Kroz Wallbreaker

‘No, not an earthquake. I’m telling you, it was a living beast – an Ogryn, biggest I’ve ever seen, with a fist like a battering ram, hurling strange… things that exploded with smoke, fire, and foul stench. Arrows bounced off it, spells splashed against it like water. It was all we could do to evacuate the garrison before we were buried alive. Yes! Just a single Ogryn!’ — Stregolei, Aravian guard-captain The terrifying Ogryn who came to be known as Kroz the Wallbreaker was abducted as an infant and raised by the Dark Elves to be a war-slave. To tame his rebellious spirit, torturer after torturer worked him over, leaving his skin a patchwork of hideous scars and his mind crushed. When they were finished he was scarcely more coherent and self-aware than a war hound or a trained destrier — a living weapon, with little trace of individuality. The Dark Elves exploited Kroz’s enormous strength, and his deadened senses of fear and pain, by girding him in titanic heavy armor. They armed him with massive spiked metal fists, and loaded him down with back-breaking payloads of bombs created by Dark Elf chitin-seers using caustic, explosive compounds secreted by giant bombardier beetles. A living siege engine, Kroz’s extraordinary capacity to blast breaches in barricades, hurl enemy warriors about like dolls, shatter otherwise unbreakable formations, and generally smash his way through whatever was in front of him earned him the nickname of ‘Wallbreaker’. His thoughtless, mindless demolition eventually led to Kroz being captured from his Dark Elf overlords and taken into the service of the Arbiter’s cause. He was busy smashing apart an Aravian bulwark when violent explosions from his explosives and his earth-shaking fist caused a sinkhole to open up, and half the battlefield plunged into a deep, dark abyss. Kroz awoke amid the rubble, boulders, and countless mangled corpses, to be confronted by a High Elf mage bearing a Shard – the cave whose roof had collapsed was one of the Arbiter’s Vaults, and the Elf was a powerful Vault Keeper. In fact, the Aravians had constructed their fortress directly above the Vault on purpose, with the full cooperation of its Keeper, to lure Kroz into a pitfall. They knew that Kroz had to be stopped if the war was to be won, and captivity within a Shard was judged the more practicable way to defeat the hulking, nigh-indestructible Ogryn. The Keeper brandished the Shard and chanted an ancient spell, unsealing the Shard’s power and unleashing its consuming hunger upon Kroz, and the terrible menace of Durham Forest, the Wallbreaker, was safely contained. Though she tried strenuously, not even the redeeming power of the Arbiter could undo the horrific torments that had stolen Kroz’s mind away from him. He was doomed to remain a living weapon, one that the Arbiter unleashes only in the most dire circumstances. She keeps the hapless Ogryn cocooned in the peaceful, timeless slumber of the Shard as much as possible, believing it is the only mercy she can bestow upon his wretched soul.