Hoarluk Doomshaper
- "There is no warlock more tied to the blood of trolls. The strength he brings in our blackest hour may carry us through. If we endure, it will be a testament to the Doomshaper's works."
- ―Chief Madrak Ironhide discussing his rival after the attempt on his life
The Dhunian shaman Hoarluk Doomshaper is a walking legend who has explored the face of Caen for over a hundred years. Though some elders are older than Doomshaper, few are so vigorous and irrepressible. Hoarluk wades into battle with a made fortitude and refuses to dire regardless of the punishment inflicted by the weapons of his enemies. Many of the younger kin who have watched him in battle are convinced he is completely impervious to pain and has learned to regenerate like a full-blood troll.
Hoarluk has an obsessive fascination with the mystical power of the blood tie shared by the troll breeds, and he believes in the superiority of troll blood over the diluted substance in the veins of other races. Resentment and awareness of the waning of his species fuels his scorn of humanity. Even in the Gnarls outsiders have encroached on trollkin lands to steal what is theirs by ancient right, and Doomshaper intends to strike back with a vengeance. The time for war is overdue.
Few are willing to speak against Doomshaper, and those who disagree do so quietly. The mighty shaman is prone to outbursts of temper and scathing indictments of those he consideres foolish. Hoarluk has challenged countless elders to duels and has never yet been defeated, cruelly humiliating those who fall beneath his staff. Many consider him insane, yet even his detractors agree Dhunia chose the old shaman and try to avoid his wrath. He has spent his life working to embolden the trollkin of the Gnarls against human interlopers.
Even before recent troubles, Doomshaper travelled from kriel to kriel gathering recruits and leadings strikes against any humans or other species foolish enough to plunder the Gnarls. He has obliterated at least two logging companies that began to poach beyond the marked trees and slaughtered no less than three tribes of bogrin who attempted to settle near his home. His acts have put him at odds with more temperate trollkin, like Chief Ironhide of the Thornwood, until the druids' recently foiled plot forced and uneasy alliance. Though Hoarluk is not a chief, he carries tremendous influence over all the tribes inhabitating the length and breadth of the Gnarls, the mightiest surviving bastion of trollkin warriors. No chief of the Gnarls dares ignores his words.
The wizened elder has spent decades recovering lost krielstones and deciphering ancient runes. He feels the weight of his ancestors on his shoulders where he keeps a collection of transcribed lore. This interest is not academic but the key to great untapped powers the shaman intends to recover and use as a weapons in the battles ahead.
By his lifelong effort and force of will, Doomshaper has gained unequalled power over full-blood trolls. He has spoken to all troll breeds, and they listen to him as if he were kin. Bearing bloodstones those brutes recognize as sacred, he has reinforced ancient pacts between species. Hoarluk earned immortality when he strode unarmed into the forest and returned with several dire trolls in tow. The beasts had never heeded the requests of their less cousins, and word of this deed has spread to every tribe, for these creatures have become the greatest weapons of the desperate trollkin.
Trolls are the chosen wrath of Dhunia, and this is the age where they will make their stand. Doomshaper enters every battle as if it were armageddon and as if the salvation of all troll-kind hinges on outcome. Some elders whisper that the roots of the fire burning in his eyes trace back to the death of his daughters killed decades ago, but Hoarluk does not speak of these things. Whatever drives him, the emergence of the Doomshaper from the forest of the Gnarls is a dire omen for those who have earned the wrath of the trollkin.