Editing Darklord (section)

===Hakaan na Uruk===
Darklord of Saarkaath. This male [[half-orc]] was born to an unknown human slave and her orcish master in the [[orc]] stronghold known as the Dark Fork Holding. When Hakaan was young, the Holding was put to the torch by a [[paladin]] order called the Storm Templars; whilst the orcish women and children fled, Hakaan was left behind, and rescued by a paladin named Leith Kelbar. As Hakaan favored his human heritage in appearance, Leith took the child in and informally adopted him.

Officially, Hakaan was just Leith's "dog robber", a menial worker, but Leith showed the boy an undemonstrative but very real affection and even trained him in weapon's use and other page skills. This in turn engendered a hero's worship attitude in the young half-orc.When Hakaan entered puberty and his orcish heritage became more appropriate, the other knights of the Storm Templars began encouraging Leith to abandon the half-orc and take a human servant instead. The stubborn and idiosyncratic paladin flatly refused them, and instead made Hakaan his squire at the age of 14. The half-orc's respect for his adoptive father only increased at this decision, and he began to dream of becoming a full-fledged Storm Templar himself, determined to prove his worth despite his heritage.

The orc/human war was still raging at this point, and soon after becoming Leith's squire, Hakaan saw his father killed during a climatic battle at Shadow Mountain. Leith's dying wish was for Hakaann to take his [[Holy Avenger]] and his armor back to the Storm Templars. The half-orc fought heroically and made the 400 mile trip back to the central temple of the Storm Templars. To his dismay, he found himself coldly received and sharply censured for daring to carry Leiber's weapons and armor as a mere squire; many of the Templars even pushed for him to be expelled from the order entirely. But his actions and skills did win him the support of a few key members of the order, and so a compromise was offered: Hakaan could "prove himself" by beginning his squire's training over from the beginning, with vague promises of a future "consideration" for full knighthood.

The young half-orc was outraged and indignant, feeling he had proved his worth through his skills already. He left the order and sought membership in another elite martial unit... however, none would take a half-orc. Only a mercenary force allowed him membership, and whilst initially distressed by their monetary emphasis and neutral (at best) morality, he soon adjusted. In fact, by the time he was 30, he was the Captain-General of his own mercenary army! But he never forgot the way that the Storm Templars and the other elite forces of the human military had rejected him, and a bitter enmity grew in his heart. Things finally came to a boil when the human kingdom declared war on the southern [[hobgoblin]]s; not only was Hakaan's army hired to work alongside an offensive led by the Storm Templars, but despite his vital role, he was not invited to the meetings held by the various generals of the royal army and the order.

That was the last straw. Hakaan began secretly communicating with the hobgoblin armies, and through his treachery the human forces suffered reverse after reverse. At the final climatic battle, the humans' last gamble, Hakaan deliberately "misunderstood" a signal to reinforce the Storm Templars and fell back, allowing his former order to be annihilated and delivering a crushing defeat to the forces of humanity. He promptly surrendered to the hobgoblins and offered them the services of his forces; those mercenaries who refused to follow him were promised safe passage to the lines, but instead were betrayed and given over to the "correction officers" of the hobgoblin forces.

Fighting at the side of the hobgoblins, Hakaan's forces swelled with the addition of several hundred orcish conscripts, all eager to serve "under one of their own". Howerver, he soon fell out with the hobgoblins and tried to betray them as well, but they were better prepared than the human forces and Hakaan found himself forced to flee with less than a thousand surviving troops into the mountains, pursued the whole way by [[hobgoblin]]s, [[goblin]]s and [[worg]]s.

He escaped by fleeing into a thick mountain fog, only to emerge in a strange mountainous region completely alien to him and his followers, and magically prevented from finding their way back to more familiar ground. Discovering a massive complex of tunnels and caverns within the mountains, at the encouragement of his orcish followers, Hakaan settled into the caves and began operating like a typical orc warchief, sending his forces out to raid the surface villages for supplies, slaves and concubines; many of those slaves or their ill-favored human-looking halfbreed children subsequently escaped to the surface, and thus the domain of Saarkaath was born.

A hundred years have passed, but Hakaan's aging has been slowed, and so he only appears to be fifty... of course, even a very-well preserved fifty is still a pretty significant age for a half-orc! In mockery of Hakaan's life-long loathing of his orcish heritage only to willingly stoop to the worst behaviors associated with orcdom, his orcish traits have been exaggerated over the years, and so he now not only looks like a pureblooded [[orc]], but he suffers even worse sensitivity to sunlight than a true orc would - combined with his curse-spawned intense agoraphobia, and Hakaan can no longer bring himself to visit the surface. Hakaan attempts to hide from his self-loathing by celebrating the orcishness of his people, surrounding himself with those who most strongly favor their orc heritage and punishing the least orcy-looking denizens of Saarkath, but truthfully it still rankles him. Combined with his inability to leave Saarkaath to take revenge on his ancient human and hobgoblin foes, and his "kingdom" is a glorified prison whose bars he can never deny.

Hakaan is amongst the most vulnerable of all darklords; aside from the hitpoints of being a 12th level [[fighter]] as well as owning a +2 greatsword and a Ring of Regeneration, he has no magical protections of any sort to preserve his life. If you can kill him, he'll stay dead. Amongst his more unusual abilities, he can fly into a berserker rage similar to a [[barbarian]], and detect [[paladin]]s with perfect accuracy.

When Hakaan closes Saarkaath's borders, a forest of magical spears and swords appears at the border; those who try to force through will suffer 1d10 damage per round, which can only be restored by magical healing - and, of course, those who try to fly over will instead just drop straight onto them.