Henry Saunders (Gorkas Jorikson)

Biography
Gorkas Jorikson was born in Relleka to a woodsman named Jorik and his wife, a fisherwoman named Guthrid. From a fairly young age, around six years, his father would bring him out of the town and teach him how to survive in the wilds, and from seven he was taught to fish by his mother. Gorkas' grandfather, an old warrior named Harkan, began to teach the boy how to use a bow and sword at the age of ten, under a constant barrage of brutal begging.

At the age of fourteen, Gorkas attended the funeral of his grandfather, Harkan, who had died at the club of a troll while visiting Neitiznot. He continued his swordsmanship lessons with other men throughout the tribe, and was generally recognized as a competent swordsman and archer. After his trials were through, and after his sixteenth birthday, Gorkas took to wandering, using the skills that his father and mother taught him to survive, and the skills his grandfather and the other men of the village taught him in order to fend off wild beasts and bandits.

He soon knew Kandarin and the Fremmennik province like the back of his hand, and took to guiding those that needed guiding for the extra money. Eventually, he ended up guiding a man who was an undercover temple knight (though Gorkas didn't know it at the time) to the town of Witchhaven. On the way to Witchhaven, the two were ambushed by a small group of bandits, whom were quickly taken care of by the Temple Knight and the Fremmennik. Impressed, the temple knight wrote down the name and vocation of the white knights' recruitment officer on a scrap of parchment and told Gorkas to go to Falador and join the knights.

Gorkas cracked a bad joke and wandered away. Wondering for the first time what was east of the white wolf mountains, but not wanting to actually cross the mountains, he boarded a boat on it's way to Karamja island. (Un?)fortunately, the boat was caught in a storm and wrecked on the way.

Gorkas and the rest of the shipwreck's survivors found themselves on Entrana, and he felt a peace like none he'd ever felt before there. Suddenly curious about Saradomin and the southerners' gods like he'd never been before, he began to frantically study the pages of the book of Saradomin given to him by a particularly friendly monk, and lived among the monks for almost a year. Eventually, however, he was kicked off of the island, the monks saying "Saradomin is no laughing matter, young man!" with his sword, his book, and his bow with nowhere at all to go. scratching his outer thigh under his leather chaps thoughtfully, he dislodged a scrap of parchment - the very same one that the man had given to him a year before, somehow surviving the shipwreck and a year of sitting in his weapon and armor chest under the monks' lock and key.

He went to Falador and joined the white knights, seeing the parchment's survival as a sign from Saradomin, and quickly ingratiated himself into the order. A few years and several skirmishes against minor orders of Kinshra later, Gorkas was inducted into the temple knights, for his dedication to Saradomin didn't go unnoticed. After almost six years in the temple knights, serving Saradomin and thwarting Zamorakianism in all it's forms, he was picked to be on Hayley Spears' elite team, the 171st Temple knights unit, where he was given the alias of Henry Saunders, which he is known by by all but a very few who know his real name, which has actually become his callsign.

After a particularly bad time rescuing Captain Spears from a yet unidentified assailant (as far as Gorkas is concerned, at least) and a vampire (who seemed to just happen to be there) which skewered Gorkas with spikes of his own blood, he decided that he needed better armor and weapons, and sought out a mage to whom one of his contacts, a sailor woman named Lilian, directed him - Malazshar the mad.

Malazshar blessed Gorkas' sword after reforging it in silver, putting a ruby into the pommel and enchanting it as well to deliver even heftier blows in his experienced hands. He also took Gorkas' temple knight armor and embedded a complicated system of enchanted sapphires and emeralds into the underside of the plate layer, over the chainmail layer, so that the armor would be slightly more durable in general, would repair itself to perfection over long periods of time (aprox 2 days), and so that when struck by magic, the magic is confined to a 2 inch square of the plate. Finally, the old wizard turned Gorkas into a cat, which he called "Puss-puss"

Malazshar the mad ended up visiting Falador, where he was attacked, unprovoked, by a trio of "Good adventurers," and the legs wounds he sustained grew worse as he remembered that Gorkas was, in fact, a human being, and turned him back into his true form even as Malazshar was dying of infectious leg wounds. Gorkas buried the old man and said the last rites over his grave, and returned to the 171st's base only to find the order disbanded.

Disheartened, he eventually ended up back in falador, serving the Commonwealth of Gielinor as an advisor, until the Commonwealth's collapse.

Later, Gorkas decided to join the new order of White Knights during the reign of Dion, and put his strategic skills to good use there. Now that Hayley has resurfaced with a new organization, Gorkas' yearning for the covert operations of the Temple Knights' special units has resurfaced with it.

Since joining SOD-E1X, he's managed to secure the position of Captain; he's currently the second in command of the unit. More recently, he's been keeping a close eye on affairs in Ardougne, and on news in Gielinor in general, though the somewhat sedentary lifestyle he's leading is fairly unsatisfying.

Appearance

 * Gorkas' face is fairly sturdy in contrast with his body, and he definately looks like a man from the cold north, aside from the well-trimmed-ness of his beard and moustache. His hair hangs down shaggily from his head, and a scar bolts down for about one and a half inches from the outside corner of his left eye.


 * Gorkas' body is lithe and sinewy, opposed to the normal stocky body type of the average Fremmennik man-on-the-street. There are three round scars on his torso, roughly the size of a fist, and one on each leg.

Personality
Gorkas has retained his ability to tell (bad) jokes in any situation, but has more than given up his reason to his hatred of Zamorak and other dark gods (Bandos and Zaros, though he hardly knows what these are...). Further, he gained quite a massive chip on his shoulder from his time in the 171st, and hates taking orders from people not directly above him in the chain of command, doubly so if the one giving orders is non-Fremmennik (as he's a bit racist). Gorkas doesn't believe that it's possible for there to be non-Zamorakian vampires or werewolves, and thinks that Bandos and Zaros are just synonyms for Zamorak. He only knows about Mahjarrats from Malazshar's mad stories

Abilities
Gorkas is highly talented and trained (where applicable) in: He's also trained, though less skilled, in:
 * Longsword fighting
 * Stave fighting
 * Espionage
 * Diplomacy
 * Tactics
 * Storytelling
 * Writing and Speaking
 * Crossbow use
 * Shortbow use

Trivia

 * Gorkas has committed so entirely to the role of "Henry Saunders the storyteller" that his real name is used almost exclusively as a callsign
 * Thanks to his time with Malazshar, Gorkas has an unusual affinity for cats.
 * Gorkas' accent is fremmennik with a hearty tempering of Asgarnian politesse.
 * During his trip to Malazshar the Mad's home, his sword and dagger were silvered and enchanted, with rubies actually melted into knot designs from the blade down into the hilt and enchanted. His temple knight armor was similarly reforged with silver, and the old mad mage divided the underside of the armor into 1cm2 squares with similarly enchanted and utilized gemstones.  When under the effect of hostile or damaging magics, these squares fall out of the armor and melt away, leaving the gem-web unharmed and preventing the channeling of magics from affecting Gorkas' body.  The fallen and melted squares regrow as though alive at a rate of 2 squares/hour