Onrack

Name: Onrack

Pseudonyms: Onrack the Broken

Age: approx. 300 000 years

Race: T'lan Imass

Appearance: --

Further info: A clanless T'lan Imass of Logros.

Biography

Before the Ritual of Tellann

In the time before the Ritual of Tellann, Onrack was the Bonecaster of his clan. He stepped down from this position and was replaced by Absin Tholai. Onrack was also a talented artist, painting mostly on cave walls.

Onrack was wedded to the woman who would eventually become the Whirlwind Goddess. While adultery was fairly common amongst the tribes of the Imass, Onrack fell in love with Kilava Onas. Shortly before the Ritual of Tellann, he painted an image of her on a cave wall, which captured a part of her soul and made her timeless, able to defy the Ritual. Onrack's wife lead the tribe into denouncing Onrack and Kilava. Onrack accepted the accusations but Kilava murdered her entire clan, except for Onos T'oolan. Onrack would have been exiled on the eve of the Ritual, but an alliance of four Jaghut Tyrants arose in the area and the ritual exile never occured. Onrack joined the Ritual of Tellann along with the rest of the Imass and became a T'lan Imass of the Logros.

During the time of the Human First Empire, the Logros T'lan Imass intervened when the humans attempted the Beast Ritual. The clans under Logros hunted and killed as many of the insane soletaken and d'ivers as they could find. All the surviving members of Onrack's clan were destroyed in the fighting with the shapeshifters, leaving Onrack clanless. 

Pursuit of the Renegades

Onrack was among the forces Logros sent in pursuit of renegade T'lan Imass, the Seven of the Dead Fires A large group of T'lan Imass, including Onrack, were scattered in the Nascent by the sudden arrival of torrential water into the warren fragment. The water's arrival was most likely caused by Rhulad Sengar when striking an alliance with the Kenryll'ah. Onrack was seperated from the other T'lan Imass and unable to escape the Nascent. In his explorations through the Nascent, he came upon and liberated the Shorn and chained Trull Sengar. The two continued traveling through the Nascent and later came upon the Nascent's enormous statues of the Deragoth. Noting that two of the statues were alive, Onrack destroyed one of the statues, which in turn caused the other to shatter and the two Deragoth emerged. The two Deragoth attacked Onrack and ripped off one of his arms before departing.

Onrack and Trull Sengar continued traveling through the Nascent to a nearby gateway into another warren, Kurald Thyrllan. After they used a moranth munition to disrupt the wards guarding the gate, four Tiste Liosan, led by Jorrude, emerged from the gate. After an initially hostile encounter, the Liosan agreed to work with Onrack, Trull and four more recently-arrived T'lan Imass, including the clan leader Ibra Gholan and the Bonecaster Monok Ochem. The assembled groups worked together to fashion a ritual to open a portal to leave the Nascent. As the ritual was completed, Onrack swore his life to Trull Sengar and affirmed it using Trull's blood, while Ibra Gholan knocked the Liosan Seneschal unconscious. The T'lan Imass went into Kurald Thyrllan to kill the avatar of Osseric presiding within that warren. Onrack and Trull returned to Seven Cities, as did the four Tiste Liosan.

Now in Seven Cities, Trull and Onrack continued pursuit of the renegade T'lan Imass. They first followed them to flint quarries on the northeast edge of the Jhag Odhan where they had a brief encounter with Karsa Orlong. Onrack used the dying fire made by Karsa in the nearby caves to attach to himself the arm of 'Siballe the Unfound, severed by Karsa a short time prior. Trull and Onrack then continued pursuing the renegades and, upon realizing the renegades' destination, awaited the pursuing Ibra Gholan and Monok Ochem to catch up. Through Monok Ochem, Onrack informed Logros that the renegades sought the First Throne to place a mortal Tiste Edur upon it as a pawn of the Crippled God. Logros accepted that Onrack was not a foe, and together Ibra Gholan, Monok Ochem, Onrack and Trull Sengar traveled through the warren of Tellann to the First Throne. At the First Throne they met Panek, Apt and Minala and joined their defence of the First Throne.

Journey to the Refugium

Onrack after the 2nd Journey into the Nascent -

Quick Ben saw Onrack’s chest swell with an indrawn breath that seemed without end.

The head then tilted down once more.

And the wizard stared into a face of smooth, wind-burnished skin above a thick, knotted beard.  Eyes of green glittered beneath the heavy ridge of the brow.  Twin streams of cold air then plumed down from Onrack’s broad, flattened, oft-broken nose.

From Trull Sengar,  “Onrack?  By the Sisters, Onrack!”

The small eyes, buried in epicanthic folds, shifted.  A low, reverberating voice rumbled from the flesh and blood warrior,  “Trull Sengar.  Is this … is this mortality?”

The Tiste Edur drew a step closer.  “You don’t remember?  What it feels to be alive?”

“I -- I … yes.”  A sudden look of wonder in that heavy, broadly featured face.  “Yes.”  Another deep breath, then a gust that was nearly savage in its exultation  The strange gaze fixed on Quick Ben once more.  “Wizard, is this illusion?  Dream?  A journey of my spirit?”

“I don’t think so.  I mean, I think it’s real enough.”

“Then … this realm.  It is Tellann.”

 (RG)

References

"Onrack. Clanless, of the Logros." (HoC, UK MMPB, p.327)

"...hide-wrapped feet...Clumps of mud clung to his ragged hide shirt and the leather straps of his weapon harness. Silty, souply water had seeped into the various gashes and punctures on his body and now leaked in trickling runnels with every heavy step he took. He had possessed a helm once, an impressive trophy from his youth, but it had been shattered at the final battle against the Jaghut family in the Jhag Odhan. A single crossways blow that had also shorn away a fifth of his skull, parietal and temporal, on the right side." (HoC, UK MMPB, p.323)

"But he had stepped aside. No longer a bonecaster for his clan - Absin Tholai was far superior in the hidden arts, after all, and more inclined to the hungry ambition necessary among those who followed the Path of Tellann. All too often, Onrack had found his mind drawn to other things." (HoC, UK mmpb, p.670)

"In truth, he (Onrack) was far less haunted by his immortality than most T'lan Imass...There was always something else to see, after all." (HoC, UK MMPB, p.323)

"Onrack drew forth his two-handed, curved obsidian sword...black rippled blade" (HoC, UK MMPB, p.323)

" 'The night before the Ritual,' Onrack replied. 'Not far from this place where we now stand. I was to have been banished from my tribe. I had committed a crime to which there was no other answer. Instead, events eclipsed the clans. Four Jaghut tyrants had risen and had formed a compact. They sought to destroy this land - as indeed they have.' " (HoC, UK mmpb, p. 671) 

"From his shoulders hung the rotted skin of an en'karal, pebbled and colourless. It was a recent acquisition, less than a thousand years old" (HoC, UK MMPB, p.323)

But Kurald Emurlahn, fragmented or otherwise, was not amenable to the T’lan Imass. Without a Bonecaster beside him, Onrack could not extend his Tellann powers (HoC)

Onrack on humankind

"They are prone to mistakes...The Logros have killed them in their thousands when the need to reassert order made doing so necessary. With ever greater frequency they annihilate themselves, for success breeds contempt for those very qualities that purchased it...More than my kin, perhaps, the edge of my irritation with humankind remains jagged." (HoC, UK MMPB, p.331)

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