Thorek Duskworn
A vignette introducing Thorek Duskworn, the Dwarf cleric.
He was a young priest tending to a fevered child. He prayed, begged, reached for the divine. Yet nothing came. The heavens had gone silent. The child died in his arms, and with her death, his faith.
He cast aside his vestments, denounced the gods, and bound the child’s doll around his neck as his only symbol.
For decades he wandered as an apostate, healing through herbs, poultices, and stubborn will. A healer without blessing, a priest without faith. He donned sword and shield and survived as best he could.
He walks the broken world as both heretic and healer, haunted by the child he failed and guided only by the fragile flame he has found in himself. It has led him to the forests, where he meets a badly injured Svirfneblin. In the face of death, his hands burn with light again.
Not from any god, but from within.
He now believes divinity was never the gods’ alone. Mortals have always carried it.