Role in Its Society:
Kavrash One-Ear is the chieftain and “seer” of a small but vicious grimlock tribe that haunts a cluster of echoing caverns off a major Underdark route. To his people, he is the one who “hears stone” and “smells tomorrow”—a hunter whose senses are so keen he can stalk prey through crowded tunnels days after they pass.
His tribe acts as ambush predators and toll-collectors along a little-known side passage: they extort food and tools from weaker groups and pick over the dead after larger factions clash nearby. In an environment where light is rare and sound carries strangely, Kavrash’s word on where to hunt, where to hide, and when to move is law.
To the broader Underdark, Kavrash is a persistent hazard and a source of rumors: a blind warband that never loses a trail, a chieftain who can smell lies, and a tribe that seems to know when a caravan is coming long before scouts do.
Appearance Description:
Kavrash is a thick-muscled grimlock with slate-grey skin and a heavy brow, his eyes shrunken and useless, clouded over with milky film. His nose, however, is broad and flared, constantly tasting the air in small, twitching sniffs. His ears are ragged—one torn away entirely, leaving a puckered scar; the other adorned with bone rings threaded through scar tissue.
He wears a patchwork mantle of cured cave-beast hide and fungus-leather, studded with bone charms and bits of worked stone that click softly when he moves. Around his neck hangs a necklace of teeth and broken steel nails, each claimed from a kill he personally scented and hunted. His hands are calloused and scarred, fingers ending in dirty, chipped claws.
White ash and dark cave-mud are smeared across his face and chest in ritual patterns, carefully painted in lines that follow the flow of his veins and muscles—textures he can feel with his own hands. When he cocks his head to listen, he goes unnervingly still, body angled to feel the slightest tremor through bare, scarred feet.
Backstory:
Kavrash was born during a time of famine. His tribe had been driven deeper underground by duergar expansion, forced into tighter, poorer caverns where game was scarce and rival packs fought over the smallest trickle of surface refuse. As a runt with one ear mangled by a rockslide, he was left behind during a hunt and nearly buried alive.
Pinned under rubble, sightless and alone, Kavrash survived by surrendering completely to sound, scent, and stone. He felt the way footsteps changed the hum of the rock, how air shifted when predators slithered by, how blood and fear stank differently on the same body. When he finally clawed himself free days later, he was changed—more patient, more methodical, and oddly calm.
He returned to find his tribe diminished. Their chief had died challenging a duergar patrol; survivors bickered over scraps. Kavrash used his sharpened senses to lead a series of precise ambushes on lone scouts, wounded beasts, and stragglers from caravans. Meat returned. Tools returned. His “luck” became legend.
When an older hunter challenged him, Kavrash dragged the challenger to a ledge in absolute darkness and gave him a simple command: “Find me.” The fight ended quickly—and quietly. From that night on, Kavrash One-Ear became scent-seer and chief.
He has since carved out a precarious niche for his tribe: a network of side tunnels, dead-end caves, and narrow kill-zones he knows like his own scars.
