Maska

Information

Player: Grakor456

Character Full Name: Maska Stonehorn

Character In-Game Name: Maska

Nickname(s): None yet.

Association(s): Horde, Cenarion Circle

Race: Tauren

Class: Restoration Druid

Skills and Abilities: Maska is a dabbler in alchemy, though he doesn't especially advertise it. He has some training with his weapons, to make up for his relative inexperience with the bear and cat forms, but any true martial opponent could swiftly remind him that, tauren strength aside, he's no warrior.

Age: 28

Sex: Male

Hair: Reddish-brown fur.

Eyes: Grey.

Weight: 530 lbs.

Height: 7'11”

Appearance

Usual Garments/Armor: Maska tends to proudly display his affiliation with Thunder Bluff, keeping a tabard on him even if he's not actively wearing it. He favors tans and darker browns, dressed in leathers and hides that clearly mark him as a druid.

Other: Maska is of fairly average height and weight, slightly shorter and slightly burlier than your average tauren, though not perceptibly so. A staff is kept on his person much of the time, an emergency weapon and focus for his magic when he needs it.

Personality

Even though most would classify tauren as a race of gentle giants, Maska does not shy away from combat, even if his contributions to battle are mostly through his healing and magical arts. He's a tauren with a strong loyalty to his own kind and the people that allied with him. This then extends to a loyalty to the Horde, seeing this alliance with the orcs and trolls as the best thing that happened to his people.

This loyalty to the Horde leaves Maska with an unfortunate problem. Despite his fairly loose relationship with the Cenarion Circle, he has no love for night elves, and what good will he may have for them diminishes ever further as tensions continue to mount between the two factions. He similarly ends up viewing most dwarves and gnomes as destructive forces against nature, and humans and draenei as enemies attempting to kill his allies. While he doesn't outright attack members of the Alliance, he's also not afraid to frequently point out that he simply doesn't want to talk to them.

He is a healer at heart, though. He's still compassionate, particularly towards Horde members. This leads to the paradoxical situation where he can end up preferring the company of blood elves over night elves. Despite his relatively young age, he sees himself as something of a guiding figure for his smaller allies. The rest of the Horde may try to stray off of the good path, after all, and the tauren need to ensure that they don't.

History

Maska grew up as a nomad, moving from place to place with the rest of his kin. His life was simple and typical of the tauren, constantly on the move to follow the kodo herds and to flee the hated centaur. Maska was too young to fight in these battles, but he did begin his training in the druidic arts, as well as a more practical trade in alchemy. In both cases, his father was his instructor, guiding him to follow in his footsteps. Slowly at first, he began to develop magical potential, though it was a hard battle for him under the expectant, if kind, gaze of his parents.

He was just old enough to participate in the Third War. The coming of the orcs was a strange time for him, and he found himself grateful and indebted to the tauren's new allies as they finally provided the tauren with something they didn't have before: a home. With the centaur beaten back by this new Horde, Maska volunteered to go with the warriors into battle. However, he was ill-suited to such things, and instead served as a medic behind the lines, both with what minor magic he'd managed to master and with some skill in first aid and medicine. He found he didn't have much resentment over this role, and the thanks of the warriors he managed to return to health was reward enough for him.

The end of the war was a relief for him, letting him return to his studies and his work. It was perhaps of this experience during the Third War that provided Maska with a renewed focus and purpose. Now that he had an idea of what he wanted to do, his training continued. His father was surprised to see him take to his training with renewed interest, especially in the healing arts.

Yet the actions of the night elves to follow the war concerned him. After it was clear that the elves had remained true to the Alliance and not the Horde, Maska found himself distancing from the Cenarion Circle, though he continued his studies of his craft. As tensions began to rise again between the Alliance and the Horde, Maska took a stance to aiding his people and his allies, finally seeing the Alliance as an enemy, even if he was unhappy to fight. For most of the battles in Northrend and Outland, he stayed in Kalimdor, being a medic for conflicts around the Barrens and Ashenvale. He managed to stay out of most direct conflicts during these times, but he got to know his orcish and troll allies better.

Saying goodbye to his parents at Thunder Bluff, Maska then left to search for a greater purpose, and a greater use for his powers.