Crom Cruach
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| [[Image:File:Crom.jpg|300px|]] | |
| Crom enjoying a fine sunny day in Cimerora! | |
| Crom Cruach | |
| Player: @Aiverzael | |
| Origin: | Natural |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Brute |
| Threat Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Lost to the ages. |
| Known Aliases: | Crom Teutates, Crom Cruach, 'Crommycakes' |
| Species: | Nephilim |
| Age: | Up there. A few thousand. |
| Height: | 9 feet; 2 inches. |
| Weight: | 2000+ lbs. |
| Eye Color: | Brown |
| Hair Color: | Brown |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | Amorite |
| Occupation: | Wandering Savage |
| Place of Birth: | Bashan |
| Base of Operations: | Currently the Rogue Isles. |
| Marital Status: | Willfully Unattached. |
| Known Relatives: | Extinct. |
| Known Powers | |
| Inhuman, Supernatural Strength | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Superhuman Regeneration. | |
| Equipment | |
| His own two fists. | |
| ' | |
As this page unfolds, it may feature content and writing that could be offensive to the views of some. Understand that this is Artistic License and not a genuine example of the player's own beliefs. Crom is a villainous, repugnant character and so I write and play him as such.
Contents |
Crom's Life and Times
Birth
Crom was born into an proud and brutal people known for their great strength, stature, and ferocity. The Amorites had managed to carve out a rather successful and flourishing pocket of land stretching across Mesopotamia. Under the Kingship of the legendary Og, the Amorites had managed to conquer nearly all lands west of the Euphrates River, including that of Syria and Canaan. Legends state that the Amorites tended to enjoy robust and enormous physiques, granted to them by congress with various 'unclean beings' and a physically demanding lifestyle. They were, for all intents and purposes, a race of raw, sordid men and vicious, domineering women. And above even that motley assembly, were the especially 'gifted' members of the race: the Nephilim. Bigger, larger, and far more dangerous than any man, it was the Nephilim that carried the mantle of legends. To be born into the blood of the Nephilim was to carry with it the demand that the child would grow to become a paragon among warrior and beast alike and a leader of men. They were universally feared by the people of that ancient world, who afforded them a burgeoning respect born of abject fear, for even a single monster of their number could butcher an entire city or village with relative ease. It was these vicious abominations of nature that Crom descended.
A nomadic and warlike people to be certain, it was standard practice to immediately induct the young and newborn into the rigors and demands of their violent society. Crom was hardly an exception to this rule. To ask him of his earliest memory from his life would garner the fractured memory of being torn from his screaming mother's womb and sprawled out for several days and nights upon a flat slab of stone just outside the city's walls. Narrowly escaping death by exposure, he would have been given only the merest rations to restore his infant strength before being inducted to further torments and atrocities.. all under the guise of 'tests of strength'. This was a meticulous training regime completed invested in the intent of stripping him of whatever capacity for compassion that might bloom up within his person and to ensure that he would be nothing less than an absolute beast of a man.
But even that early memory of neglect paled in comparison to the recollection of when he was first taught the valued lesson of self-preservation. To this day Crom breaks out in a cold-sweat as he recalls being hurled into a crampt, shallow pool of water and made to quite literally 'sink or swim'. And to further compound the terror and difficulty of this 'trial', Crom was hurled into that pool along with several dozens of his fellow tribesmates. It was only through sheer determination to live that the young Crom managed to survive this early brush with death. At only two years of age, Crom was made to beat, brutalize, and kill lest he succumb to the flailing fists of his fellows or the lingering pull of gravity tugging his ankles towards the bottom of the pool. By battering his fellow 'pledges' to death he was able to assemble a makeshift 'raft' comprised of the corpses of the deceased and ensure his own survival. He would have been given little respite from this trial, however, as he was immediately whisked away along with whatever other survivors to be formally inducted into the Amorites' brutal warrior-culture. There, he would be taught by veritable monsters to be nothing less than an engine of war.
War
The tyranny of King Og and the brutality of the Amorites was not to last, however. It came to pass that a great host of 'People of the Desert' arrived in Canaan in those days. There, they came to see and covet the beautiful lands of the Amorites' and their own inherent wickedness and depravity. They felt obliged to obliterate this foul people from the face of Promised Land, forever. Made both bold and bitter from their forty-years sojourn into the harsh, unforgiving desert wastes, the Israelites possessed a tenacity to match even that of the Amorites' themselves. And so it came to pass that the Amorites of King Og and the Israelites, led by Moses, came to clash in the rich, fertile lands of Bashan. As strong and as powerful as Og and his dreaded Nephilim were, they were unable to overcome the sheer determination and overwhelming number the Israelites fielded to battle and so their civilization was smashed to pieces and their lands taken as war-trophy by the exiled Israelites. After the conflict, it was written that, "We completely destroyed them, as we had done with Sihon king of Heshbon, destroying every city—men, women and children." Dt 3:7
While essentially true for the most part, the Israelites had failed to account for desertion among the Amorites. In the final battle of their long, bloody and protracted war, Crom, already a seasoned warrior known for his proclivity of "halving men with his bare hands", remembered his early lesson of self-preservation. Crom fled just as Moses took hold of his spear and pierced the Great King of Bashan through his ankle, felling him ingloriously before his own tribal host Amorites.
After the battle, Crom wandered far and wide across Mesopotamia and saw far more than he ever dreamed possible. He developed a powerful lust for wine and women in those days of his own Exodus, indulging these debased desires at every opportunity between whatever skirmish or war campaign he had sold himself towards. Little to his knowledge, this ennui would set the tone for much of the rest of his life.
Enslavement
Brash, proud, and overly arrogant, Crom was the very epitome of cockiness. Although inhumanly powerful and possessed of a growing notoriety among his contemporary warriors of the age, Crom was quickly falling in love with his own legend amongst his fellow mercenaries and brigands. And so, it was high-time that the fates conspired to teach him another lesson: Hubris.
It was during a stint of providing 'muscle' to a growing clan of thieves and murderers from Tyre, that he encountered a power that far eclipsed his own. Whilst raiding an outlying village of Jerusalem, the actions of the bandits came to the attention of none other but King Solomon himself. Having been out surveying the area for a new palace-residence in the 'country', the wise king heard tales of a clan of murderous men occupying one of his villages. Perhaps seeing this as a favorable distraction to the dull and boring past-time of surveying for a 'proper' home for one of the several-hundred wives of his harem, Solomon came upon the village with his private guards. The cheap thieves and rabid murderers proved to be little threat to Solomon and his cadre of trained, disciplined, and experienced soldiers.. until, that is, he noticed Crom among their throng.
Crom was sprawled out in the kitchen of a farmer's home guzzling from an enormous cask of wine, the fresh blood of the former owners and two of Solomon's guards still dribbling off his hands. The air of the farmstead was putrid with the scent of the rotted remains of the farmer and his family. Solomon quickly and easily subdued him with but a gesture and a word. Stammered that a mere man could wield so much power, Crom struggled against invisible force that restrained him shouting all manner of obscenities and threats to the 'interlopers' and the gray-haired man that led them.
Solomon, wise and he was, saw potential in the enormous example of the man. He took to the beast of a man and stamped him on the chest with his Seal with a strong punch, silencing Crom's protests. Crom was taken to Jerusalem and made to 'redeem himself for his sins' by 'assisting' in the construction of the greatest Temple of the Lord. And so it was for several years, that Crom was engaged in the draining act of hard, brutal labor. Crom was absolutely certain that he had moved his own share of mountains' worth of stone blocks during his 'service' to Jerusalem. Any semblance of an ego was crushed during this time in bondage, as each day he recalled how easily he was subdued by the 'Old Man' and his guards, building into a seething disgust and hatred for himself and the one that bound him. He was even further harried by the fact that he was but one of many monsters and beasts of legend the Wise-King had managed to subdue and press into service in building His Grand Temple. Chain-gangs of wicked, vile men and all manner of unsightly beast and demon worked day and night to construct the Holy of Holies and it's outlying walls, all united in their own self-hate and overwhelming misery at their current lot in existence.
Hubris was, however, usually a double-edged sword. Crom's sin of Pride seemed to have been contagious. As the years past, Solomon himself, the Wisest Man among Men, fell victim to adoration of his own example and pedigree and so gradually placed himself upon a higher pedestal than the Divine Benefactor of he and his people. The Temple's construction became just as much a testament to Solomon's own glory as it was to the sublime power of his God. And so, the minute cracks that formed in the moral fabric of his Reign eventually blossomed into veritable chasms that undermined the very nature of he and his people.
Crom's bondage was lifted when the Wise King finally passed on, resulting in an explosion of warfare to break out amongst his heirs and people. Not wishing to wait around any longer where he might become the next pawn to whatever other tyrant emerged from the bloody infighting of Israel, he vacated the city and entered the wilds of the world, where he would remain until the modern age.
(( More to come later!))
