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Iron & Blood
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Kaurik, the Warlord
Kaurik the warlord was the youngest child of the house of Ush, a small duchy outside the Blood Swamps. For many years, Kaurik’s ancestors ruled the duchy justly. Kaurik’s great-grandfather, however, angered the gods when he supplanted their idols with his own graven image and brought down a curse upon the family. The other nobles shunned Kaurik’s family, and each succeeding generation became more inbred and rife with disease and madness.
A teenage Kaurik, his mind already betraying signs of his family’s degenerate ways, fell in love with his sister Agath. The young woman, however, became obsessed with a knight of the castle guard, and drowned herself in the swamp when the soldier rejected her. Grief-stricken, young Kaurik retrieved her body and preserved her remains. Kaurik’s older brother, Magnor, claimed vengeance by slaying every fifth man in the duchy.
Weary of Kaurik’s family’s tyranny, the people of the land and the few remaining soldiers of the garrison rose up in anger and burned the castle down. Every family member died in the fire except for young Kaurik, who escaped into the swamps. Surviving in the wilds of the swamp, Kaurik quickly grew more and more feral.
His fetish for the dead grew stronger and stronger, and soon he began to claim his first victims and fashion their skin into masks for him to wear. In a matter of months the villagers spoke in whispers of the Curse of the Swamp. As he matured, he grew into a tough, cunning fighter even as his mind became more and more warped. A true madman, Kaurik attacks with a berserk and manic rage unseen in most warriors.
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