family's particular history of mixing freely with both humans and other half-orcs over a series of generations. That said, her appearance by and large tends to reflect her orcish origins most clearly. She stands at 5'10, not especially tall for a half-orc but not exactly diminutive. Her frame, on the other hand, though athletic, does tend towards the slender, the way some human women tend to be. This can make her seem deceptively frail-looking compared to other members of her race. Her skin is a medium gray in hue, and her hair like that of most half-orcs is black, thick and straight for the most part. Graaki does usually make time to groom it a bit, work in some braids, try to make it look more interesting. Her eyes are a deep hazel-shaded green. Like most half-orcs she has two large canines jutting up from her lower jaw.

Ordinarily Graaki wears simple, comfortable clothing, with a set of sturdy hide armor covering everything. Surprisingly, she actually does like wearing feminine-looking garments, though her ability to do so is somewhat limited by the fact that her activities require her body to be free to move and well protected. Sometimes she will wear makeshifts skirts over trousers, visible beneath her armor. Other times she'll put on funny-looking bracelets that appear quite at odds with the rest of her clothing and gear. She tends to favor natural tones in her attire when given the choice.

Personality:
Graaki has a bold, action-oriented and rather impulsive demeanor. Faced with a new danger or an unexpected situation, she would rather respond immediately than to spent time on deliberation or planning. She wants to learn, yes, but hers is often a learning by doing, by trial and error. Likewise, once she comes to a decision to do something, Graaki sees no pointing in further waiting - if you know what you will do, then do it now. Needless to say, she is not ordinarily prone to second-guessing herself, or to procrastination.

Though the last few years wandering the mountains have taught her to be comfortable with only her own company, Graaki is in general more people-oriented than is typical for her race. For her, caution is always mingled with curiosity when meeting strangers, the unknown. She makes a deliberate effort not to be rude - one of the many ways in which she tries to exert a kind of self-control over what she sees as some of her worser instincts - but on the other hand, the half-orcs idea of just it is that means can be somewhat... different than what others might think it to be. Most of the time she makes no effort to conceal her thoughts or intentions or reactions to things, or to speak anything but exactly what she is thinking. Additionally, the rough nature of typical interactions between her people means that sometimes, what Graaki thinks is a friendly joke or greeting might be taken by others to be a threat of some sort. She is slowly realizing this, and trying to adjust her demeanor accordingly, but such changes do not necessarily come easily. Additionally, though she doesn't exactly enjoy using intimidation or threats of violence to gain sway over people, it is something she is good at, whereas smooth talking or witty debate are not her strong points. If that means using such tactics to get important things done or stopped, Graaki sees nothing wrong with it. Oftentimes, the things she might threaten people with are not actually actions she'd be willing to carry out, but given the reputation half-orcs have, most people fail to realize that. In general she tends to be a better listener than she is a speaker - she can absorb much of a higher-level conversation in her own way, but trying to contribute much would just leave her stumbling over words, for she is not at all verbally articulate.

Though she does find it exciting and sometimes even outright enjoyable, Graaki does not lust after battle the way some warriors do, and given the opportunity, she is not at all averse to trying to avoid the need for violence altogether. These are also situations where her aptitude at adopting a threatening demeanor is useful: better to viciously threaten to break a man's every bone, than to actually have to use violence, even of a less drastic sort, against him. Fighting is easy. Not fighting requires self-control.

Control is a big thing, for Graaki. She still has a temper, a tendency to grow furious when provoked, or even just frustrated. To her, acting on that is a kind of failure, a weakness. She knows that it is what most strangers she meets expect of her, but that only strengthens her desire not to be like that. It is not that she things rage is a bad emotion - no, to her the ideal is not complacency, but rather control; not furious outbursts acted on without any consideration of consequences, but rather rage harnessed so that it burns cold, the ability to stare at a man and want to strangle him but still look calm, and use that anger later, in a better way. She understand that power is often not about strength, but in how you use it, and that not doing something can require as much as doing it, and because that is not a natural instinct at all to her it is one that's frequently on her mind, a personal goal to strive for.

Though she doesn't have the ability to be very quick or flexible with her words, she is much moreso with her methods of thought. Graaki has always been an 'out of the box' kind of thinker, liable to suddenly come onto unexpected approaches or ideas rather than just default the tried and true, expected way of doing things. Not all of her sudden bursts of inspiration are actually good ideas - sometimes they can be dangerous, other times merely ridiculous, but Graaki is usually keen to try them anyway at least once, if only to figure out for herself just why things go wrong. She is not necessarily a quick thinker, but when she does come to an idea it can be quite creative. She is in fact quite intelligent, in a rough, instinctual kind of way - people almost always underestimate her in this regard quite significantly. She is quite a visual person, remembering things like navigation and people primarily by visual markers. Demonstrations do far more for her than other forms of instruction. She tends to gesture a lot when she speaks, if she is at ease with the person she's speaking with and not on her guard. Occasionally, she gets these much more 'big picture' type visions - like her idea that her abilities are a sign that she is meant to change the order of things in some significant way - that have no easy explanation and yet which she clings to with utter certainty.

Background Description:
They are not of bloodspear blood. There was little that Graaki's people knew or could say of their origins or history, but that they repeated frequently, angrily, defensively. No, they had lived a semi-nomadic existence on the edge of the Dawnforge mountains for centuries, long before the war and conquests of the western orcs. Of course, few outsiders cared to take note of that distinction, and certainly it did very little to lessen the tensions that now prevailed between common people of the vale and those with orcish blood.

Perhaps this suspicion was apt. In other ways, her people were quite like one might imagine a group of half-orcs to be - violent, impulsive, drawn to simpler pursuits and occupations. Some hunted, or sold their swords as mercenaries or guards to the people of the villages and towns below; some launched occasional raids on the dwarves of Hammerfast and its environs. They rarely married - a woman whose brood had three or four different fathers among them was not uncommon there, nor a man who only knew of half the children he'd fathered. Disagreements were often settled with a show of violence, even among children and the elderly - in fact, 'old folks fighting' was a spectacle the children would usually run eagerly towards. Some of her people spent entire lives up in the mountains, while others left never to be seen or heard from again, and neither of these paths was considered unusual.

This was the life Graaki was born into. The women of her lineage had a distinct tendency to be drawn to human men - her grandmother had, in fact, given birth to four in such circumstances. The family was known in their part of the region for having 'outsider blood', though this meant little save a few taunts and some fights in childhood. Graaki was born in the middle of a massive storm, howling winds and rumbling thunder shaking the walls of the makeshift shack her mother was birthing in. Later, a local soothsayer would say that this meant this girl was storm-blessed, favored by Kord. Her mother did not put stock in 'god talk' as she called in, and this would, for years, be all but forgotten.

Graaki always thought it funny, the way fate worked, that she would be born with larger teeth and greyer skin than her brothers, yet they were the ones who acted like every description of half-orcs anyone ever heard and she was the one that was always...different. It was a difference that was hard to describe, in childhood, yet one that was somehow clear not only to her but to peers. She was always...wandering off, curious, asking questions about too many things and getting smacked upside the head by annoyed adults again and again. She was the one who thought of the strange way to win at a familiar game, the one that wasn't technically against the rules but just, no one ever did, and when she won in that way the other kids were angry instead of impressed, and later on she played alone. She was always, always drawn to storms, to walk right into them and stay there for hours and hours, listening to thunder and only returning afterwards, soaked to the bone.

She was not, of course, entirely different. She had always been incredibly impulsive, and never could stop herself from asking a question even when she knew it would just get her smacked again, hard. She also had a temper, that furious rage that her people were always known for. As she began to enter adolescence however, it became...different. Others could grow furious and then would fight and well - a half-orc could take a blow hard enough to crack three bones and merely grunt and return the attack and afterwords both would be fine with what happened. When Graaki grew angry...things happened. The man that could shrug off three broken ribs reacted in a different way entirely when instead of that, there was suddenly an overwhelming rumble of thunder pushing him back six feet and deafening him for half a day.

It wasn't that her people were afraid of magic, exactly. Magic is what that wizard you were fighting against threw at you, or what the squishy little fellow fighting by your side used to slow the creatures down while you bashed their skulls in. It was not, however, something that half-orcs did. There were no half-orc wizards or sorcerers or warlocks in their mountains, and the fact that the girl was somehow now lashing out with thunder only heightened her 'outsider' blood, her strangeness. It was then that her mother told her of the soothsayers words. Graaki sought out the woman, and was told that she had been chosen by Kord, the great god of storms and war. Of course, the woman said many things, being my this point incredibly old and senile, but those words stuck with Graaki, and she decided that she would go, learn what it was that the god or the fates wanted of her.

She wandered deeper into the mountains, further east, chasing lightening and thunder and storms whenever she could find them, hardly seeing other people for days on end and yet certain that she would, eventually find what she was seeking, the voice of Kord, his will, something. She couldn't say where this idea came from, or her certainty, but so it was. She did begin to hear something, during the storms, at night in the cold blustering wind, but it was not the voice of a god but rather those of primal spirits, and not exactly voices but...energies, impulses, a sharing of thoughts. For a while, it even seemed as though where she went, the storms followed, as if trying tell her something. She moved further south without realizing it, and apparently back closer to civilization, for one day she walked into a pass between mountains to find some kind of druid being set upon by a small group of bandit, on of them a half-orc like her. The druid only grew more fearful when he saw Graaki, no doubt thinking she would join them. It was then that she really felt an odd sort of power flowing through her, as if there was a storm inside her very soul and she felt rage, but ever since the trouble caused by those youthful outbursts of rage she had been trying to...control it somehow, cold anger instead of hot, keep inside herself. Will you allow this? the thought seemed not her own as it crossed her mind, but Graaki did not pause to think on that. She moved forward, and joined the druid in fighting off the attackers, all of them. She drew on the thunder that just seemed to flow from her in battle and...something else too, as if some primal energy was trying to guide her.

Afterwards, the druid said the strangest thing. It called her Warden, with respect, and Graaki did not understand what that was supposed to mean. She said so, and the druid explained about the power of nature and earth, and Graaki asked many questions and for once, someone seemed happy to explain rather than grunt or shove her away or hit her. There was only so much the druid could explain about her powers, for his own were of quite a different sort, but she had always been a better learner than the others, thinking and trying something else instead of just growing angry very fast and smashing whatever it was.

Graaki was a half-orc that was not of bloodspear blood, and arcane power she knew nothing of but could sometimes control flowed through her, and she was apparently chosen to be a Warden of Storms, perhaps born with the blessing of Kord, and it was her place to Protect, to Ward, to Not Let Things Like That Happen. Graaki was certain that there must be a reason that she was like this, was not born just another half-orc, that there was something in the world she was meant to do, or change. There was a reason that she was Graaki Thundersoul, and she would find it, even if it was far, far beyond the mountains she called home.

So she walked and walked south and east. Sometimes she would find other travelers on the road and offer to go with them for a time, help protect them from the dangers well known on the road. At least a few of those times, she was pretty sure her offer was accepted only because the people in question were too terrified to tell her no. She was not so good with words, in the way that the people in the lands below the mountains seemed to expect. In at least one of those cases, Graaki was quite certain the beasts she ended up fighting off would have killed them if she'd not been there, so she thought - if she had to scare people into letting her help them, that was fine too. Once she joined up with a band of adventurers in clearing out a nest of kobolds, mostly because she needed the gold, and that was fine too, but she was certain it was not what she was meant to do, pointless fighting for gold. She moved on.

Recently, her travels took her to the outskirts of Harkenwold, where she began to hear rather disturbing stories of what was going on in the barony. The further in she walked, the more she heard. There was fear, in voices and faces, and for once fear of these Iron Circle people seemed to outweigh the fear they might otherwise had felt at the sight of her. Just listening to villagers talked filled her with anger, furious anger at those that would pillage the land and abuse the people on it. Graaki was not known for her ability to put on a facade, or to sugar-coat her words. Not long after she had expressed, rather publicly, her exact opinion of this Iron Circle (the villagers had scuttled away from her in alarm), she was approached after dark by a man nursing what appeared to be a rather serious, if not very recent, injury. He told her that he had been one of the Marshals, who kept the peace before, that most of his order had been killed but a few fought on. He himself was still too weakened to join them, but he could tell Graaki where to go, if she was serious. Graaki said that she was, and was thus told to go to a small village called Tor's Hold where, she was told, the start of a real rebellion might, perhaps, be starting in earnest. She set off in that direction the next morning.