Stokk the Broken

Stokk was born among the Night Skewers, a tribe of cave—dwelling Ogryn living beneath the Dusk Hills. He left them to seek fame and fortune in Anhelt, arriving in Delanos confused but well-meaning. He did not realize he had arrived during a time when hatred of Ogryn was high across Anhelt — the rise of the Gaellen Pact and its promise of vengeance was stoking much fear and anger. Within a few days of arriving, having done little more than explore the city, he was captured by city patrolmen and accused of being a ‘Gaellen spy’, ‘frightening the populace’, and of ‘inciting disorder’. He was held captive, beaten and deprived of light and fresh air by the Delanos officials, and regularly placed in the stocks in public to show off what the burghers claimed was their ‘effective defense’ against Gaellen infiltrators. After Stokk spent over a year languishing in captivity, Gaellen invaders stormed Delanos and found him on public display. After the Gaellens determined Stokk was ignorant and harmless, a vengeful Ogryn alchemist called Vizug the Noxious claimed him. Seeing that Stokk was a member of the Night Skewers — and thus a skulking weakling in Vizug’s eyes — and that he had been foolish enough to have been captured by the League, Vizug treated him as little more than a heap of flesh to experiment on. Stokk, desperate to be accepted, agreed to serve Vizug’s living laboratory. Advances in his venge-fire alchemy and the grievous challenges of the Gaellen War led Vizug to envision a whole new use for his toxic compound, turning fanatical warriors — or condemned criminals – into living weapons. By having volatile compounds of fire and acid imbued into their own flesh, such a warrior could not be disarmed or safely captured. However, to endure the agony of being a living bomb on the verge of detonation, Stokk and the other prototype bio-weapons had to be drugged with stupefying, anesthetic compounds. This left them too passive and delirious to be effective warriors, so Vizug gave them additional tinctures to induce rage and frenzy. After many failed attempts he found a balance that created raving, fearless warriors who felt no pain. Gaellen commanders were happy to use Vizug’s alchemic compounds on the enemy, but balked at the cruel extremity of making their own soldiers into disposable weapons. As the invasion faltered and the Gaellens were pushed back, however, one by one they agreed to use any means necessary and Stokk was pushed into battle for the first time. He was a whirlwind of frenzied energy, the elixirs in his system making him implacable and unreasoning. Soldiers were melted and burned alive within their armor by caustic fluids that no amount of water could neutralize, their screams drowning out Stokk’s own wild, incoherent battle cries. The fear and chaos Stokk sowed allowed other Gaellen warriors time to regroup, heal their wounds, and maneuver into advantageous positions. As soon as Stokk was exhausted and his reserves of chemicals temporarily depleted, they surged forward to collect him and shatter the disorganized and traumatized remnants of the enemy. The Free City of Klodovic was destroyed after Stokk was smuggled into the city by night and set loose. Spewing toxins and burning acid, he poisoned half the city and set fire to scores of buildings, allowing the Gaellen forces beyond the walls to storm the city with ease. Stokk was eventually captured when Telerian League forces deployed a specially trained squadron equipped with magically protective suits, long catch-poles, and corrosion-resistant cages. Without the drugs that kept him numb, Stokk suffered horribly at the hands of the Telerians, who experimented on him in turn and pried from him many of Vizug’s secrets of toxic alchemy. Once they had extracted all they could from Stokk, the League sent him back to attack Vizug’s camp in an act of cruel, vengeful irony. Stokk was on the verge of finally losing control of the raging alchemical storm within him and, as Vizug’s guards desperately tried to stop him, he warped and bloated with poisonous fumes and searing acid, about to explode and surely cause catastrophic harm and damage. Moments before he would have detonated, however, the Arbiter appeared in a flash to absorb the wretched Stokk into one of her Shards. She had little love for Vizug, whose callous experimentation had created Stokk, but she could not allow the terribly unfortunate Stokk to be destroyed and forever lost. Partly she was driven by pity, to save Stokk and perhaps one day reverse his explosive decline. But she was also motivated by sheer practicality: if Stokk had been made irrevocably into a living weapon and was now constantly on the verge of self-destruction, it should be she, and no other, who should have the option to deploy him if absolutely necessary.