Oshuun Karral

Oshuun Karral was a hobgoblin mercenary, one of the six Dwayne took up the mountain as the Idir Expedition, hired out to open Wraithblade Keep and bring back whatever was in it. Whent, who had a hand in the hiring, understood that everyone on that crew died but two: the Peren spearwoman Nazeera, and Oshuun. Nazeera died of her wounds at Ridh not long after. He was also among the crew that fell on Kithul at the keep, alongside Yamael.

What he brought down the mountain was the Wraithblade Khopesh, Clan Zarkhûn’s relic and a cursed thing. Nazeera speared the goblin that carried it from behind; Oshuun choked it to death, took the hooked sword off the body, and carried it home. He brought it to Beltran Grayeras about two months before the party learned that any of this had happened, and Beltran killed him for it.

Two accounts of that end reached the party, two seasons apart. Whent, who was told less than he thought, knew only that he never saw the man again and assumed he had died somewhere or gone somewhere. Orvayne, who stood nearer the household, gave the plain version: the one who came back with the blade was the one it was taken from. He also gave the reason, which was not personal. Anyone who wanted the sword badly enough to reach for it became a problem, and Beltran solved that problem the same way each time, more than a few times, at least a dozen.

No likeness of him survives, and no description either. Asked what he looked like, the one man who could have said remembered the look of him and not the name, and never gave the look. His age, his build and his coloring were never written down, and nobody set down a word he spoke.

He came back anyway, in the last place he would have wanted to. Two seasons on, Koa and Hinta went back into Wraithblade Keep to break the sword on the Mól anvil, and the keep’s dead came out of the walls at them: the shades of everyone the Khopesh had killed, gathered at the place the sword belonged to. Two of the dark ones came through the floor, and Koa recognized one of them. It was the hobgoblin who had gone up that mountain with Dwayne and carried the sword back down it, which is the last word on Whent’s version of things. The blade Oshuun delivered was the blade he was killed with, and being killed with it is what kept him.

The dark ones drain the strength out of a man’s arms on a touch and turn pale with it, and a pale one is spent and settled and walks through people without noticing them. One of that pair took most of Koa’s strength off him over a night. He worked out in the same minute that whoever holds the Khopesh commands them all, and came close to reaching for it. A week later Hinta’s hammer came down on the Mól anvil, the Khopesh broke like glass, and everything bound in it went free.