Gurvok

From CotH-Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search
Horde Gurvok Wolfbite
Shatteredhand.jpg
Player Geoni
Gender Male
Race Orc
Class Raider, Beast Master, and Assassin
Age 48
Height 7’1 ½”
Weight 442 lbs.
Eyes His eyes are brown, their color much like wet clay scintillating in the sunlight.
Hair His head is bald, a few small scars on his head’s dull green but shiny skin. His seven-inch long beard, along with his body hair, is black, coarse, and scraggly.
Affilliation(s) The Shattered Hand Clan, the Horde.
Occupation Assassin and Worg Raiser
Status Alive


Appearance

Usual Garments/Armor:

What he is wearing depends on where he is and what he is doing. If he is near Orgrimmar taking care of his wolves, he will likely be shirtless, wearing dusty white leather pants and nothing else due to the heat.

If he is doing something that requires him to be a bit more formal, he will wear a vest made out of white wolf fur and a pair of brown leather boots, which have white symbols painted onto them.

If he is going into battle, travelling, or on an assassination job, he usually wears kodo-skin armor. The armor is red and white in color, hugs tight to his large figure to allow flexibility, and symbols of the Shattered Hand Clan and the Horde are stitched into it. With assassination in particular, he will wear a helmet made from a wolf’s mane and a wolf mask over his face.

Other: An iron fist hangs off his left wrist, where his shattered left hand once was. He has one white tattoo. This tattoo is a battle hymn written on his upper right arm. Where another white tattoo once was, which was a symbol of the Shattered Hand Clan etched into the skin of his shattered hand, is a replica of cold iron. However, he has repainted the symbol of his clan on his iron fist with white paint.

He also reeks of the smell of wolves and sweat most of the time.

Personality

Gurvok is an assassin, but his personality doesn’t reflect it much; he doesn’t act quiet or sly, on the contrary, he’s talkative and friendly. He can speak many languages, but speaks all of disastrously, Orcish and Old Orcish being the exceptions. Even if he butchers these languages, he’ll unabashedly carry long conversations in it even if he’s speaking mostly incoherent sentences. His demeanor changes according to who he’s talking to. If he’s having a conversation with his mother, he is most likely irritated and will be blunt and harsh about everything, even if he’s speaking to somebody else. This is usually midday, when the heat is getting to him and the sun’s central position in the sky makes him tired. If he’s away from his mother and with other Orcs, he will be a bit more talkative and compliant in his exchanges. And if he is talking to somebody new to him, he will likely be friendly but flighty. There is always something on his mind, deep emotions that don't have names. He often stares off into the distance to linger on these feelings, tuning out those around him. He seeks to understand his emotions, and in the process of doing so, has trouble expressing them. He has never approached those that he has had romantic feelings about, may they be female or male, because he doesn't understand what to say to them, or how he would say it if he did know. Because of this, he has given up on any hopes of a romantic life for now and redirected all of his passion into his career.

There are exceptions, and a lot of it has to do with his past. He dislikes most humans, and though he is considerate because he has learned that there have been a few kind humans here and there, he is mostly distrustful of them for both reasons of factions and his memories of war. It is the same with the other races of the Alliance. Draenei, however, cause him a lot of anxiety. Whenever he sees one or meets one, he is overwhelmed with incredible guilt, remembering the things he did to them when he was a child. This guilt is beginning to wash away as he has come to realize that it wasn't entirely his fault for being tricked, but the guilt is still there nonetheless. When it comes to members of the Horde, he is generally friendly. He does have some tension with the Blood Elves and Forsaken every once in a while, but doesn’t dwell on the tension.

When he is in battle, or on an assassination job, he thinks like a worg in order to fight with them, and though he no longer allows himself to fall victim to bloodlust, his way of approaching a situation puts him in a very feral mindset. He ignores the words of both friends and foe, and only focuses on the person(s) he is determined to kill.

History

Gurvok was the only child his parents were ever able to conceive. His childhood was rough; his father was a berserker and raised Gurvok with the intentions of making a berserker out of him as well. He would often anger Gurvok enough to invoke a fight with him, and when he fought with his son, he threw full-force adult punches at the child. Gurvok didn’t see why the clan needed many warriors nonetheless berserkers, growing up on the mostly peaceful Draenor. However, when he was fourteen, he learned the berserker’s worth to the clan. The Draenei slaughter had begun, and his father was one of the men sent out to do the slaughtering. He, along with some of the other berserkers, would be the ones that came back carrying the most heads. The berserkers were of quickest and most efficient to the clan, and being one was something to be proud of. Gurvok realized that this is why his father pushed him so hard to become a berserker.

Gurvok’s father completed om’riggor when he was fourteen, and expected Gurvok to do the same. Killing a talbuk and painting his face with its blood was the easy part, being surrounded by two packs of hungry and savage worgs on his way back wasn’t. He quickly and quietly stepped out of their path, and watched each pack glare at the other as he did. An eerie feeling overcame him when he met eyes with these worgs. One pack seemed weaker than the other did, and after they began to fight, it soon became clear to Gurvok that the stronger pack intended to make a meal out of the weaker one. He watched as the strong worgs bit each of the weaker worgs to death, and did nothing to interfere. The last of the weak worgs was a pregnant one, and she snarled her teeth and eyed the three worgs that surrounded her with the profound instinctual intensity of a soon-to-be mother. She stood her ground, preparing to fight all three of them as the last hope for her pack’s survival, even if it meant death. Gurvok realized this, felt sympathy he didn’t think he had overwhelm him, and for that reason he decided to fight alongside this weak and overpowered worg. This battle was furious; the worgs constantly tossed Gurvok to the ground and pushed their claws into his chest, and bit into the flesh of his upper arms and shoulders, tearing it. Yet each time this happened, he would rise, and push the blade of his axe into the torso of the worg. He killed the entire pack this way, intoxicated with rage and lust for victory. Because of the bites he received from this fight, he chose Wolfbite to be his surname.

The pregnant worg managed to survive, and he dragged this dying worg back to his clan’s settlement, losing a lot of blood from his arms and shoulders in the process. At first, the clan considered his condition a sign of weakness, but after he told the story of what just happened he was able to change their minds and have the worg and himself treated for wounds. Weeks later, the worg would give birth to five stillborn pups and one female pup. She fell weak from giving birth, and was in howling pain every time her pup nursed. Gurvok named the pup Lak’tuk because of this. From then on, he was considered a grunt worthy of training by not just his father, but any of the clan’s other fine warriors and berserkers. Many cheered for him when his left hand was smashed and shattered. And later that year, when he traveled with much of the clan to attend the Kosh’arg Festival, his father announced that he was proud of his son, and that their ancestors should be too. It was at the festival where he learned of raiders, warriors who fought while riding on mounts, and decided that this is what he wanted to become along with being a beast master. He had grown tall, strong, and respected, but afraid of rising to this new intention because raiders were relatively unseen in the clan.

For the time being, he trained as a warrior. Part of the training was going out to slaughter the remaining Draenei and collect what they called “demon heads” to bring back as tokens. He did this until no more Draenei could be found, and became a warrior of the clan by bringing many heads back to the settlement. He would look back at these actions at a later point in time as the reason he never allows anyone to call him a warrior. When he was seventeen, he began to train Lak’tuk to be mounted. The pup had grown incredibly large on the excess milk her mother produced, and could handle Gurvok’s heavy weight. Her mother had recently passed from a mysterious ailment, and thus lost the last of her possible distractions. She proved to be quickly trained, and very compliant to Gurvok’s commands.

It was only a matter of time until events forced Gurvok to reveal his intention to be a raider. When he was nineteen, the dark portal was opened and the clan went through. They went to war with the humans, and he joined in the rush on Stormwind Keep atop Lak’tuk. It was his father, who walked beside him into battle, who was the most disappointed. Luckily, Gurvok was able to point out that there were raiders from other clans fighting with them. He said to his father, “The path of the warrior is honorable, and what could be more honorable than going down that path on the top of another warrior? This is the way they have chosen to go down that path, and I am going to do the same.”

His father huffed in reply, and that huff would be the last thing Gurvok’s father said to him, because he died in the Horde’s first attempt to take Stormwind Keep. The rest of the first war went well for Gurvok and Lak’tuk, because they survived, but the exchange he had with his father before it began haunted him throughout his battles.

After the first war, Gurvok found a beast master from another clan who was raising worgs. He allowed Gurvok to have his Lak’tuk mate with the alpha male of his pack so that Gurvok could raise and train more worgs for future battles. Lak’tuk’s first pups were born just before Gurvok turned twenty, and since she had seven pups, taking care of all of them became too much of a task for Gurvok to handle alone. He had to resort to his mother for help, and as soon as they began to work together, they began to constantly bicker with one another to the point where they would schedule their day as to best avoid each other. And so the years passed by and Gurvok learned how command multiple worgs while mounted on Lak’tuk by having them hunt the wildlife of Azeroth.

When Gurvok was twenty-five, the chance for him to prove his skills as both a raider and a beast master arrived with the coming of the second war. He first went into battle in the Northern portion of the Arathi highlands. Things were immediately intense during the first of the battles and he lost one of his three fighter worgs after only a few days. The brute force of berserkers proved to be more useful in these initial clashes, so Gurvok thought, but he didn’t let that get him down. He decided that the better strategies were assaults and ambushes from behind, when people weren’t expecting a group of worgs to attack when their backs were turned. This technique earned him many kills where he would be the one killed if he had tried the same approach directly. Despite the constant setbacks and eventual loss, this is how he fought the second war, and how he earned the respect of his clan as a raider.

The clan planned on fighting to their death, but the victorious humans had other plans for the Orcs; Gurvok was one of the last of his clan to be put into the internment camps, because they had to pull him away from his worgs and his worgs away from him. Though they beat him to a pulp in order to drag him into the designated camp, he had taken worse beatings from his father when he was a child. He would have fought these humans until they killed him, but they didn’t; they knocked him unconscious, dragged him into the internment camp, shot at his worgs to scare them away, and that was that.

For the next eleven years, he would hear his worgs howl, and he would howl back with all his might. The worgs didn’t stop visiting the internment camp they knew their master was trapped in, howled despite being scared off or shot at every once in a while, and Gurvok eventually realized that they wanted to be with him. He couldn’t see his worgs, but when he heard them, he would throw some of his rations over the camp’s massive log fences and their howls would stop. He eventually found a small hole between two logs of the fence where he could peek out and look into the wilderness, and sometimes his worgs would come up to the hole and lick at it as he poked food through while talking to them. Life in the internment camp was frightening for Gurvok as the behavior of the Orcs became unusual, which meant frightening. The Orcs would fight over beds, rations, or something as simple as being bumped into. This stressed Gurvok out, and caused him a lot of anxiety, and it was because of this anxiety he developed sleep problems that would persist even after his liberation.

As the years passed by, most of his fellow Orcs became lethargic, and he would have become the same way if it weren’t for his mother, who despite growing old was determined to shout and fight with everyone around her. She started trouble where nobody wanted it. People began to hate her for this behavior, and even Gurvok began to disapprove of her, despite her authority over him as a mother and an elder. Yet, Gurvok was inspired to have more friendly spars with the few Orcs in the camp who were large as him, because he knew his mother acted the way she did because she didn’t want to become weak, and he felt the same way. These Orcs became his close friends during these years. The closer they became, the more they would fight; this is the nature of friendship.

Despite the internment he was in, as Gurvok climbed into his thirties, almost all of the aspects of his pre-internment lifestyle died with the passing of time. Fewer and fewer of his worgs came to the walls to howl or wait for his rations until it was only Lak’tuk who would return to that peephole to listen to Gurvok’s voice. He had no beasts to raise, only anger. He became a brawler, and feeding all of his natural determination into the fighting, he became undefeated. There was, however, a young Orc who he trained as she grew up in the camp, and this girl became a mute and brooding 6’9” giant by the time she was a woman. An Orcess her height was a rarity, but so was her skill in the brawler’s ring. On the day she decided to fight Gurvok with the intention to defeat him, the internment camp was freed. She knocked Gurvok unconscious after the longest match the camp had ever seen, and when he came to, he was free. He was in love with this girl, but kept this to himself. She knew he was keeping secrets from him, and he agreed that if she defeated him, he would share all of his ghosts with her. When he awoke from his unconscious state, only a few Orcs were left near the camp, and she was nowhere to be found. He hasn’t seen her since.

With freedom came profound indecision; the world was wide open again and anything was possible. Thirty-seven years old with the coming of freedom, Gurvok felt that he had lost so much, but there were other Orcs older than him who raised families and led clans. There was a world behind him and a world ahead of him, and he decided not to turn his head. He was alone at first, and thought his clan had abandoned him because the camp was mostly deserted, but a pregnant Lak’tuk led him to his clan, who camped nearby. Upon arrival they explained to Gurvok what happened, along with confessing how amazed they were by Lak’tuk’s dedication. They realized that the worg watched over them for over a decade, as if she was the mother of them all, and for that they nicknamed her Mother.

She gave birth to a healthy litter of pups, and like Gurvok she felt stronger than ever despite aging out of her youth. For the next four years Gurvok would cross the sea and travel Kalimdor, rekindling his connection with Mother while raising a new set of fighting worgs, meeting the many races and peoples of Azeroth, and fighting new battles.

It wasn’t until he was forty-one when he would settle down in Durotar to help build Orgrimmar; Gurvok didn’t settle down at all, really. It was during that year when his life became busier than it had ever been. Every day he had to take care of the wolves, have at least two or three arguments with his mother, help build Orgrimmar, and train himself, his wolves, and the young Orcs who wanted to become a raider like himself. His lack of sleep turned him intense and flighty. Incredible changes happened to the Shattered Hand Clan as they became focused on servicing the Horde as rogues and assassins. Gurvok wanted to become an assassin in his loyalty to the clan, but struggled to figure out how he could incorporate his experience into the art of killing. Then he remembered he second war, and how he attacked people from behind and kill them quickly, blowing into them as if he were a howling gust of wind. He focused on his connection between himself and Mother, a bond with so much strength and history that it seemed nearly ethereal; the connection between these two warriors is what gave them success as assassins.

In the last seven years, Gurvok has developed both sanctions and irritations, and they have kept him busy. He has risen in status as a worthy assassin, as a trainer for young Orcs, as a beast master who breeds a proud line of worgs, and new skills and abilities learned from other assassins. Many problems plague his everyday life: he does nothing but fight with his mother, sleeping problems are getting worse, he and Mother are becoming slower as they approach old age, and he has been offered a new position. Of all of these problems, the latter is what troubles him the most; the new rank includes a ceremony, and he has to sever his hand to replace it with a weapon as is tradition in the clan, and he has become so indecisive about what it is that he wants to replace his hand with that it has become an existential crisis.

He distracted himself from this dilemma the only way he knew how, which was with work. Adding to his existing pile of obligations, he joined the Deadeye Watchers, a warband that was protecting Horde interests in Ashenvale at the time. Due to this, along with a large number of assassination jobs coming in, Gurvok found himself so busy that he got little to no sleep. After a while, this began to take its toll on Gurvok. He had to quit the Watchers and slow down on the amount of jobs that he accepted from his superiors. Noticing this, they asked Gurvok to get more sleep or they would give him no more jobs. He ignored them, and continued to work until one day, when he was helping his mother out with the worgs, he collapsed from exhaustion. Concerned and frustrated, she spoke about this to Gurvok's superiors until they found out how they could resolve this. Their resolution was to give Gurvok a forced vacation. The man had never taken a break from his duties in his entire life, and knowing this, they demanded that he spend at least a month off work.

Gurvok hadn't an idea what to do with himself, stripped from work and duty. It was all he knew. He began to dwell on all of his years past, and thought about his home planet. Something within his spirit led him there again, where he would meditate on his past and future. His mind wandered back to that crisis of what to do with his hand once he accepts his promotion and cuts it off. He sat with his worg Mother on a hill and Nagrand and stared into her eyes. She stared back, and when she did, the glaucoma in her eyes blocked his penetrating gaze. It was on this hill when he began to accept that his beloved worg was going to grow venerable and die soon, and that his lifestyle would have to make a change. He decided that his days of being a raider were to come to an end once he cut his hand off. He knew that an axe wouldn't be right for the job once this happened, and that he had to incorporate a new weapon into his occupation. This new weapon would be a fist of iron. He sketched it while staring at his clans flag, and designed it to look like shattered bones of metal. When he finished planning, Gurvok felt at peace with himself; his existential crisis was coming to an end.

Wandering Nagrand, Gurvok came across some Draenei as he was about to pass through Halaa. Gurvok had never been to his home planet since it was shattered, and he found himself in an unfamiliar world. As a result, he was lost, travelling the warped lands of his youth. Reluctantly, he approached them for directions. He had a conversation with the anchorite about his past, the future, and what it meant to call Draenor his home. They spoke on the Burning Legion, and their relentless chase of the Draenei throughout their history. A guilt no longer washed over Gurvok when he thought about the genocide he took part in. He was then beginning to realize that it wasn't his fault for being tricked, or the Draenei's fault for bringing them to his home. It was simply the Legion's doings. Though the anchorite didn't understand Gurvok's intentions for what he planned to do once he found his old village, he gave him a map of the new Nagrand and bid him farewell.

Gurvok set off to the place where his clan once called home, on the edge of Nagrand. Though half of his abandoned village had been lifted into the sky, the tree stump where his hand was shattered at the completion of his om'riggor still remained intact. He laid his hand upon the stump and severed it from his arm with a single slam of his axe. Prepared for the healing process, he bandaged the bloody stump on his arm and set off for a place where he could receive proper healing. The initial healing took place in Shattrath, where an infection was cleaned out and where he rested until new flesh formed over the bare bone. He returned to Azeroth the day after the Shattering happened, and found the city of Orgrimmar in destruction. He was enthusiastic about helping rebuild, but his superiors urged him to remain calm until his healing completed. For the time being, he convened meetings between a weapon designer, a blacksmith, and the superior who would be the one to attach the weapon to his stump. Together, they created a brilliant fist of iron. The iron fist's carpals were fragmented, spikes rose from its knuckles, and its fingers were long and bony. This not only brought joy to Gurvok, but to his clan as well. This was not only a weapon and a part of Gurvok, but it was a symbol for the resilience of his people. Once the fist was bolted into bone, Gurvok attained his new rank. Now, he trains to use his new hand, a weapon he is somewhat unfamiliar with, as he takes care of his aging worg and reviews jobs to either accept for himself or pass down to lower ranking assassins.

Skills and Abilities

As a trained warrior, Gurvok can use axes of all kinds, along with the minimal knowhow of how to wield swords, daggers, and maces. He can fight with his bare fists just as well. As thoroughly described in his history, Gurvok is truly a beast master, as he has risen generations of strong fighting worgs. His ability to mount, control, and fight atop Mother is as easy for him as walking. He has recently learned more about the uses of poisons and other technologies from other assassins, and has begun to incorporate that into killing.

Recently, be has begun to learn how to use his iron fist, a fist weapon with spikes long enough to deliver a blow that can puncture organs and iron strong enough to crack a skull. Though he is new to using such a weapon, he has a history in sparring, so close combat comes natural to him. This, he finds, requires him to dismount. And so, he has retired Mother from the job so that she may age in peace.

Despite all of these abilities, Gurvok has a weakness, which is his ability to doze off at any given time, even if he’s standing up or riding Mother. He has struggled with blood rage in the past, but can keep himself under control most of the time. Being an assassin means that he can't lose his mind on the job, even if there's slaughter involved. However, on rare occasions, he succumbs to the rage. When he does, it's full-blown.