Half Beak was a Great Horned Owl, or Bubo virginianus, who was once a soldier of the League of the Ice Talons. During a battle against the Kielian League, he engaged in battle with Ezylyrb's father, Raskin, and was maimed, losing a portion of his beak. Later, he, alongside another Great Horned, Three Talons, infiltrated a training camp conducted by Moss to train snow leopards.
History[]
The Rise of a Legend[]
Half Beak (real name unknown) was first mentioned by Raskin when the Supreme Commander of the Kielian League recounted a short skirmish to Gundesfyrr and Lyze. During a short skirmish above the first of the Ice Talons promontory, he and one of his Horned kinsmen came up against Lyze's parents, him against Raskin, the other against Ulfa, the former of whom raked of half his enemy's beak, though at the cost of half his face and all his whiskers being seared off. Despite this injury, Raskin's foe was able to escape with his life and subsequently took the name Half Beak in reference to the scar.
Sometime later, the treachery of the falcon messenger Glynnis led Half Beak and the very same owl he had fought alongside against Rask and Ulfa, who had since taken the name Three Talons, to a secret training camp on the Nacht Sted, where the Kielian League was recruiting owls and snow leopards to the war effort. The two Great Horneds used their scars to their advantage and approached the leader of the group, Moss, claiming to be hireclaws wounded in the war, unable to go into battle, but still very experienced and happy to assist his training plans, which Moss accepted, not having the luxury of time to look into the 'hireclaws' history more carefully. Half Beak and Three Talons then began assisting in the training as a greater force of Bylyric's followers were mustered, but in a strike of fortune, Loki, Blix and Lyze, the son of Half Beak's old foe Rask, stumbled upon the training grounds and Lyze recognized the injuries two of the recruits sustained to match the injuries delivered to a pair of Great Horned Ice Talons by his parents and identified them as slipgizzles. With the exception of the snow leopards, Half Beak and Three Talons were the only not familiar with Kielian spoken code and thus were unaware of the warning Moss and his other owls were given to the presence of traitors in their midst.
The warning came just in time, for as dawn came the next day, Half Beak roused himself and, after checking to see of his secret enemies were now asleep, flew out to the Bitter Sea where he rendezvoused with Glynnis and a strike force of Ice Talon League members that he led back to the same. Storming out of the lightening darkness suddenly, the presence of a foreign Others' weapon aided the Kielian League in turning the tide and in the process, Half Beak was slain.