Basic Information
Full Name
Dorrak Stonevein
Nickname
Maw-Breaker
Race (Grade)
Half-Giant (D)
Class
Barbarian
Height
8'3"
Birthday
Frostmoon 3, 1276
Age
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Birthsign
Bloodline Ability
Unknown
This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.
Physical Description
Dorrak Stonevein, looking terrifying and feeling perfectly mellow
Appearance
Dorrak stands a little over eight feet tall and is built on a scale that makes doorways, chairs, and most horses look like polite suggestions. The frost giant blood in the Stonevein line shows plainly in his skin, a cold slate blue-grey that never seems to feel the weather. His black hair is shaved close at the sides and gathered into a long, heavy braid bound with red cord, and he wears a short black beard and a pair of small gold earrings. Several cords of beads, carved charms, and long curved fangs hang around his neck. He dresses simply in Northman fashion: a pale sleeveless tunic lined with fur at the shoulders, a wide wrapped sash, dark trousers, and heavy leather wraps from his knuckles to his elbows. His face, at rest, looks carved out of a glacier and deeply unimpressed with you.
Unique Characteristics
The patterns covering nearly every inch of Dorrak's skin are not ordinary tattoos. They are victory markings, a Stonevein custom: every band records a challenge he survived, whether a winter expedition, a monster kill, a duel, a rescue, a mountain crossed, or a battle lived through. A band is only inked after a skald has witnessed the deed or confirmed it, and since lying in a skald's verse is the gravest dishonor a Northman can suffer, every line of Dorrak is true. His body is essentially a biography. The largest pattern, the great spiral that covers his entire left shoulder, marks the White Maw. The longest fang on his necklace came from the same place. He would rather you didn't ask about either.
Personality & Temperament
Positive Traits
- Mellow, patient, and genuinely hard to provoke
- Listens far more than he talks, and remembers it
- Has nothing left to prove, and knows it
- Gentle with children, animals, and nervous people
- Honest to a fault, even about his own legend
Challenging Traits
- Downplays his deeds until it becomes infuriating
- Says one word where five would really help
- Forgets how terrifying he looks to strangers
- Utterly defenseless against a bakery window
- Wanders off to stare at perfectly ordinary things
No. [He looks at the man's arm. Then at the man.] I'm afraid you'll need a healer.
It was injured. [Reminded that it was twelve feet tall.] Still injured.
Why is there fruit inside the bread? [Ten minutes later, with his mouth full.] Never mind. Don't explain it. Just keep doing it.
Likes
- Pastry, especially anything with fruit baked inside
- Watching a city go about its strange daily business
- Cold, clear mornings that smell like the Trench
- Quiet company that doesn't need conversation
- Honest work with a clear beginning and end
Dislikes
- Hearing the White Maw saga performed at parties
- Challengers who desperately need to win
- Doorframes built for ordinary people
- Anyone who bullies the frightened or the small
- Honeycomb bread; he has eaten enough for one life
Background & History
The Clan That Faced West
Dorrak was born in Torheim in 1276, in the Stonevein longhouses at the high western edge of the Hearthstead. Most of Torheim looks east, toward the fjord and the sea. Clan Stonevein has always looked west, toward the Frozen Trench, and its half-giants have spent generations as the city's guides through the summer passes and hunters of the high peaks. Among the Stoneveins, survival is treated less like a hardship and more like a basic qualification for adulthood. Dorrak grew up climbing ice-covered cliffs, wrestling for sport, hunting mountain predators, and hauling loads that would normally have needed a fjord charger. He was Blooded at thirteen, and the stain of that first hunt is still faintly visible across his brow beneath the ink that came later.
Not Much Point Anymore
Dorrak was unusual even among half-giants. He was ridiculously strong: not "strongest man in the longhouse" strong, but strong enough that his clan eventually stopped entering him into the stone-lifting and wrestling contests at the clan games, because there was not much point anymore. He stood as Clan Stonevein's champion in Holmgang for several years. After a while, the other clans began settling their disputes with Stonevein through negotiation instead, which the Jarl considered the single greatest diplomatic achievement in the clan's history.
The White Maw
When Dorrak was twenty-two, something came down out of the Frozen Trench and began attacking the settlements along its foothills. The White Maw was an enormous frost-bred predator, large enough to drag fjord chargers off the mountain trails and intelligent enough to deliberately target supply caravans in the dead of winter. Several hunting parties went after it. Some did not return. Dorrak finally found it during a blizzard high in the passes. His Ironquarter greatsword broke. So he killed it with his hands. He does not enjoy telling this story. Other people enjoy telling it considerably more, and Torheim's skalds turned it into a saga that is still performed at feasts. Since a skald's verse is considered definitive testimony in Torheim, Dorrak's own version ("It was injured") is, legally speaking, the wrong one.
"Down"
Dorrak was not banished. He was not disgraced. Nothing terrible happened. At twenty-seven, he simply realized that he had spent his entire life looking at the same mountains. One morning in 1303 he packed his belongings. His brother asked where he was going. Dorrak answered, "Down." And that was, apparently, the entire plan.
Fruit Inside the Bread
For the next three years Dorrak wandered through the lower kingdoms, working as a caravan guard and a monster hunter whenever the coin ran low. He is fascinated by cities, not because he loves them, but because he finds them deeply strange: people living stacked on top of each other, paying for water, and employing a man whose entire job is lighting lamps. He also discovered his one real weakness. Stonevein food was nutritious, practical, and extraordinarily boring, and the first time Dorrak walked into a proper pastry shop, in Oskari, he stood at the counter for ten minutes trying to understand why anyone would put fruit inside bread. He has been making up for lost time ever since. He later walked the entire length of Bannon's Bakery Row in a single afternoon and still describes it as the most religious experience of his life.
Silmarithil
In the late summer of 1306, Dorrak settled in Silmarithil. Three years of cities had taught him exactly how a room goes quiet when someone his size ducks through the door, and Silmarithil is the first place where it mostly didn't. A town whose watch is made up of Grippli acrobats, whose astronomy professor is a minotaur, and where a retired half-orc gladiator champion trains in the forest every morning has very little attention left over for one more large stranger. The cold air under the Elderwood reminds him of home without the view being the same, and the Hearthmarket sells honey cakes. He takes monster-hunting and caravan work when it comes, and otherwise seems content to watch the town go about its business.
Goals & Aspirations
Every Bakery in Haven
Dorrak is working his way, methodically, through every bakery he can reach, and he keeps a ranked list. The current top two are both in Goodberry: Storen's bakery and his sister Briar's confectionery, The Sweet Spot. He has made the trip specifically for them more than once, and he considers the portal fare to be money well spent.
Understanding Cities
Dorrak still does not understand cities, and he has decided that he would like to. He asks questions nobody born in one has ever thought to ask: who decided where the roads go, why the baker and the butcher are not the same person, and what everyone does all day when there is nothing to hunt. He listens very carefully to the answers.
A New Kind of Marking
Dorrak left Torheim because he had run out of new things. Every band on his skin is for something he survived, and most of them are for something he killed. He has quietly decided that the next one will not be. He has not told anyone what he has in mind, though more than one baker in Haven has noticed an eight-foot half-giant watching them knead dough with an unusual degree of attention.
Current Status & Relationships
Residence
Role
Monster Hunter
ATTENTION!
Dorrak Stonevein is a D-grade half-giant of frost giant blood, over eight feet tall, and almost certainly the strongest person most people in Silmarithil will ever meet. When his greatsword broke fighting a twelve-foot frost predator in a blizzard, he finished the job with his bare hands. He is also one of the most mellow people in the city: quiet, patient, and completely uninterested in proving anything to anyone. He will not arm wrestle you and he will not accept your challenge, and this is not fear. It is mercy, and he means it sincerely. Do not mistake that calm for softness. If something truly dangerous ever comes for Silmarithil, he is exactly who you want standing in front of it, and whatever it is will not enjoy the experience. If you need to find him, check the nearest bakery first.