Nagala's Story - Part 1: The Warbringer, Roton Stoneblood
Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 9:38 am
(( This is the first part of Nagala's backstory -- the history of her father, Warbringer Roton Stoneblood. I'm still working on the second part, which chronicles what happens to Nagala when she parts company with her father. I know the details, I just haven't committed them to text yet. Once I finish this, I'll throw up Lielyn's history. Eventually, I'll do my druid, Basharn, as well. Though admittedly, his past is considerably more tame. ))
A veteran of the First and Second Wars, and a survivor of the Third, Roton Stoneblood has grown weary of conflict. Born on Draenor in to the Shadowmoon clan, Roton was trained from a young age in the ways of the hunt. Though the shamanistic orcs revered nature and preached respect for all living things, Roton found early on that the sport of tracking one's prey, the thrill of slaying it, and the recognition it afforded him appealed more to his desires than filling the collective gullet of his family and clan.
As time passed, this craving for acknowledgment encouraged Roton to hone his skills and seek out larger, stronger, and more intelligent beasts. It wasn't long before his name had circulated amongst the families of the Shadowmoon, often described in such glowing terms as one of the most skilled scouts and hunters of his generation. Some believed Roton to have been touched by spirits of the ancestors of old, and blessed by both the Mother of the Wolves and the elements themselves.
Roton himself had little time for ritual or religion and never believed himself to be touched by the divine in any measure, but he welcomed others to believe he was. He bathed in the glory of their adoration and hungered for it almost as much as he did the ecstasy of the kill at the end of a hunt. Naturally, this attracted the attention of Gul'dan, also of the Shadowmoon clan.
When the orcs began to war against the draenei, Roton's fame had begun to wane. He had bested even the most intelligent, most legendary of beasts of Draenor and found himself without anything sufficient left to challenge him. And without grand, life-threatening challenges, Roton could not guarantee his continued status as a household name amongst his people. The war afforded the newly enlisted Scout Roton a wellspring of new challenges and fresh adulation, as well as a new vice. In all his time tracking the creatures of Draenor, Roton had never stalked a truly sapient being. The first draenei to fall under his arrow was a turning point in Roton's life; the passion it spawned in him for murder became all-consuming. It was during this turbulent time that Roton earned the moniker 'Warbringer' by both sides of the conflict, because wherever Roton went, he brought war and horror on the heel of his boot.
His fame as an advanced scout and the impression he had left on the enemy was largely why he was of a select few chosen by Gul'dan and his aides outside of the clan chieftains to taste a drop of the blood of Mannoroth. The result was that even Roton's need for recognition was consumed by the lust for murder. Roton gladly forsake the Shadowmoon clan and swore fealty to Gul'dan's new Stormreavers. When the Horde passed through the Dark Portal in to Azeroth, Roton was one of the first to volunteer. On the other side of the Portal lay a whole new world of prey and opportunities for slaughter.
The First War was bloody and brutal, and the four years of harsh warfare and the harsh loss at the hands of the Human kingdoms had somewhat cooled Roton’s ambitions for conquest. The thrill of murder had begun to grow commonplace and stale, and the flame sparked by the drop of demonic blood he had been tasted had begun to ember. The greatest impetus for change, however, came from a female orc warrior named Kokelle.
Kokelle was a true beauty by the standards of Roton’s people, and carried herself with equal grace in bed or in battle. She was the first thing Roton had ever found himself caring about beyond himself or the hunt. Kokelle had grown wary of Gul’dan and the direction the warlock was leading his Stormreavers, and carefully began to inspire seeds of doubt in the Warbringer and select others about the Stormreaver’s motives. Roton and Kokelle were bonded just before the end of the First War, after Kokelle realized she was carrying Roton’s child.
Roton and Kokelle’s only child, a daughter named Nagala, was born in the brief lull between the First and Second Wars. If Kokelle had calmed the horrendous beast that had raged inside of Roton, Nagala had tamed it. The Warbringer had never known himself capable of such love; he paraded his daughter before grunts and generals alike, as if that one small life were a truly extraordinary thing and a marvel for all to see.
His pride and joy over her birth was tempered only by the nightmares that plagued him at night as the realization of the atrocities he had committed began to weigh on his soul. The age of his victims had never concerned him before, nor did thoughts of whom they might leave behind. This sudden genesis of conscience troubled Roton greatly, and it was with no small reluctance that he answered the call to arms at the beginning of the Second War.
As the war progressed and the brutality of the Horde’s leadership became more pronounced, Roton began to understand more and more Kokelle’s reservations. When Doomhammer ordered the Stormreaver clan to stay and defend the position of Stormwind and Gul’dan betrayed Doomhammer by ordering the clan elsewhere, Roton turned his back on the clan. He was thought well of enough to hear the whispers and rumors about Gul’dan’s true motivations, and refused to lose upon the world his daughter had been born the wrath of the Burning Legion. He never wanted his daughter to know the guilt he felt, or worse be crushed under the heels of another as the Horde had done the draenei or the humans.
Roton fled Stormwind and returned to his family, and suspecting retaliation from the Stormreavers when they noticed his treachery, packed them up and took them deep far in to the desert wastes of the Badlands where they could hide. Not to long after they had gone to ground, Kokelle claimed that she was visited by a Spirit of the Sky, whom told her of a great restoration of her people and an exodus across the sea to a land of peace and hope.
At her urging, she, Nagala, and Roton made it in time to join the great migration of Thrall and the freed orcish clans to Kalimdor. It wasn’t until some time later that Roton learned of the Stormreaver’s destruction at the Tomb of Sargeras, and realized that he and his family could finally live in peace. Along with many others, Roton and Kokelle settled in the Barrens around what would eventually be called the Crossroads.
The Third War came as a great shock to the aged Roton. Though Kokelle had laid down her sword and taken up the way of the spirits under the tutelage of tauren windspeaker named Umai, and was clearly growing in religious clarity, her health had begun to fail. A foul disease was slowly eating away at her and there were no cures to be found, despite the best efforts of a every shaman, druid, witch doctor, and medicine man that Roton could summon. Refusing to leave his family for yet another war, the old Warbringer committed himself to simply defending his homestead, leaving their side only tend to the farm and gather supplies.
It was toward the end of the Third War, when Roton had made a brief travel to the goblin town of Rachet to fetch provisions for the coming change of seasons, that his farm was raided by a band of centaur under the influence of a Burning Blade cultist. Nagala, grown in to that awkward stage between child and adult, had little option but to hide as she witnessed the brutal rape and murder of her mother. Kokelle tried her best to defend herself, but her shamanistic gifts were no match for the power hungry cultist.
When Roton returned from Rachet, he found his farm ablaze. He rushed inside to find his daughter weeping over the battered corpse of his brutalized wife. Roton dropped to his knees and wept to, for the first time in his life that he could remember. He wept like a broken-hearted child.
Her mother’s death had ignited a fire in Nagala, and she burned rage and a desire for revenge. Roton, however, had learned from the pacifism his wife had discovered late in her life and had taken it to heart; he refused to believe Kokelle would desire anyone or anything’s death in her name – even those of the individuals who used and murdered her. Nagala blamed her mother’s death on Roton’s absence and took her father’s refusal to act on Kokelle’s murder as an insult. That night, after Roton had buried Kokelle, Nagala ran away.
Roton spent the following years languishing in deep tankards of mead, trying to wash away the guilt he felt. Guilt for both the horrible crimes of his past, and the responsibility he felt over his wife’s death. It wasn’t until recently, when the Burning Blade began to surface once again, and rumors began to float about that the Burning Legion was soon to return that the Warbringer lifted himself out of his cups and began to look around.
Making his way to the Crossroads, Roton saw the refugees left in the wake of the Burning Blade and saw what he believed to be first hand evidence of the Legion’s return. He saw families that had been torn apart as had his own, and realized that was something he could not allow. And he found warcallers out recruiting for the Horde defenses, beckoning all willing and able to the Valley of Trials in Durotar.
A small female orc orphan crying and shouting for her mother while clinging to a torn cloth doll was the image that had burned itself in to his mind as Roton returned to his hut and pulled out his bow and arrows. Weapons that had once bore remarkable, frightful enchantments, now cracked and faded and hardly of any use. The crying child had reminded him so much of his own Nagala that it had broken his heart. He knew that lack of practice and excess of alcohol had numbed his skills, but he would simply relearn what he had forgotten.
Roton would carry on his shoulders the guilt of every war if it meant that no one else needed suffer as his daughter had suffered, as he had suffered. He would war, if it meant the next generation could finally know peace.
It was the only way he knew how to atone.
(( Also, for no particular reason, Roton's flagRSP2 info, followed by Nagala's. ))
Name: Roton Stoneblood
Title: Warbringer
Clan: Stormreaver (formerly)
flagRSP2 Title: "Veteran of the First and Second Wars"
Age: 67
Hair: Gray
Eyes: Red
Height: 6'7"
Weight: 280lbs
Skin: Green
flagRSP2 Description: Warbringer Roton Stoneblood is an approaching-elderly orc with weathered, weary seeming features and parched, leathery olive-hued skin decorated with countless scars. Both his long, gray-white hair and beard are drawn in tight braids and are bound with thin thongs of kodo leather. His salmon-colored eyes are surrounded by the tired wrinkles of age and experience, and his broad lips tend to fall around his yellowed tusks in a mirthless manner that might imply loneliness. Though he walks with a noticeable slouch and the rigors of age have clearly taken their toll, his calloused hands remain adroit. The top of his left hand bears a tattoo in the semblance of a Stormreaver clan crest, though it has been marred by two cruel-looking scars drawn in cross over it.
Name: Nagala Stoneblood
Title: N/A
Clan: Stormreaver (by birth), Frostwolf (by effort)
flagRSP2 Title: The Warbringer’s Daughter
Age: 27
Hair: Black
Eyes: Violet
Height: 5'11"
Weight: 180lbs
Skin: Green
flagRSP2 Description: Nagala Stoneblood is a young, female orc with svelte, rounded features and smooth, teal-colored skin unadorned by scarring. Her scalp is shaven, and her blue-violet eyes are surrounded by dark circles that might imply weariness. Nagala has thin, olive-hued lips that are folded tightly around small, ivory tusks which appear to be regularly polished, perhaps suggesting a certain vanity. Her pointed ears are pierced and decorated with several small hoops made of tarnished silver etched with crude runes written in Taur-ahe. Nagala presents herself with visible confidence, seldom allowing herself to appear intimidated even when faced with the most insurmountable of odds.
A veteran of the First and Second Wars, and a survivor of the Third, Roton Stoneblood has grown weary of conflict. Born on Draenor in to the Shadowmoon clan, Roton was trained from a young age in the ways of the hunt. Though the shamanistic orcs revered nature and preached respect for all living things, Roton found early on that the sport of tracking one's prey, the thrill of slaying it, and the recognition it afforded him appealed more to his desires than filling the collective gullet of his family and clan.
As time passed, this craving for acknowledgment encouraged Roton to hone his skills and seek out larger, stronger, and more intelligent beasts. It wasn't long before his name had circulated amongst the families of the Shadowmoon, often described in such glowing terms as one of the most skilled scouts and hunters of his generation. Some believed Roton to have been touched by spirits of the ancestors of old, and blessed by both the Mother of the Wolves and the elements themselves.
Roton himself had little time for ritual or religion and never believed himself to be touched by the divine in any measure, but he welcomed others to believe he was. He bathed in the glory of their adoration and hungered for it almost as much as he did the ecstasy of the kill at the end of a hunt. Naturally, this attracted the attention of Gul'dan, also of the Shadowmoon clan.
When the orcs began to war against the draenei, Roton's fame had begun to wane. He had bested even the most intelligent, most legendary of beasts of Draenor and found himself without anything sufficient left to challenge him. And without grand, life-threatening challenges, Roton could not guarantee his continued status as a household name amongst his people. The war afforded the newly enlisted Scout Roton a wellspring of new challenges and fresh adulation, as well as a new vice. In all his time tracking the creatures of Draenor, Roton had never stalked a truly sapient being. The first draenei to fall under his arrow was a turning point in Roton's life; the passion it spawned in him for murder became all-consuming. It was during this turbulent time that Roton earned the moniker 'Warbringer' by both sides of the conflict, because wherever Roton went, he brought war and horror on the heel of his boot.
His fame as an advanced scout and the impression he had left on the enemy was largely why he was of a select few chosen by Gul'dan and his aides outside of the clan chieftains to taste a drop of the blood of Mannoroth. The result was that even Roton's need for recognition was consumed by the lust for murder. Roton gladly forsake the Shadowmoon clan and swore fealty to Gul'dan's new Stormreavers. When the Horde passed through the Dark Portal in to Azeroth, Roton was one of the first to volunteer. On the other side of the Portal lay a whole new world of prey and opportunities for slaughter.
The First War was bloody and brutal, and the four years of harsh warfare and the harsh loss at the hands of the Human kingdoms had somewhat cooled Roton’s ambitions for conquest. The thrill of murder had begun to grow commonplace and stale, and the flame sparked by the drop of demonic blood he had been tasted had begun to ember. The greatest impetus for change, however, came from a female orc warrior named Kokelle.
Kokelle was a true beauty by the standards of Roton’s people, and carried herself with equal grace in bed or in battle. She was the first thing Roton had ever found himself caring about beyond himself or the hunt. Kokelle had grown wary of Gul’dan and the direction the warlock was leading his Stormreavers, and carefully began to inspire seeds of doubt in the Warbringer and select others about the Stormreaver’s motives. Roton and Kokelle were bonded just before the end of the First War, after Kokelle realized she was carrying Roton’s child.
Roton and Kokelle’s only child, a daughter named Nagala, was born in the brief lull between the First and Second Wars. If Kokelle had calmed the horrendous beast that had raged inside of Roton, Nagala had tamed it. The Warbringer had never known himself capable of such love; he paraded his daughter before grunts and generals alike, as if that one small life were a truly extraordinary thing and a marvel for all to see.
His pride and joy over her birth was tempered only by the nightmares that plagued him at night as the realization of the atrocities he had committed began to weigh on his soul. The age of his victims had never concerned him before, nor did thoughts of whom they might leave behind. This sudden genesis of conscience troubled Roton greatly, and it was with no small reluctance that he answered the call to arms at the beginning of the Second War.
As the war progressed and the brutality of the Horde’s leadership became more pronounced, Roton began to understand more and more Kokelle’s reservations. When Doomhammer ordered the Stormreaver clan to stay and defend the position of Stormwind and Gul’dan betrayed Doomhammer by ordering the clan elsewhere, Roton turned his back on the clan. He was thought well of enough to hear the whispers and rumors about Gul’dan’s true motivations, and refused to lose upon the world his daughter had been born the wrath of the Burning Legion. He never wanted his daughter to know the guilt he felt, or worse be crushed under the heels of another as the Horde had done the draenei or the humans.
Roton fled Stormwind and returned to his family, and suspecting retaliation from the Stormreavers when they noticed his treachery, packed them up and took them deep far in to the desert wastes of the Badlands where they could hide. Not to long after they had gone to ground, Kokelle claimed that she was visited by a Spirit of the Sky, whom told her of a great restoration of her people and an exodus across the sea to a land of peace and hope.
At her urging, she, Nagala, and Roton made it in time to join the great migration of Thrall and the freed orcish clans to Kalimdor. It wasn’t until some time later that Roton learned of the Stormreaver’s destruction at the Tomb of Sargeras, and realized that he and his family could finally live in peace. Along with many others, Roton and Kokelle settled in the Barrens around what would eventually be called the Crossroads.
The Third War came as a great shock to the aged Roton. Though Kokelle had laid down her sword and taken up the way of the spirits under the tutelage of tauren windspeaker named Umai, and was clearly growing in religious clarity, her health had begun to fail. A foul disease was slowly eating away at her and there were no cures to be found, despite the best efforts of a every shaman, druid, witch doctor, and medicine man that Roton could summon. Refusing to leave his family for yet another war, the old Warbringer committed himself to simply defending his homestead, leaving their side only tend to the farm and gather supplies.
It was toward the end of the Third War, when Roton had made a brief travel to the goblin town of Rachet to fetch provisions for the coming change of seasons, that his farm was raided by a band of centaur under the influence of a Burning Blade cultist. Nagala, grown in to that awkward stage between child and adult, had little option but to hide as she witnessed the brutal rape and murder of her mother. Kokelle tried her best to defend herself, but her shamanistic gifts were no match for the power hungry cultist.
When Roton returned from Rachet, he found his farm ablaze. He rushed inside to find his daughter weeping over the battered corpse of his brutalized wife. Roton dropped to his knees and wept to, for the first time in his life that he could remember. He wept like a broken-hearted child.
Her mother’s death had ignited a fire in Nagala, and she burned rage and a desire for revenge. Roton, however, had learned from the pacifism his wife had discovered late in her life and had taken it to heart; he refused to believe Kokelle would desire anyone or anything’s death in her name – even those of the individuals who used and murdered her. Nagala blamed her mother’s death on Roton’s absence and took her father’s refusal to act on Kokelle’s murder as an insult. That night, after Roton had buried Kokelle, Nagala ran away.
Roton spent the following years languishing in deep tankards of mead, trying to wash away the guilt he felt. Guilt for both the horrible crimes of his past, and the responsibility he felt over his wife’s death. It wasn’t until recently, when the Burning Blade began to surface once again, and rumors began to float about that the Burning Legion was soon to return that the Warbringer lifted himself out of his cups and began to look around.
Making his way to the Crossroads, Roton saw the refugees left in the wake of the Burning Blade and saw what he believed to be first hand evidence of the Legion’s return. He saw families that had been torn apart as had his own, and realized that was something he could not allow. And he found warcallers out recruiting for the Horde defenses, beckoning all willing and able to the Valley of Trials in Durotar.
A small female orc orphan crying and shouting for her mother while clinging to a torn cloth doll was the image that had burned itself in to his mind as Roton returned to his hut and pulled out his bow and arrows. Weapons that had once bore remarkable, frightful enchantments, now cracked and faded and hardly of any use. The crying child had reminded him so much of his own Nagala that it had broken his heart. He knew that lack of practice and excess of alcohol had numbed his skills, but he would simply relearn what he had forgotten.
Roton would carry on his shoulders the guilt of every war if it meant that no one else needed suffer as his daughter had suffered, as he had suffered. He would war, if it meant the next generation could finally know peace.
It was the only way he knew how to atone.
(( Also, for no particular reason, Roton's flagRSP2 info, followed by Nagala's. ))
Name: Roton Stoneblood
Title: Warbringer
Clan: Stormreaver (formerly)
flagRSP2 Title: "Veteran of the First and Second Wars"
Age: 67
Hair: Gray
Eyes: Red
Height: 6'7"
Weight: 280lbs
Skin: Green
flagRSP2 Description: Warbringer Roton Stoneblood is an approaching-elderly orc with weathered, weary seeming features and parched, leathery olive-hued skin decorated with countless scars. Both his long, gray-white hair and beard are drawn in tight braids and are bound with thin thongs of kodo leather. His salmon-colored eyes are surrounded by the tired wrinkles of age and experience, and his broad lips tend to fall around his yellowed tusks in a mirthless manner that might imply loneliness. Though he walks with a noticeable slouch and the rigors of age have clearly taken their toll, his calloused hands remain adroit. The top of his left hand bears a tattoo in the semblance of a Stormreaver clan crest, though it has been marred by two cruel-looking scars drawn in cross over it.
Name: Nagala Stoneblood
Title: N/A
Clan: Stormreaver (by birth), Frostwolf (by effort)
flagRSP2 Title: The Warbringer’s Daughter
Age: 27
Hair: Black
Eyes: Violet
Height: 5'11"
Weight: 180lbs
Skin: Green
flagRSP2 Description: Nagala Stoneblood is a young, female orc with svelte, rounded features and smooth, teal-colored skin unadorned by scarring. Her scalp is shaven, and her blue-violet eyes are surrounded by dark circles that might imply weariness. Nagala has thin, olive-hued lips that are folded tightly around small, ivory tusks which appear to be regularly polished, perhaps suggesting a certain vanity. Her pointed ears are pierced and decorated with several small hoops made of tarnished silver etched with crude runes written in Taur-ahe. Nagala presents herself with visible confidence, seldom allowing herself to appear intimidated even when faced with the most insurmountable of odds.