Halaki

Information

Player Name: Sol

Character Full Name: Hala'ki (Hah-lah-kee)

Character In-Game Name: Halaki

Nickname(s): Usually Hal, Ki, or some other diminutive. Zombie will do in most cases.

Association(s): First and foremost, the Knights of the Ebon Blade, though he aligns himself with the Darkspear Tribe and the Horde for the “sentimental value”, as he puts it. He's recently found himself counted among the ranks of the Darkspear Echoes, and though he's not quite sure how that happened, he doesn't object to it.

Race: Jungle Troll, and a living dead one at that.

Class: Death Knight

Age: Mid thirties.

Sex: Male

Hair: The guy's entirely hairless, but he seems to have sewn somebody else's scalp onto his own, snowy white dreadlocks and all. These are threaded with shards of bone throughout the braids and often culminate with tiny trinkets and effigies dangling from the end, some more macabre than others.

Eyes: Runic blue and blazing, alternating slightly in hue and intensity depending on his mood.

Weight: Lithe, muscular and athletic in build, typical of a trollish warrior (if a bit more hulking), though he does seem thinner than he ought to. Weighs in at around three hundred and twenty pounds.

Height: A fair bit taller than your usual Troll, actually - though he tends to slouch more than your usual Troll, too. About seven foot seven, though his typical posture degrades this to dead on seven feet.

Appearance

Hala'ki's most obvious and only real constantly worn “garments” (if they could be called that) are his bandages. Tattered, dirty strips of cloth are wrapped around much of his body, covering his torso and most of his arms and legs. They're also wrapped around his throat and the lower half of his face, and there are two similar strips of cloth tied around and hanging from his tusks. Held over his face by string is an old Rush'kah mask, the paint faded and the sides chipped.

Over this, he usually wears patchy leather trousers and a vest with a dark reddish hue, with several apparently unnecessary belts, buckles and straps worn here and there on his body, perhaps to hold his bandages in place. A few trophies and mementoes hang from these straps, from shrunken heads to bare skulls to random trinkets.

On top of all that, he wears plate armour vambraces, greaves and spiked pauldrons of some obscure dark metal, secured in place by the above-mentioned array of fastenings. A cloak, ebon and crimson in colour and fashioned from leather and some sort of scale, rests draped over his shoulders, studded with a series of small blue gems that travel down the spine and, at the risk of sounding fashionable, match his eyes.

Other: Hala'ki's skin, rather than the typical blue tone of a Jungle Troll, seems to be an extremely dark shade of grey with a purplish red tinge, easy to mistake for black or brown under most light. It is also heavily desiccated, shrivelled and callused, and appears as though it's stretched crudely over his muscular frame. Despite looking almost delicate and fragile in its unusually dry state, his skin has a natural (or unnatural, rather) thick, leathery quality, like animal hide. He also has several tattoos and scars in certain places, though they are largely faded due to the condition of his skin and hard to discern. There are, however, two prominent rune-shaped markings that appear to have been carved into his back at either shoulder-blade. There's also what appears to be an open wound that passes straight through his torso in the centre of his back, just missing the spine, which carries through to his chest. Either side of this appears to be festering as though it was alive (albeit diseased), and it's even been known to spontaneously bleed at times.

Hala'ki appears to have great trouble staying still for any amount of time, and is constantly twitching, fidgetting or otherwise moving about in some way or another, and these erratic movements range from drumming his fingers against the haft of his spear to spontaneously starting to do stretches. This is related to how in tune he was with the natural world when he was alive and how he's struggling to deal with the dulled sensations and perpetual coldness that come with being undead, which he finds to be maddening and seeks to counteract.

Perhaps similar to this is how he seems to communicate through gestures rather than spoken words, particularly around people he doesn't know - however, this is more likely down to his actual way of speaking. His voice is heavily distorted by the energies within him, giving it a grinding metallic edge and a deep, resonant quality. Simultaneously, it also sounds to be extremely hoarse and strained, and he seems to have trouble maintaining a consistent volume, pitch and pace when talking.

His Runeblade isn't really a Runeblade as such, but rather just a runed blade, shorter than the typical two-handed sword or axe many a Death Knight wields, and is usually mounted to his spear and used accordingly. Though this sort of weapon is optimised as a thrusting, lunging tool, Hala'ki's size and natural dexterity allows him to wield it as a sort of bladed quarterstaff.

Personality

As far as brooding, depressive, vengeful corpses go, Hala'ki is a surprisingly mellow, pleasant person. Despite his often erratic behaviour and mannerisms, he's generally a rather calm, even laid-back individual. He takes a “cheerfully pessimistic” approach to most things and often demonstrates a slow, detached and thoroughly patient manner, often to the point of apathy. He's dour, unflinching, hard to faze and often oddly gleeful about it, displaying a wicked sense of humour and an animated, even “lively” demeanour. Combat comes to him as a necessity of unlife and he's equally giddy and cheery about that, too, often to a worrying extent. Although naturally bloodthirsty, his experiences and his time in the Scourge have turned it into something else entirely.

Despite this, though, he's actually a rather intelligent person, thoughtful, with an inquisitive interest in philosophy, psychology and the cultures of other races. T he great equaliser of death has all but eradicated within Ki the xenophobia and misogyny that is a staple of the attitude of many Trolls - especially so when dealing with his brothers and sisters in the Ebon Blade, whom he feels closest to. This is much less apparent when dealing with other races, though - he feels that the Horde is much better off without the Forsaken and Blood Elves, despises them accordingly, and often treats the Alliance with disdain primarily as a matter of political course.

As a former follower of Samedi, Loa of the Dead, Hala'ki believes that life comes and progresses in stages, and that one can only move on once everything in one stage is wrapped up completely. Another trait of Samedi worship he's carried with him is an utter loathing of the Undead, which still extends, subconsciously at least, to himself and any such creatures he'd ever find himself dealing with, including his beloved Ebon Blade brethren. This usually manifests itself as more a lamenting pity than anything else, a deep sympathy for their sorry state which couples nicely with the feeling of shared pain with his fellow Death Knights and also his overwhelming urge to annihilate the Scourge, which he likes to think of as “emancipating” the tormented souls that constitute its shambling ranks. On the subject of besting the Scourge, he is adamant against using the same tactics as they do in defeating them, citing inventive thinking as their best resource. This frequently leads him to disagreements with his brethren, and still, this justification is hollow - he simply reviles the Undead and their ways, seeking to differentiate from them in any way he can.

Despite seeming rather calm and composed in most situations (if he awkward and having an odd way of showing it), Hala'ki is psychologically all over the place, fractured. He loathes his undead state and himself, which leads him to overt humbleness and an almost suicidally reckless nature when it comes to battle, and yet he values his continued existence and that of his brethren to an extreme degree. He feels an obligation to help the living, and yet simultaneously he often finds himself despising them, and often treats them with an egotistic cynicism, believing his experiences make him inherently superior to them, even if his status as undead contradicts this. He still reveres the Loa, even if he's bitter that they have “abandoned” him.

His mind is a confusing, mismatched patchwork of the broken pieces of what it once was, and he's all too aware of this. He constantly seeks to distract himself from his internal thoughts, be it through his apparent scholarly interests, his compulsive habit to twitch and fidget and preoccupy himself with movement and, when it comes down to it, straight-out battle, which all serve as diversions. Indeed, his usually upbeat attitude is his own way of over-compensating for being undead, and its forced nature shines through when he simply can't make conversation, becoming awkward and detached. And despite all this, he still longs to be accepted as a Troll again by his tribe, rather than an abomination - though he's satisfied, at least, with the conclusion that this is merely a pipe dream.

He possesses a reverent respect for elderly Trolls, a burning hatred for Murlocs and, of course, the Hunger that drives all Death Knights to inflict pain and suffering. It seems that Hala'ki has found a means of focussing this urge into a simpler, less harmful passive aggression against people he immediately decides he doesn't like. Even if this does make him come off as a massive bully at times, he finds it thoroughly therapeutic. However, prolonged times without fulfilling his sadistic desires for violence make him irritable, callous and eventually psychopathic - moreso than usual, I mean.. He can often be found passively engaged in particularly brutal sparring matches or doing terrible things to small animals in an attempt to sate the Hunger, though it isn't as helpful as he'd like to think.

History

Born as the son of a prominent tribal warrior (and the eldest daughter of another who his father had bested in a duel), Hala'ki's “career path” within the Darkspear Tribe was chosen for him months before his birth, and his childhood largely consisted of preparation for it, as was that of many sons of the Darkspears. When he wasn't practicing spear-fighting and axe-throwing with his friends, he was wrestling and grappling with his friends, and later, when he wasn't hunting beasts in the rainforests, then he was boasting about the beasts he'd slain earlier that day. Maybe he was saddled with incompetent friends, or maybe he had considerable natural aptitude for it, but Hala'ki seemed to be set to become an excellent warrior, standing head and shoulders above many of his peers.

This lifestyle honed his killer instinct from a young age. At fifteen, he chose himself a modest mate, and was brought into conflict with another rival for her affections, an older Troll who was a hideskinner. To solve their dispute, the two men agreed to fight till first blood - which Hala'ki drew when he tore his adversary's throat out with his tusks and teeth. It rapidly became apparent that Hal was a bloodthirsty little bastard, as though it wasn't abundantly clear before. His new wife was followed quickly enough by a child to call his own, but he paid neither of them much heed, such was the busyness of his life as a warrior. He devoted the entirety of his time to hunting and fighting, as his father had before him. What else was to be expected of him?

His formidable fighting prowess secured him a comfortable position in the tribe and cultivated a little delusional bubble of his own indestructibility and indomitable strength within Hala'ki's mind, and he grew complacent, unable to find a challenge in his day-to-day life of battle. With this came arrogance, which meshed well with other negative traits brought on by his brutal life. He was seen as an overtly self-assured, egotistical bully by many, with little respect for anyone but the tribal elders. One thing led to another and he eventually came to blows with his own father, who had decided that his son needed to be taught a lesson. This was exactly what occurred, and Hala'ki was humiliated before the tribe, his ego trampled and his reputation besmirched. Facing disgrace, it seemed things couldn't get any worse for Hala…

Until the Murlocs attacked not long afterwards. Having already established himself as a poor team player, Hala'ki found himself shunned by his warrior brethren, even as they accepted him to fight again as they co-ordinated their best efforts against the interlopers. The Darkspears' methods of warfare, built around hunting beasts, was not suited against the alarmingly co-ordinated lightning raids of the fish-men. Pushed into a losing, non-conventional war with spiteful comrades, a dead family and his life falling to pieces around him, Hala'ki sank into a brooding depression during this time, lamenting mortality, the finite nature of all things, and his own failures. And like many so desperate men before him, he turned to religion, even if his knowledge of it was indistinct.

The situation grew worse and Hala'ki's business continued as usual until he sustained a series of serious injuries after being mauled by a pack of the fish-men in a particularly fierce raid, which put him in a coma. Lacking the time and resources to deal with him, the Witch Doctor assigned to deal with him simply considered euthanizing the warrior as he slept, and having learnt what a terrible state of mind Hala was in at the time, he was starting to look at death as a mercy. The Witch Doctor probably would've went through with it if the Orcs didn't arrive the next day, aid the Darkspears in defeating the Sea Witch and her Murlocs, and ferry them away from their broken home to the new land of Kalimdor.

Funnily enough, Hala'ki managed to sleep through much of the Third War. It turned out that his comatose body was simply carried with the travelling Horde, and it was only after the Darkspears had settled on the Echo Isles that he came to. When he finally woke up, though, he immediately began to ramble about death and finality and in-depth conversations with spirits, to the point where the Witch Doctor watching over him simply clubbed him over the head and put him right back to sleep. After he came to again, though, he was in a much more controlled state of mind. He explained to the Witch Doctor that the Loa Samedi, whom he'd been inadvertedly praying to during the war on the Broken Isles, had came to his spirit as he lay dying and had communed with him, but he couldn't quite make sense of exactly what the Loa had spoken to him about. The Witch Doctor, sceptical and doubting that the wounded warrior had any propensity for the gods and spiritual arts, merely nodded, smiled and patted him on the shoulder before issuing him a potion to further aid his recovery, putting it down to a bad dream or perhaps minor delirium.

Hala'ki, however, was convinced. Long hours of thought and meditation led him to his own conclusions, and by the time he could walk on his own accord he was trouncing through the Echo Isles, lecturing people about death and the afterlife and what he thought of it. Regarded as a mad preacher and a lunatic by many, Hala'ki nonetheless used his faith as a crutch to get his shattered self esteem back on track (at the cost of his reputation, it seemed) and eventually earned himself an audience with an interested Priest of the Loa, who taught him, in the simplest terms possible for the unkempt warrior‘s benefit, the ways of Samedi. And yet, he was forced to question his own beliefs when somebody finally decided to bring him up to date about what he'd missed in his coma - an immeasurably large army of the undead had attacked Azeroth, and the Horde was now allied with a renegade splinter faction! Infuriated but fascinated and yet still unable to act on it, Hala'ki merely waited until he could fight again before he decided he'd go to Lordaeron and see this for himself.

He never got the chance. Before he could fight again, with his arm still in a sling, the Darkspears were driven off their islands by Zalazane's insurrection. Fleeing to Sen'jin Village with the rest of the tribe, Hala'ki was deeply alarmed that the necromancy he'd heard so much of, learnt to revile, and was planning to go and see in effect had been used so close to home. When Hala'ki could fight again to a reasonable degree, he partook in several unsuccessful attempts in retaking the Isles, but their small parties never penetrated the outer islands and were forced into retreat by Zalazane's forces, sustaining many casualties. Hala'ki considered his continued survival in these brief attacks as a sign from the Loa that he was meant to do something with his life.

Leaving his still-tarnished reputation behind him, Hala'ki set out from the village and didn't return. His first stop was at the Crossroads, where he encountered a member of the Royal Apothecary Society, and ended up gathering some reagents for the Forsaken alchemist in exchange for some very blunt and basic descriptions of the undead manner of being, alongside tales of the Scourge. Though the apothecary didn't take him seriously, this was enough to keep Hala'ki's interest piqued. By the time he found himself standing in Tirisfal Glades, the spiritualistic warrior was overtaken by zealous fervour and an urge to do what he decided must have been his “duty” to the Loa - to destroy this Scourge, wherever he could find them.

Initially co-operating with the Forsaken in their efforts against the straggling forces of the Scourge, Hala'ki quickly realised that the free-willed Undead had no intention to assist him in his ill-defined religious goals. Eventually, he put them behind him and headed further north for the dreaded Plaguelands, where the Scourge held the strongest presence outside of Northrend. What he saw was outrageous. Nature as he knew it defiled at every turn, Hala'ki would have flown into a murderous fury if he wasn't immediately forced to take flight when patrolling Scourge warbands set upon him.

It was lucky that he found Light's Hope Chapel when he did, otherwise he wouldn't have lasted very long. After being tended to by Argent Dawn medics and having their mission and philosophy explained to him, Hala'ki found them in keeping with his own and decided to join their ranks. While among them, he was lucky enough to find another Darkspear Troll, this one much older than he was but nonetheless a much more formidable combatant. The two grew to be close friends, and Hala'ki began to affectionately refer to the elderly Troll as “Ol' Mon” - it irks Ki to this day that he cannot remember his real name. It later transpired that Ol' Mon was a Shadow Hunter, and his reasoning for being in the Plaguelands was much the same as Hala'ki's. Upon much eager pestering, Ol' Mon eventually agreed to take the younger (even if he was middle-aged) Troll under his wing in these arts, giving him a new way to do battle against the Scourge and a means of compensating for the fighting prowess he'd lost when he sustained those injuries all those years ago.

So Hala'ki carved and painted his Rush'kah and followed Ol' Mon as an apprentice, broadening his understanding of the Loa and the world around him through his wisdom and tutelage as they both battled the Scourge alongside one another and the rest of the Argent Dawn. Things continued this way for several years, with the two of them conducting and participating in several operations against the Scourge's holdings in the Plaguelands. Hala'ki came to regard Ol' Mon as something of a surrogate father - a much more suitable one than the one who'd humiliated him and then gotten himself killed.

However, as Hala'ki had learned over the years, all things were finite, and this was not to last. Eventually, death came for him, silent and cold unlike the chaos and heat of battle he was used to. Having been separated from Ol' Mon in a prolonged battle against a pack of Ghouls, Hala'ki lost his nerve and flew into a frenzy, screaming praises to Samedi with each strike he landed and beseeching the twisted corpses to take their long-delayed rest at last. Indeed, he didn't fully notice he'd been stabbed clean through the back with a Runeblade until he pulled himself off of it, and promptly fell to the ground, his heart pierced. And as he fell he could have sworn he heard his prayers to Samedi in the battle answered - a cold but gentle voice was speaking to him within his mind..

… and later, telling him to get to his feet and don the suit of armour that had been laid before him by the same pack of Ghouls. It soon occurred to Hala'ki that it was not the Loa speaking to him, but rather another such spirit of the dead - and yet strangely, he couldn't find it within himself to care. He didn't seem to care about most things he'd used to, now. Indeed, the only thing he cared for was carrying out the whims of this new voice and sating the peculiar urge to destroy and slaughter he found himself bearing. It was fortunate that fulfilling both of these things went hand in hand nicely with one another.

With a fearsome Runeblade at his side, Saronite armour strapped to his frigid skin, terrifying powers at his beck and call and with a new purpose driving him, Hala'ki descended upon the Scarlet Enclave with his brethren of Acherus. Wreaking carnage among the living in the master's name was the only thing that mattered to him and so many others. The campaign against New Avalon continued for some time until eventually it was brought to a halt, the township devastated and the Scarlets sent into hasty retreat. In the ruins was found a jailhouse filled with Argent Dawn prisoners, who changed hands from one keeper to another.

Hala'ki was assigned to execute one such prisoner, but to his surprise the elderly troll he'd been told to kill began to converse with him as an individual as he raised his Runeblade over his head, begging to be recognised and calling him by name. When he told him to fight the Scourge's control, he decided he'd had enough and shut him up by hasty application of runed Saronite. Regardless, this certainly gave Hala'ki something to think about…

Which he thought about, a lot - at the wrong moment. At the Battle of Light's Hope, Hala'ki's mind was filled with memories of the words of this strange old man. This would have been problematic if the fighting didn't abruptly stop altogether. Suffice to say, when Hala'ki managed to stave off such memories, he found that there was no longer any voice in his head but his own twisted thoughts. Hala'ki soon found himself storming Acherus with his brethren - but directly afterwards, he was nowhere to be found at all.

He was finally located several days later in the abandoned ruins of a former Mossflayer Troll village, having attempted to use the tools left there by the previous owners to give Ol' Mon's corpse a proper Troll burial (read: mummification) and halfway through the process on himself. Hunched and gibbering, the Argent Dawn patrol that found him initially mistook him to be a bandage-wrapped Ghoul until he started speaking to them in broken Orcish and they noticed his burning blue eyes. Upon being taken back to the Ebon Hold, Hala'ki found himself subjected to what was referred to as “rehabilitation”, which equates a lovely little mix of psychological therapy and torture, a process usually reserved for particularly stubborn converted Scourge Death Knights. Regardless, this hammered the Troll's broken psyche into shape - poorly, but into some shape, nonetheless.

Were it not for this, Hala'ki probably would've never gotten over the slaughter he committed under the Lich King's thrall, and most certainly not what he'd inflicted on his beloved mentor. Struggling to cope with being “abandoned” by the Loa would have been enough for him, but not so. When it was all done, however, Hala'ki was in a much more coherent state of mind - relatively speaking, of course.

While honing his Death Knight abilities in the Hold, Hala'ki was assigned the rather degrading job of “Ghoul watch” - that is, tending to and supervising the various mindless undead that the Ebon Blade raised for menial tasks around Acherus. However, it rapidly became apparent that his niche was to be found in the field of Blood rather than the Unholy as was anticipated. Hala'ki trained for several months until he set out into the world.

However, he didn't quite set out to the places the Ebon Blade were directing their attention towards. Instead, he ventured off to Kalimdor - Horde territory. This would usually be questionable behaviour for a Knight of the Ebon Blade, but with the infallible alibi of searching for able-bodied warriors to draw into the fight in Northrend covering his back, nobody was particularly inclined to question him at the time. However, this itself is only a half-truth.

Hala'ki seeks to bury the skeletons in his closet and resolve what business he had with the Darkspear Tribe that he left open when he departed for the Plaguelands, to redeem himself in the eyes of the Tribe and help them gain some further level of independence from the Orcs. It pains him to see his people's society centred around a small fishing village on the coast, and so he seeks to recapture the Echo Isles from Zalazane's forces, who were partially responsible for spurring him off towards the Plaguelands in the first place. Moreover, he seeks to find a proper place to bury Ol' Mon's mummified body in accordance with Darkspear rites, in the cemetaries of his people.

Having found a use for himself among the ranks of the Darkspear Echoes, Hala'ki will fight at their side until such a time when the Tribe's home is their own again. Only then, he feels, can he finally wrap up this “stage” in his life (or lack thereof) and turn his eyes to the north, as his brethren would have it.