Voragh

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Neutral Voragh Backbreaker
Voragh4.gif
Title <Pit Gladiator>
Gender Male
Race Orc
Class Warrior
Age 37
Height 6'8"
Weight 417lbs.
Eyes Maroon
Hair Black
Affilliation(s) The Hate Exchange
Occupation Gladiator, mercenary
Relative(s) Gortaz Angermaw (father), Shenkt Angermaw (brother), Shoglig Angermaw (mother) - all dead
Mentor(s) None
Alignment Chaotic Neutral
Status Intoxicated

Information

Player: Sol

Character Name: Voragh Backbreaker, Son of Angermaw

Character In-Game Name: Voragh

Nicknames: Vor and a host of derogatory nicknames and insults applied to him.

Associations: The Horde by blood and honour and the Cartel by the promise of wealth. He's currently working off a debt he owes to a draenic divinist by the name of Elara.

Race: Orc

Class: Gladiator

Age: He's seen thirty-seven years, not that he's been counting. Biologically forty-four. Blame warlocks. In spite of it, he's ageing well.

Hair: As thick, dark and greasy, matted up into a crude mohawk, with sideburns and twin tufts of beard framing his jawline, chin and upper lip shaved.

Eyes: The murky maroon of day-old dried blood with a jaundiced yellowish tinge to the whites thereof.

Weight: 417lbs of stocky muscle.

Height: Six feet and eight inches.

Appearance

With a heavy, hanging brow, beady eyes set far apart, and a jaw square and nose wide both crooked from being broken and reset many times over, Voragh is an unremarkable orc. His skin is dark green with a bluish-grey tinge, lined with wrinkles and countless scars alike. A multitude of tattoos and scarifications map his neck, arms, chest and back, most of them of a traditional orcish origin (i.e. a series of runes streak down his back, aligned roughly with the vertebrae of his spine, reading: only steel may judge me.), but others not (the serpents that coil around his wrists). Tall, powerfully built and gruff, he's thoroughly average to look at.

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His armour is black and thick leather, well-treated and accented with streaks of blood red dye. His waistguard and gauntlets are mailed, and his boots are greaved and sabatoned. Both his boots and gloves are weighted to add a bit more push to his punches and kicks, and his outfit teems with knives. He typically wears a mouthguard of a mask rather than a helmet, and wields a sword forged for vrykul hands.

Personality

Feckless, reckless, ruthless. A lot of other words ending in -less. Less than an orc should be. A boisterous bruiser whose callings in life appears to be smashing things up, making a lot of noise and both at once, Voragh will eagerly hurl himself into any manner of combat, shouting threats, insults and curses galore while doing so. He subscribes to the simple-minded conviction that violence is the purest form of self-expression, and thus besting someone in combat is a quick way of establishing yourself as superior. Blindly clinging to a prophecy read to him by a fel seer in the days of the Old Horde, he is convinced that death cannot take him so long as he faces it in combat - which explains why he rushes so eagerly into battle while demonstrating caution in other places. He is horribly crass, gruff and rude outside of battle, although he approaches unfamiliar social situations carefully. He is fearless in the fight but a coward in most other matters, so no wonder he tries to scrap wherever he goes.

Underneath it all, though, he's surprisingly ponderous and pensive, prone to bouts of melancholy. And yet he's stubborn and very set in his ways, adamantly refusing to even try to muster the willpower to kick his bad habits. Although he seems wholly without both ambition and inhibition, and while he'd certainly deny it if asked, Voragh is a quietly honourable creature who believes in repaying his debts and treating his opponents fairly in defeat. Indeed, in seven years of living and working amongst the cutthroat Steamwheedle Cartel, this is likely the main factor preventing his social advancement beyond the role of lowly pit dog, because believe it or not, he's smarter than he looks. He has also in recent years become a pious adherent to traditional orcish shamanism, or at least the faith as he understands it.

History

Born into the savage Bonechewers shortly before the Horde formed, Voragh was a runt. He would have been drowned at birth had his father not been interrupted in the deed by a seer who claimed that their people would need every available soldier in some great, coming war. And so he, alongside his older brother, grew up seeing draenei slaughtered from afar and seeing the grisly aftermath up close. Of course, in his clan, this meant he never went hungry. In fact, he found himself relishing the carnage in his limited understanding of what was going on. His mother would always tell him that he'd grow up to be big and strong, a famous fighter who'd go down in song through great deeds in battle, and this early buffering of Voragh's ego had a lasting effect on him. His sibling rivalry with his brother Shenkt became grimmer as their surroundings did and, both vying for the favour of their father, Voragh bashed his head in with a rock during a wrestle. No questions were asked. And neither he nor his mother objected when the acolytes of Gul'adn came to their hut, taking the child to march alongside his father through the Dark Portal, using fel magicks to drain his vitality to the point where he doubled in physical age in a matter of minutes. Big and strong he was, and he was baying for blood and the chance to earn his place in the songs. Voragh was among the few Bonechewer warriors who stepped beyond the Portal in those years, marching under the standards of the Burning Blade due to a blood debt.

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The bloodlust the warriors of the clans now felt mixed with Voragh's youthful whimsy, for he was still essentially a child in an adult's body. As he grew older and older and as Stormwind's army became weaker and weaker, he meanwhile became more of a horrible, shrieking terror on the battlefield, a berserker of prodigious might and endless rage. Though he became renowned as a skilled and mighty warrior, even some of his fellow clansmen expressed concern. That was, of course, following the incident in which he'd buried his sword in his father's back over the right to carry their standard into battle. A warlock and self-proclaimed prophetess spoke to have foreseen Voragh's demise, once, and told him that death could never take him so long as he faced it in battle - essentially saying that so long as he fought them, no foe could kill him - and Voragh bought into the 'prophecy' religiously, propelling himself into battle after battle against steeper and steeper odds under the mad belief that he was invincible. Although not born into them, Voragh was a textbook example of why the warriors fighting with the Burning Blade were once looked upon so warily by the rest of the Horde. When the wars were over, he persisted to be a rowdy troublemaker when he was interned. He instigated and was victim to various instances of violence between inmates, having many rivals and outstanding feuds amongst his fellow orcs that were barely kept in check by the Horde's loose hierarchy. This among other things ensured that he was watched hawkishly, but also that he was regularly pressed into pit fights by corrupt camp guards.

For one reason or another, he wasn't so keen to join the Burning Blade's Blademasters in embracing shamanism and serving as the vanguard for his people's redemption. No - when the time came, Voragh wasn't all that enthusiastic about casting off their shackles and fleeing to Kalimdor. He was comfortable in the monotony of slavery and captivity and was less than eager to forsake the power the demons had given them. Bloodlust was like a drug to him, and he was not keen to leave it behind for good in favour of 'redemption'. Of course, he wasn't particularly vocal about this, unwilling to go against the wills of the majority and face being shunned. He fought in the Third War as a Grunt without distinction, although he was punished for demonstrating notable brutality and callousness. Particularly, his attempts to indulge in certain Bonechewer traditions were frowned upon. Fear of death from exposure in the strange wilds of Kalimdor kept him from deserting.

Settling in Durotar effectively clanless and friendless, he found – or rather, was found by – a fellow former warrior of the Burning Blade who shared his views on the New Horde. Crippled and forced to rely on a walking staff, this ancient orc had since begun to dabble in dark magicks, and was one of the founding members of the Burning Blade that would serve as the long arm of the Shadow Council. Voragh found himself drawn in by his wisdom and strange charisma and departed from Durotar to travel amongst the wilds with him, where they rendezvoused with other members of the new cult. Ascending Dreadmist Peak and settling in the camp there, Voragh found himself guarding the warlocks and undertaking various rites of his own. Following months of loyal service, Voragh was selected to drink demon's blood.

The next thing Voragh remembers is waking up in the middle of the Barrens, his head buzzing, his thoughts scattered, his body aching, feeling a craving for felblood to his core that he was unable to sate. The blood he was covered in led him to conclude that drinking the felblood had thrown him into a rage like never before, and that he'd either attacked his fellow cultists or been driven out into the wilds to attack others. Either way, attack others he had – for not far from where he'd been, a tiny swine farm that had once been home to a venerable old warrior, his mate, his two children and two peons lay in ruins, the bodies of its occupants (and swine) torn apart and scattered with his greatsword buried amongst the gore.

The sight of such a scene of slaughter brought pause even to this bitter, hateful specimen of orckind. This is what the demon's power had led him to – the brutal, underhanded murder of an entire family, just as he'd slain his father years before, and he couldn't even remember it too relish the deed as he might once have done. The farmstead was in a spot of unrecognisable wilderness, rife with lions and other predators, and he dared not venture too far out. There he remained for months. When he ran out of swine to eat, he indulged an old Bonechewer habit and ate the corpses of those he'd brutally murdered. Even this abundance of food barely kept him barely alive, for those months spent squatting coincided with horrible withdrawal sickness. A single goblet of felblood had left him cripplingly addicted, but it was in these days of utter isolation that he slowly, painfully managed to wean himself off by going cold turkey. He was almost losing his mind to withdrawal and thirst when the well dried up, but a freak rainstorm proved to be his salvation in this regard. He took it as a good omen, a sign for him to turn away from his wicked path.

Having more or less buried the addiction but having ran out of food, he was found an emaciated husk in a crumpled heap beside the farmstead's water supply, unconscious yet near death. There was conspicuously little trace of the great crime he'd committed, so were he discovered by members of the Horde, he would have escaped punishment. However, he was not. He was discovered by goblin traders, who cheerily slapped a collar on him and hauled him back to Ratchet, where he was mended back to health and put to market. A burly, intimidating orc like Voragh was snapped up by a businessman looking to make his fortune on the arena circuit, who paid for the slave's training – although it turns out he didn't need much – and sponsored his fights. You see, life has an odd way of moving in recurrent circles. This wasn't the first time he was thrown in shackles and forced into fights against his will, and it certainly wasn't the first time he enjoyed it.

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Narrowly surviving his fights long enough to save up a fortune to buy his freedom, Voragh remained a regular fixture of Cartel pit fights for many years, deriving a new surname from one of his arena aliases. The dog-eat-dog yet oddly cosmopolitan environments of Ratchet and Booty Bay were corrosive influences to his sense of tradition and whatever idealism he may have had, and while he hasn't walked a particularly straight path, it's never been so crooked that he's been worshipping demons and drinking their blood. Voragh is trying his hardest not to think too far ahead to steer away feelings of self-pitying nihilism, but he is gradually coming to realise that he could have done a lot more good in the world over the past seven or so years. That doesn't mean he's rushing to change his ways, though.

Skills and abilities

First and foremost, Voragh is an orcish warrior with nearly thirty years of fighting experience. Moreover, he is a veteran of the arena, and hell, it shows. He's highly proficient with heavier swords, and as far as armour goes, he is most comfortable wearing partial leather and mail. He's most dangerous when equipped accordingly, but even if somehow caught without such things, his knowledge and breadth of experience can allow him to put up a solid fight against odds stacked highly against him when properly applied. When you break it down, there aren't all that many things on Azeroth he hasn't traded blows with, and it shows spectacularly. Even if disarmed, he is a formidable brawler.

His greatest strength and direst weakness are probably his Blood Furies. While most orcs are still susceptible to them in moments of stress, Voragh has more trouble with it than you'd expect. It manifests itself as a throbbing ache in his forehead and a buzzing in his skull, which grow and grow as a fight draws on until they become unbearable and he loses himself to violent rage. In the throes of such a frenzy he's progressively stripped of much of his capacity for higher thinking, losing his acute tactical insight, sense of self-preservation and partially his ability to differentiate from friend and foe. More to his benefit, though, he can muster feats of speed and strength he wouldn't otherwise be capable of and withstand terrible punishment. The major downside to this is he tends to be subject to incapacitating fatigue and injury when he's winding down from one of these Furies.