Bio

Poor Toby was a half-orc in a tribe of vicious orcs, who would have been brained at birth were he not the only nephew of the tribe’s chief. Wertha is a warrior chieftan who overthrew the Gruumshite clerics of the Blackspear Tribe and captured Bloodskull Keep, in the north of Thar, driving his father (and Toby’s grandfather) Buran into exile.

Sponge is a nickname the other orc children gave him, as he was considered soft and weak, and if squeezed hard, he cries. His real name is Tobias Young Junior, and he is the long-lost son of Tobias Young. Sponge’s mother Hilda had run away from home, and begged to be taken away from her brutal life to find peace among the humans. The orcs took Hilda back to camp, where she gave birth to a male half-orc. Hilda gave him a human name, after his father, but it was almost never used.

Hilda died not long after of a terrible fever; as the Gruumshite medicine men were exiled, there was little healing or magic available. As a blood relation of the warchief Sponge was allowed membership of the tribe but his human blood delayed his maturity compared to the other orc children. He has known nothing but abuse from his peers and disappointment from his uncle, with Wertha constantly telling him what a worthless creature he is and how he is a disgrace to the orc bloodline. Wertha has gone so far as to lay responsibility for his sister Hilda’s death upon Sponge, holding him up as an example of the weakness of humans and how her fraternization with them gave her a disease that took her life.

Sponge has been praying each night for months to be delivered from his tormented life. He dreams of having a father, someone who likes him and appreciates him for who he is, and can look past his heritage. He has begged Gruumsh for the same deliverance his mother sought, and with the magic of the Deck of Many Things, he has been brought to the side of Ko’gash to serve as a friend and ally.