Durst

Winter Orc – Barbarian / Waste Walker

Not much to tell. Born on the ice. Grew up on the ice. Still here. Most people who try that are dead, so I suppose that counts for something.

I am a winter orc. My people live on the Crown of the World where the wind strips flesh from bone if you stand still too long and freezes the blood in your chest if you lie down wrong. We do not write things down. We do not build monuments. We survive, and the surviving is the monument. You want to know who I am? I am still breathing. In the Crown of the World, that is the only thing that matters.

I carry two axes. One burns. One freezes. People ask why both. The answer is simple. Some things die to fire. Some things die to cold. I prefer not to guess wrong.

The flaming axe was taken from a raider who thought he could burn our camp in a storm. He was wrong about the storm and wrong about us. The freezing axe I made myself, in the old way, with water from a glacial stream spoken over by our elder before she died. Both axes have killed more than I care to count. Neither one has let me down. I trust them more than I trust most people. Axes do not lie about what they are for.

Thorne sent for me. That is why I am here.

The old giant does not summon people lightly. When he calls, it means something in the ice has shifted and he needs hands he can trust near it. I have answered his call before. I will answer it again. That is the arrangement between us. Not a contract, not a debt. Just the understanding between two creatures who know this land and know what it costs to keep it.

He did not explain everything when he summoned me this time. He does not need to. Thorne says come, I come. The reasons sort themselves out when I arrive.

What I found when I arrived was a group of southerners heading north into the worst part of the Crown. A metal man with his mind cracked open. A shadow-touched woman who moves like smoke. A priest whose light burns even when he does not mean it to. A woman who talks to the dead and travels with something that is not alive and not dead and not anything I have a word for.

They needed a guide. Not because they are weak. They are not weak. I have seen them fight. The metal man hits like an avalanche when his fury takes him. The shadow woman strikes where you do not expect and vanishes before you can strike back. The priest calls fire from his goddess like she owes him a personal favor. The death-woman and her companion work together like two halves of the same jaw.

They are not weak. They are just not from here. And the Crown does not forgive ignorance, no matter how strong you are. A southern hero who does not know how to read the wind or test the ice or smell a storm three hours before it arrives is a dead hero. I keep them from being dead heroes. That is my job.

I do not understand half of what these people talk about.

Dreamlands. Veil of Slumber. Cosmic entities. Fey courts. Gossamer. Nocturnes. They use words I have never heard for things I have never seen, and they discuss them the way I discuss snow conditions, casually, as though everyone should know the difference between a Nocturne and a Phantasm the way I know the difference between pack ice and drift ice.

I do not pretend to follow it. When they start talking about the architecture of dreams or the politics of creatures that live between sleep and waking, I check the perimeter. Someone has to.

What I do understand is this, something is wrong with the ice. Something beneath it is waking up. The obelisks my people have guarded for generations (without knowing why, without remembering the reason, just knowing it mattered) are being corrupted. A man from the south is racing north to break a seal that has held for five thousand years because he believes what comes out will make him more than he is.

I do not need to understand the Dreamlands to know that is a bad idea. I have seen what happens when you crack open ice that was not meant to be cracked. What comes up is never what you were hoping for.

The sacred pool of the Saumen Kar, the pool of Seven Griefs was hard for me.

The others knelt and prayed and offered pieces of themselves like they had been doing it their whole lives. The shadow-woman showed weakness. The priest called on his goddess. I stood at the edge of the water and felt… nothing I was willing to give.

It is not that I have nothing. I have plenty. I have memories of hunts that went wrong and friends who did not come back and choices I made in the dark that I would make differently if the dark gave second chances. I have all of that. I just do not hand it over because some pool tells me to.

The water took what I offered anyway. Maybe it knew I was trying. Maybe it did not care about sincerity so much as presence. Maybe standing at the edge and being honest about the fact that you have nothing to say is its own kind of offering.

I do not know. I am not a priest. I am not a scholar. I am an orc with two axes who knows how to walk on ice without falling through.

But when they needed someone at the door during the metal man’s healing, Thorne looked at me and said what he always says. Not an order. Just a fact, “You are alive here. Not surviving. Alive.”

So I stood in the arch. I faced the dark. I did not pray. I did not speak. I just stood there and let the cold know this ground was occupied.

The spirits moved on.

I do not know how this ends. The others talk about artifacts and rituals and things that could rewrite reality. I talk about how many days of supplies we have left and whether the ice ahead will hold our weight.

Both conversations matter. They just happen at different altitudes.

I will follow them to the Nameless Spires because Thorne asked me to and because the ice needs someone there who can read it. Whatever they find at the top of the world, whatever cosmic thing they have to fight or bargain with or seal away, they will need someone watching the ground beneath their feet. Making sure the path holds. Making sure there is a way back.

That is what guides do. We do not write the story. We make sure the people writing it survive long enough to finish.

Tagged: Gatewalkers, Player Character