Jal Okruk

"Let me be clear - If we fail in this mission, I still expect to be paid in full."

Jal is one of the three members of the Omniventuring Co. and a fighter in Belshere's shadiest underground fighting ring, The Pit. She appeared in the first arc, The Murder Lab, and has appeared in every arc since.

Abrasive, impolite, and arrogant, Jal doesn't particularly like forming close bonds with people. While she cares for the people she works with and for a certain bartender, her early childhood ostracization has led her to believe the worst in people. However, in the wake of dangerous missions and her untimely death and resurrection, she may just be starting to reconsider her "no strings attached" policy.

Appearance
Jal is tall with rippling muscles and an overall athletic physique. Like most half-orcs, she has tusks that she keeps sharpened. She has brownish-gray skin, dark brown eyes, black slightly curly hair, and a smattering of scars from her various fights both inside and outside of The Pit.

At the age of fifteen, Jal went behind her mother's back and got the sides of her head shaved, and have kept her hair like this ever since. She often wears her head in a ponytail or braided. Only a few people have seen her with her hair down.

Jal tends to mostly be seen in her armor, but in the few instances that she's not wearing it, she's clothed athleisure wear in case she needs to do an impromptu workout.

History
Born in the small, insignificant, and ignorant town of Barmwich to immigrant parents, Jal learned early on about how judgemental and cruel people can be. Jal's orcish father, Gell, spent most of her childhood away from home, preferring to fight in a hundred-year-long war between humans and orcs in his homeland. With the occasional money from her father, Jal's mother had to struggle to make do with the few skills she had: sewing and herbal medicine.

Jal has three older brothers and one younger brother, all of whom she loves dearly, though she always had a special connection to two of her older brothers, Romardo and Diero. She also grew up with two cats, Racer and Ballad. While she was always extremely close to her mother, Jal was at best apathetic towards her father and at worst, afraid of him.

For the few years she was in school, she faced mostly ridicule and isolation, causing her to adopt a surly and closed-off exterior so that others wouldn’t know how their words hurt her. When Jal was ten, her youngest brother, Pieron, was attacked by a group of bullies. Enraged, she, Diero, and Romardo found the bullies and reciprocated their assualt, Romardo almost beating one of the bullies to death. After hearing about their brutality, their father (who was paying them one of his infrequent visits) took notice and offered to teach the three of them how to fight. Jal and Diero eagerly agreed, but Romardo refused, disgusted with himself. For the next three years, Jal’s father trained her and Diero during his rare visits, teaching them how to use the Mark of Gruumsh to their advantage in a fight.

After Pieron’s encounter with the bullies, Jal’s mother pulled all of her children out of school and struggled to educate them with help from her eldest son, Marcon. Jal was never one for school or schoolwork, and would often slack off, much to her brother's chagrin.

When Jal was thirteen, her father died suddenly in his bed, leaving her confused as to how to feel. While she feels she might have loved her father, he abandoned their family to live out his soldier fantasy, and only seemed to take an interest in her when she demonstrated her potential in a fight. However, she decided to be there for her mother, who was devastated by his death. To this day, she does not know how she feels about her father, but she's sure it's something close to disdain.

When Jal was fifteen, Romardo married a shy and quiet human girl from their town, Miri. While Jal technically had no reason to dislike her, she distrusted Miri because she was a human, felt that she was too meek for someone as gregarious as Romardo, and was sad that her brother would be leaving his family to start a new family.

When she was sixteen, her mother fell very ill, and she and her brothers were told that she would not get better. While Jal had been mostly indifferent towards her father’s death, this devastated her. She and her brothers had always been extremely reverent of their mother, who had essentially raised the five of them by herself. On her deathbed, Jal’s mother gathered all of her children and told them the story of how she and their father met, revealing her betrayal of her people. Jal and her siblings were confused, disgusted, and ashamed, but they all made a silent pact to never let their mother know. To this day, Jal’s still unable to reconcile the loving, warm, and tough-as-nails mother she knew, and the violent, manipulative, and unsympathetic soldier her mother once was. Nevertheless, she still loves her mother and is violently protective of her memory.

In-Game
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