Temples have never been erected in Hoar’s name. Shrines to his honor do not dot the countryside. The prayers that reach him are curses, hate-filled epithets wishing pain and affliction on others. Hoar is the god of violent retribution, and even those who wish for his interposition shudder at the thought of meeting one of his devout adherents.
With leathery skin perpetually chapped from years of trudging through Faerûn’s snow-packed northlands, the giant form of Nazarov the Unbidden cut a dramatic and imposing silhouette whenever he returned to arctic outposts and habitations, seeking to replenish his meager stocks.
Unlike most paladins—standing tall and bright, embodying the very concept of goodness—Nazarov’s deeply lined face spoke of an inner horror, a darkness brimming within. Those few who looked up to meet the goliath’s gaze quickly found themselves glancing away, instinctually recoiling from whatever dwelled behind the dark orbs.
Though sightings of giant-kin were uncommon enough in the cold reaches, his full suit of adamantium—ebony plates which reflected an otherworldly green in candlelight—immediately announced his specific presence. Where he traveled, death was sure to follow, and word spread quickly when farmers and scouts first marked his approach to a town or settlement.
Forever silent about his origins and birth tribe, rumors abounded. Some said he was ostracized after ignoring the giant-kin rules about fair fights, others that he slew his own chieftain as an act of tribute to his patron deity. Whatever the reality, he did not concern himself with the idle babbling of urbane busybodies, and they were smart enough not to whisper their suspicions in his presence.
Though a seemingly tireless embodiment of mortal retribution and divine vengeance, many of the commoners and low-born respected him, if from a distance. He rarely had occasion to enact his lethal sentence on those who worked honest jobs—in most cases they simply possessed neither the means nor the opportunity to commit atrocities on the scale that would draw the hulking paladin—and as such felt safer knowing he was in town; a feeling only slightly overshadowed by their palpable unease at his immediate presence.
Unlike many of his calling—warriors in direct service to the divine—he did not carry a shield, rather solely wielding an enormous, tall-as-a-man greatsword that seemed to glow red when he drew it in service of his god’s will. It has been said that, in an effort to escape his vengeance, a noble countess caused a stampede of her prized horses, but that two mighty swings of Hoar’s Reach cleared the obstacle, Nazarov’s gait never faltering, never slowing.
What would possess a man to abandon his birth-tribe, worship a god of retribution from halfway across the known world, and spend his solitary and lonely life walking inexorably from task to task, hunting down those that had drawn the attention of his deity?
Whatever secrets the grim-faced goliath kept, they undoubtedly intruded upon his thoughts the same way he entered each new township—unbidden.
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