Overview
"The strongest thing about Smackage wasn't his muscles either. It was his refusal to ever stop smiling." — Uaellaen
Smackage was an ogre warrior and Uaellaen's closest friend. Where Uaellaen was the mind and Rumzuck Umbatsch was the shield, Smackage was the heart — the one who kept the company human, and who made it possible to keep going.
Habitat
He is home to wherever the laughter is. In the old world he kept with Remedy; in this one he keeps with the six, and the tent has a way of feeling warmer when he is in it. He is at home in the mud, in the feast, and in the middle of a fight he has decided to treat as a joke. He is not a creature of the quiet, and he is happiest in the loudest room in the company.
Appearance
2.72 m of ogre, all grin and bad posture, in the way of a man who is having fun and intends to tell you about it. Smackage stands 2.72 m and close to 408 kg, built rounder through the belly than his kin, with a jaw so wide and so often grinning that his face reads as one long, friendly threat. His skin is green-brown, browner than Rumzuck's, with a pale pink tinge to the nose and the tops of the ears where the sun has got in. His eyes are a warm brown, and they are laughing before his mouth gets there. His head is round, hair a wild black that no comb has ever won an argument with, and his left ear is torn — the top third missing, gone since a fight in the old world he will not name but will absolutely tell you about. His distinguishing mark is the grin: it is always there, in the middle of battles, at funerals, in the new world that has given him every reason to stop, and it is the one thing about him that has not changed. Elders of his kind go brown-gray and slower, their grins going quiet; Smackage is young-elder — the green is still warm, the grin still loud. He wears a battered leather vest over dark leathers, a greatclub of oiled wood at his back, and a belt with more pockets than sense.
Warfare & Markings
He fights like a party — loud, fast, and with a joke in the middle of it. He is not the shield and he is not the mind; he is the one who turns a battle into something the company can stand to be in. His one true mark is the torn left ear, the top third gone, and he wears it like a medal and tells the story of it like a song. He wears the greatclub of oiled wood, and the belt with more pockets than sense, and he carries small things for other people in them — a knife, a seed, a word they needed to hear.
Behaviour
Loud, funny, and fiercely loyal. He made jokes in the middle of battles and laughed when others screamed. He is the kind of warrior who fought with a smile and won with a roar. He is the emotional anchor of the company: the one who notices when someone has gone quiet, and the one who will stand in front of them and make a joke until they move. He is optimistic in a way that is not naivety — he has seen the worst of the old world and the unknown one, and he still chooses the laugh, and the choosing is the point.
"Smackage could make you laugh while an ogre charged at you. And then he'd make it stop charging."
Magic Alignment
Ogre strength is his, and it is carried with a grin. He is Ogre Strength, a body that is a wall and a joke at once; Warrior Expertise, high-level combat training; Morale Boost, the presence that could lift the spirits of entire squads and hold them up when the ground fell out from under them; and Tactical Intuition, a surprisingly sharp battlefield sense hidden under the boisterous exterior. His signature power is the grin itself — not a spell, but the thing that makes a company keep fighting when the fight has every reason to be over. The price: he takes the hits meant for the mood, and he has a habit of forgetting to take the hits meant for himself.
Society
In Remedy he was the heart of the guild — the glue that held the mind and the shield together, and the reason the company did not come apart. In The Forgotten he is still the heart, now of the six and of whatever the six become. He is the one the company comes back to, and the one who decides that the day is not over. Outsiders meet the grin first and the ogre second, and the ogre is friendlier than the grin lets on.
Culture & Lore
The wiki keeps him as Remedy's heart and Uaellaen's closest friend, and the tale is told mostly by Uaellaen, who respects him more than he lets on. The old world said the ogre who would not stop smiling; the new world says the same thing, and is slowly learning that the smile is the point, and the point is the strength.
Home
He keeps with the six, in no fixed place, in the deep marsh country of the old world behind him and the unknown universe in front of him. His truest home is the loud room, and the loud room travels, and he is always in it.
Relations
Uaellaen — his closest friend, the mind he keeps grounded. Rumzuck Umbatsch — his shield, his friend, the one he makes laugh. Wreckreate — the mind, the fourth of the core. Remedy — the guild that raised him. The Forgotten — the company he now keeps warm. The new world is the one thing he has met that he has not yet found a joke for, and he intends to fix that.
In the Story
Like Rumzuck Umbatsch, Smackage was part of Remedy's golden era — and like Rumzuck, he was banished to the unknown universe after The Fall of Remedy. He is with Uaellaen, and is now a founding member of The Forgotten. In a new world that gives him every reason to stop smiling, Smackage is smiling. That, Uaellaen suspects, is the point.
Quotes
"The strongest thing about Smackage wasn't his muscles either. It was his refusal to ever stop smiling." — Uaellaen