Character concept by Sam Deutsch, all rights reserved.
“There is nothing like the smell of blood on the battlefield. Gods help me, I miss it terribly.”
Date of Birth: Unknown.
Current Status: Fall, 1332 Avard; working for the Star's End Monastery.
Lo-Kan stands 7’8” tall and weighs 410 pounds. He is a muscular, hulking creature. His face is scarred in many areas and his nose shows signs of being broken many times. He is missing the top portion of his left ear, and there is a permanent low-profile lump over his right eye. While all goliaths are considered ugly by human standards, Lo-Kan is exceedingly so.
If one were to look past the wounds they would still see the signs of age and physical toil. At 41 years old, the wrinkles around Lo-Kan’s eyes and mouth are starting to become more prominent. With age came battle experience and wisdom. Lo-Kan has retained all of his youthful vigor and has complemented it with a masterful knowledge of battle tactics.
The rest of his body is hidden by scale armor, which is slightly dented, but fits well and is still in excellent condition.
Lo-Kan’s war mount, Maul, is a 25 foot long 3600 pound juvenile minotaur lizard. While mounted and charging into battle, Lo-Kan favors striking with his lance, which he holds with two hands while leaving his shield equipped in his left forearm. Sheathed in its scabbard on Lo-Kan’s sword belt is a bastard sword.
When Lo-Kan speaks his voice rumbles like deep thunder. Not as familiar with the common tongue as others, Lo-Kan is often misunderstood and taken for a stuttering, slow-witted simpleton. Perhaps it is because a lay onlooker would just assume that someone as big and strong as a boulder would be just as smart as one too. The truth is, Lo-Kan's native language is Dwarfish, and should anyone converse with him in that language they would find him to be quite intellectual. A practiced scholar of war and ever present around the highest ranking officers, Lo-Kan can match wits with any General while still earning the respect and admiration of the common soldier.
It is said that nobody truly knows why the War of the Goliath Kings was started. Lo-Kan assumed it was over petty matters of lordship, like an insult or a challenge to another’s courage. A messenger must have been killed here and there, and then a few skirmishes must have broken out among the armed emissaries before actual battles had begun being waged. Over time, the violence must have escalated into a full-scale war – a war that had been hot, cold, and everything in-between for decades on end. In truth, Lo-Kan didn’t care. He just wanted to fight.
As a sergeant of the main cavalry unit in King Vimak’s army, Lo-Kan was unparalleled when charging into battle. Lo-Kan’s role was to lead a large group of shock troops into the fray to penetrate and scatter the lines of the enemy's foot soldiers. All of King Vimak’s cavalry rode atop lizards of some sort. They were the only mounts able to carry the enormous weight of the goliaths, and they were bred and raised for battle like horses are to the humans. Lo-Kan’s mount was Maul, a vicious minotaur lizard that weighed 3600 pounds and stretched 25 feet from horn tips to tail. Drafted into the king’s army at 15 years old, and issued his mount the year after, Lo-Kan and Maul had been fighting companions ever since.
The only thing that Lo-Kan had known longer and better than Maul was the war itself. He was born into it, lived among it, and had fought in the war his entire life. It was his life. And he was good at it. Thus. it was understandable that after more than 20 years of fighting and crushing the enemy in battle, Lo-Kan’s world was turned upside down. His commanding officer bounded his girth into the barracks to pronounce to his cavalry that the war was over. Lo-Kan had seen many cease-fires and the like, but never had he imagined he’d live to see the day when a treaty of peace was signed. War was all Lo-Kan knew, and now the war was over.
Lo-Kan was honorably discharged from King Vimak’s army. He was given a pouch of gold and was able to retain his equipment: his armor, bastard sword, lance, and mount, as if the two could have been separated anyway. Maul was so loyal that the only reason he’d leave Lo-Kan’s side is if Lo-Kan willed it, and even that might not be without difficulty.
Without battles to fight at home, Lo-Kan and Maul set out to find new battles to fight. Lo-Kan missed the cries of charging armies and the bloody melee, and Maul was growing restless, aching for the opportunity to spear an enemy with his horns.
“There is nothing like the smell of blood on the battlefield,” Lo-Kan said to Maul on many occasions after a long day of wandering and looking for the next battle. “And I love watching our cowardly enemies shit their pants at the sight of your goring charge.” Lo-Kan wanted to get back into the fray. He wanted to strike, be struck, and then strike last. He missed the afterglow of battle where meat, mead and women were abundant – a celebration of life every bit as it was a celebration of victory.
How different his life was now. Lo-Kan was tired of going from town to town looking for work as a mercenary. He wanted to be part of an army again, or even just a company of fighting men. As he wandered from town to town he would inevitably be challenged to a fight, duel, or joust of some kind by a seemingly endless number of street toughs that thought they could take down the hardened goliath. Were the bragging rights worth their lives? “Probably so,” Lo-Kan thought, since he was a formidable opponent, and their lives were probably worthless anyway. Fighting in this manner wasn’t a complete loss. After all, Lo-Kan was able to feel his lance and sword penetrate flesh again, and Maul was able to eat.
It was during the moonrise of the last days of Dacal, the dark days, that he saw through the trees a fearsome company of fighters while searching for his next adventure. Lo-Kan was amazed by the stealth and deadliness of two elven monks that emerged from the trees to overtake a band of thieves, but then was sickened by the way they turned and ran when the battle started. Soon after, two spell casters arrived and turned the tables on the thieves. One of the casters, a warlock by the appearance of his spells, pursued one of the men on horseback before taking a hefty bolt to his arm. Instead of turning tail and fleeing like most casters do, this one leapt up onto a nearby cart, let out a fearsome roar, and unleashed devastation on his attacker.
Lo-Kan was in awe. “This is no ordinary company,” Lo-Kan said to Maul. “We could fight with these men.” The band tied the thieves’ cart to their horses and left in a hurry, not noticing that Lo-Kan and Maul were following them back to a strange wooden building surrounded by a large wall in the forest. Lo-Kan looked at his map and then back up at the holdfast. “Look, Maul,” Lo-Kan said. “Star’s End Monastery”
To follow.
To follow.