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Arkral Azgirn, Dwarf| Arkral Azgirn |
Posted: Sep 7 2009, 03:18 PM
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 Group: Citizen Posts: 1 Member No.: 504 Joined: 7-September 09  |
Player Name: WickedNails Preferred Method of Contacting: PM How did you find Meliora? RPG-D Other Characters: N/A Name: Arkral Azgirn Name Etymology:
Age: 78 How Old He Appears: Mid-40s Gender: Male Race: Dwarf Sexual Orientation: Straight Follower Of: Garga Respected Deities: Venea Zephyrius, Ebelle Azuke Disliked Deities:
Class/Occupation: Barbarian/Tanner Appearance: Many have the image of a dwarf in their heads as a fat man with a long beard. They’re half-right. Standing four-foot-eight and weighing in at around three hundred pounds, pale-skinned Arkral is a powerhouse vaguely resembling the god Garga in build. Straight and of a blood-red hue is the well-kept mane that stretches loosely to Arkral’s shoulders; never does he put his hair into any kind of fancy design, instead keeping it au naturale. His beard is no different, though it is much longer. As dark and straight as the hair atop his round skull, Arkral’s beard is almost as long as his body. It is extremely well-maintained. Only near the bottom, where it begins to fold inward for a semi-rounded point, does he have any sort of decoration; a single band of simple, undecorated mithril holds the end of his beard together. This band rests about mid-shin, the final point of the beard hanging just below the dwarf’s knees; it is a small band resembling a large, hefty finger ring. Eyes the colors of polished emeralds stare out from betwixt a pair of high cheekbones. They are supported by an almost squarish jaw and small, yet bulbous nose. Topping them is a broad forehead often creased in thought. His lips are of an average thickness, neither thin nor oversized. One thing that cannot be said about dwarves is that they are sharp dressers. As do his kin, Arkral prefers comfortable clothing to fancy attire. His breeches are of thick, chocolate-brown cotton. His shirts are of the same cotton, but usually gray. His thick, wide belt and heavy boots are of black leather. Of red-dyed leather is the flat-topped, wide-brimmed hat that Arkral often wears atop his head when he goes out on the road; a thick hat band made of black leather surrounds it, decorated only with a steel buckle and the etching of his name into the side of it. His long overcoat is made of brown leather. He can sometimes be found in a cloak made from the hide of a polar bear and a vest from the hide of a wolf or boar is not an uncommon sight. Arkral walks with a steady gate. He can be quick on his feet if he needs to and is quite dangerous at short distances, but he is not a seasoned runner. There is rarely a jest on his face or excitement in his eyes, but pride in the best of his work makes him beam like a blazing fireball. When he is not working, he is often seen with a well-made pipe of polished redwood between his teeth. Only in the evenings is it lit, or after a meal, but people that describe him often mention the pipe. Hanging from his belt is a small hammer made of steel, the first thing he ever forged by himself; beside that is a razor-sharp hatchet, also made of steel. Personality: It is said that no being that thinks can be any less than many-faceted. People have many opinions of varying things. Their emotions and temperaments are as different as the size and shape of individual snowflakes. Dwarves are often considered simple-minded miners whose work in the smithy is nonetheless to be revered at the very least and whose stonework in particular is exceptionally beautiful. Yet dwarves are deep thinkers and quite emotional. Their close-knit familial clans are as involved with one another as they are with their own kin. They can be fierce in battle, raging against their enemies like a tidal wave of anger and passion rising up to epic proportions. Though small, they are devastating heavy-hitters and those who underestimate them rarely live long enough to see the wisdom behind their thoughtful faces. Arkral Azgirn is no exception. He has chosen the life of a tanner, preferring the blazing sun to light his path to the darkness of a mine. He is as familiar with the pick and the hammer as any other dwarf, having worked in the mines and the forge in his younger years; descending into the caverns within the mountains periodically, he finds a home in those of his bloodline and allies in the form of others of his race. He has simple tastes, preferring what is practical to what is frivolous; in this, he is truly a dwarf at heart. As with other dwarves, he is slow to make friends beyond others of his ilk; yet he is equally slow to lose them and often loyal to a fault. It could be said that this is perhaps Arkal’s greatest strength and his most debilitating weakness. It is just as difficult to make an enemy of the dwarves, however. Again, Arkral is no exception. While he can be irritated and annoyed like anyone else, he is slow to anger in most cases. Certain things do put the look of a dangerous firestorm into his eyes very quickly. Slavery, for example, is something that Arkral finds the notion of highly offensive. Arrogance and one-upmanship are more likely to get you severe lip service than anything else. He dislikes torture, but understands it in certain cases. He hates thieves. If possible, he despises liars even more. He has been known to grumble about people that are too lazy for his tastes from time to time, but such is the way of the dwarves that it is understandable; from dawn until dusk, they are often hard at work. As with any other dwarf, Arkral takes great pride in his beard. He combs it and keeps it as neat as women often keep the hair on their pretty heads. To insult his beard is to insult Arkral. While most insults roll off of his back like water down rocks, his beard is conversationally untouchable unless you’re complimenting it. He cares about his looks to an extent, even going as far as spending a bit of time brushing his long hair, but it is his beard that he considers his true point of pride and dignity. Dwarves are fond of strong ale and often brew their own; they call it stout, and there are few outside dwarven clans that can drink it. Drinking contests are a point of entertainment for dwarves, but it’s all in good fun. They know their weapons and armor well, for they spend their lives making the best of the best. Only elves make weapons as fine in a dwarf’s opinion, and then it’s more frivolous than practical. Arkral takes as much pride in his work with leather as he or any other dwarf does in metalwork. He refuses to take the hide from an animal that he has not himself killed and he keeps the hair or fur that he removes from the hides he tans. He won’t refuse coins when they are offered for his work, but mostly his fee is more practical: food, for example, and a good sword or two that he can sell. Arkral is fond of stewed goat, something that he finds many humans think is disgusting. He is no druid or ranger, yet he cares well for any animal that he comes into possession of (yes, even goats). He feeds them well, cleans them, gives them a decent place to sleep and enough room to roam about in. When he kills an animal while hunting, he uses every bit of the animal that he can; the organs and muscle become his meat, the tendons and ligaments become bowstrings and thread for stitching up leather, the bones and antlers become tools or weapons, the hooves (for animals such as the caribou that fill his mountainous homeland) become pommels and what-not, and the hides become clothing or armor. Some hides he keeps completely intact so as to wear them as winter cloaks or coats; others he forms into leggings, boots, belts, body armor, bracers, and the like. Because he takes pride in his work, he will never declare a project finished until he is completely satisfied with it. Like all dwarves, Arkral will deal with humans for business purposes. Yet he distrusts them, knowing their destructive tendencies. While dwarves are certainly destructive enough on the battlefield, they don’t tend to want to destroy something just to rebuild it in their own image. Arkral doesn’t like elves, believing they’re too stuck-up and too attached to their comfortable living in the beautiful cities they build. He believes they aren’t as hard-working as dwarves and look down on those that are. But the drow are a particularly strong point of hatred for him. He’ll not deal with any drow that come his way and lip service is the least of what drow will get if they try to push the issue. He doesn’t like the laziness of hobbits, but he does admire the gnomes and their ingenuity. Arkral distrusts magic. That which bolsters his physical abilities might be worth taking a gander at, though he’s suspicious of the arcane in general. He’ll use magical objects only if he must. He understands that the powers of priests and priestesses are not arcane, however; he thus is much more amicable to them than he is to mages. But even they are people he is not too fond of. Favorites:
Armory: Mithril Chain Mail Shirt, Mithril Battle Helm, Mithril Gauntlets History: Everyone knows that the elves are immortal. They are also the most well-known among the human populations of the world. They have the finest weapons, the fanciest clothes, and the saddest tales. At least, that’s what an elf would have you believe. An elf would have you believe that a dwarf was nothing more than a short human with a beard or perhaps a hobbit who’d let himself go. Dwarf women? Ha! What dwarf women? They were merely hobbit wenches pretending to be dwarf men. Because of the elves, not many know about the dwarves. For while the elves keep the beauty of nature close at hand through the rangers they train, carefully avoiding doing any more work than they actually have to, the dwarves have taken to the mountainous regions of the world. Dwarves are the real tellers of tales, the true bards in a world beset by evil. Few know of them, for they – unlike the elves of the surface world of Meliora – do not advertise their existence. Yet even those who know of them know little about them or their war against a race similarly bound to the underground caverns deep beneath the mountains. Few know the hatred the drow profess save those who’ve witnessed their savage brutality; the way the mercilessly kill every man, woman, and child for the sheer pleasure of the bloodlust that runs through their own frigid hearts. Miners and smiths for the most part, dwarves spend only two human lifetimes apiece on Meliora before their bodies die and their spirits are carried to wherever it is that spirits are carried. They survive by doing the same thing they have always done: guarding themselves and their clans with a fury that strikes fear into the hearts of those that stand against them – and they never stand against them for long. They work harder than any other race, constantly digging deeper in a vain attempt to sate their greed with precious stones and the most precious of metals: mithril. They care deeply for their families, their clans, and their simple – yet fulfilling – way of life. It is into this lifestyle that Arkral Azgirn was born. Hide tough as leather, eyes like emeralds, and hair the color of blood marked him as one of the cave kin – dwarves who stay close to the surface and sometimes do business with humans. He was raised to be a miner, just like everyone else, and he was quite a decent one. When he was twenty-two years old, he found four thick veins of mithril and two deep reservoirs of emeralds. He had a nose for metals and stones; that much was clear from the beginning. He could hold his liquor, too: he never lost a drinking contest. But like all dwarves, when it came to combat, he was mediocre at best until he was trained. This is perhaps the most fundamental truth of the dwarves: they are as stout of heart as they are of body. Their minds might not be as sharp as those of the hobbits or elves, but they have their talents just as the gnomes had their cleverness, wit, and seemingly magical charm. Arkral was no better than anyone else with a blade; in fact, when it came to daggers and swords, most dwarves seemed to lack the basic understanding of how to hold them. Most of those in the Azgirn clan wielded hammers, a few wielded axes, and King Azel – the “Rock Warrior”, he was often called – was a master of the throwing axe. It was one thing to rely on each other in a battle; but when the shield dwarves that guarded the king got into the action, it was a sure thing that a lot of the king’s enemies were going to find small, well-placed axes embedded in their filthy skulls. For twenty years, Arkral had trained for just that honor. He eventually became so engrossed in finding just the right niche and mastering it that he often found himself nodding off when he was supposed to be mining. It was late one morning when he had his chance to prove himself at last. He’d been given a pair of axes a number of years earlier; though he seemed to have little skill with them, he had been practicing. But even his father didn’t know that he’d secretly been spending even more time with the aging dwarf’s steel-and-stone battle hammer. Exhausted from training, he was beginning to nod off once more. War pick in his hand as he slowly began to slump against the wall, he hardly noticed shadows among the shadows. It was the drow. They had planned a raid, planned to take the mines by force and reap the rewards. The clang of steel against steel shook the dwarf out of his semi-light half-slumber and he quickly realized they were under attack. A fierce battle was already raging. Screaming in rage as he saw two dwarves cut down before him by the curved scimitars of an ebony-skinned elf, he unleashed the fury of a dwarf and attacked. He was outmatched, however, and would have been dead were it not for his father. The drow heard him coming – it wasn’t hard; the whole tunnel probably did – and whirled to fight Arkral with one blade and Arkral’s father with the other. Pushing the younger dwarf aside, he fought the older one – and lost. But as he fell, his blade slammed up through the older dwarf’s gullet. The dwarf was dead before he hit the ground. The last clear thought Arkral had as he rushed to his father’s body was that Doril Goblin-Slayer – his father – was dead. If he had been angry before, he was absolutely enraged now. He took up his father’s hammer and unleashed a primal war cry that literally shook the tunnel. Several drow and dwarves alike were downed more by surprise attacks than by any skill on either’s part. It only lasted twenty minutes. When it was over, Arkral was covered in blood. Nearly a hundred dwarves were dead. But not one single drow escaped that fight. Hardly recognizable, hatred burning in Arkral’s green eyes, he had to be pulled back from the captured Priestess by eight dwarves. In the end, the woman was released. She was naked, her clothes having been burned and her items tossed down a canyon into darkness. She was starving, her throat was parched, and she had wounds that the best healer could not have removed all over her body. She had no eyes, no ears, and no nose. Her hair was gone. Her hands were gone. She was lucky she still had feet. The dwarves neither found out nor cared what became of her in the underground wilderness. And the cause of this mutilation, the purveyor of the torture that had revealed the location of two nearby drow encampments – was none other than Arkral himself. An older dwarf had taught him how to do it, but he had done the deed himself. After that, the dwarf changed. Two successful raids against the drow with less than a half-dozen between the pair escaping saw Arkral’s dream come true. He was almost forty at the time. From that point on, he trained constantly with his badly-damaged battle hammer. When the time came for him to produce his greatest masterpiece, a masterwork item of immense beauty and power, he fittingly used his father’s hammer to craft it. It broke upon the forge, but it didn’t matter. When it was done, Arkral had crafted something worthy of a dozen dwarven kings: Falin Thocral, he called it. Its name meant “strongest dwarf” and “noble hall”. With his newly-crafted, all-mithril war hammer by his side, nothing could stop the dwarf. Over the next twenty years, he went on to become a great warrior worthy of much praise by his king – just like the other half-dozen shield dwarves he served with. But as time wore on, Arkral realized more and more that he didn’t want to be a fighter all his life. He was tired of seeking out the drow, tired of battle, tired of mining. He had never seen the fresh air above the mountain for himself, but he wanted to. He asked the king to relieve him of his duties. The king said that he would only do this if he married his daughter. So he did, and he was taught to be a merchant. He was taught by the king to tan hides, to hunt an animal and take it for all it was worth. Then he was wed to Vonbryn Duerack. Her name meant “tunnel wisewoman” and her clan name meant “dark bridge”. It was thus that Arkral became a Prince. But the king had four daughters and nine sons; he was quite old, close to reaching the end of his life, but there was little chance of Arkral ever becoming king through his marriage to Vonbryn with so many other sons to take up the king’s jeweled crown of gold and mithril or the equally fine battle helm the king often wore. Arkral wouldn’t have wanted the position anyway, though he would have taken it had there been no one else to do so; Arkral is an honorable dwarf more than willing to do his duty if necessary, after all. But he had lived his life in battle; he wanted now only to settle a bit and enjoy some well-earned piece. Arkral and Vonbryn grew fond of each other over the years, dwelling both above the mountain in a well-built, well-maintained cabin and below it in a cave specifically decorated by Vonbryn; the cabin was Arkral’s to decorate. The pair constantly moved between the tunnels below to be with their kin and the slopes above to sell their wares. But a particularly clever assassin murdered a large number of dwarves while they slept one night. It was only by chance that a few of them woke. When this happened, the dwarves were alerted quickly. The assassin called on his own people, and the drow attacked. It was in this attack, which was only barely won by the dwarves, that Arkral’s wife was slain. Then Arkral left the tunnels for good. He has lived off of the land since, selling his wares to those who would require them. His cabin has fallen into a bit a of disrepair, but it’s maintained well enough to keep it standing and in relatively decent condition. He no longer wears the ring; symbolically burying it and his wife’s cavern decorum with the ring his wife wore during her funeral, Arkral severed all ties to his clan. He still sees them from time to time; how could he not? But he no longer lives with them. He no longer works with them. Once a warrior; once a husband; and once a legend in his clan, Arkral is now a simple tanner of the mountains. He survives how he must and he hears a little news of the world every now and then; he usually doesn’t much like what he hears of late, but that’s not really his concern. He’s no human or elf. He’s a dwarf, and he’s staying put until he can stay put no more. RP Post Sample:
This post has been edited by Arkral Azgirn on Sep 8 2009, 03:26 PM -------------------- Profile Antagonist: "Frankly, I could care less about who's rulin' what as long as I get by well enough at the end o' the day. But why do we even need deities? It's not my fault the elves an' humans an' other races are too lazy to do things themselves. I say we need a unified government, an empire with a ruling council that deals with everythin' the imperial army don't." "Breakfast" |
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| Venea Zephyrius |
Posted: Sep 12 2009, 03:10 PM
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 Goddess of Air  Group: Admin Posts: 661 Member No.: 115 Joined: 18-September 05 |
This character is now approved!
Just a couple of things here, Wickednails: 1) Remove any details concerning hobbits- they don't exist in Meliora! (as much as I do adore Merry and Pippin) 2) Clarify Akral's opinions of the deities. You have put here that he follows Garga and respects both Venea and Ebelle, but you have also stated that he distrusts magic, and I see in his signature that he is an antagonist who doesn't favor the rule of deities at all. With things the way they are, these details seem contradictory. A wee bit of clarification should take care of that. Also, I can see that you've been cooking up your own concept of what Akral's dwarvish society is like. If you'd like to put together a little documentation for that, you can certainly post it in The Library for others to refer to.  Now that Arkral's approved, you can begin posting in-game. If you aren't sure where to start, I recommend heading over to the Plotting forum to check out other peoples' ideas and perhaps post your own brainstorming thread. You can also throw around thread ideas with other players in the Cbox or PM individual members you'd like to plot with. Posting an open thread might be a decent idea as well. If you have any questions, send 'em my way.  Well done here. Akral looks like he'll be a lot of fun! Welcome, officially, to the game.  -------------------- |
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