Oskar Meilil

The Meilil tribe found Oskar as a baby. It was never known why he was found alone on the northern edge of the Dark Scars. Without kingdom or clan, the baby had little chance in the untamed Wildlands. “Humanity” means something other than cities, religions, or kingdoms, so the Meilil tribe took the child in. Nameless, they picked the name as “Oskar” had been the only dwarf the tribe had ever known, and it seemed as good a name as any.

The Meilil are dedicated protectors of the numerous dinosaurs living in the Wildlands. While they tolerated herding and hunting, poachers and rustling were seen as a plague to be wiped out. The polluting plague of civilization was the reason why dinosaurs had been driven to extinction, and if left unchecked would spread even as far as the Wildlands.

Oskar was not raised with any particular pair of Meilil. It was decided that having any one family keep him would deny Oskar a sense of clan, something even the barbarians knew was central to dwarfs. This allowed him to cultivate all the skills of the community including leather and stonework, hunting, trapping, riding, tracking, and battle.

Oskar may be a dwarf by birth, but his heart and soul are those of a wild, untamed warrior of the wild. He fights not for gold or glory but for the thrill of the hunt, the bonds of brotherhood. As a taller dwarf, most didn’t immediately recognize him as not human. He wears the pelts of beasts he’s hunted, wields an axe passed down from his clan’s chieftain, and carries with him both the might of the mountains and the unbreakable spirit of the barbarian life.

A dwarf among humans is a difficult burden to live with. The first 50 years seemed to be the ideal life, but the fact that Oskar never seemed to age when all his peers grew old, made him different, even if he was a barbarian. It was like he was a vampire, forever the same in a world of constant change. It was for this reason that Oskar made the painful decision to leave the Meilil. To leave the tribe seemed unnatural, but is this natural?

The petrified forest had a call to Oskar that was hard to describe, as if there was something calling in the rocks. So much seemed right. The cold stone of the forest and the fight to stay alive. But the solitude of the forest ultimately didn’t sooth the itch for combat. The life of a cleric or monk wasn’t for him.

The occasional incursion into the forest went from being rather rare to quite common. When his favorite raptor-steed was killed by poachers, Oskar vowed to unleash the rage on those who would destroy the natural world. Although he has a desire for self-discovery, he holds a deep resentment towards other dwarfs because of the abandonment.