Ferish the Half-Orc
Warchief Ferish the Half-Orc
"There is little to endear me to those who abandon their weakest members, give me a reason to care for those who do that."
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
wordsIdentifying Characteristics
Facial Features
Body Features
Physical Quirks
Special Abilities
Apparel & Accessories
Specialized Equipment
Mental Characteristics
Intellectual Characteristics
Morality, Philosophy & Taboos
Biography
Early Life
Education
Employment
Accomplishments & Achievements
Failures & Embarrassments
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
Savvies & Ineptitudes
Personality, Quirks, & Vices
Likes
Dislikes
Social
Religious Views
Social Aptitude
Wealth & Financial State
Family Ties and Contacts
Mannerisms
Hygiene
Speech
Hobbies
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Scarred and weathered, she has both her eyes looking to the world clearly, though reading small lettering has become a greater challenge than it once was.
While the definition to her musculature has faded, when she acts there are still echoes of her youthful strength, from the solid grip of a hand shake to joining her warriors when her camp or current town residence is under attack. She rarely removes her heavy plate armor boots.
Body Features
Her black hair has been cut to settle at ear-length, though the uneven ends suggest she takes her own knives to her hair instead of going to a professional.
Her hands have been scarred long ago for the most part, the more recent scars indicate hand-to-blade fighting, while the older scars suggest she fought without gauntlets.
She rarely removes her plated boots, but if one were to see her bare legs below her knees, they would see scars from magical burns, puncture-scars, and would see her feet scarred from when she had had to fight barefoot or in thin shoes.
Overall, she is as tall as the average Orc woman, towering over Human women and easily eye to eye if not taller than Human men. To go with her height, she has the muscle to carry plate armor, even at her age, and the weight of a Human man.
Facial Features
The left tusk has also been burnt and marked from previous fights. Its twin on her right side has been chipped on the front-most side.
Her ears are unadorned, but the right ear looks like it had once had a piercing that had been partly ripped from her ear.
Her eyes are more a swamp-muddy dark hazel than the stark brown and green of most humans, and are one of the clearest marks of her human heritage along her shorter tusks.
She hasn't bothered with warpaint or makeup since her young adult years when she was trying to be more accepted by humans. The blood of herself or her own enemies that has decorated her face from the actions of battle are warpaint enough for her since not long after Ilneval took her into his ranks of paladins and chosen warriors.
Identifying Characteristics
Physical quirks
With a preference for wearing plate armor, she has a heavy step, though no longer runs in it.
She stands tall, preferring to dare any challenger to fight her over slouching as if defeated before drawing her weapon.
She carries her weapons along her waist with the exception of her shield, and her gear is usually left in camp or stored in Bags of Minor Holding carried along a bandolier across her chest.
Special abilities
Apparel & Accessories
The hat is all the more garish in combination with her preference for wearing green tunics and brown jerkins tucked into her plate boots.
Most of the time outside her camp, she wears plate armor and has four days' worth of under-armor layers in her travel packs to wear her under-armor at all times while on the road.
Her steel plate armor is scarred with scratches and burn marks, though dents and deep marks have been either corrected, reforged, or cause for replacement.
Specialized Equipment
She tries to avoid developing a special attachment to her current sword, but does mourn each one when it does break, or is lost to her.
She is, however, attached to her shield. It is a heavy heater shield with the heraldry of Ilneval on the front. It is worn with the guige (strap) crossing the opposite from her Bandolier of Bags of Minor Holding.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
For several years, Ferish wandered the wilderness of Theydim, wandering into town when she needed supplies and doing small helpful jobs to try and encourage the local guardsmen and lawkeepers to be more effective until one day, she stopped a lawman from grossly abusing his power against a poor family who could not afford to pay taxes.
The deity heard her warcry and touched her as she struck the lawman with her sword, turning the attack into a smite. Emboldened by her reconnection to the gods, the gods of a half she had tried to cut herself off for years while among Humans, she held the lawman accountable for abusing his power and negotiated for the family to work off their taxes in a more productive way than causing the family harm.
She traveled again as a Paladin, where the records of her activities fade after joining a rogue and heading into a small town called Oakenfield.
The records pick up again much later, and Ferish has been gathering warriors to her side as Theydim falls into civil war. Where the bickering humans seeking to be the heir to the High King throw around thin promises to the people, she leads her forces in to towns to purge and bring justice to those who needlessly break the laws - by blade or by word. She has trained law enforcement for the towns to defend their homes from raiders and bandits.
Gender Identity
Education
Her father was a bard (though not one of renown skill), so she learned of many tales and stories from him as she grew up in a clan that generally snubbed her, and he taught her some of her basic reading abilities. She mostly learned from experience, or from obsessively learning the stories, myths, and legends of people or places, and found some slightly greater acceptance from Humans.
As she took command of the far South-West Theyrim, she welcomed bards out of memory of her father and asked magic users to tell her about their magicks.
Her political education is mostly taking what she knows of from myths and legends, and applying them to her experience. Most of her laws focus on defending the whole, with reparasions being paid in labor or other aid to the community instead of punishment for most deeds, as she figured that if such punishments were generally acceptable for the legends, then they could be applied to mortals of today.
Her herblore is adequate enough for wandering the wilderness and not dying right away, and is mostly developed from personal experience or things she had learned from others informally.
Employment
Warband Leader.
Warchief
King of Theyrim
Military Advisor to the King of Theydim
Exile (independent nation absorbed back into Theydim, Ferish became a Fallen Paladin)
Traitor to Theyrim
Warchief of Ferinias (independent nation)
Accomplishments & Achievements
- Unifying the far South-West corner of Theydim and stabilizing the area
- Some other bits to be worked out in-lore
Failures & Embarrassments
- Fighting a Vampire Mage, she was pushed into a portal to this kingdom. When she woke up, she had lost her connection with the god she had been trying to follow, and as such, lost her Paladin abilities.
- Her habit of pushing or ramming doors when in ancient buildings or ruins, made more embarrassing if the door was absolutely openable or very breakable.
Mental Trauma
If connection is lost once again, she could resort to committing unspeakable acts until a God communicates once more with her. (Alignment Shift)
Intellectual Characteristics
She is not dumb, she can logically reason things, but sometimes when she speaks, what she says fails to properly convey her ideas. This was more obvious and a frequent frustration when she was younger.
She can play music, but declines to sing. When pressed into playing an instrument, she tends to play a woodwind instrument into a simpler tune. She will not be playing symphonic pieces because she never learned them.
She is smart enough to know that when she doesn't know something but knows someone who does and is within practical contact, she should ask that being for advise. She also knows legends are legends and not everything in them will work in the same way.
Morality & Philosophy
The weak are to be defended, like one's pets would be.
Lies and deceit are the tools of weak cowards.
Authority is to be respected, but that respect must be earned through strength of mind or body.
The Gods can be finicky, but are the founding stones to reality, and the source of absolute true power, and those who become legends are only legends because the Gods wish it.
Taboos
- Treating pets/the weak like garbage.
- Disregarding the Gods and their powers.
- Going against one's God or Goddess they had chosen or been chosen to follow.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
To be remembered for glorious deeds.
Savvies & Ineptitudes
Vices & Personality flaws
Personality Quirks
Stabbing people with a fork if they steal food in front of her.
If someone commits a minor crime in her presence, she can usually let the person go if there is no major harm to the whole, but has still smacked pickpockets and the like upside the head, even if they were assisting in her own quest.
Hygiene
She left when she realized she could never "clean" herself up enough to be accepted by her mother's family because of her orc blood. Her mother was hardly the paragon of cleanliness.
Social
Religious Views
Her rekindled ties to her orc heritage and gods has led to her being very devout in belief, even if not in practices.
She believes her actions and deeds will stand up before the scrutiny of Gruumsh and the gods of death when it is her time.
Social Aptitude
Her diplomatic skills are better when among Orcs, though some purists deride her for being "half-man."
Her blustering volume of noise can make her seem confident or overconfident, but losing her connection to her god the first time has scarred her into constantly trying to prove she is worthy of [Ilneval's] blessings.
She enjoys being among people, but not always the center of attention unless the conversation steers towards the direction of her "Great Deeds," but she is happy to regale the tales of the great deeds others had done in their mighty quests.
She learned many of her human mannerisms from her mother's human family, but the complexities of the various titles Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and others can carry eventually fall into a handful of titles she will use more often than names:
- Princess/Prince/Lordling - Anyone of at least seemingly high nobility, lordling being for children of nobility.
- Boss - Whoever she is working for.
- Her warband calls her this if they're the older veterans.
- Sneak - Anyone tied to criminals.
- Warrior - Any non-paladin melee user.
- Magic One - Druids, Mages, Wizards, Sorcerors.
- Knight - Paladins.
- Priest - Clerics, Priests, any not-Paladins touched by a God/dess or Gods/Goddesses
- Various nicknames- she means them well, though sometimes it is because she doesn't remember a person's name.
Mannerisms
"WHAT IS SUBTLETY?"
Hobbies & Pets
Listening to stories of glory, collecting books recording those legends, tracking down the truths to the legends.
Speech
Relationships
History
Ilneval took Ferish into his favor when she was without a god and after she had proven herself to careful in her considerations for action, and bold in her chosen actions.
Wealth & Financial state
She is dependant on blacksmiths to help her maintain her gear when she has a habit of picking fights with large beasts to test her strength, to the point she will locate blacksmiths and sell her scavenged gear to them before anyone else, and ensures the protection of blacksmiths when she is in town (not a racketeer scheme, but any and all thefts are resolved faster when she is in town or the town is part of her collective union).
- Common - can speak and read
- Orcish - can speak, read, write
- High Orc, can speak
- Dwarvish - can recognize the lettering as being the same as her original Orcish alphabet, but not the same letter sounds or words.
- Ancient - can read the lettering as original Common, but the words do not match her original Common
I love this character! What a rich history! I also appreciate characters who challenge the built-in assumptions of DnD. Ferish would fit well with the orcs of my world. I like her a lot.
She was one of the very first articles I wrote on WorldAnvil, and she was the one I basically built Corive for before throwing in other PCs I had rolled up and played in a table where Death Just Happened regardless of narrative or anything. She was also fun to recreate when I was trying to "back port" her to 3e/3.5e because there were rules on how a Paladin had to act and their values, but I wanted to see how much I could twist those rules to still follow the letter, if not the spirit.
I'm glad to hear she'd fit in your setting - I enjoyed taking the built-in frameworks and saying "You say I can't, but what if I could?"