Udam

Udam  Rank-1 ex-Barbarian  BB7A57
Broadsword-5, Brawling-2, Crossbow-3 Mechanical-2
Recon-2

Background

Udam long believed in his heart that he was born in the last days of his people.

Born when the Loeskalth were still a nomadic band, a much larger nomadic band. His earliest memories were of the close huddled bodies, reeking in their unwashed clothes and bent under the great loads upon their backs. The mass trudging ever onwards over miles and miles of strange and cavernous surroundings.

Hunted, ostensibly for their blasphemous and dangerous beliefs, they clung to the notion that theirs was once a great people. That the world had been handed down to them by powerful distant ancestors. The notion of a glorious past gave people hope, and pride, and that made them dangerous in the eyes of some.

Death was a constant companion in those early days. Attacks from other bands were frequent, and casualties, funerals, the weeping and the redistribution of personal effects seemed an inescapable morbid ritual. His own father perished in their defense when he was still quite young, and his mother followed a mere ten years later to infection. All his siblings but one went in turn, malnutrition, a sickness of the mind, and a sister in childbirth.

His younger brother, Ukiah, the only other survivor form those days is now among those entrusted with the care and tending of the Sun and the various other pieces of vital machinery.

He was an adult with a wife and a young child of his own when they found their salvation. He had already been fighting, as nearly ever able body did, for the better part of ten years. That place, this new world, gave them hope renewed, divine salvation in a sense, and as they put down roots they defended their new home with a bloody minded and unyielding tenacity.

They had lost so many by that time. So many friends, brothers and sisters in arms, dead or maimed in the ceaseless struggles. Even now he does not know how, or why, he survived when so many did not. Luck perhaps, the favor of a powerful Ancestor watching over him, but he persisted day by day and in time grew wiser in the ways of battle. While never savvy enough, or politically inclined enough, to consider vying for the position of chief, he struck down warrior after warrior in the frequent skirmishing and raiding, and in time he became a respected name. He was entrusted with the instruction of some of the younger warriors, and his own children, the ones that survived, came to learn from him.

He spent much of his time on the outskirts of their lands, always watching, always cautious to spot a raiding party or some other danger long before it threatened their little world. He even learned some of the mystery of the artifacts that made their life possible through the council of his brother, Ukiah. He learned which metals made good weapons, and how to build a crossbow that could reliably punch through armor.



Appearance

But this life, this precarious existence, aged him prematurely. While only thirty four, approaching a venerable age for his people, he would be thought to be in his late forties by most. His is not the toned and hairless musculature of idealistic sculpture, but the hulking, stooped and hairy frame of a veteran warrior, scared and weary, his face and his eyes betraying the terrible weight of his years.

He is pale from his long vigils in the lightless corridors, with webs of vivid blue veins visible on the surface of his thick arms and broad chest. His ivory colored hair hangs in a long intricate braid to one side, his hair line just starting to recede and the braid decorated with colored bands and knotwork.

His haggard bearded face seems like a window into a distant age, and his blue eyes are still bright with a predatory gleam. Both arms and part of his weathered face bear complicated tattooing in faded blue ink.