Murdok Redscar - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Murdok Redscar

Nickname

The Bronze

Race (Grade)

Orc (E)

Class

Fighter / Gladiator

Height

6'4"

Birthday

Heatwave 5, 1276

Age

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Birthsign

The Sunscale Wyrm

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Bloodline Ability

🔮Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Murdok Redscar, Bronze Medalist

Appearance

Murdok stands at 6'4" and is built like the Redstone Range itself: dense, hard, and seemingly indifferent to what the weather is doing. He is barrel-chested in the way that arena fighters from Urakkis tend to be, not the large, showy muscle of someone who trains for appearance, but the compact, dense power of someone who has been hit repeatedly by things that wanted to kill him and had to continue fighting anyway. His skin is the dusty grey-green of Urakkis's desert orcs, weathered by years of heat and sand, and his lower tusks are filed to neat points which is, in Urakkis, considered a sign of discipline and personal maintenance. His head is shaved close. His eyes are amber, steady, and have the particular quality that experienced fighters develop: they are always slightly ahead of wherever they appear to be looking.

The scarification is the first thing most people notice, once they recover from the initial impression of his size. His arms, shoulders, chest, and the visible portions of his back are covered in elaborate ritual patterns, cuts made precisely and allowed to heal in raised ridges that document every arena victory, every significant kill, every achievement worth recording in Urakkis's tradition. Each pattern has a specific meaning. He knows what all of them say. He has occasionally found, to his genuine surprise, that people in Goodberry ask him about them out of curiosity rather than recognition, and he is still working out how to feel about that. He now wears shirts with some regularity. This is new.

Unique Characteristics

He does not fidget. This sounds like a small thing and is not. Murdok at rest is completely still in the way that large, dangerous animals are still, not relaxed, exactly, but conserving. In Urakkis, constant motion signals anxiety, and anxiety signals weakness, and weakness is a liability he spent thirty years eliminating. He assesses every room he enters within the first ten seconds: exits, potential threats, angles of approach. He does this in Goodberry bakeries. He does this at the market. He cannot stop doing this. It is, at this point, simply how he sees. He bought furniture for his manor three weeks after moving in, very functional furniture, placed so that he always has his back to a wall, and has not yet bought anything for decoration, though he stood in front of a window display in the market district for some time the other day looking at a painted clay pot with an expression nobody nearby could interpret.

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Personality

Positive Traits

More observant than he looks
Completely honest; alarmingly so to some
Loyal to anyone who treats him with genuine respect
Has an unexpected dry humor
Quietly curious about the world
Does not complain about his problems

Challenging Traits

Finds Goodberry's softness genuinely baffling
Assesses every person he meets as a potential opponent
Suggests resolving disputes by fighting
Struggles with strange human customs
Bored without physical challenge
Has not told anyone from Urakkis about his manor

"In Urakkis, if someone bothers you, you fight them. Here they make you tea. I do not understand the tea." [Pause.] "It is not bad tea."

"The manor is..." [Long pause. He appears to be choosing words with great care.] "...acceptable."

"I am not staying. I have said this several times now." [He has been in Goodberry for months. He shows no signs of leaving.]

Likes

The food in Goodberry, though he won't admit it
Training alone in the early morning when the city is quiet
Direct people, anyone who says what they mean immediately
The particular quiet of Goodberry at night
Sparring with Astrid Shieldrose, who actually tries
The garden attached to his manor

Dislikes

Being stared at
Small talk
People who go soft on him in a fight out of politeness
Being asked to explain his scars
How long everything takes here
That he has not left yet

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Background & History

Born in the Redstone Range

Murdok was born on Heatwave 5, 1276, in the Arena District of Urakkis, which is exactly as formative a birthplace as it sounds. His earliest memories are of the sound of the colosseum, the crowd noise, the clash of weapons, the particular roar that goes up when something decisive happens, and he considered this the natural background of the world for several years before he understood that other places were different. His father was a district enforcer and his mother a weapon-crafter at the Bloodforge, and neither of them was the type to offer much in the way of softness. He received his first scarification mark at twelve, a single line on his left forearm marking his first successful beast hunt into the canyon systems east of the city. He does not remember the hunt as clearly as he remembers the mark being made. The mark was permanent. The hunt was just an afternoon.

The Arena

He entered the arena at sixteen as most young fighters do, through the lesser bouts, the ones that happen before the main events and that the crowd watches with only partial attention. He lost his first match and won the next eleven, a ratio that the veteran gladiators noted and the Arena Master noted more carefully still. By twenty he had enough scars across his chest and arms to tell a reasonably complete story of his career, and by twenty-five he had become the kind of fighter that other fighters studied when they were preparing to face him. He was not the most brutal combatant in Urakkis, there are always more brutal ones, but he was among the most technically complete, with the patience to make other fighters come to him and the strength to make them regret it when they did. Prassix, the warrior deity, was said to mark certain fighters with a particular quality: not just endurance, not just power, but presence, the ability to hold ground in a way that makes the crowd understand before the fight begins that this person intends to win. Murdok had this. He has always had it.

The First World Games

When word of the first World Games reached Urakkis, Warlord Orgoth the Scarred convened a brief and brutal selection process to determine who would represent the city. Murdok won it. This was not a surprise to anyone who had watched him fight, but it was notable because the selection process had taken place the day after he had survived a particularly demanding bout in the main arena and he had not asked for additional time to recover. He traveled to Goodberry, which required crossing terrain that the Urakkis delegation found successively less and less hostile the further south they went, eventually arriving in a city that appeared to be organized entirely around pleasantness, which none of them had a cultural framework for. The Games themselves were extraordinary. The field of competitors was unlike anything assembled in a single place in recent memory. Murdok placed third. He fought the eventual gold medalist in the semifinal and lost a match he could reconstruct move by move from memory, which he does, periodically, because there are things to learn from it.

Murdok's Manor, Goodberry

The Prize and the Problem

Third place at the World Games came with a small manor within Goodberry, notably smaller than the silver prize, which went to Astrid Shieldrose, a fact Murdok has filed away without particular bitterness because in Urakkis the difference between second and third is typically survival. The manor is a solid stone building in a quiet district, with a garden he doesn't use and windows that let in more light than he is accustomed to. His plan was to inspect it, establish that it was real, and leave. He did not leave. He has thought about this periodically and has not arrived at a satisfying explanation. The most honest answer he has reached, and he has not shared this with anyone, is that Urakkis was waiting for him in specific ways he had grown tired of, and Goodberry, bewildering, soft, relentlessly cheerful Goodberry, was not waiting for him in any way at all. Nobody there wanted anything from him. Nobody was assessing his weaknesses to exploit them. Nobody was positioned to challenge him for his standing. He slept through the entire first night in the manor without waking once. This had not happened in years.

Adjusting, Badly and Then Less Badly

The early months in Goodberry were an extended exercise in cultural confusion. He suggested, once, that a market dispute he witnessed could be resolved through combat and was treated as though he had said something dangerous, which in Urakkis it would not have been, it would have been standard procedure. He knocked on nobody's door for three weeks because in Urakkis you announce yourself by entering and this did not translate. He has learned to knock. He finds the practice unnecessary but has accepted that it is how things work here. He has also discovered, more reluctantly, that Goodberry's food is exceptional in ways that Urakkis cuisine is not, not because Urakkis food is bad, the Predator Stew is substantial and honest, but because Goodberry has apparently devoted considerable cultural energy to making things taste good rather than primarily making things fuel a fight, and the results are difficult to dismiss. He has not told anyone this. He eats at the same stall in the market three mornings a week and has been there long enough that the owner knows what he wants without being asked, which is a form of recognition he finds he does not mind.

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Goals

To Figure Out Why He Is Still Here

This is the most honest goal Murdok has, and he has not stated it to anyone because in Urakkis it would read as weakness to admit uncertainty about one's own decisions. But it is the question that sits underneath everything else he does in Goodberry. He left Urakkis as a champion going to collect a prize. He is still here months later. He trains every morning in his garden because that is what he does and has always done. He eats at the market. He has a passing familiarity with three or four of his neighbors, enough to nod at them when they pass. None of this constitutes a life in any framework he grew up with, and yet he has not left. He will, at some point, need to either leave or decide that staying is a choice he is making deliberately. He is not there yet. He is close.

To Find Something Worth Fighting Here

Murdok is a fighter in the precise and complete sense: it is not just what he does but what he organizes his life around. The absence of stakes in Goodberry is the thing that confuses him most. Nobody here is fighting for survival, for standing, for the right to exist in the social order. The fights that do happen, disputes, conflicts, dangers, are handled by people whose entire job it is to handle them. He finds this deeply strange and has been gradually, reluctantly, developing a theory that there might be things worth protecting in a place this peaceful that you would not get a chance to notice if the place were not peaceful. He has not yet figured out what to do with this theory. It is new.

To Settle the Semifinal, Eventually

He lost in the World Games semifinal and placed third as a result. He is not bitter about this. He is specific about it, which is different. He has reviewed the match in detail, identified the four moments where a different choice would have changed the outcome, and filed this information away for future use. If there is a second World Games, and he believes there should be, something this well-organized should be done again, he intends to be there. He will have addressed the four moments by then. He does not intend to place third a second time.

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Goodberry

Role

Gladiator

Notable Connections

Warlord Orgoth the Scarred

Former Lord, Urakkis

Prassix

Warrior Deity, Urakkis

ATTENTION!

Murdok Redscar is a thirty-year arena veteran who placed third at the first World Games competing against the best fighters Xeres could assemble. He is large, he is covered in ritual scarification that documents more violence than most people will experience in a lifetime, and he will assess you as a potential opponent the moment you walk into his eyeline. He is also not aggressive, not looking for trouble, and, this is the part that surprises people, genuinely honest. He does not play games, does not angle for advantage in conversation, and does not say things he does not mean. Treat him with the directness you would want in return, do not go easy on him in a fight out of misplaced courtesy, and do not try to explain Goodberry's customs as though he is too simple to understand them. He understands them fine. He just disagrees with most of them. He is adjusting. Slowly. On his own terms.