Kaarsk
The Coldpeak’s lead hunter. Carries a massive longbow across his chest, with hatchets and a knife for close work. Skeptical of outsiders and doesn’t hide it. When Broken Tusk suggested bringing the party along to find the missing hunters, Kaarsk agreed, barely, and made the terms clear at once: don’t slow us down.
He moved at a pace that took an Athletics check just to keep up. When a hunter fell through the ice and took exhaustion, Kaarsk sent him home with an escort and kept going without breaking stride. After the wolf fight he skinned the pack himself and gave River a nod for helping, which is about as close to a compliment as he gets.
Berg speaking Orcish on the first day made an impression, not as a diplomatic gesture but as a statement of what Berg is. Kaarsk has been revising his read of the party ever since, without saying so. He has said so to other people, though. When Durok met the party in Session 15, he told Berg that Kaarsk had spoken highly of him, and Brekk said afterward that Kaarsk speaking highly of anyone means more than it sounds.
He was injured in one of the elemental attacks on the camp, and he hasn’t stopped watching its edges. When the party came back from Caer-Konig in Session 14, he was at a fire outside the camp with food enough for all of them, because Durok had told him they were coming. In Session 15, still unable to hunt, he gave the party the job of finding where the attacks were coming from. In Session 17 he stayed behind to hold the camp while the war party went northwest to the Elk. He didn’t come along, and he didn’t need to say why.
Before the Reweave — In the unwoven, Kaarsk resented the Reghedsmen for taking game the tribe couldn’t spare, and resented Broken Tusk’s peace with them more. When Rimetalon attacked the camp in Session 6, he held the line against the elemental spirits while the party went after the beast: he looked at Berg, pointed past himself, and said “I’ve got these. GO.” That was where his injury came from. The Reweave rewrote this. Memories of it surface as half-rumor, not error.