(Pronunciation: Hard Ch, as in the Scottish "loch," and long American-English A in the first, stressed syllable; thus, roughly, "CARE-icks.")
Charracks was born to a wealthy merchant family in the town of Techlin on the Fire Coast, and found little in town to interest him as he grew into his teens. He pressed weights and trained under a local pugilist just to keep his mind off his boredom, but it always returned soon after each workout, when his muscles were finished working. He often wandered the streets out of sheer ennui, watching the people go by and wishing something sudden and violent would happen to make them interesting to him. Often, he fantasized about thieves approaching to steal from him, only to be broken under his sheer physical power as he attacked, but nothing of the kind ever happened.
One evening, lurking about the edges of town, Charracks spotted someone in a shadowy alley: An attractive young woman, several years his elder, daringly dressed, all in leather, rope, and chains. He followed her, and to his deep pleasure, found that she had led him to a place worthy not only of interest at last, but of awe and amazement: A forbidden temple, buried beneath the earth, arranged for the worship of a terrible diety whose power and deadly beauty were manifest to Charracks from the moment he entered as Vammakhel's presence seemed to descend upon him. He rejoiced in silence, and the woman who had led him there saw him, and took him aside with her to "punish" him.
She underestimated Charracks. Unlike the others of the town who worshiped at that temple, he had no desire to be bound and struck by a beautiful priestess or powerful priest. He fought the woman who led him there in spite of the wounds he inflicted in freeing himself, welcoming the pain that meant he was free. When he wrenched the whip from the hand of the priestess, he cast it aside in fury, and battered her with his fists alone, in fury that she should set herself above him and take for herself the right of punishment. When the high priest of the temple finally separated them, the priestess was barely alive. Broken and whimpering, no longer beautiful, she had to be carried away for slow, painful healing, and the blood that covered Charracks's fists was as much hers as his own. In another place, he might not have lived through the experience, but the high priest saw in Charracks the spirit of Vammakhel, and rewarded him with indoctrination into the priesthood. Charracks would not be asked to bind and strike willing supplicants however; he believed, and the high priest agreed, that was beneath him. Charracks was made the temple's enforcer, the looming threat meant to keep priests and parishioners alike in line, the man whose cold and deadly malice could cow even the lovers of pain who came to worship at that temple. Not long after his ritual indoctrination into the priesthood, the threat of Charracks's vengeance had risen to the top of the long list of reasons that those who knew of the temple's existence dared never betray its secrets.
Charracks's hands were never idle in the temple; a part of his time was spent in simple worship and his part in the rituals of the place, and a large part in simply being seen, grim and menacing, but there were sometimes also occasions to practice his torture techniques. He learned to use whips and scourges of all kinds, and eventually even some of the intricate pieces of cold equipment that filled the deepest dungeon rooms of the temple, but he also stayed in practice with his fists. There were always others better versed in the application of specialized devices, or the best ways to achieve the maximum possible level of pain without allowing the victim to lose consciousness, but Charracks was the most feared of all the priests, for to him, the purpose of the torture was secondary. Whether punishment was intended or an experience of Vammakhel's power, or even if information was to be gained, Charracks was ruthless, and interested only in inflicting pain. The high priest knew that to turn someone over to Charracks was to risk permanently disfigurment or disability for the victim, or driving the victim to madness with agony. He knew that the chance of a victim's death was greater under Charracks's hand than under any other priest's. He knew it, and still used Charracks, for the glory of Vammakhel, and for the sensation and the panic and terror that Charracks's use would bring.
No one ever found out if a parishioner broke faith after all or if the wrong person got careless and was seen by the authorities, but the town militia finally found out about the temple, and their raid emptied it completely. The fortunate managed to escape and flee, a few died fighting, and most of the parishioners were forced to leave the community. The priests, resisting arrest to inflict as much pain as they could, were mostly hanged. Charracks himself would have been among these if not for a stroke of good fortune. On the fateful night, he was sitting by his ailing mother's bed, brooding over the unworthiness of family obligations that prevented him from attending the forbidden temple to pain. Various confessors fingered him, but he had not been caught in the temple, and had no opportunity to resist arrest in its defense. When the town took custody of Charracks, he accepted it because the temple had already been taken and he knew he could not win, and his sentence was not death but exile in spite of his reputed deeds. His parents wept to learn where he had spent his time away from them, and grimly, imagining that the temple could have been safely defended if only he had been present to lead its priests and parishioners in the defense, Charracks blamed his parents for all that had gone wrong. Since the time he was taken into custody, he has never spoken to them.
