Ghomm Yellowhand Champion Lore
Ghomm of the Yellow Hand was given nothing in life: not a loving family, not a stable upbringing, not an honest livelihood; even his natural form was ripped away. He was born to a Dusk Hills clan, but, with their resources strained to the limit, they abandoned him to die in the wilderness. The screaming Human child was discovered by an eccentric, reclusive local Fae.
The slender, tree-like creature never told Ghomm its name. When, years later, Ghomm learned language, he called it ‘the Helper,’ or sometimes ‘the Quiet One,’ for the Helper did not speak. Nevertheless it developed a rapport with Ghomm that grew as he did. Ghomm took his own name from one of the few sounds the Fae ever made, a deep guttural exhalation that indicated pleasure or contemplation. Besides a few such vague utterances, he knew no tongue, experiencing the world intuitively.
The Helper nurtured and strengthened Ghomm throughout his youth. It sent him to hunt beasts and steal livestock from pastoral clans much like the one that had abandoned him. The Helper took these animals, alive if possible, and led Ghomm in sacrificing them in strange rituals, arranging their entrails in mystic shapes and wordlessly gesturing as if in supplication to some unknowable higher power.
After nearly twenty years together, the Helper led Ghomm to a hillock where a solitary black dire-ram stood, large and impressive, one horn broken off in some old battle. The territorial beast charged Ghomm, who charged right back. They struggled mightily before Ghomm slit the beast’s throat with his hunting knife, and as it died its cursed soul grafted itself to his own. When his Skinwalker fugue ended, Ghomm blearily saw one last glimpse of his Helper before the enigmatic Fae faded into the foliage, never to be seen by Ghomm again.
Ghomm shed no tears when he realized the Helper was not returning. Since his guardian had never wronged or misguided him, he believed it had led him to this fate, and left him to steer it for himself, for a reason. He fashioned a weapon from the ram’s bones, and set to wandering. With his life now his own, it was time to decide how to use his strength and wilderness cunning.
Months later he spotted a group of fellow Skinwalkers — vagabonds, orphans, and exiles much like himself. They were struggling to fight a monstrous cottage-sized knife-beetle which had been stalking them for days, disrupting their hunting and foraging. Thinking of the many times the Helper had protected and guided him, Ghomm decided to do the same for the desperate Skinwalkers.
They were on the verge of fleeing when Ghomm charged ferociously into their midst, swinging his bone-club into the soft joints between the segments of the insect’s legs – he had fought such creatures before. The other Skinwalkers took heart and rejoined the fight, employing Ghomm’s tactics. After they battered the creature’s many legs out from under it, Ghomm struck the final blow. One of the Skinwalkers had perished, but they were victorious.
Ghomm plunged one huge hand into the insect’s guts, coating it with yellow ichor, then slapped a handprint onto the fallen Skinwalker’s shield, which he took up mournfully and strapped to his back. The others, inspired, did the same, marking their chests or loincloths. As one, they hailed Ghomm as ‘Yellowhand’. The Skinwalker group became his adoptive family and took the name and emblem as their own. They accommodated his feral, language-less nature and gradually Ghomm learned the rudiments of speech, but remained highly taciturn. His generous actions and stark courage spoke for him.