Note: I started this in Notes on my iPhone in December of 2017, the same time I was polishing the fantasy ranger vignette. The last edit was made in April of 2020. I’m sure the bulk of the writing was done in 2017. I think Brorig and the ranger are the same character, although Brorig may be a hermit-style monk who lives in the Underdark. (DL, Sept. 18, 2021)

“I know nothing of my parents. One of them was an orc; the other was a human. That’s it. Earlier than I can remember, I was taken by the Bloodskull clan in a raid, and I was raised by one of their war chiefs as a Bloodskull warrior. By the time of my Gurk’cha ceremony at fourteen, I had already been on many raids and spilled much blood. I do not like to remember those days. Orcs live like wild beasts, and I lived as an orc. 

In the summer of my seventeenth year we were raiding in the lowlands of Mortgwyern, camping in the deep woods by day, taking what plunder we could by night. I was as bloodthirsty as the rest. One day as most of us slept we were ambushed by rangers from the provincial guard. Every orc was slaughtered, but I was netted and taken alive to serve as a thrall in the provincial coal mines. 

For two years I was a slave in the mines and lived in the dark and the dust with outlaws and outcasts. 

It was in that place of despair and death that I first began to live.