Concept painting of Husk, an Orc of mixed lineage and sorceress with an emerging talent for rune-lore. I'll soon be taking her on a Norse-style journey into a vast, ancient forest in 'A Bronnhelm Tale.' Her spells are synonymous with her skin-art, while her back is marked with a mysterious tattoo of the three Norns or fate-weavers, a ward she does not remember receiving yet brings her luck. Perhaps one day she will discover her benefactor.
Late evening, under the glare of the surface sun, Husk was spared a return to the perpetual horror and strife of her homeland deep in the Iron Mountains. The Witch-Queen Valeris had unleashed the orc-tribes on Bronnhelm's territories but as night began to flood the land, Husk's brethren came to be ambushed and slaughtered by a warband of spear-men, patrolling from nearby Bronnhelm. Before she could be dragged to the corpse-fire the Druid, East-Wind, forbid any man to touch her and took the gray-skinned girl into his flock of outcasts. To him, Husk had been spared a battle-death and was thus miraculous, lucky, a child-curiosity, touched by fate-magic.
And East-Wind found his intuition to be correct, for he later observed her scribbling runes with discarded charcoal. One winter morning he caught her daubing complex bind-runes on his long-house with the blood of slaughtered live-stock. Over time, his kind heart tamed Husk's wild mind and between chores he would teach her a little more the secrets of rune-carving and the art of inking the skin with spells.
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