Actually, I have one more thought about Hal and building community I want to try to hash out. Less about his relationship to it as a theme and more about how the theme informs his characterization. Particularly, the flawed premises he operated under at the beginning of the campaign. I don't think this is a "greatest strength, also greatest flaw" kind of thing, because all indications are that he's mostly moved on from this way of thinking by the end of Convergence, but I do find it fascinating.
Basically, I think a lot about the connection between these three moments: Yanessa at Thjazi's execution
Thaisha's blessing to Azgra
Hal is not someone who has ever seems to have doubted the justice of Thjazi's cause. He does not need to be convinced that the Sundered Houses are bad news. What he does doubt is that they should be the ones to fight. And he emphasizes two things when framing his choice against Thjazi's. First, that he's choosing the Rungjani, specifically Dol-Makjar, specifically his children, but the Rungjani. Second, that they have served their time already. That for them, war should be a thing of the past. Now, I've talked in the past about what a radical and important choice it is for an Orc in Araman to reject war conceptually. Which is true. But I think this idea that war ought to be behind them, that they, as individuals and as a culture, have earned peace, interlocks with this idea of building community in a fascinating way.
I don't want to make his motives sound purely altruistic because I don't think that's true. I think Hal's trauma from the War of Axe and Vine made him deeply fear violence on a personal level. But I do think his dream of reclaiming the Round was always bigger than himself. And it's chasing the Round that caused Hal to make moral compromises. He hasn't just rejected fighting against the Sundered Houses, he has ingratiated himself with them. Teaching Wick elocution, schmoozing with them to get funding and access to land that they shouldn't even hold. I've talked in the past about him throwing his political connections around while unabashedly bribing a guard. He has done this all in service of reclaiming the Hallowed Round and building a space for orcs to gather as a community and explore their history. (Kother'ai was a play he was planning to put on long before it became a comment on Thjazi's execution). Prior to the campaign, when choosing between security and freedom, Hal has chosen security. When choosing between security and morality, Hal has chosen security. But it is a choice he's made with experience convincing him that you cannot build things that last in war.
That in order for a community ravaged by centuries of war to grow, peace was something it needed. He believed, perhaps rightly, that giving his people a place to "figure out who they are and who they will be," required peace. And he has been willing to sacrifice a lot to maintain that peace. But peace also tends to be in the service those who have power. And compromising to maintain it will only ever make those already in power stronger
