Post by Gassymask on Sept 30, 2015 10:45:08 GMT
Profile
Name: Snakha "No-Tusk" Tvallo
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Race: Hobgoblin
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 176
Occupation: Bounty Hunter, Wargkeeper/trainer
Rank: Citizen
Basic Appearance
Flat nosed and ugly-faced, with ash-grey skin that identifies him as a descendant of one of the Southwestern mountain tribe of Orcs, Snakha stands slightly taller than the average Hobgoblin but with a leaner build than most of his fellow brethren. He is considered by many (even by fellow Hobgoblins) to be a freak of nature and an abomination. The skin on the right side of his face is burnt away, leaving only reddened scar tissue stretched tight over his skull, studded with patches of bare bone. His black hair is quite long and he likes to keep it in a simple knot to avoid having it be a distraction to him. It is known that most hobgoblins have a more pronounced lower tusk and Snakha is no exception. Unfortunately for him, his tusks are nothing but jagged stumps, simply because both of them had been shattered during his early adolescence. His ears are the typical pointed hobgoblin ears, though he wears two golden rings through his right one. Yet despite all this, the most noticeable thing about him is the fact that he has a cleft palate that splits his upper lip, making his already monstrous appearance look even more terrifying.
Combat Credentials
Combat Style:
Though infamously known to be skilled in fighting with a bow from long range, Snakha certainly can handle himself just as well in close range with his axe and knife. Unlike most Hobgoblins, Snakha knows discipline in combat and he doesn't mindlessly charge into a fight whilst swinging a weapon around. This can sometimes give him in an advantage in battle against enemies who underestimate his fighting prowess. In close combat, he likes to use his axe to shatter or pull away shields as well as to disarm his enemies before closing in for the kill using his knife. He rarely blocks, preferring to use his lean build to dodge and dance around his opponent's attacks. In longer range engagements, Snakha can wield his bow with deadly accuracy, a skill he has honed and perfected ever since he was a young boy.
Abilities:
Animal Empathy - Raised amongst animals, Snakha is quite fond of them and knows his ways around them. Most animals tolerate his presence and are usually quite fond of him as well.
Warg Trainer - Like mother, like son, Snakha is able to communicate with wargs through a garbled, growling form of speech. This, in turn, allows him to train them into obedient pets or ferocious war animals.
Excellent Tracker - Snakha is an extremely skilled tracker. Some people even go as far as saying that he's spent so much time with wargs that he has their sense of smell.
Experienced Forager - Snakha learned to feed himself and his pack of hungry wargs with his bow and knowledge of the wilds. He knows lures, bait, traps and what types of plants and animals that are safe to eat.
Tribal Magic (Enchanting) - Snakha is able find where the veil between this world and the next is at its weakest and 'reach through' to imbue a fetish or totem with magic. Though, unlike a true enchanter his creations are expended with use and purpose made with this in mind.
Intelligence - A trait uncommon amongst Hobgoblins, Snakha is not slow and dull-witted. He knows how to read and write as well as speak the common tongue.
Shortcomings:
Speech impediment – Snakha has a hard time speaking due to his cleft palate.
Anger Issues - Due to his Orcish blood and upbringing, Snakha is quick to anger and will probably resort to violence if his skill is questioned or if he is insulted. He also does not tolerate anyone messing with his wargs and will more than likely kill those who harm or threaten them, simply because he considers them his family.
Terrifying - His appearance would often cause people to immediately consider him to be a dumb, mindless monster who would kill anybody who stands in his way. His inability to speak well in order to explain himself also does not help against these claims.
Loner - He considers himself an outcast and as such, he does not like the company of others besides his wargs.
Weapon(s):
Orcish Longbow - A bow that is thicker than a human or elven bow, with a considerable draw power.
Axe - Snakha prefers an axe for fighting, something that can smash through shields and bash through skulls with ease. A sword only has one use, but an axe has many, which is why he prefers it.
Knives - He is known to keep more than one knife on him at all times.
Gear:
Helmet - He wears a helmet made from the skull of a cave troll he once killed. It is painted green and has a crude mask made from wood put into its front side. The mask is made to look like the face of a snarling orc, with two small holes for the eyes. In settlements or around others, he is rarely seen without his helmet and mask.
Armour - He wears a leather cuirass with metal plates riveted to the inside of the armor. There are bone spikes attached to parts of it which allow him to attach strips of cloth or wildlife to it to further break himself up against the foliage.
Belts - Instead of carrying around a heavy backpack to keep his belongings, Snakha keep things essential to his survival like bait, rope, line, fish hooks and climbing claws tied to the belts he wears around his waist.
Mount - Snakha is never seen without a warg nearby. Bred, trained and cared for by himself, he often surrounds himself with two or three of them whilst choosing the strongest of the pack as his mount.
Background
Snakha was born to Yotul She-Wolf of the Tvollo, a tribe of orcs destroyed by the Kratdlak tribe of Goblins some years ago. His mother bore him after the surviving the rape and being left for dead, and raised him among the pack of wargs she cared for. Life in Piriihu region was certainly hard and usually those who were not a part of a tribe would perish, yet Yotul was an exception. She managed to survive and scrape by on grit and her skills.
Despite this, Snakha always considered himself to be lucky that he wasn’t born into a tribe. For he was born with a deformity, a cleft palate, that would have seen him killed amongst the tribes of the orcs, whereas Yotul raised him lovingly. As he grew older, he became an accomplished hunter and trapper, supplementing his mother's gathering efforts, by bringing meat to the table as they moved from place to place. As a Wargkeeper, Yotul taught her son how to communicate with the monster-wolves as well as how to call upon otherworldly powers to grant blessings through the use of totems. These skills would prove useful for Snakha in the years to come.
One day, the two decided to migrate far north into the territory of the Nurian Empire, figuring that their lives would be much easier there. In Nuria, the two never abandoned their nomadic lifestyle and they never stayed in one place for too long, lest they be blamed by the locals for every misfortune and bad crops in the area. When hunting, Snakha and his mother tended to be careful to only hunt and forage in the woods far from human settlement, where they wouldn't anger any humans. In the rare few days when game was scarce, the two would trade what they had with the few humans who were not scared off by their wargs and by Snakha’s appearance.
Unfortunately, despite their efforts, one day they were attacked in the night by a group of young human noblemen that had caught wind of them. These men fancied themselves adventurers, ridding the world of a terrible horde of monsters. Despite the valiant efforts of these brave human adventurers, Snakha and his mother were able to fend them off, and in the process they also killed one of them. Knowing that the humans would strike back, the two fled south the same night, traveling as fast as their wargs would carry them. They were not fast enough to flee the Nurian cavalry pursuing them, however.
The fought valiantly, but in the end they were no match for the well-trained and well-equipped cavalrymen. After the short one sided battle, the Nurians could’ve finished the two off then and there, but instead they chose to have a little fun first before leaving…
In the hours that followed, Snakha was held down and was forced to watch as the Nurians brutally tortured his mother until they eventually got bored of her, decapitated her and took her head as souvenir. With her dead, the men then focused on Snakha. To begin, one of them took a hammer and smashed the young Hobgoblin’s tusks off, leaving a jagged mess of broken bone. They would then spend the next hour torturing the defenseless hobgoblin. They cut him up, held his face to hot coals until he stopped screaming, flayed the skin off his back and much, much more. In the end, they nailed him to a tree to let the wild animals deliver the coup de grâce.
Snakha was pinned to the tree for about two hours, barely alive and surrounded by the lifeless bodies of his wargs and his headless mother. For two hours, Snakha stood there, slipping in and out of consciousness, waiting for death to come and embrace him. Fortunately for him, death never came. Instead, someone else came to his aid, pulled him down from the tree and dressed his wounds. That someone was Aenyewedden.
An exiled elf, Aenyewedden had lived for almost two centuries in the very forest where Snakha’s mother and their pack of wargs met their unfortunate end. For over two century she had nurtured the region and its inhabitants. Pines grew straight and tall to great heights, while oaks spread wide and lush across creeks and brooks. Far from human civilization and rather isolated from the tribes of the southern Piriihu region, the Kharaith was a small region to the southwest of Nuria that Aenyewedden called home. Many others would have left the hobgoblin to die, seeing him as nothing more but an abomination and an insult to nature that needed to be erased from this earth, but not for Aenyewedden. For several months, she took care of Snakha until he was able to get back up on his feet. For those several months, she cared for him, a creature loved by none.
Aenyewedden… such a beautiful name. Meaning “Child of the Woods” in loose translation, her name was too difficult and too poetic for a creature like Snakha. So he called her Naeris.
For some time, Snakha called the Kharaith Forest his home as well and he came to regard Naeris as a friend. Life was lonely in the woods and Naeris appreciated the company, even if that company was a monster like Snakha. Under her care, Snakha came to truly understand nature. The deer that fed in the verdant pastures, the wolves and bears of the forest that ate their fill, all of them served a purpose. Life and death were a part of nature’s balance, a balance Naeris worked hard to maintain and encourage. In the end, Snakha came to appreciate this balance as well and he helped Naeris to care for her home for the entirety of his time there.
During his time in the Kharaith, Naeris also taught the hobgoblin how to read, write and use numbers, as well as how to speak the common tongue. Progress was awfully slow at first, but once Snakha discovered how useful a knowledge of writing and numbers was in a world where few people expected orcs, much less hobgoblins, to be even able to read, Snakha began to pursue it with a passion. Eventually, after roughly 3 years staying with the elf, Snakha said his farewells and thanks. At first, Naeris insisted he stayed, but Snakha figured that he shouldn’t burden the elven woman any longer and he headed northward, promising that he’d pay her a visit sometimes in the future.
After he left the Kharaith, life went on more or less as normal as it could be for a man like Snakha. He hunted and gathered food in the forests far from civilization and he was always on the move, never staying in one place for more than a week at most. He was careful to not disturb the natural order of things and he only hunted and killed whenever he needed to. His time in the Kharaith had truly changed him for the better.
Despite living somewhat comfortably in the forest by his himself, he felt defenseless without his pack of wargs and so, after some time, he tamed a few wild ones and took care of them. It was also around that time that he first got into bounty hunting. After almost a week without finding any game larger than a rabbit, Snakha went down to a nearby human forest trading post to trade furs for food and supplies. There, he found a poster demanding the kill or capture of a notorious group of bandits who were a plague for the inhabitants of the region. This group of bandits also just so happened to be made up of the cavalrymen that had tortured Snakha and killed his mother a couple years back. Without hesitation, Shnaka took the bounty and immediately went to work tracking his targets.
For three weeks he followed their tracks until he found them hiding in an abandoned castle hidden in the woods just a couple miles off the Nuria-Piriihu border. He waited until nighttime before he made his move, a knife in hand and his wargs following closely behind him. Though he could’ve easily finished the job using his bow to kill the bandits, he opted instead to use his knife, figuring that it would feel more personal that way. The fight lasted for only a few minutes, his wargs and his knife dancing in a morbid little dance of death as he slit throats and painted the walls of the castle with blood. In the end, he fed the dead bodies to his wargs while their heads he claimed for himself.
Killing the bandits was vengeance and profit; Snakha's first blood and his way into bounty hunting. He spent several years hunting heads and moving from place to place with the warg pack that he now cared for by himself – they assisted in trailing the quarry and were fed their horse, whereas he took their heads and equipment and sold both back to humans in varying settlements. He was good at his job, able to track quarry, move silently and kill precisely, using his warg pack when it became necessary. As a hobgoblin, he always worked alone, for none would partner with him, which only honed his self-reliance. Despite his abilities, he was often mocked for his speech impediments and his employers often tried to cheat him, assuming him simple in the head. In several occasions, he had to kill or maim a local mayor or sheriff to make his point about being paid fully for work done.
Over time, he gained quite a reputation for being one of the most effective bounty hunter in Nuria. At the age of 28, he had already claimed over 5 dozen bounties and he was known throughout the southern province of Nuria as “No-Tusk’, the notorious man hunter. Though he preferred using his bow, he eventually became rather adept in the use of his axe and knife, often using them when he needed to.
The most notorious bounty he ever pursued was no human, but the mad, renegade elven ranger Tinuviel, a renowned archer and magic user of centuries worth of experience who had decided to wage war on the human towns of the southern Nurian provinces, starting with the killing of poachers but moving onto merchants, travelers and any that strayed into his range.
The hunt lasted three months where the two skirmished constantly; the ranger Tinuviel would strike, and then Snakha would track. Eventually, Snakha gave up on chasing the man and laid bait of his own, trailing a caravan of loggers into the forests in secrecy. But when the elf struck, he didn't trail him. He let the ranger and his animal companions strike, slaughter the human loggers and plunder them for supplies. He trailed the ranger from a distance, learning his habits and his methods and what he did when he wasn't waging a war against anything that came into his forest. By the time Snakha had a very good idea of how the elven ranger operated, Nuria added a considerable bounty onto the head of Tinuviel. A number of hunters were drawn into the region as a result of the increased bounty.
Snakha hired himself as a guide and took them into the forest. These men scorned the hobgoblin with the speech impediment, ignored his advice and were brash, all of which made them very good bait. When Tinuviel came for them, Snakha managed to disappear. Using his knowledge of the elf's methods, he tracked down the elf and fought a running battle where one might assume that the hobgoblin might get the worst of it, being a stupid hobgoblin. Days of moving, ambushing and fighting, of laying traps and killing the animals and spirits the elf sent against Snakha and his pack were not enough to finish the fight. In the end, the hobgoblin had to rely on something else: the unexpected.
The hobgoblin bounty hunter surprised even the elf with the last possible ploy that any haughty elf would expect from a brute hobgoblin – Snakha used his intelligence and knowledge to get the better of the elf and trapped him in a snare, leaving him defenseless. But just before Snakha could deliver the killing blow, a familiar face appeared before him. Naeris, who had been watching the fight between the two, intervened just as Snakha was about to shoot the elven ranger through the chest. She pleaded for the ranger’s life and told Snakha that Tinuviel was no other than her brother. As of then, the Nurians had expanded the reach of their southern colonies and they were slowly encroaching upon the Kharaith, which explained why Naeris had called upon the help of her brother to dissuade the humans from their efforts at colonizing the region. Usually, Snakha never let go of a bounty. But for Naeris’ sake, he made an exception. He took Tinuviel’s bow as proof of his death for the Nurians and spared the ranger. After exchanging a short farewell with Naeris, Snakha then walked off and never looked back.
The bow was apparently enough proof for the Nurians and they gave Snakha his pay. Following this, Snakha decided that his time in Nuria was at an end and he had to look for business elsewhere before the Nurians find out about his lies. With that in mind, he and his wargs went in the direction of Etirath, hoping to find some better bounties in the young kingdom…
Relations
.........
Name: Snakha "No-Tusk" Tvallo
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Race: Hobgoblin
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 176
Occupation: Bounty Hunter, Wargkeeper/trainer
Rank: Citizen
Basic Appearance
Flat nosed and ugly-faced, with ash-grey skin that identifies him as a descendant of one of the Southwestern mountain tribe of Orcs, Snakha stands slightly taller than the average Hobgoblin but with a leaner build than most of his fellow brethren. He is considered by many (even by fellow Hobgoblins) to be a freak of nature and an abomination. The skin on the right side of his face is burnt away, leaving only reddened scar tissue stretched tight over his skull, studded with patches of bare bone. His black hair is quite long and he likes to keep it in a simple knot to avoid having it be a distraction to him. It is known that most hobgoblins have a more pronounced lower tusk and Snakha is no exception. Unfortunately for him, his tusks are nothing but jagged stumps, simply because both of them had been shattered during his early adolescence. His ears are the typical pointed hobgoblin ears, though he wears two golden rings through his right one. Yet despite all this, the most noticeable thing about him is the fact that he has a cleft palate that splits his upper lip, making his already monstrous appearance look even more terrifying.
Combat Credentials
Combat Style:
Though infamously known to be skilled in fighting with a bow from long range, Snakha certainly can handle himself just as well in close range with his axe and knife. Unlike most Hobgoblins, Snakha knows discipline in combat and he doesn't mindlessly charge into a fight whilst swinging a weapon around. This can sometimes give him in an advantage in battle against enemies who underestimate his fighting prowess. In close combat, he likes to use his axe to shatter or pull away shields as well as to disarm his enemies before closing in for the kill using his knife. He rarely blocks, preferring to use his lean build to dodge and dance around his opponent's attacks. In longer range engagements, Snakha can wield his bow with deadly accuracy, a skill he has honed and perfected ever since he was a young boy.
Abilities:
Animal Empathy - Raised amongst animals, Snakha is quite fond of them and knows his ways around them. Most animals tolerate his presence and are usually quite fond of him as well.
Warg Trainer - Like mother, like son, Snakha is able to communicate with wargs through a garbled, growling form of speech. This, in turn, allows him to train them into obedient pets or ferocious war animals.
Excellent Tracker - Snakha is an extremely skilled tracker. Some people even go as far as saying that he's spent so much time with wargs that he has their sense of smell.
Experienced Forager - Snakha learned to feed himself and his pack of hungry wargs with his bow and knowledge of the wilds. He knows lures, bait, traps and what types of plants and animals that are safe to eat.
Tribal Magic (Enchanting) - Snakha is able find where the veil between this world and the next is at its weakest and 'reach through' to imbue a fetish or totem with magic. Though, unlike a true enchanter his creations are expended with use and purpose made with this in mind.
Intelligence - A trait uncommon amongst Hobgoblins, Snakha is not slow and dull-witted. He knows how to read and write as well as speak the common tongue.
Shortcomings:
Speech impediment – Snakha has a hard time speaking due to his cleft palate.
Anger Issues - Due to his Orcish blood and upbringing, Snakha is quick to anger and will probably resort to violence if his skill is questioned or if he is insulted. He also does not tolerate anyone messing with his wargs and will more than likely kill those who harm or threaten them, simply because he considers them his family.
Terrifying - His appearance would often cause people to immediately consider him to be a dumb, mindless monster who would kill anybody who stands in his way. His inability to speak well in order to explain himself also does not help against these claims.
Loner - He considers himself an outcast and as such, he does not like the company of others besides his wargs.
Weapon(s):
Orcish Longbow - A bow that is thicker than a human or elven bow, with a considerable draw power.
Axe - Snakha prefers an axe for fighting, something that can smash through shields and bash through skulls with ease. A sword only has one use, but an axe has many, which is why he prefers it.
Knives - He is known to keep more than one knife on him at all times.
Gear:
Helmet - He wears a helmet made from the skull of a cave troll he once killed. It is painted green and has a crude mask made from wood put into its front side. The mask is made to look like the face of a snarling orc, with two small holes for the eyes. In settlements or around others, he is rarely seen without his helmet and mask.
Armour - He wears a leather cuirass with metal plates riveted to the inside of the armor. There are bone spikes attached to parts of it which allow him to attach strips of cloth or wildlife to it to further break himself up against the foliage.
Belts - Instead of carrying around a heavy backpack to keep his belongings, Snakha keep things essential to his survival like bait, rope, line, fish hooks and climbing claws tied to the belts he wears around his waist.
Mount - Snakha is never seen without a warg nearby. Bred, trained and cared for by himself, he often surrounds himself with two or three of them whilst choosing the strongest of the pack as his mount.
Background
Snakha was born to Yotul She-Wolf of the Tvollo, a tribe of orcs destroyed by the Kratdlak tribe of Goblins some years ago. His mother bore him after the surviving the rape and being left for dead, and raised him among the pack of wargs she cared for. Life in Piriihu region was certainly hard and usually those who were not a part of a tribe would perish, yet Yotul was an exception. She managed to survive and scrape by on grit and her skills.
Despite this, Snakha always considered himself to be lucky that he wasn’t born into a tribe. For he was born with a deformity, a cleft palate, that would have seen him killed amongst the tribes of the orcs, whereas Yotul raised him lovingly. As he grew older, he became an accomplished hunter and trapper, supplementing his mother's gathering efforts, by bringing meat to the table as they moved from place to place. As a Wargkeeper, Yotul taught her son how to communicate with the monster-wolves as well as how to call upon otherworldly powers to grant blessings through the use of totems. These skills would prove useful for Snakha in the years to come.
One day, the two decided to migrate far north into the territory of the Nurian Empire, figuring that their lives would be much easier there. In Nuria, the two never abandoned their nomadic lifestyle and they never stayed in one place for too long, lest they be blamed by the locals for every misfortune and bad crops in the area. When hunting, Snakha and his mother tended to be careful to only hunt and forage in the woods far from human settlement, where they wouldn't anger any humans. In the rare few days when game was scarce, the two would trade what they had with the few humans who were not scared off by their wargs and by Snakha’s appearance.
Unfortunately, despite their efforts, one day they were attacked in the night by a group of young human noblemen that had caught wind of them. These men fancied themselves adventurers, ridding the world of a terrible horde of monsters. Despite the valiant efforts of these brave human adventurers, Snakha and his mother were able to fend them off, and in the process they also killed one of them. Knowing that the humans would strike back, the two fled south the same night, traveling as fast as their wargs would carry them. They were not fast enough to flee the Nurian cavalry pursuing them, however.
The fought valiantly, but in the end they were no match for the well-trained and well-equipped cavalrymen. After the short one sided battle, the Nurians could’ve finished the two off then and there, but instead they chose to have a little fun first before leaving…
In the hours that followed, Snakha was held down and was forced to watch as the Nurians brutally tortured his mother until they eventually got bored of her, decapitated her and took her head as souvenir. With her dead, the men then focused on Snakha. To begin, one of them took a hammer and smashed the young Hobgoblin’s tusks off, leaving a jagged mess of broken bone. They would then spend the next hour torturing the defenseless hobgoblin. They cut him up, held his face to hot coals until he stopped screaming, flayed the skin off his back and much, much more. In the end, they nailed him to a tree to let the wild animals deliver the coup de grâce.
Snakha was pinned to the tree for about two hours, barely alive and surrounded by the lifeless bodies of his wargs and his headless mother. For two hours, Snakha stood there, slipping in and out of consciousness, waiting for death to come and embrace him. Fortunately for him, death never came. Instead, someone else came to his aid, pulled him down from the tree and dressed his wounds. That someone was Aenyewedden.
An exiled elf, Aenyewedden had lived for almost two centuries in the very forest where Snakha’s mother and their pack of wargs met their unfortunate end. For over two century she had nurtured the region and its inhabitants. Pines grew straight and tall to great heights, while oaks spread wide and lush across creeks and brooks. Far from human civilization and rather isolated from the tribes of the southern Piriihu region, the Kharaith was a small region to the southwest of Nuria that Aenyewedden called home. Many others would have left the hobgoblin to die, seeing him as nothing more but an abomination and an insult to nature that needed to be erased from this earth, but not for Aenyewedden. For several months, she took care of Snakha until he was able to get back up on his feet. For those several months, she cared for him, a creature loved by none.
Aenyewedden… such a beautiful name. Meaning “Child of the Woods” in loose translation, her name was too difficult and too poetic for a creature like Snakha. So he called her Naeris.
For some time, Snakha called the Kharaith Forest his home as well and he came to regard Naeris as a friend. Life was lonely in the woods and Naeris appreciated the company, even if that company was a monster like Snakha. Under her care, Snakha came to truly understand nature. The deer that fed in the verdant pastures, the wolves and bears of the forest that ate their fill, all of them served a purpose. Life and death were a part of nature’s balance, a balance Naeris worked hard to maintain and encourage. In the end, Snakha came to appreciate this balance as well and he helped Naeris to care for her home for the entirety of his time there.
During his time in the Kharaith, Naeris also taught the hobgoblin how to read, write and use numbers, as well as how to speak the common tongue. Progress was awfully slow at first, but once Snakha discovered how useful a knowledge of writing and numbers was in a world where few people expected orcs, much less hobgoblins, to be even able to read, Snakha began to pursue it with a passion. Eventually, after roughly 3 years staying with the elf, Snakha said his farewells and thanks. At first, Naeris insisted he stayed, but Snakha figured that he shouldn’t burden the elven woman any longer and he headed northward, promising that he’d pay her a visit sometimes in the future.
After he left the Kharaith, life went on more or less as normal as it could be for a man like Snakha. He hunted and gathered food in the forests far from civilization and he was always on the move, never staying in one place for more than a week at most. He was careful to not disturb the natural order of things and he only hunted and killed whenever he needed to. His time in the Kharaith had truly changed him for the better.
Despite living somewhat comfortably in the forest by his himself, he felt defenseless without his pack of wargs and so, after some time, he tamed a few wild ones and took care of them. It was also around that time that he first got into bounty hunting. After almost a week without finding any game larger than a rabbit, Snakha went down to a nearby human forest trading post to trade furs for food and supplies. There, he found a poster demanding the kill or capture of a notorious group of bandits who were a plague for the inhabitants of the region. This group of bandits also just so happened to be made up of the cavalrymen that had tortured Snakha and killed his mother a couple years back. Without hesitation, Shnaka took the bounty and immediately went to work tracking his targets.
For three weeks he followed their tracks until he found them hiding in an abandoned castle hidden in the woods just a couple miles off the Nuria-Piriihu border. He waited until nighttime before he made his move, a knife in hand and his wargs following closely behind him. Though he could’ve easily finished the job using his bow to kill the bandits, he opted instead to use his knife, figuring that it would feel more personal that way. The fight lasted for only a few minutes, his wargs and his knife dancing in a morbid little dance of death as he slit throats and painted the walls of the castle with blood. In the end, he fed the dead bodies to his wargs while their heads he claimed for himself.
Killing the bandits was vengeance and profit; Snakha's first blood and his way into bounty hunting. He spent several years hunting heads and moving from place to place with the warg pack that he now cared for by himself – they assisted in trailing the quarry and were fed their horse, whereas he took their heads and equipment and sold both back to humans in varying settlements. He was good at his job, able to track quarry, move silently and kill precisely, using his warg pack when it became necessary. As a hobgoblin, he always worked alone, for none would partner with him, which only honed his self-reliance. Despite his abilities, he was often mocked for his speech impediments and his employers often tried to cheat him, assuming him simple in the head. In several occasions, he had to kill or maim a local mayor or sheriff to make his point about being paid fully for work done.
Over time, he gained quite a reputation for being one of the most effective bounty hunter in Nuria. At the age of 28, he had already claimed over 5 dozen bounties and he was known throughout the southern province of Nuria as “No-Tusk’, the notorious man hunter. Though he preferred using his bow, he eventually became rather adept in the use of his axe and knife, often using them when he needed to.
The most notorious bounty he ever pursued was no human, but the mad, renegade elven ranger Tinuviel, a renowned archer and magic user of centuries worth of experience who had decided to wage war on the human towns of the southern Nurian provinces, starting with the killing of poachers but moving onto merchants, travelers and any that strayed into his range.
The hunt lasted three months where the two skirmished constantly; the ranger Tinuviel would strike, and then Snakha would track. Eventually, Snakha gave up on chasing the man and laid bait of his own, trailing a caravan of loggers into the forests in secrecy. But when the elf struck, he didn't trail him. He let the ranger and his animal companions strike, slaughter the human loggers and plunder them for supplies. He trailed the ranger from a distance, learning his habits and his methods and what he did when he wasn't waging a war against anything that came into his forest. By the time Snakha had a very good idea of how the elven ranger operated, Nuria added a considerable bounty onto the head of Tinuviel. A number of hunters were drawn into the region as a result of the increased bounty.
Snakha hired himself as a guide and took them into the forest. These men scorned the hobgoblin with the speech impediment, ignored his advice and were brash, all of which made them very good bait. When Tinuviel came for them, Snakha managed to disappear. Using his knowledge of the elf's methods, he tracked down the elf and fought a running battle where one might assume that the hobgoblin might get the worst of it, being a stupid hobgoblin. Days of moving, ambushing and fighting, of laying traps and killing the animals and spirits the elf sent against Snakha and his pack were not enough to finish the fight. In the end, the hobgoblin had to rely on something else: the unexpected.
The hobgoblin bounty hunter surprised even the elf with the last possible ploy that any haughty elf would expect from a brute hobgoblin – Snakha used his intelligence and knowledge to get the better of the elf and trapped him in a snare, leaving him defenseless. But just before Snakha could deliver the killing blow, a familiar face appeared before him. Naeris, who had been watching the fight between the two, intervened just as Snakha was about to shoot the elven ranger through the chest. She pleaded for the ranger’s life and told Snakha that Tinuviel was no other than her brother. As of then, the Nurians had expanded the reach of their southern colonies and they were slowly encroaching upon the Kharaith, which explained why Naeris had called upon the help of her brother to dissuade the humans from their efforts at colonizing the region. Usually, Snakha never let go of a bounty. But for Naeris’ sake, he made an exception. He took Tinuviel’s bow as proof of his death for the Nurians and spared the ranger. After exchanging a short farewell with Naeris, Snakha then walked off and never looked back.
The bow was apparently enough proof for the Nurians and they gave Snakha his pay. Following this, Snakha decided that his time in Nuria was at an end and he had to look for business elsewhere before the Nurians find out about his lies. With that in mind, he and his wargs went in the direction of Etirath, hoping to find some better bounties in the young kingdom…
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