The Tragic Tale of Epikk, Son of Epikk

Born in a small orc stronghold, Epikk, son of Epikk, was raised for several years amidst the tribe of his father, learning the language and culture of one half of his ancestry. As a young child, however, the stronghold was attacked by a large force of human and elf soldiers, intent on its destruction. The attackers would later suggest that the stronghold’s warriors had been raiding the nearby countryside, stealing wheat and cattle from farmers around the nearby Neverwinter.

Badly wounded and barely alive, Epikk was taken in by a human priest, Galen Stronhyr, who recognised his half-human heredity and sought to protect it from the base instincts of the warriors who had sacked the village. Returning the young boy to his own city, Galen raised Epikk as a disciple of Tyr, the god of justice. Living a privileged life in the urbanity of the city was almost the complete opposite of his upbringing in the stronghold, and Epikk was torn between his gratitude that Galen had rescued him from a terrible fate, and a yearning to rediscover his orcish roots.

Galen raised Epikk as a disciple of Tyr, providing him with a strong religious foundation amidst the teachings of his god, and hoped his protégé would follow in his footsteps as a priest of the order, preaching justice as the highest virtue above all others. While the boy was a quick study in the philosophy and theology of justice itself, Epikk found the tedium of the scrolls and books too much, the endless laws and rituals for ensuring that justice and order were maintained at all times. As he progressed in his studies, Epikk began to consider some of the hypocrisies inherent in Galen’s teaching and became belligerent, often arguing with his adoptive father about the virtues of war; the means by which most of the common folk recognised Tyr. “It is the scales which sit upon the hammer, my son,” Galen would say to him, to which Epikk would reply; “but without the hammer, the scales have no foundation.”

In particular, Epikk found a growing resentment of the ways in which the cult of Tyr, among other religious institutions, had been drawn into the political machinations behind the assault on the stronghold where he was raised. Knowing that the priesthood had turned a blind eye to the injustices of the slaughter which occurred there in the name of undermining what they considered to be a local threat from the orcish stronghold.

Throughout his tutelage in the ways of Tyr, he learned much of the other gods. But few of the human gods interested him. In the temple’s great library, he stumbled across a tome entitled Blood and Thunder: The Orcish Faith. Therein he learned of the mighty god Gruumsh, but was shocked at the superficial and dismissive treatment of the sect by the book’s author. Recognising the same crude assumptions that were often levelled against him by many other so-called ‘cultured’ races, Epikk grew to suspect that this record was not the unbiased treatise it claimed to be.

On the eve of his induction into the priesthood of Tyr, a force of drow attacked the city. Against Galen’s wishes, Epikk rushed to join the defenders, placing himself in the vanguard and in the very midst of danger. Feeling energised and elated, he suddenly recognised his true calling: battle. But the weather turned, and a vicious thunderstorm began raging overhead. As the city’s defenders pushed the raiding party back, Epikk found himself surrounded by foes on the fringe of the battle, standing atop the slaughtered corpses of his own comrades. There, he slew many drow, but at the very last was cut down by their leader. The wound was terrible, and struck him across the face and would have been a mortal blow to many lesser combatants: even so, it cost him his right eye.

In that moment, as the storm raged overhead, Epikk summoned all the conviction burning inside him and despite his terrible wounds stood once more. Calling to the heavens, he took up his sword and in the name of Gruumsh One-Eye, vowed to strike his enemy down. Chasing him through the battlefield, he faced the drow leader for a second time: yet with this renewed vigour it was he who smote the elf into ruin and broke his body in two. For the first time since his childhood, he felt whole once more.

On the verge of death, he staggered back to the temple, where Galen nursed him back to health. His eye was lost, but Epikk saw this as a sign of his true destiny; the calling of Gruumsh. He would show the world that the orcs were not the brutes they were made to be, that his people were as just and honourable as any other, and that in the name of Gruumsh One-Eye, he would act as the highest paragon of the virtue of justice.

Galen, horrified, rather than supporting his convictions instead cast him out. After all he had learned, his adoptive father could not countenance his son becoming a disciple of a god he considered barbaric and evil. To Galen, his son had betrayed the very ethos and moral principles which had opened Galen’s heart to him in the first place, and the generosity of his hospitality and love. Conversely, Epikk viewed this turn of events as yet further evidence of how much the self-claimed ‘civil’ people of the world still had to learn. He would be their teacher, he would bring the word and the true justice of Gruumsh to those who lived in barbarism, even if such savagery and decadence was hidden beneath facades of marble and buried within the texts of musty scrolls. Thus, he set foot beyond his city and into the wilds, to explore the world and avenge injustice wherever it may be.

Inspiration

The image of Epikk is derived from a Magic: The Gathering card, a source of a great many visual inspirations for my Dungeons & Dragons character visuals. This one in particular is interesting because the card is black, and typically orcs feature heavily in red in Magic, like their goblin kin. This one, though, is called the Mer-Ek Nightblade, and features some fascinating art by Lucas Graciano.

His leathery hide and mottled skin give an impression of a phenotype of orc which is perhaps more adjusted to cool climates than warm, and his long, upswept ears are quite reminiscent of classical elven ears. I particularly like that this orc doesn’t look quite so savage and unkempt as more cliched orcs tend to. Epikk is, himself, quite cultured and while he doesn’t mind breaking the faces of his enemies, first and foremost he is a considered and philosophical being.

His armour is practical, he carries knives (the card type is Orc Assassin after all), and of course he hauls a massive sword across his back. In the game, Epikk is defensive-minded; his traditional combat deployment is the sword-and-board, and he took the Defensive archetype to reflect his focus on defence. As the character was played, Epikk was someone whose first thought was the protection of his allies and friends; followed closely by an ever-encroaching rage focused on the destruction of his enemies. Keeping these two aspects of his nature balanced—his studious learning under Galen, opposite the fury of Gruumsh, and the coalescence of his dual nature as warrior and philosopher—was one of the aspects of Epikk that I enjoyed expressing most.

As for his character, the original concept for Epikk was, perhaps unsurprisingly, developed via his being an embodiment of a classically ‘epic’ character; so epic that he was literally an epic’s son as well. With that in mind, I enjoyed playing an orc that had been taken from his own culture and raised in a more “civil” one only to have his ideals shattered once he had matured, then taking it upon himself to prove to all and sundry that even the brutal Gruumsh bore an aspect of nobility and honour, as much as his peers apparently thought otherwise.

Using Epikk as an NPC

The stat block provided for Epikk illustrates his abilities in a fashion that attempts to make utilising him as (relatively) simple as possible. Like anything developed from a player character, the range of abilities is far greater than that of a simple monster, making it particularly difficult to truncate his talents.

With that in mind, some abilities have been removed altogether, others condensed, and one or two unique abilities included simply to give a taste of the character’s purpose (namely Bulwark and Gruumsh’s Fury). In the game he was a part of, for example, Epikk did not possess either a magical shield nor Stormfury, his +1 Longsword listed here.

As regards his character, Epikk is undoubtedly heroic, prepared to sacrifice himself for his beliefs and those he cares for. He will not hesitate to launch into the fray, nor think twice about sacrificing his own welfare or safety for that of his allies. He does not take kindly to betrayal however, and will bitterly pursue those who have wronged him and his companions, to the point of becoming distracted from any other mission at hand.