"Handsome Luke" -- as he's often called nowadays -- is out on his own, a long way from home.

Home used to be a well-fortified keep, near the edge of the empire, whose inhabitants had long kept a wary eye on the orc and goblin tribes and protected the local farmers and herders from raids.  Luke, who went by another name in those days, was a half-orc orphan who never knew his parents.  He was brought up among the servants at the keep.

Being big, strong, and mostly docile, Luke was a useful guy to have around the place.  Once he became a teenager, he started doing some part-time work as a sparring partner to the young human nobles and gentry who would come to the keep every year to be trained as paladins and knights.  He enjoyed the roughhousing, and although years of sparring gave him a few scars, cauliflower ears, and a broken nose, he didn't much care -- his goblinoid features meant he had never been the prettiest guy around to begin with.  He was okay at fighting, but never great at it.  He relied on his size, strength, and toughness, and as the knights and paladins in training started to develop real martial skills, they were always able to beat him eventually.  Beating Luke became something of a rite of passage for the young.

Life went on like this for a few years, and Luke was mostly content with his place in the world, until a strange thing happened.  To keep a long story short, he started hanging out with the Lady Roxanna, the wife of the military commander of the keep.  She taught him to read, and she taught him religion.  Luke was already a churchgoer -- in the pious setting of the keep, with many paladins and clerics of Hieroneous forming the backbone of the military force, almost everyone went to church.  But it was Roxanna who made Luke care, and taught him to read the scriptures for himself, and sometimes talked with him late into the night about life, the gods, and everything.  It took Luke a while to realize it, but he was in love, and strangely indeed, so was she.  They kept that a secret, of course, which wasn't too hard since few would have believed it anyway.

After a while, Luke felt called to do more with his life, so he applied to become a paladin of Hieroneous.  He was turned down due to sheer lack of charisma; even with his new book learning, he was still at best a plainspoken fellow who tended to mumble, hardly an inspiring figure even if you overlooked the ugly face.  But most people liked him nonetheless, and Roxanna pulled a couple of strings, and Luke was trained as a knight.

He served reasonably well for a couple of years, until he had one really bad day.  He was with a small squad of knights and paladins when they came to a hamlet that had been burned to the ground, everyone in it massacred.  They rode hard and caught up to the human bandits who had done it.  The bandits surrendered and were taken prisoner and tied up.  Luke stood guard while the other knights went to look for survivors.  Words were exchanged, and Luke -- disgusted and angry to begin with -- fell into a rage and hacked the prisoners to death.

Ashamed but still truthful, he waited for his comrades to return, and admitted his crime.  He returned to the keep and was imprisoned, awaiting court-martial.  Soon Roxanna visited his cell with news that made his heart sink even lower.  A certain paladin had learned of Luke's affair with Roxanna and, moved by sheer jealousy, was threatening to publicly denounce them at Luke's court-martial.  Luke knew what he had to do.  With her help, he escaped from his cell that night, took his sword and armor, and fled across country.

He has been wandering ever since.  He changed his name to "Luke" on a whim, grew out his hair and beard, and started wearing a wide-brimmed hat pulled low on his head, casting a shadow on his face.  He regrets that he's a murderer, but he feels he's still a good guy at heart and a loyal servant of Hieroneous, and he thinks he's been punished enough by being effectively exiled.  He has gotten into some scrapes, used his martial skills to defend the weak on occasion, and at other times chopped wood and carried water to earn a few coins.  He thinks that by now the knights of the keep probably aren't chasing him any more, so he just keeps traveling around hoping to find something good to do with his time.  He hopes he'll know it when he sees it.

Luke stands about 6'8" tall.  He looks a little flabby, but he's strong and tough as nails.  He has long black hair, tied in a braid, but with a receding hairline up front.  He has an unkempt black beard.  His face betrays his orcish heritage quite strongly, and looks pretty busted-up too.  He wears a brown leather hat with a wide round rim, and well-worn traveling clothes.  He carries a big rucksack and a two-handed sword.  He mostly acts reticent and polite, and speaks in a low voice.

On the way to Brix, Luke is quiet but friendly.  He asks the more learned members of the party what, if anything, they know about the ghost wizard and the ooze, and how best to handle such adversaries in the future.

In Brix, Luke keeps a low profile.  He is a little concerned that someone might be looking for him here (although he does not reveal this to the other PCs).  He does some drinking in the local taverns, though not to excess.  He gets a foot massage and enjoys the fact that he's not out trekking across the countryside.

Although he is interested in the strange goings-on with ravens and wolves, as well as the dagger, he doesn't see himself as being able to contribute much in the way of research.  But he talks interestedly with the other PCs about whatever they learn.

(Does he happen to hear any of the recent news from Shattered Bridge?)

It would take more than stares to make Luke lose his cool.  Having fought against real orcs before, he understands why his own orc-esque appearance makes some people uncomfortable.  In the past he has usually found that a combination of unfailing politeness and the fact that he's too big for most people to mess with keeps situations from getting out of hand.  He employs that approach here, and keeps his blade well out of sight so that any town guards don't have an excuse to bother him.

That being the case, Luke decides not to make any more trips to the shrine of Heironeous in Brix for the time being.  He is sure his god will understand.

He also avoids the jewelers' district, since that's a likely place for running into Duke Rathborn's men.

Luke slowly chews a piece of rabbit, as an excuse to take his time to answer the old man.  But while doing so, he makes sure to look the old man right in the eye; he does not want to seem like he's hiding anything.

[Luke has 8 Charisma and no training in diplomacy or deception, so his act might not be as convincing as he wants it to be, but he'll give it his best shot:]

After swallowing, he says in a low voice, choosing his words carefully, "I'm sorry, but you've got the wrong idea about me.  I'm not hiding from anyone and I've got no need to.

"Now, I guess you've seen me with my hat on, sitting over here by myself in the corner of this fine tavern, and I can get why you think I might be hiding.  But just look at my face.  I'm obviously a half-breed, and some friends of mine have said I look more like an orc than a human.  That tends to frighten some people.  And I get a little tired of people staring at me, or pointing and whispering, or acting rude.  So when I don't want to deal with that, I sit off to the side and stay out of the way.

"Now, I don't like that you seem to think I must have done something wrong, but I'll let that pass.  I'm sorry to hear about your troubles.  You said that some kind of big thing in a cave tore up your farmhands.  Did any of them live, or did you mean it killed them all?  How did you find out what happened to them?"

[Does Luke have any idea what "members of the path" means?]

Luke stays at the table, sitting very still, slowly getting his rage under control.  It's a good thing, he thinks, that he had his sword wrapped up in his bedroll, so there was no way he could have whipped it out and beheaded the old man right then and there.

The old man isn't too smart, he thinks.  If you meet a big guy who's wanted for murder, and you think he's capable of killing some big monster in a cave... why would you threaten him?  It would be so easy to follow the old man's directions to his farm tonight or tomorrow night and kill him in his sleep.

Which would serve the old man right for threatening Luke... But Luke knows he can't do that.  That's what a monster would do.  He prays devoutly to Heironeous that he may never again become a monster.

But is the old man stupid and inviting his own murder, or is he somehow craftily setting a trap?  It doesn't make much sense: assuming someone really has been offering a bounty on Luke, if the old man wanted to benefit from the situation, he should have just taken the money and led the people offering it to the tavern where Luke's been sitting for hours.  So it's hard to see how going to the old man's farm would be walking into a trap.

Still, Luke sees no reason to help someone who has rudely threatened him.  At the moment he'd be quite happy to learn that the old man had been eaten by the cave monster.  It doesn't seem especially likely that there would be treasure there, nor clues leading to whoever sent the wolves to attack the caravan.

So the thing to do, Luke thinks, is just to get out of town as soon as possible.  The old man isn't expecting him until noon the day after tomorrow, so even if he decides to carry out his threat to inform on Luke, by then Luke will be nowhere to be found.

But first he needs to change his appearance, and especially get rid of the hat.  He laughs to himself a little.  He really liked that hat...

He resolves that in the morning he will go to a barber, get a haircut, change his facial hair, then buy a new hat somewhere, then leave town after telling the rest of the group where they can find him.

He throws the old hat into the nearest sewer.

Luke is surprised to learn that the Path has put out a bounty on him.  He didn't expect them to be involved with something as mundane as tracking down a fugitive from Shattered Bridge.  But, he certainly can't blame them.  He just needs to stay out of their way.  That means no visits to any temples or monasteries of Heironeous for the foreseeable future.

Luke is not happy about this lack of spiritual guidance, but he expects he'll be OK.  He resolves to pray and read his holy scriptures often.

In the morning he goes to a barber and has his beard shaved, leaving only a thick black mustache [think Freddie Mercury].  He has his hair cut short too.  Then he buys a black knit skullcap, with no brim, just something to keep his balding scalp from getting sunburned.

During our downtime in the dungeon after Episode V, Luke takes his time in closely examining the four katanas that the party found.  He gets a rather covetous look in his eyes.  He has never owned a sword anywhere near this nice.  Now he has two!

Luke equips himself with the particularly shiny and probably magical one, and takes one of the others as a spare.  He walks around the room, taking some non-strenuous practice swings, getting used to the weight and shape of these swords.

In his mind, he fondly remembers the flail that he is discarding here.  It was always fun to fight with a flail -- to whirl that chain around and slam it into the head of a training dummy or an orcish raider.  But there's just no doubt that a bastard sword or katana is a more precise and therefore more deadly weapon.  No point getting sentimental, he thinks -- if you're going to fight monsters you have to use what works best, it's that simple.  Besides, these elven blades sure are pretty...