Harla Chainbreaker
Harla Coppersmith (a.k.a. Chainbreaker)
"I will raise them up, break their chains, restore their pride, and remind them what it means to be free. And then you will realize that you can't lash us all." - Harla Coppersmith, after the Battle of the Irminsul
Physical Description
Body Features
Pale grey fur, small curled horns.
Facial Features
Near the end of her life, Harla had so many scars on her face and upper body that almost no hair remained.
Identifying Characteristics
Pierced horns with broken chains embedded into the bone.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Harla was born to a family of coppersmiths owned by the Turanniel dynasty of the windy steppes. Coppersmithing being a strong and useful trade, her family was treated better than many of her kin by their elven overlords, but she still grew up witnessing and experiencing physical, emotional, and psychological abuse. One of thousands in a wide, sky-open slave camp overseen by several dozen Turanniel soldiers and a small group of sorcerers, Harla's life was destined to be short, violent, and ignominious.
Harla grew into her trade, becoming strong and skilled at smithing. Her skill is what saved her in her early teenage years, as the Turanniel put her entire tenement to the sword in retaliation for an attempted escape by a small group of goblin slaves that she and her family had never even interacted with. Dozens of orcs and goblins were dragged out of their hovels at dawn and staked to the ground, killed via dagger-cuts to the stomach. Stomach wounds kill slowly, and the victim suffers for hours or even days; Harla, spared the slaughter along with several of the other smiths and ironworkers, was made to continue her daily tasks even as she watched her mother, father, and siblings slowly bleed out in the centre of the camp, wailing for hours as they died.
It was years before she could sleep a full night without hearing their cries. Her anger grew, but she dedicated herself to her work to escape the lash, as all of her people perpetually attempted to do. The Irminsul looming vaguely on the horizon was a constant reminder of her servitude, as well as the futility of escape.
This and a hundred other atrocities were, ultimately, not quite enough to push her into action. As the years passed, she grew strong and resourceful, excelling at her art and being granted more and more freedom, though she was still little better than a dog on a leash. It was not until her twenty-eighth year that she received the push that she needed.
The Turanniel reassigned one of their noble scions to Harla's production camp. An unnamed backwater on the windy steppes, it was no place for any other than the most disgraced and incompetent of nobles, despite the importance of the camp's metal and glassworking output. This noble's name was Eranolas, and he was a monster. Given complete command over the camp, ostensibly to learn discipline, Eranolas merely used the slave population for his own whims.
The daily schedule was disrupted due to his personal needs. Food was taken away from the slaves to satisfy Eranolas' decadent parties that began to be thrown with great regularity. The conditions of the camp, already depressingly poor, grew worse. Due to the irregular hours and lack of nutrition, the slaves began to fall behind on their production targets, which was when the executions began. Eranolas, have no experience managing projects, began publicly executing the lowest-producing individual from each trade, at the end of every week. One smith, one potter, one glassmaker, and one stonecarver would be hung by their arms, have their stomachs cut open, and be left to bleed out for as long as it took. Their bodies would not be removed until the following week, when the next victim was made to remove the previous corpse before being executed in the same way.
Unbelievably, even the coming of Eranolas was not the push Harla needed. The slave population, born and bred into servitude, were not geared to rebellion. They had all heard the stories of failed slave revolts, and had all seen their friends and families be killed by their elven overlords. In all her years, Harla had never even seen anyone strike an elf, be it goblin, orc, or minotaur. She'd never even seen the elves do anything resembling manual labour, besides physical abuse and murder, but that was always undertaken in groups.
As such, she was as surprised as anyone when she caved Eranolas' face in with her fists.
On a frigid winter day several years after his arrival, Eranolas called the camp together. He had a reward to bestow, he had said. He was so drunk he could barely speak, and he swayed as he addressed the assembled host. He separated the males from the females of each species, and and offered his men his choice of the women. Rape was not uncommon in slave camps, but to make such a public affair of it was appalling even to most of Eranolas' surprised guards. Sadly, this likely would have been just another of the many atrocities committed against the northkin if he had not selected Harla for himself.
He ordered her to the podium, which she obeyed. He ordered her to publicly remove her clothing. She obeyed. He ordered her to turn around. She did not obey. In an impulsive burst of rage, she wrenched her left hand out of her manacles, tearing three of her own fingers off in the process, and swung the now-free manacle by its chain into Eranolas' head with all of her strength, killing the drunken monster immediately.
The next few hours are a blur, but she remembers a lot of blood. Ultimately, all the elves were dead along with over half the camp's population of former slaves. Unknown to her at the time, she had just started The War of Tusk and Horn.
Gender Identity
Female
Sexuality
Harla took many lovers, all male, but was never handfasted to any of them.
Education
Harla was taught smithing from her parents. She was taught navigation by the Blue Sky tribe, and leadership from the Mammoth tribe. She learned guile and patience from the goblins of Stonetusk, and brutality from the orcs of the windy steppe. She learned the Imperial tongue during her years in the Protectorate, and she learned the ways of The Unchained Storm from ascetic minotaur living deep in the Rainlands.
Employment
Slave. Smith. Rebel. Refugee. Hunter. Warrior. Forger of Nations. Hero. Harla has been many things in her life.
Accomplishments & Achievements
Liberation of the northern lands from their oppressors over the course of a twenty-year-long conflict.
Failures & Embarrassments
History tells of great generals, praising their long records of victory. Harla is not one of those generals. The War of Tusk and Horn very nearly failed on numerous occasions. Harla lost many large battles before she and her forces began to win and claim territory.
Mental Trauma
Harla, like most of her generation, was raised in squalous slave camps to psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. She has endured it all, but not without scars. Her closest allies spoke of how she rarely slept through the night, and would regularly collapse into sobbing heaps after battle.
Intellectual Characteristics
Harla's strength is a brilliant spatial mind. She could look at anything, be it a piece of metal or a battlefield, and map out all the necessary steps to achieve one's goals. On the battlefield, this translated into her being a brilliant general. In peacetime, it allowed her to create breathtaking weaponry and sculptures of metal and stone.
Morality & Philosophy
Harla believed that every individual should be treated according to the content of their character, regardless of race or place of origin. She did not always think this, however; those who remember the early years of the war remember her violent, show-no-quarter tendencies. Her experiences in Fogdale made her re-evaluate her position, however, as did the Battle for the Irminsul.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
Freedom for all the True Folk.
Savvies & Ineptitudes
Terrible at anything scholarly. Particularly likes fishing.
Alignment
Chaotic Neutral
Current Location
Ethnicity
Honorary & Occupational Titles
Chainbreaker, Uniter of Tribes, The Grey Storm
Life
28 AT
44 PR
Circumstances of Birth
Harla Coppersmith was born entirely unremarkably to a family of coppersmiths owned by the elven Turanniel family.
Circumstances of Death
Chainbreaker died of old age on a small fishing villa in the Rainlands, years after the war ended.
Birthplace
Unnamed slave camp on the Windy Steppes
Children
Current Residence
Dead
Gender
Female
Eyes
Brown, large
Hair
Shaggy, grey
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Dark grey
Height
1.85 m
Weight
220 kgs
Aligned Organization
Other Affiliations
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