Gwarin the Red
In the soot-stained annals of Khaz Gurdrin's ceaseless border wars, few dwarven warriors struck more fear into the hearts of enemy clans than Gwarin the Red. This grizzled veteran's fearsome monikers - "Goblin's Bane," "The Hammerfall," and "South Gate's Wrath" - echoed with a blood-curdling resonance that sent even the most stalwart foes fleeing into the tunneled depths.
Now well into the winter years of his sixth decade, Gwarin's once ruddy complexion has faded to a weather-beaten mask of scars and scowling creases. His thinning sheaf of crimson hair and full beard have greyed into a flinty iron-rust hue, their frayed ends carrying whispers of the hundreds of goblin, orc and troll braids once woven into their coarse strands as grisly trophies. Gwarin's body bears the reminders of over 40 years of thankless, subterranean campaigns - from the curved stump of his right horn to the vicious gash bisecting his left cheek, all the way down to the slight hitch in his heel as it drags with each punishing step.
Born the second son of Slulin Heartbreaker, a renowned siegesmith and hero of the Dourden Uprisings, young Gwarin was compelled into martial service almost from the moment he could first grip a war pick. He spent his formative decades in a perpetual cycle of long tours at the frontlines, brief respites wandering the oppressive husks of Khaz Gurdrin's half-ruined Deeps, and an endless parade of gut-churning ceremonies bidding farewell to the latest crop of fallen warriors hauled back from the Vermin Breaches.
Any youthful notions of glory and conquest were quickly excised from Gwarin's being by the brutal realities of eternal underground warring. Existence became an endless haze of bloodied battlefields, back-breaking drills, raucous drinking halls and sleepless kits awaiting the next summons back to the ritualized slaughters. All while New Khaz Gurdrin's furnaces raged on, endlessly churning the captured and fallen into fresh warpike shafts, broken-toothed cogs and corroded buckles for the never-ending grind of industry and attrition.
It was an ogre's jagged-toothed maw that ultimately took Gwarin's warfighting days in the summer of his 43rd year. In a desperate laststand amid the shattered spires of the South Gate complex, the crimson-cloaked warrior threw himself into the breached ramparts with what remained of his devastated regiment. Even as his guts were torn asunder in a welter of arterial spray, Gwarin fought on - jabbing and gouging with the serrated remains of his broken hammer until a savage backhand from the ogre's tree-trunk arm sent his shattered body tumbling from the slick embankments. When the dwarven reserves finally routed the ogres and secured the Gate hours later, they found Gwarin amid a cairn of nearly 60 goblin and ogre corpses...barely clinging to life but still bellowing out a hoarse battlecry.
By the time the grievously wounded warrior awoke amid New Khaz Gurdrin's sickly efforts several weeks later, Gwarin's leg had withered into a grotesque parody of its former self. The Temple Artificers offered only to amputate the gangrenous limb entirely, something the proud dwarf spumed outright. With a belly churning from the effort, he spat out the old dwarven epithet, "Call no shieldmaiden mine daughter e'er again if I let you cull this warhorse thus!"
Since that ignominious moment, Gwarin has lived out his years as a respected companion to the younger generation of New Khaz Gurdrin's defenders. His legendary exploits on the battlefield afford the aged dwarflord a begrudging aura of gravid prestige. But most know it is his keen strategic mind that bested even master tacticians in sieging and defending against the endless onslaught of humanoid raiders over five decades.
These days, Gwarin whiles away the hours regaling wide-eyed youthful squires and officers with his scar-stories and critiquing New Khaz Gurdrin's latest defensive schematics from the comfort of his stout oaken chair. His wry witticisms and mordant observations on siege warfare remain as indispensable as his emotional anchor during the most harrowing sorties. Despite his palsied limp and perpetual facial sneer of agony, ones sees glimmers of the old, feral warrior resurface in Gwarin's remaining eye as he conjures memories of the sacked breaches and fallen brothers-in-arms.
Most nights, Gwarin can be found in the recesses of his candlelit study - fortifying his strained nerves with hearty pulls from an everpresent flagon of the Head Mason's deepest stock. Between drinks, he meticulously maintains the few worldly treasures adorning the cramped chamber's soot-stained walls - a grizzly tapestry depicting his legendary last stand, the remains of his ruined warhammer mounted on an intricate wrought iron plinth, and his greatest prize... a grotesque trophy-crown fashioned from the sharpened fangs of goblin kings and orcish warlords he's slain in personal battle over the decades.
The longer one studies that leering, crude ossuary diadem, the more the bestial, deep-socketed snarl etched into Gwarin's expression seems to mirror the crudely knitted fangwork itself. A subtle reminder that even the most exhausted of warhounds rarely shakes the scent of the hunt from their nostrils.
