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. 

Note: I started this in Notes on my iPhone in October of 2016; it was last edited in December of 2017. Tolkien has influenced the language, and Dungeons and Dragons has influenced the characterization. I think of him as half orc. (DL, Sept. 18, 2021)

He moved through the deep woods like one long acquainted with dark places, for so he was. As always, he carried with him the same sort of kit he had carried in the armies of Dar Sheiling, although time and experience had taught him the best substitions to make in keeping with his current life.

The pair of Dar Sheiling javelins–short, heavy, cruelly barbed, and cast in the hundreds by the front ranks to break the shock of enemy assaults–he had replaced with a single, long spear. The hard, heavy, iron-soled boots so apt for wearing out many leagues on imperial roads and for treading down the fallen he had replaced with supple doe-hide boots for more nimble footing and greater stealth in dangerous places. “Besides,” he said, “If they fail me in battle, better to lose my feet all at once than to grind them to stubs day after day.”