Skok Duskblight
“If Chuthar ever wishes to grant me a boon, it would be the removal of this darkness within me.” Skok poked at the flames of his small campfire. They rose higher and pushed back the shadows of night around him.
You would be nothing without me, a voice whispered in his mind, chasing the warmth from the fire.
“Then 'nothing' would be a blessing indeed.”
But we have accomplished great things together, you and I—conquered mighty warriors, flayed souls alive. Your god holds you back. Forsake him, and let the power of chaos grow within you.
“My god is the last bastion that holds my sanity intact.” Skok gripped one of his bone tablets and closed his eyes. “Chaos has no power over me.”
I grow stronger every day, with every life you take. You cannot deny that you need the power of chaos.
Skok's chants grew louder as he rocked back and forth, drowning out the voice inside him. When he finished, the fire was all but dead. A single faint ember glowed in the night.
“I've seen the darkness of your world.” Skok licked the dryness from his lips. “I'll not let it live in my realm. In time, Chuthar will hear my prayers, and you'll be banished forever.”
Laughter echoed up from a deep chasm inside Skok's head. When the voice spoke again, it was faint and seemed to come from a great distance. When next you face danger, you'll call upon the power of chaos to save you.
And then it was gone, and he was alone.
A shiver ran along Skok's spine. He poked at the ember and leaned down to blow upon it. The tentacles of his twisted visage wriggled across his chest as a new flame danced to life. He pulled his cloak about him and looked up at the night sky full of stars.
“Maybe I'll let death take me next time, and I'll end this misery for the both of us,” Skok said.
The tentacles fell still. Once a simple apprentice to the druid Ugaell, Skok Duskblight is perhaps the most powerful human shaman in all of Praetoria. One day, while collecting herbs deep in the forest for his master, he came across the remnants of a chaos rift, its spinning vortex frayed and cracking at the edges. Being a curious young man, he approached the purple wisps of the dying portal. The eldritch power sparked a deep longing within him. A voice called from within, urging him on.
As Skok edged closer, the force of the rift dragged him violently forward. He stumbled and fell to the forest, and his head and shoulders vanished into the blackness beyond. Darkness engulfed him, and a mad buzzing filled his head. He screamed as an incredible pain tore at his face. It felt like his skin was melting, deforming, twisting into something new and horrible.
Fighting against the pull of the rift, he dragged himself free of its hungry, spinning maw… but not before the chaos powers within had twisted his features beyond recognition and possessed him with a foul entity. Now he wears the skull of a forest stag to hide the horrors that afflict him, though eldritch tentacles still wriggle from beneath the mask.
The small bone tablets Skok carries harness and stabilize his newfound chaotic power. Each has a single rune etched upon it, a prayer to Chuthar, God of Nature and the Fey, asking forgiveness for the blasphemous magic that courses through his body. Most of the time he can control the dark urges that nag at him, but there are occasions when the chaos entity takes over and he becomes that which he fears more than anything else: a part of the monster caged deep inside of him.