Gara The Whelp

There was once a pathetic whelp named Gara who believed himself to be so strong. His arrogance was so great that he would often neglect his training regimen; he thought that because he was naturally bigger than all the other younglings that he had no need for learning more refined combat techniques or training his reflexes to their finest. Indeed, he would laud his innate immensity over his peers, beating and bullying them every chance he had, all the while proclaiming that he was "the greatest there ever was." Gara boasted this in spite of the fact that the whelp was no match for his much bigger and stronger father Colgor who did not once so much as hesitate to give Gara a thorough beating whenever he stepped out of line. One fateful day Colgor just so happened to overhear his pompous son bragging about his own greatness to all his little friends, and that day he beat Gara more savagely than ever before.

Fists and fury were all Gara could feel as he was punched, kicked, smashed, and slammed into a paltry mound of blood and tears on the ground. "You think you are so great?" Colgor barked as his fist came crashing into his son's soft and swollen, tearstained cheek. Gara laid there on the dirt floor as a rich crimson pool formed around him. "If you are so great then stand up!" His father ordered, but try as he might, Gara's arms and legs were broken and would not budge. "You are pathetic, a disgrace!" His father shouted as he tramped on Gara's right hand with a heavy foot; there was a loud crackling as his carpals and metacarpals all broke apart, and then again his father continued to grind them with his foot until each piece was fractured and Gara felt as though his entire hand was filled with shattered glass.

"How in the world could you possibly think-" His father began, but before Colgor could finish his thought, along with blood and bile, Gara barely managed to spit out the words, "It's not fair." His father paused allowed his son to pant for a moment before continuing, "you are over four times bigger than me and I am just a child..." he droned, "It's not fair." With this, Colgor began to roar with thunderous laughter. Gara trembled in fear while his father's whole body uproariously quaked and he wiped the mirthful tears from his eyes. "A boy your age still thinking life is supposed to be fair. That's precious enough to warm even a lich's heart. Tell you what, I will let you rest up until the next full moon, and that next dawn we will hunt."

Gara remained in his bed for weeks, resting and healing until the full moon night, wondering what was to come. He had never been on a hunt before, and among orcs, the first kill is a very important rite of passage. Eventually, the full moon came and Gara had made a significant recovery. His hand was still shattered and one shin was still broken, but he was able to hobble along well enough. Before sunrise, his father handed him a jagged obsidian dagger and the two of them went on their way to the nearby woods. As the tread, Colgor showed Gara the boar tracks on the soft dirt, and he taught him how to follow their trails of broken twigs and branches through the brush. Once the two of them came across a den, his father instructed Gara on how to weave together a basket from the wild sturgrass so that he could set a simple trap. Gara winced and quivered with pain every time he needed to move one of his shattered fingers, but he held back his tears. After a silent and excruciating ordeal, the woven basket was complete. His father was so proud of Gara that he gave him a pat on the back before going about the rest of the process of arming and baiting the trap.

The two hid away in the undergrowth until at last a young boar could not resist the scent of the ambroberries that Colgor had gathered as bait. Sure enough, the boar sniffled and sniffed ever closer to the sturgrass basket until the trap was sprung. The basket came crashing down over the boar and a heavy stone came tumbling down on top to hold it in place. Colgor rushed over to help hold the basket in place as the boar panicked and bucked within. Gingerly, Gara walked over as the boar continued to struggle, goring its tusks through the side of the basket to break free; however, even as the beast managed to burst out the side, Colgor was ready and grabbed hold of its tusks and wrestled it to the ground, driving its snout into the mud.

Gara steadied his dagger, prepared to strike, but his father shook his head and tersely stated , "Not yet." The boar continued to struggle in Colgor's grasp, jerking and twisting itself in unnatural ways in a desperate attempt to break free, but all of its efforts were to no avail. It tried and failed, squealing and reeling for almost an hour straight before it was too exhausted to continue and just lay there panting miserably. At this point, Colgor grappled the beast's skull and raised its head from the mud. He spoke into its eyes, "What's the matter? Don't you want to live?" He shook the boar but it did nothing in response as it had already given in entirely to despair. "Pathetic. Simply pathetic," Colgor muttered before turning to Gara.

"My son, look upon this forlorn beast and understand that this is the true nature of this world. It struggled and it failed and now it will perish. It was not strong enough and there is nothing more to it than that. It does not matter that its pathetic bestial mind was no match for the ingenuity of our trap or that its weak muscles were no match for these fine examples of orcish supremacy that you see before you," he flexed. "It was not fair by design and now this creature has known the misery of defeat and will die. In this world, there are beings born far greater than us. There are mighty titans as colossal as the mountains who can crush us between their thumbs, and there are feeble mages who can chant a few magic words to call down all the lightning in heaven upon us and reduce us to nothing but ash. We must always work to become stronger. This boar did not train well enough and now it will be killed, it has no more chances, but so long as you are still alive you can always get stronger. Any day that you are not getting stronger is a day wasted, remember these words well my son."

Gara nodded and Colgor then abruptly released his grip on the boar. For a brief moment, boar's heart was reinvigorated with hope, and with a burst of strength it scrambled to its feet, but before it could dash away into the bushes, it felt a heavy weight upon its rump and then a sharp pain upon it's back as Gara had leaped on top of it and began boring his dagger into its spine. The hapless boar's hooves gave one last helpless buck before its whole body fell limp. The young orc leaned forward and then finished the beast off swiftly and mercifully by driving his blade straight into its brain through its eye. Colgor quietly beamed with delight and then tersely uttered the name "Garrok." Garrok and Colgor carried the carcass home and prepared a lavish meal in celebration. From that day on, Garrok trained harder than ever before and never once boasted about his strength, even as he developed one of the finest warriors the orcish race had ever known, and that is why he went down in history as Garrok the Meek.