Eight-Fingers Oba is a member of Tawni Balfour's crew, and appears in the A Pirate's Daughter campaign in Heroes of Might and Magic IV. He is revealed to be Tawni's real father.
Biography[]
In Enroth[]
Oba is described as a tall, quiet man with "taut, wiry muscles and dark skin". He had a short, black beard peppered with gray, and was a master with the spear. During his travels with Tawni, he was close to fifty years old.
Oba used to be a fisherman on Enroth. One day, his village was attacked by pirates, and almost everyone there was slain. Oba survived, but lost his parents, his brother, his wife, and his child. Hoping for a chance to get revenge, he sailed in the navies of Bracada, Erathia, and Nighon.
He spent some decades as a whaler, and at one point, he encountered a group of mermaids. He later described them as "more beautiful than any woman you have seen, but they are as vicious as a blood-hungry shark!" He was the only member of his crew to survive the encounter.
Deciding that he didn't have enough opportunities to kill pirates, Oba decided to become one, so he joined the crew of Black Balfour. When in battle against other pirates, Oba was a madman, charging ahead and claiming eight or nine lives before it was over - far more than anyone else. When they went ashore, Oba would start bar fights that ended with his opponents dead, or drag passed-out pirates into alleyways to slit their throats. But when facing innocents, like merchants or sailors, Oba tried to avoid killing anyone, and he never killed his fellow crewmembers. Oba counted every pirate he killed until he reached 500; one for every member of his family. After that, he stopped counting.
One day, Black Balfour stopped at the Rusty Mug, a tavern in Nighon, for a drink. He was attracted to the serving woman, but he'd had a lot to drink, and passed out on his way up the stairs to her room. Oba ended up in bed with the serving woman. Ten years later, Black Balfour returned to the Rusty Mug, where he found the woman and her ten-year-old daughter Tawni. As he was unable to remember his actions that night, she quickly convinced him that Tawni was his daughter, and that he should send her some gold to pay for the girl's future. Oba gave him his dagger and told him to give it to the girl as a gift. Black Balfour quickly forgot about his promise to send gold to the girl's mother, but Oba took care of it instead.
In Axeoth[]
After the Reckoning, Black Balfour became a pirate on the Gold Sea, with Oba as his second mate. Tawni joined the crew, and was eventually given command of one of Black Balfour's other ships. During this time, Oba lost the ring finger and small finger on his left hand, earning him the nickname "Eight-Fingers".
When Black Balfour was killed in combat, Tawni took command of his fleet, and Oba became her second mate. He was also her second-in-command when they were ashore. Tawni started a war against the other pirates in an attempt to become Queen of the Gold Sea. Oba initially approved of this, as it gave him many opportunities to slay pirates. Later, she ended up in a war against the Mer-Queen, ruler of the mermaids, offering him a chance to get revenge on the creatures that had slain his whaler crew. He was eventually promoted to first mate.
Tawni considered Oba to be the only member of her crew that she trusted, and one day, she asked him why he became a pirate, as he didn't seem interested in gold or power. He replied that he loved the sea, and might be just as happy as a fisherman, but admitted that he wanted to kill pirates. He told her about the pirate attack on his village, and his revenge. She realized that she was sitting next to a one-man army.
Eventually, Oba grew tired of the constant fighting. He prevented some of the pirates from slaying a wounded mermaid, and dragged Dirty-face Derring from the home of a merchant while he was plundering it. Tawni demanded to know what was going on, and he told her that he was tired of the bloodshed. "Everyone is your enemy! When will it end, Tawni? You fight and fight - I thought my thirst for vengeance couldn't be quenched, but look at your taste for conquest and murder. It never ends!"
A few days later, she asked him why he was still killing - his family had been avenged many times over. He admitted that he wasn't sure, but didn't think he could stop. During the conversation, he made a throw-away comment about the Rusty Mug, and after going through memories of conversations she'd seen between Oba and her mother, Tawni eventually realized that he was her real father. She confronted him with this, and he admitted it.
Before her final encounter with the Mer-Queen, Tawni gave Oba a dinghy and enough food and water for two weeks. She told him that he had avenged his family, and it was time to leave. "I am retiring you. Find a nice quiet place. Build yourself a home and fish, or buy a ship. I also gave you enough gold to get you started. Do something other than pirating - you don't have it in you anymore." He gave her a long hug, before climbing into the dinghy and rowing away.
Oba later bought a fishing boat and built a small home on an island in the Gold Sea, where he was often seen in the company of a widow that lived nearby.
