Dhorgun

Information

Player: Sol

Character In-Game Name: Dhorgun

Character Name: Dhorgun No-Name the Younger, son of Dhorgun Eartaker the Elder.

Nicknames: . . . Yeah, it's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? He's typically addressed as 'young Dhorgun' by older orcs and just Dhorg by those his age. He's cool with that.

Associations: The Horde and the Warsong Clan

Race: Orc

Class: Hunter

Age: Twenty

Sex: Male

Hair: Coarse, dark brown, grown long and worn in a top knot through his teens, albeit cut short very recently. What's left remains tied up. He also has a fairly triumphant beard about the jaw with a conspicuous inability to grow a mustache.

Eyes: Brick red, prone to dart left and right and filled with youthful vigor.

Height: A relatively diminutive 6'2".

Weight: A relatively scrawny 330 lbs.

Appearance

Usual garments/armor: Simple furs and hides worn in traditional orcish style with a studded harness, steel-toed boots and a cloak to match it all. In battle or while traveling, he wears the face of a worg dyed red with blood.

Other: Dhorgun is partially deaf in his right ear. It's inconvenient.

Personality

Dhorgun is a wholehearted and loyal adherent to his people's values and ideals who strives to express them in his every action. He is also a calm, bright, level-headed thinker. He's also not a shaman, and nor does he make any pretensions of wisdom or wit. And yes, surprisingly, he's real. He's impeccably moral and honorable in accordance with Orcish customs and is heavily spiritual, but that doesn't mean he'll duel someone to the death over a slight, or spend all his time meditating and expect a ghost to solve his problems. He bares his teeth and squares his shoulders in response to insults or challenges, but this is just culturally-ingrained posturing he indulges in while he carefully evaluates the threat he faces. He reveres his elders and respects their guidance, but is set enough in his own ways to question them if he feels he needs to, for all sages were fools once and may prove to be so again. He's all for a glorious death in battle, a heroic sacrifice for the betterment of all, but he wants to have at least earned a name for people to remember him by when he does. He is an orc. But he is not a fool.

It seems that he's aware of one thing above all else: his youth. He once made the mistake of calling a forty-year-old 'elder' and defended himself by half-jokingly saying “To me, all orcs are elders.” This is essentially true. He literally completed his rites of passage into adulthood last week. He has no glorious reputation, no honours to his name, and seems to live under the shadow of a disapproving absentee father for whom he has an unhealthy hero-worship complex. He is earnest in his desire to prove his worth to his fellow orcs, and if there's anything that could ever drive him to act recklessly, it's that. In keeping with this, he tries to avoid burdening his brothers and sisters with his problems when he believes he can deal with them himself – and even when he thinks he can't, due to the belief he might grow into a better person through the struggle. He seeks glory, he seeks honour, and he also seeks thrills. Though he abstains from pleasures of the flesh, Dhorgun is a hunter through hedonism. He delights in the challenge and the excitement of the hunt.

In speech, Dhorgun is characterized by an utter lack of airs and graces, an easy and good-natured sense of humor and a pure and simple honesty that is, at times, disarming. He speaks utterly plainly, so blunt and laconic that he'd often seem rude to those who don't know better. He is, however, careful to frame his statements when involved in discussions - “So my mother tells me.” and “That is my belief.” would be heard a lot if you were to strike him up for a debate. This is to clearly distinguish which wisdom is his and which isn't – he utterly refuses to take credit for anything that is not entirely his own work. He's racist, certainly, but there's more to racism than hatred – he doesn't hate every Alliance race, for starters. In fact, he finds things to respect in each of them. However, he has a pre-prepared perception of everyone who isn't an orc – and perhaps even some who are.

Ultimately, Dhorgun is a child of the apathy of the camps looking forward to a brighter future for his people and driven to act in order to secure it.

History

In such a strange and complicated world, Dhorgun has had a surprisingly simple life. He was born into the shackles his mother lived in. He is the only son of a ruthless lesser Warsong warleader and his corrupted shaman mate who had lost her way with the spirits when Shattrath burnt and then with demons when the Great Lethargy set in. While she was with child, Dhorgun's mother was captured and interned in the Lordamere camp. As soon as he was big enough, he was put to labour. He hardened himself through the exertion and the beatings and had his first hands-on experience with beasts while dealing with the vermin that threatened the inmates' tentative supplies of food and water. However, he and his mother were the only Warsongs in the camp, captured while the rest of their clan hid in the countryside. The two of them were outcasts of a sense.

Great racial unity fell upon the orcs when Thrall liberated them from the camps. Dhorgun was barely ten years old at this point, and he was proving to be a bright and honest young orc. The closest he came to his father after they were reunited, however, was when they mourned Grommash together alongside the rest of the Warsongs. It all went downhill from there as Dhorgun got older. His father was forever with the Warsong Clan, posted far away from the place where Dhorgun and his mother settled in the Barrens, and he was somewhat taken under the wing of an old orc trapper who had lost his mate and sons at Hyjal. However, despite all he learned from the man, he grew to have little but ire from him, yet his mother's friendship with him precluded him from simply ignoring him. His mother, meanwhile, rekindled her bond with the spirits and taught him much about the old ways of the orcs.

His father's visit when he was fifteen made Dhorgun acutely aware of just how far they'd drifted apart. In the written correspondence between his parents, his mother had praised the boy greatly, and Dhorgun the Elder was deeply disappointed. Upon seeing him practicing with a bow rather than an axe, his father asked his mother a simple question within the Younger's earshot: "Are you raising me an orc or an elf?" His father's disapproval hung over him like a specter these next few years, and the boy strove to succeed in all he could.

When Dhorgun was seventeen, the correspondence between his parents stopped. Something to do with his mentor, the old trapper, and how close he was to his mother. Dhorgun didn't pay it much attention. Truth be told, he didn't really care. His father, whether he wrote to his mother or not, was still his father, and he still desired to please him as much as he desired to continue learning from his mother and his mentor alike. And so he learnt. But Dhorgun never really came any closer to pleasing his father.

Last week, a physically adult Dhorgun became a cultural adult. He undertook the rite of Om'riggor. For lack of talbuks in the Barrens, he put an arrow through the side of a lion, wrestled its bleeding form to the ground and strangled it to death with his bare hands. Then he bashed its head open with a rock for good measure and bellowed victory to the sky. He skinned it and made a blanket for his frail mother to wear in the coming winter from its tawny fur, and incorporated parts of its hide into his Armour. He made a sash out of its tail and gave it to a she-orc he intended to court, but his advances were sadly spurned before they became remotely romantic. He wears a claw from each paw and two canines from its jaws on a string necklace. He drew upon his face with its blood and his mother, a shaman, conducted a small ritual to validate the rite amidst a crowd of those dear to them. They dined on its roasted meat that night with some boiled potatoes and tough bread.

Dhorgun rested well that night. The dawn of that new day marked the beginning of his journey through adulthood into where he hopes will be the annals of legend. He's decided a fine way to start it all off is to track down his father and inform him of his success. He is having a bit of trouble with it.

Skills and abilities

Dhorgun's primary skillset is that of a survivalist. He knows his way around the wilderness, and is more than adept in hunting, foraging and navigating. Moreover, he has a certain instinctive aptitude with animals that's been honed through experience – through tracking them, trapping them, wrangling them and taming them to killing them and making best use of their remains.

He is most widely known, however, as an archer. He is one of those rare orcs who almost entirely forgoes traditional close-quarters combat in favour of striking from afar. His bow is heavy and a challenge to draw, and he does it with practised little effort. If you still think he's weak for being a ranger, try getting up in his face and being beaten over the head with the thing. Or don't. It'll hurt.