Character from Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
Seven-foot Toblakai who began as a savage raider and evolved into a civilization-shattering force of nature — a man whose answer to every broken system is to break it harder. Witness.
Karsa Orlong is Erikson's most dangerous thought experiment: what happens when you give a barbarian the intelligence to understand civilization and the power to reject it? He begins the series as a genuinely terrible person — a rapist, a murderer, a tribalist who measures worth in skulls. Then he sees the 'civilized' world and finds it worse: slavery codified into law, cruelty administered through bureaucracy, suffering distributed with mathematical precision. His evolution is not redemption — it is radicalization in the opposite direction. He becomes a force that intends to tear down every institution, every hierarchy, every system that allows the strong to organize their exploitation of the weak. His catchphrase — 'Witness' — is both a command and a threat: see what I do, because I am coming for everything you have built. He carries a Toblakai's contempt for complexity and a philosopher's understanding of why simplicity is the only honest answer to a dishonest world. He is terrifying because he might be right.
Over seven feet of scarred, corded Toblakai muscle. Long black hair, savage tattooed features, carrying a flint sword — bloodwood, chipped obsidian edge — taller than most humans. His body is a map of every fight he has survived, which is all of them. Wooden sword on his back like a totem. Moves with the terrifying economy of someone who has never needed to hurry because nothing has ever been fast enough to require it.
Also known as: Karsa, Karsa Orlong, Toblakai, Knight of Chains