Big Scars
Big Scars, born a hill orc fighter. Upon having his umbilical cord cut, he wrested away the falchion used for the task and proceeded immediately to the Dungeon, cursing loudly (as orcs often do.)
Not long after reaching puberty, he found a lovely gold ring abandoned upon the dungeon floor. Aha, he thought, there's my fifteen minutes old present (orcs, being a short-lived race, don't have much use for birthdays.) Thinking ringofslaying as hard as he could, he slipped it on and felt his whole hand go numb.
"Damn it!" he yelled, tugging at it, but it wouldn't come off.
"I'll get that for you," offered Sigmund, and Big Scars ducked behind his dinner plate of a buckler as a scythe passed through the place he'd just been.
"Where'd you come from?" demanded Scars, rummaging through his meager possessions.
"We've been sitting right here for weeks, killing all the adventurers who come down those stairs," explained a centaur, and fired an arrow into Scars (hence the name.) "You?"
Aha, thought Big Scars, feeling clever; that must mean this is a cursed ring of teleportation. Perhaps I should allow them to kill me.
"Teleport!" bellowed Big Scars, reading his largest stack of scrolls, and the ring gave up its grip on his finger.
Damn, he thought, as Sigmund incinerated two of his scrolls and one of his nipples in a burst of flame; now I'll regret dying.
"Berserk Rage!" squealed the frantic orc, and threw down the contents of a random potion bottle.
"I can still smell you perfectly," scoffed the centaur, firing an arrow in his general direction.
"Two can play at that game!" cried Sigmund, and suddenly disappeared.
Unnerved, Big Scars bolted for the stairs on the far side of the room. He made it all of one step before an arrow lodged between his shoulder blades, puncturing a lung. He'd been impaled by centaur arrows several times while still in the womb, though, as his mother was an adventurer, so this only caused him to pick up the pace.
"Burb gob shluh," cursed the orc, as best he could.
"Keep shooting!" answered Sigmund, hot on his heels. "Argh! Stop shooting!"
"How do I know he didn't say that?" demanded the centaur, and shot Sigmund again.
Big Scars raced for the stairs, turning gradually into a credible imitation of a siege engine; that is, pocked with flaming arrows.
"I'm right here!" screamed Sigmund weakly, coming visible again. "Stop shooting me!"
Big Scars screeched to a halt, decapitated the wounded man, then made good his escape with several vital organs still intact.
His next birthminute present was an amulet of faith, so he decided to follow Okawaru for the great big stacks of powerful equipment which could not help but result from such a combination. He suffered through a succession of terrible gifts, doggedly fighting the entirety of the Lair two or three times apiece as they ran away from his +1 falchion of flaming. Finally receiving a +8/+0 katana, he renounced the worship of Okawaru before it hit the ground, cursing the god for a miser and a purveyor of false promises (as orcs often do.)
Returning to the temple, he eventually decided to follow The Shining One, chiefly as an excuse to abandon the unfinished Lair in search of demons and the undead. He used his first and last real weapon to hack a beeline toward the Crypt, eventually finding a level of the dungeon which was entirely overrun with spriggans and trees. Seized by a sudden hunch that a deep elf fire elementalist who had been much more powerful than he was at the time had died on an identical level recently, he decided that he didn't care for the sensation of dirt between his toes (for he hadn't any shoes) and proceeded directly down the first set of stairs.
A few minutes later, Big Scars decided that he preferred the feeling of dirty feet to the one of getting every last potion and scroll he owned blown up by yaktaurs and proceeded directly back up to the spriggan level. Cursing deviously to himself, he threw his heavy chain mail into a nearby lake and donned some soft leather, rubbed some dirt into his eyes so they wouldn't give him away by shining, and crept stealthily through the underground forest in search of the entrance to the Vaults. Spotting a particularly powerful-looking spriggan carrying a neon sign which read THE ENCHANTRESS, he screamed his stealthiest war-cry and charged at her; she'd obviously spotted him, though, and answered his first blow by hitting him roughly thirty times with a quick blade of distortion, inflicting several points of damage and banishing him to the Abyss.
Throwing his head back to scream foul curses at the sky (as orcs often do) he was momentarily blinded by the enormous spotlight there.
"Don't look at the camera," boomed the voice of The Shining One. "Pretend it's not there."
Aha, thought Big Scars, so that's how she spotted me.
He felt much more confident in his sneakiness as he desperately ran for his life from the legions of horrible things drawn like moths to his unbelievably large, bright aura. Aided by a certain ring of teleportation he'd found gathering dust in his pocket, he bounced around every corner of the Abyss, occasionally laying counter-ambushes for some of the weaker packs chasing him. This went on for so long that by the time he finally escaped, TSO was ready (and then some) to bless his weapon.
"But only once," cautioned the god.
"That shouldn't be a problem," replied Scars, and no sooner was the blessed +8/+3 katana back in his hand than he was roundly cursing The Shining One for a paparazzo and a pornographer, repudiating his worship with vile oaths, covering TSO's altar with vampiric weapons and throwing curare needles at himself while he cast regeneration over and over.
This done, Scars fled the simultaneous wrath of two gods for half a screen and prostrated himself before the altar of Ashenzari.
"You know I'm all-seeing," she stated.
"You know that I know that I do," he replied, smirking cleverly.
"Then you know that I know that you've abandoned two gods already. Why should I accept you?"
"Look, I'm taking off the amulet of faith," he announced, and did. "All those other dieties were--" he said, and swore for several hours (in orc hours) "--but you're the real thing, the kind that a man can settle down with. I'll never leave you."
"Now I've heard it all, too," she sighed, but gave him a chance anyway (as women often do.)
In accordance with the teachings of Ashenzari, Big Scars cursed and cursed until everything he owned was cursed, save for the katana which Okawaru had forged and The Shining One had blessed, because it bore both of their marks and Ashenzari's power could not touch it. Now skillful and mighty, he petitioned Ashenzari to reduce him once more to a stumbling mook by teaching him the secrets of magic.
Finally discovering the entrance to the Vaults hidden cleverly between a lightning-struck tree and an enormous pile of spriggan corpses, Big Scars proceeded at last to the Crypts and continued petitioning Ashenzari to undercut his bottom line in favor of more spellcraft.
Coming to a great brass double door, large enough to drive a herd of yaks through, inscribed with countless images of death and the grave, Big Scars went to kick it in but was overbalanced by his own shield and sprawled incompetently to the cold, hard ground inside; as his weapon-- immune to Ashenzari's bindings-- tumbled from his clumsy fingers, the ancient lich within rose from its shadowed throne. The dead air of the tomb began to hiss and crackle with the terrifying powers suddenly brought to bear.
"You ought to cool it on the skill transfer," advised Ashenzari.
"I know what I'm doing," he gruffly replied, picking himself up and retrieving his unbelievably vicious sword from the scattered bones of his assailant. "Take my shields skill next," he announced, reading a scroll of remove curse and hurling the treacherous obstacle into a nearby lake before it could trip him again.
"The sword can't carry you after you leave the Crypt," sighed Ashenzari.
"Why would I leave the Crypt?" laughed Big Scars. "I love it here, there's a lake to throw shields into and nothing ever blows up my consumeables."
"Because you've cleared it," she replied.
Big Scars cursed loud and long (as orcs often do.)
