Zankali

Information

Player: Ronin

Character Full Name: Zan’kali the Bloodtiger

Character In-Game Name: Zankali

Nickname(s): Zan, Savage, Bloodtiger

Association(s): Herself, the Horde (when it suits her), the Darkspear Tribe (when she’s in a –very- good mood)

Race: Troll

Class: Berserker (Warrior)

Age: 23

Sex: Female

Hair: Orange, cut short for convenience and “Styled” (or rather, her approximation of what’s stylish)

Eyes: Fiery Orange, leaning towards the Golden-Yellow spectrum

Scale: 1.15

Appearance

Usual Garments/Armor: Being of wildling, berserker origin and not boasting much to speak of in the “extracurricular skills” department, Zan’kali rarely wears anything that doesn’t look heavily worn-out and, most often, outright looted and repurposed to fit her extra-large form. Her armors are usually a mismatched mess of thick, heavy leathers and mail, with a healthy dose of bone and animal effigy ornamentation giving it flavor. Her armor grants her some small measure of protection, even if it is mostly bits and pieces stolen from her defeated dead, and it still allows her largely unimpeded mobility and speed.

Her casual clothing is very tribal and basic, mostly just scraps of leather sewn together or lashed on. It leaves her body largely exposed, which is likely a holdover from being raised in the humid jungles of Stranglethorn.

Other: She tends to prefer heavy, bladed weapons, even with fist-style weaponry. She was never trained in the traditional fighting techniques of her people, so stealthier piercing weapons and throwing implements are fairly beyond her.

Personality

She’s brutal to the point of being a savage, straight-forward in such a way to be considered flatly blunt, and overall stubborn enough to make mules seem reasonable. While not abjectly “stupid”, Zan’kali is the sort of creature more sophisticated folk would consider simple, mostly because she cares little for life’s deeper mysteries. She likes the simple things, and to keep things simple – if she enjoys it, it’s good, and if it causes her unhappiness, then it’s probably better off crushed under her calloused foot. Naturally, this can make her fairly unreliable to those she’s not acutely fond of, but that doesn’t mean she’s totally chaotic in nature – sometimes, even one such as Zan’kali can keep long-term goals in mind and do things she doesn’t like if it will garner her greater gains further down the line.

While she won’t be admitting it to anyone, what Zan desires most is to be accepted - whether by a single person, a group, or a much larger organization, it doesn’t really matter, so long as she’s truly accepted. Such sentiments will lead her inevitably towards working with others, even when she doesn’t particularly feel like it.

History

Zan’kali’s earliest years were much like those of other female Trolls of the Darkspear tribe. She, like the others, was allotted no respect and no status beyond a trophy for the males. What was unusual for her, even as a child, was her size, and the treatment she received because of it. From a very young age, the troll stood a head taller than most of the males, and even more than the other females, which quickly made her a target of ridicule and teasing jests. Whenever she would try to prove her worth and natural strength, she would be severely punished by her father, and as such was never allowed to make a name for herself, up until the orcs came.

During the days of the naga and murloc troubles, most of the Darkspears were absorbed in the troubles caused by the seadwellers, but Zan’kali was too absorbed in her embittered rage at her circumstances. Her father felt nothing but disappointment in her over her size and general clumsiness (she never did well with mundane work-activities), and those few males who still overly concerned themselves with things like taking wives in the midst of the Sea Witch crisis rarely considered her a worthy future candidate for when she came of age. The young trolless did what she could to alleviate her stresses via practicing with weaponry behind her father’s back whenever she had the chance, developing a skillset that proved valuable once the orcs arrived to save her people. Soon after, when Thrall decreed that females were to be treated equally, Zal’kali did all she could to avoid her father and took to training with the other young adults, her height and size allowing her to practice with the older children.

She did very little fighting during the remainder of the third war, since she was simply too young and inexperienced, but afterwards she stuck around with the orcs during the founding of Durotar and Orgrimmar. A strong independent streak developed during this time, likely in rebellion of her people’s old ways and the relatively regimented ways of the orcs. She developed brutal and efficient abilities, but her attitude and her rage kept her from ever being officially accepted as a Warrior of the Horde, which was fine by her.

During the last five years or so, she grew into quite the young woman. She got used to throwing her weight around to get what she wanted, largely acting as an unaligned renegade and mercenary. Generally, she kept to herself and fought only for personal profit – killing criminally aligned individuals for the gold in their purses or animals for their skins, a trend that’s persisted to the day. In general, her attitude became rather brash and, at times, hostile, the Troll realizing that her size and strength could be used to force others to do as she pleased. In particular, she took a liking to proving her superiority to other males.

In present times, she’s become a bit lost. She’s reached a point where proving her strength to anyone that challenges her only gives her so much pleasure, and where pushing people away has left her lonely and somewhat bitter. Having no real purpose in life doesn’t help, and so she seeks to find her proper place in the world, even going so far as to believe she must have some particular destiny in this life set out by the Loa, which she only needs to seek out and achieve.

Skills and Abilities

Big and Brutal – Zan’kali combines two of the Trolls’ most favored warrior traits – being huge and powerful, and being a mindless, bloodlusting berserker. Zan’kali’s plus-sized body means she has a lot of strength to throw around, and she supplements this by letting her rage take over completely during battle. While this makes her a terror to face when she’s got the upper hand, she pays far too little attention to the defensive side of battle, and it’s a good thing she has trollish healing to fall back on or she’d have been dead early on in her life.

Savage’s Style – While normal warriors fight using three specific disciplines – standard, offensive, and defensive – Zan’kali only knows bloodlust and savagery. However, she’s learned to adapt the warrior’s traditional styles to fit her bloodlusting berserker ways, formulating three styles of her own – Relentless Tiger, Savage Raptor, and Heavy Crab. While these styles offer different or “better” (depending on your point of view) fighting bonuses, they’re also more restrictive – she can’t change between them as freely as warriors can change between their combat stances because her styles are largely dependent which weapon she uses, which can’t be switched out as readily.

Relentless Tiger - Combining the wild athletic combat styles of her people with the usage of mangling fist-weapons, Zan’kali developed this technique to combat swift and precise combatants. She builds up a rhythm of attacks – kicks, punches and slashes – and keeps the pressure on her foes, attempting to strike them over and over without giving them the chance to retaliate. Beyond keeping constant motion, she can’t protect her vital areas with this style (not that she would be likely to anyway), but she’s usually able to overwhelm her foes until they’re gouged and bleeding from various wounds. (Generally the equivalent/replacement of Berserker Stance)

Savage Raptor - Zan’kali’s a huge girl, and a heavily muscled, powerful one at that. She took to wielding two greatswords (or other such two-handed weapons) at the same time without terribly much training and quickly developed a fierce fighting style to utilize them. Using the huge weapons to both bash/cleave through enemy defenses as well as utilizing their bulk to deflect/rebuke her enemy’s attacks, she can easily create a steady battle pace with them that feels very natural – which is great, since she doesn’t like to do any thinking or planning during combat, anyway. (As above, for the Battle Stance)

Heavy Crab - Zan’kali’s least utilized style is as blunt and unimaginative as its name might suggest. Wielding the biggest, heaviest mace or hammer she can find in both hands, she uses all her might to try and smash her opponent into off-color paste. Wrecking shields and sundering weapons is the aim for this style, all before she goes in to crush her foe’s armor into useless scrap. Whatever dim parts of her mind remain active during battle often derive a sick sort of glee out of seeing how far she can bat a foe, subconsciously scoring points in her mind whenever she sends them careening through other objects. Heavy Crab is for only the most defensive or tenacious of enemies. (Defensive Stance, this one)

Improved Rejuvenation – While all trolls get to boast about their healing factors, Zan’kali’s is a system boosted from constant use. Throughout her entire life, she’s been beaten up, often as a cause of her own anger or ridicule of her size by her fellow Darkspears pre-Orcish rehabilitation. Since the orcs taught them a new way and gave females the chance to stand as equals, she’s only gotten herself into more trouble, and has had plenty of lumps to show for it (as wells as slashes, gashes, rendings, and so on). Her body has experienced a state of almost constant healing for years now, often with the aid of alchemical potions and “juju formulas”, and has thusly become better and more efficient. A cleaving chop to the leg that doesn’t cut it off won’t leave her hobbled and unable to fight, just give her a pretty serious limp, for example. (I have no intention of using this ability to grant any bonuses over other players in combat, I only intend for her not to show weakness or fatigue during battles and to have less “recovery time” between them – during fights, she’ll always have the same, agreed upon amount of HP/Hits as everyone else.)