Well as to my motivation for creating Thorkoth it is quite simple. I have been reading the Warhammer books about Gotrek Gurnison and Felix Jaegar. I have always wanted to play a dwarven character and I thought that a battle rager would be an awesome type of dwarf to play. I also wanted a way to incorporporate another NPC (flameskull-Abigail) into the game. I thought what better way to do it than by twisting a tale of godly intervention with retribution and irony.
We had lost several guides in the underdark recently and I felt we should have one that had a least a small chance to survive. Although I wanted a dwarven character I didn't want the usual axe wielding, unkept, unbathed, obnoxious, beer drinking, cave dwelling, psychopathic killer. So I created a hammer wielding, neat, clean, curtious, beer drinking, cave dwelling, psychopathic killer. I also wanted to create a character that as usual had different types of skills that would be useful for the group. I also hoped that for once the PC's in the group wouldn't automatically hate and despise one of my characters when he was introduced. If the henchman could in some way have commonality with someone in the group (a fellow dwarf like Anterias maybe the PC's in the group would not take their usual lack of tack and be courteous to someone trying to help them. But being who I am I had to put a twist to it, so I added the flameskull Abigail so that they would still be able to direct their negativity towards me.
Most of the skills that the group would find useful would be his underground navigation skills honed from years spent adventuring in this realm, as well as his years traveling back and forth from Khazefryn and Morten. When I created the Dwarven Defender? kit, I had envisioned a character class that was a penultimate shield, a bulwark that the group could rely on to protect them. That kit would be at it's best not moving and attacking but holding it's ground and not letting others past it. Of course I didn't have the forsight to comprehend how if outfitted properly he would also be the killing machine that Mike? has made him to be. So rather than the shield of the group, I decided to make the sword or in this case the hammer of the group. A fighter that would rather be smashing through things then preventing things from smashing through him. Pretty much the combination of the 2 characters - Thorkoth and Anterias have the potential to be devastating if played together properly.
