Fetzen

Bronze Castle's Spikes

Name: Fyr

Race: Demon

Age: 33

Sex: Male

Appearance:

Fyr's about 162cm tall and of above-average muscularity, but feasting and drinking have caused a noticeable amount of fat to accumulate around his waistline as well. His black hair reaches well past his shoulders and is one big and unkempt mess he seems to be almost as proud of as of his wound horns. The latter don't appear to be made of keratine, but of some kind of much more mechanically stable compound. Those few people who had the opportunity to touch them even claim that they'd feel a bit metallic. His skin is of a reddish complexion all over his body and feels more like leather than anything else. A look on his nacked back would reveal quite an assortment of long scars.


Personality: Most people might associate hell with nothing but terror, so it comes all the more as a surprise to them that Fyr actually is not the kind of savage killer addicted to cruelty they might expect. On the contrary Fyr tends to be friendly, sometimes even jovial. Despite all the threats surrounding it and all the hardships of survival it brings with it, Castle Bronze actually is the best thing that has happened in Fyr's life so far. His thankfulness not only comes from him realizing that it's advisable, but from heart -- as much as a demon can have such, that is.

However Fyr also likes to enjoy himself, feasting and drinking when there's the right opportunity and pulling harmless pranks on people to get over a hangover. Overall the process of socialization with the castle's inhabitants goes along well, but still not to the degree he and the people around him might prefer for he still knows little about the social customs of this world's inhabitants.

In combat, Fyr presents himself as determined and nasty. He treats his present enemies the same way he treated his past enemies, just with more experience.


History: The forest around Bronze Castle is large and diverse, and so are the creatures and individuals living in there. Not everyone is turned down by initial failure, not everyone lacks the optimism and dedication required to pull through with a delicate piece of magic and not everyone is afraid of the darker things possible.

It was a dark and thunderous night when Fyr was ripped out of hell and tossed into the mundane world, summoned by ritualists who had spent months on their effort to obtain some 'help' for their own tribe. Their belief was that they had targeted the spell right and only summoned one of the lesser, more docile inhabitants of hell whom could be controlled and used for their own purpose. Ignite that campfire here, cast a levitation spell onto that brutally heavy stone there, do this, do that...

Admitted, at first Fyr did indeed not even realize that he was effectively being enslaved, simply because that kind of treatment was not so different from what the small demon had been experiencing in hell for years. However now he saw something he had not seen before: People walking around without someone else lashing them into a certain direction, people just doing what thy wanted to do... freedom. He struggled with his unfamiliarity with the world, but still the desire rose quickly to obtain this freedom for it just felt so much better.

Fyr had not killed before for he simply had been under constant supervision by beings much more capable than him, but the latter didn't hold true for those... whatever those two-legged creatures were. He burned them, impaled their chests with wooden stakes or just outright bashed their heads with whatever happened to lie around. Years of hard labor had hardened him and taught him to adapt so he proved ready. Luckily the Bronze Castle's guards didn't kill him when he arrived at their gate in rugged clothes and with hardly any food left.

There was only one thing of significance he had on his body: a small, golden needle piercing through his left ear. It was, and still is, the only possession that the summoners had brought out of hell along with him. Just like its origin it seems to defy the laws of nature from time to time and grants the same thing to its owner.


Equipment:

• Simple linen clothing, more gray than white and intended for everyday use.
• Leather armor adapted to his small size.
• Crossbow: A donation to him since he wanted to learn it, but he's not made much progress with that so far.

Spike:

Spike Name: Horizon Travel
Spike description: A small needle of golden color, yet apparently made of an incredibly much stronger material. There's no decoration on it for the only thing that's not the needle itself is a pair of tiny barbs obviously there to prevent the trinket from detaching from whatever it has been pricked through.
Spike theme: Horizontal travel, even under circumstances that would not allow for it otherwise. It's ought to be damn useful in a place with many lava streams and impassable rifts.
Spike ability:

• Upon activation, the spike instantly redirects the bearer's momentum to a line horizontal with respect to the ground. The then horizontal momentum is unchangeably maintained until the bearer can or does not want to maintain it further or an obstacle is encountered. In the latter case the same kind of impact occurs as it would have occurred without using the spike at all when colliding, including any negative consequences for the spike's user. The redirection of the user's current momentum to the horizontal results in similar effects should the current momentum greatly differ from the horizontal momentum.
• The spike can also be used onto another person, working exactly like it would on oneself. In that case the affected indidual needs to maintain the effect as well and its stamina is drained in the same manner.

It should be mentioned that collissions with other objects can be induced by the spike's user or the other person affect by it intentionally by just grabbing them if they happen to be in reach, thereby causing a controlled stop.

Personal ability:

• Fyr's a demon. He has much, much less trouble with wielding magic in a much more instant manner and thus is able to use it even in a fight. However that doesn't automatically make him the pinnacle of wizardry, for every spell's formation still needs to be learned and that is something none of his former masters cared much about. Therefore his repertoire is effective, but also rather basic.
• Resilience: Fyr might not look like much, but he's made sure that all that condensed magic has been put to good physical use by implementing bones and horns significantly reinforced with metallic minerals and by packing his sinews and muscles tighter and sturdier. The good side of things ? He can survive bone-breaking and flesh-tearing events a lot easier than others. The bad side of things ? A well placed stab wound to the heart will still kill him and so would large bloodloss or similar things. Also he's a brutally heavy boy.
• Strength: He's a demon, and albeit he's by far not the largest he's still a lot stronger than he looks like and can easily keep up with much, much larger humans, elves or other individuals. However it is all raw strength, meaning that he simply lacks the skill required in order to put it to effective use in combat. He's probably a brutal tavern brawler, but can be happy to know which side of a sword not to use for holding it.

Nightfall: A Dark Fantasy Adventure

I'm interested, however I feel obliged to give out an advance warning about me not being familiar with tabletop. If that's too much of an issue I'd completely understand!

Bronze Castle's Spikes

Fyr

Name: Fyr

Race: Demon

Age: 33

Sex: Male

Appearance:

Fyr's about 162cm tall and of above-average muscularity, but feasting and drinking have caused a noticeable amount of fat to accumulate around his waistline as well. His black hair reaches well past his shoulders and is one big and unkempt mess he seems to be almost as proud of as of his wound horns. The latter don't appear to be made of keratine, but of some kind of much more mechanically stable compound. Those few people who had the opportunity to touch them even claim that they'd feel a bit metallic. His skin is of a reddish complexion all over his body and feels more like leather than anything else. A look on his nacked back would reveal quite an assortment of long scars.


Personality: Most people might associate hell with nothing but terror, so it comes all the more as a surprise to them that Fyr actually is not the kind of savage killer addicted to cruelty they might expect. On the contrary Fyr tends to be friendly, sometimes even jovial. Despite all the threats surrounding it and all the hardships of survival it brings with it, Castle Bronze actually is the best thing that has happened in Fyr's life so far. His thankfulness not only comes from him realizing that it's advisable, but from heart -- as much as a demon can have such, that is.

However Fyr also likes to enjoy himself, feasting and drinking when there's the right opportunity and pulling harmless pranks on people to get over a hangover. Overall the process of socialization with the castle's inhabitants goes along well, but still not to the degree he and the people around him might prefer for he still knows little about the social customs of this world's inhabitants.

In combat, Fyr presents himself as determined and nasty. He treats his present enemies the same way he treated his past enemies, just with more experience.


History: The forest around Bronze Castle is large and diverse, and so are the creatures and individuals living in there. Not everyone is turned down by initial failure, not everyone lacks the optimism and dedication required to pull through with a delicate piece of magic and not everyone is afraid of the darker things possible.

It was a dark and thunderous night when Fyr was ripped out of hell and tossed into the mundane world, summoned by ritualists who had spent months on their effort to obtain some 'help' for their own tribe. Their belief was that they had targeted the spell right and only summoned one of the lesser, more docile inhabitants of hell whom could be controlled and used for their own purpose. Ignite that campfire here, cast a levitation spell onto that brutally heavy stone there, do this, do that...

Admitted, at first Fyr did indeed not even realize that he was effectively being enslaved, simply because that kind of treatment was not so different from what the small demon had been experiencing in hell for years. However now he saw something he had not seen before: People walking around without someone else lashing them into a certain direction, people just doing what thy wanted to do... freedom. He struggled with his unfamiliarity with the world, but still the desire rose quickly to obtain this freedom for it just felt so much better.

Fyr had not killed before for he simply had been under constant supervision by beings much more capable than him, but the latter didn't hold true for those... whatever those two-legged creatures were. He burned them, impaled their chests with wooden stakes or just outright bashed their heads with whatever happened to lie around. Years of hard labor had hardened him and taught him to adapt so he proved ready. Luckily the Bronze Castle's guards didn't kill him when he arrived at their gate in rugged clothes and with hardly any food left.

There was only one thing of significance he had on his body: a small, golden needle piercing through his left ear. It was, and still is, the only possession that the summoners had brought out of hell along with him. Just like its origin it seems to defy the laws of nature from time to time and grants the same thing to its owner.


Equipment:

• Simple linen clothing, more gray than white and intended for everyday use.
• Leather armor adapted to his small size.
• Crossbow: A donation to him since he wanted to learn it, but he's not made much progress with that so far.

Spike:

Spike Name: Horizon Travel
Spike description: A small needle of golden color, yet apparently made of an incredibly much stronger material. There's no decoration on it for the only thing that's not the needle itself is a pair of tiny barbs obviously there to prevent the trinket from detaching from whatever it has been pricked through.
Spike theme: Horizontal travel, even under circumstances that would not allow for it otherwise. It's ought to be damn useful in a place with many lava streams and impassable rifts.
Spike ability:

• Upon activation, the spike instantly redirects the bearer's momentum to a line horizontal with respect to the ground. The then horizontal momentum is unchangeably maintained until the bearer can or does not want to maintain it further or an obstacle is encountered. In the latter case the same kind of impact occurs as it would have occurred without using the spike at all when colliding, including any negative consequences for the spike's user. The redirection of the user's current momentum to the horizontal results in similar effects should the current momentum greatly differ from the horizontal momentum.
• The spike can also be used onto another person, working exactly like it would on oneself. In that case the affected indidual needs to maintain the effect as well and its stamina is drained in the same manner.

It should be mentioned that collissions with other objects can be induced by the spike's user or the other person affect by it intentionally by just grabbing them if they happen to be in reach, thereby causing a controlled stop.

Personal ability:

• Fyr's a demon. He has much, much less trouble with wielding magic in a much more instant manner and thus is able to use it even in a fight. However that doesn't automatically make him the pinnacle of wizardry, for every spell's formation still needs to be learned and that is something none of his former masters cared much about. Therefore his repertoire is effective, but also rather basic.
• Resilience: Fyr might not look like much, but he's made sure that all that condensed magic has been put to good physical use by implementing bones and horns significantly reinforced with metallic minerals and by packing his sinews and muscles tighter and sturdier. The good side of things ? He can survive bone-breaking and flesh-tearing events a lot easier than others. The bad side of things ? A well placed stab wound to the heart will still kill him and so would large bloodloss or similar things. Also he's a brutally heavy boy.
• Strength: He's a demon, and albeit he's by far not the largest he's still a lot stronger than he looks like and can easily keep up with much, much larger humans, elves or other individuals. However it is all raw strength, meaning that he simply lacks the skill required in order to put it to effective use in combat. He's probably a brutal tavern brawler, but can be happy to know which side of a sword not to use for holding it.

The Elder Scrolls : Voice of the Sky

Oh no you don’t.

Not here son.

Not in my Tamriel.

@Stormflyx

Your Tamriel? Who gave you that?

The Black Prophecy (Dead now; requiescat in pace!)

Vaught

_{Early Spring of the Year 315 P.F}

Plants needed water. Even the toughest cactus in the most arid desert required the occasional rain to come down from otherwise blue skies, but of course the more green colleagues it had in its vicinity and the taller those were, the more of the precious liquid was in demand. From that point of view the terrential downfall that had occurred in The Greatwood area a few days prior was an event to be thankful for, but the hunting party that had gathered in the nearby village thought otherwise.

For them any of the larger puddles was just one more reason to stay further apart from each other. One of the men had fallen back into the usual routine and closed in on the others a few minutes ago and was covered in the cold mud their horses' hooves had sprayed still. The humid ground slowed them down, forced them to evade additional obstacles and kept alive the dense mist that only helped their prey. They were a ragtag group of four peasants who had convinced their local horseshoer to forge them some spearheads, to sharpen their pitchforks and to check their primitive crossbows, but even to those non-professionals it was obvious that both their own equipment and the current conditions were not in their favor.

Still they pressed on, knowing that their path would only lead them closer to The Greatwood itself. It was the forest that stood for the unknown like hardly any other region in Outremer and the unknown was what most humans feared most, but what had happened in the village of those humble peasants had been frightening, too. Their fields had been fertilized with the blood of the cattle they were intended to nourish! The wooden fence intended to keep away the wolves had been broken and yet another of the sheeps had been brutally torn apart, but the rain had reduced the perpetrator's traces to meaningless shapes yet again. The fourth time this month...

The four men had no coin to spare, no food to give away to what might be just a big, wild boar or even a large bear. There was enough scum roaming around in the region around Portus Cruor that used to oppress people that living there was hard enough already. Even if they wouldn't be able to find the exact animal, they were determined to decimate the population and to scare the remainder. They had already hunted down one boar and wrapped it up nicely on one of their spare horses, but their lust for revenge was far from satiated yet.

The Greatwood didn't present itself with a clearly cut and abruptly upcoming treeline, but it was a steady increase in how close the trees stood to each other. The terrain slowly became rougher, grass and trees taller and roots came sprouting from the ground. Also the fog started to thicken so it was decided to turn around and continue in another direction, but not after a short but well deserved break. The small party slowed down gradually, then came to a complete stop in the midst of what seemed to be a large glade. A gentle mixture of sounds came to their ears: a small creek, woodpeckers and other birds, a fly whizzing by and finding its sudden death between a man's swift hand and his leather clothing. All harmless things that wouldn't harm anyone.

Yet a few minutes into the break there suddenly was disturbance: a loud crack like a thick twig snapping on the ground. A large animal perhaps ? The horses had been tied to a tree near the water so they could drink and eat a little. That's where the sound had come from. Jacob stopped eating and started running towards their location as one of them whinnied. The fog made seeing what was going on difficult from any significant distance.

"Hel..."

Jacob's outcry came to an abrupt end only to be followed by a dull sound. Now George, Harod and Flynn started running, too. They were greeted by the sight of what they only believed to be a human upon a second glance. Staring down upon them was a pair of reddish glowing eyes situated at least seven feet above the ground. The individual it belonged two didn't move much. It just pointed downwards towards Jacob who seemed to be unconscious, but bleeding from a broken nose at least.

"I think he's still alive. I'll take these two horses and leave you the others to get yourself and him out of here!"

For a brief moment, the three peasants just stood there in shock and watched with obvious disbelief as the almost gray-skinned, hulking man untied two of the animals without even looking at the arrangement of improvised weapons their owners had brought along with them. At least that was until Flynn made an attempt to end things in an instant as he charged forwards, pointing his spear directly at Vaught as the latter bowed in order to undo yet another knot in the rope.

Vaught's elbow hit the wooden shaft so hard that the whole thing was sent flying far into the woods, but not without interacting violently with Flynn's temple. The man cried out and landed face-first in the mud, bleeding from a serious looking head wound.

"Don't you listen ? Go before I trample your two friends and hunt you down like a sheep out at feed!"

It was not only the incredibly chesty voice alone that put fear into the men's hearts, but also the sight of teeth that seemed more suited to consume flesh than anything else. Whoever, whatever this wickedly huge, strangely pale... man... was, he wasn't joking. George and Harrod did not make any further attempts to attack him, but just watched in awe as Vaught reached for one of the steed's reigns and mounted the other. The horse buckled beneath him to a large degree, but would suffice for quite a while still.

It was only when the four peasants had already disappeared in the fog behind him that Vaught realized his mistake. He had said something that might trigger more of the village's attention instead of reducing it. This probably wouldn't be the last hunters he'd encounter, but he was tired of them. Why was he showing mercy to those humans if all they seemingly had in mind was to eradicate everything that disturbed their way of living ? The general feeling of 'enough' had risen to an uncomfortable level he just refused to ignore anymore.

Something more drastic than just feeding on sheeps while everybody was asleep had to be done.

Portals to the Nether (Fetzen x AutumnFrost)

"Hmm..." Othen murmured more to himself than towards Branna or anybody else. It was a sound indicative of him thinking too much to produce anything more meaningful.

"I have a few things to pick up before I can leave the city, but I know precisely where to go so I don't have to search the proper merchants first. Given the current progress of the day they won't be available until early tomorrow I think, but after that I'd be ready. How does that sound ?"

Othen realized that he was in a bit of a situation: He just had to buy some stuff that he had not intended to buy originally. If he would come back to Branna without at least one bag filled with some stuff that looked like metal or minerals she could very well grow suspicious. So him saying that he'd have to visit some merchants tomorrow early wasn't even a lie, but he'd have to make sure that whatever deception he'd buy would be as cheap as possible. He needed coin for food and water and there also was a stable's owner to pay for keeping his horse supplied.

"Are you going by foot or on horseback ? I'm doing the latter, but we could just as well meet at the east gate instead of the stables."

Othen hoped that Branna would not burst out in laughter at this point. Experience told him that people tended to turn their heads a lot when seeing him riding, so he couldn't rule out that she might find the mere thought of him doing so amusing.

"We could also meet pretty much anywhere else. I suppose you wouldn't have much trouble finding me even in a crowd, would you ?"

The big man smiled as he put up the rhethorical question. Nobody had ever had much trouble finding him in a crowd, except maybe if said nobody was a dwarf who couldn't see anything else than the groins of those standing around him. Branna was not a dwarf though, and if she truly was an experienced adventurer there was no reason to mistrust her abilities. Othen felt like he'd be in good hands with her, but he was unsure if he could do the same for her. His smile inadvertently faded as Othen found discomfort in these thoughts.

The Prince's Royal Guard

Not only hammer-troll decided to drop his weapon, but so did the lycanthrope opposing him. The tremendous axe was good, but given the very close quarters they were about to engage each other in it would only not be of much use. Manald also remembered that there was armor embedded in or below that troll's skin, so as much as he'd never admit it his claws would not be of as much use as against all those goblins. The goal, again, was to hit the throat. It was the same weakpoint as with the other troll and this one hadn't even seen it happen, but this time there was no room left for a furious charge.

The wolf's thighs exploded in a burst of power, catapulting the colossal creature off the ground and towards the troll without too much forward momentum. The intention ? To come crashing down on it, make it collapse to the ground with him on top of it. Yet as the troll raised his arms to protect his head from any suspected attack they collided with Manald's feet and the troll gave him a spin. Instead of transferring all of the gained momentum onto the troll almost right from above, Manald's torso toppled forwards and the lycanthrope nosedived into the mud behind the trolls back. The latter stumbled forwards, but maintained enough stablity to make a turnaround.

Manald tried to get up from the ground as quickly as possible, but by the time he had recovered from the vicious downfall and turned around on all four legs the troll had already reached him and now got his hands around Manald's neck, starting to choke him from above. Now that, quite ironically, was Manald's weakpoint. The troll did not have claws like him that could rend stuff as easily, but cutting off the blood supply to one's brain would work on Manald just as well for a brief blackout during which one could do everything with the lycan.

The way out of this ? Manald did not spend precious moment on trying to think about some nice maneuver, but instead raised his arms from the ground and rammed his claws into the trolls hands. There was armor, but he could search for a way beneath the metal. He had to and he had to do so very quickly. Blood poured out of the troll's hands as he continued choking Manald while his victim shredded the troll's skin, seeking the edges of the armor plates to he could lever them out of their places and get access to the muscles and sinews beneath them. He'd not have much time to just physically disable the hands around his neck, but he also hoped that the troll would just give up before that due to excessive pain and blood loss.

The Five Senses

Týfurkh

_{@Pezz570@13org@Jerkchicken@HokumPocus@Typical}

Quite a lot of things were happening at the same time, not all of them being noticed by Týfurkh despite the fact that he probably had the best optical overview over things. Fighting in close quarters was something that just tended to consume all of his attention, so when the magical ball exploded the resulting shockwave hit him without any advance warning. It threw him against the stone wall, barely providing enough time for him to tighten his muscles and to prevent his head from banging against the building too violently. Still he'd probably develop a headache due to this at some point.

Should he charge up the stairs ? Maybe he could intercept this guard, just knock the man out of business before he could come back with reinforcements. It would come at the significant risk of running right into a numerical superiority though and this also was not the direction they had to go. So instead, Týfurhk let the front part of his crossbow drop to the ground and make some nice dents into the wooden paneling as he busied himself reloading. Long and narrow corridors had the big advantage of making targeting very easy for there was hardly any way to evade something, so taking care of the other two guys running away should be easy.

Easy enough for a decent throwing knife as well it seemed. Had that been Chres ? The disturbing thought of having done too little about learning everyone's abilities briefly crossed Týfurkh's mind before it was disrupted by Chres' request. Týfurkh turned his head towards his companion and nodded. Before joining him though he picked up one of the guard's shields.

"Just try to get out of the way quickly when this charge ends, okay ?"

A brief smile appeared on Týfurkh's face as he raised the shield. It wouldn't help Chres standing in front of him, but it would protect his own upper body and hopefully block those arrows which otherwise would fly past him and hit those behind him. The advantage of long, narrow corridors did not only hold true for the pactmakers after all...

The Fall of Faith: A Journey Home

This sounds intriguing :)

The Black Prophecy (Dead now; requiescat in pace!)

Vaught

Vaught

Hider

Identity

• Vaught The Great
• Vaught The Mad
• Slayer Of Portus Cruor

Type

Rogue being

Myth

"So I'd like to tell you a little story about Portus Cruor. Yes, that gritty place of unlimited filth in the south nobody likes to talk about. Not even the people living there like to talk about the place for doing so isn't good for their reputation or their 'professional' success in most cases, so don't worry if you've never heard of anything like this before. It's not a very well known story and I can certainly say that because I myself stumbled upon it in the archives only recently."

The magister and his student sat opposing each other, only separated by a small round table covered by an unorderly arrangement of parchments and a few burning candles.

"So we have Portus Cruor where no honest nature wants to go to, and also there we have Vaught, a boy who's allegedly been picked up by some scoundrels sailing along the western coastline of The Greatwood. Those pirates... it's not enough for them to harass innocent seafaring merchants for their goods, but some of them don't even stop from human trafficking. Their miserable city has a rather constant need for slaves as its inhabitants treat them far less well than those of... erm... here, for example ?

Vaught, looking like someone who had not even finished growing into an adult, was put into the pits. That's what they call their arenas down there where they let people fight against each other for public entertainment. Some of those are paid and more or less professional individuals, but most are captives who are forced to fight for their lives and seldomly make it higher up. They are given promises of freedom and coin should they reach the top, but of course the owners of the pits make sure that they get the most out of their greatest assets before that.

Vaught however... he was a lucky one. Completely inexperienced, but showing enough talent not to be put into an impossible situation by his owner at the early stages. People could watch him making his first kill by barely using more than a stone, but soon they saw him wielding a wooden club, then a simple axe and ultimately sword and shield. I have to admit that I'd be amazed if that would be one of my own children, but fortunately we don't do such cruel things like stealing people up here.

So Vaught rose to be one of the major attractions of the pits, seeing great bloodshed several times a month and preparing to defend his own life during the remainder of the time. Whether he ever started to like it ? I don't know. It's certain however that he adapted, becoming a more and more cruel and ruthless man himself both in and outside the arena at least as far as we know. People also noted that he bulked up dramatically until he, at some point, outright dwarfed his opponents. Spectators started speculating whether the owner of the place had hired an alchemist to mix some wicked substances into the man's food, because, you know, he also grew heads taller than the others.

Then, only a few years into things, came what my sources often refer to as 'the night of the red ring'. A simple summer day with swealtering weather as its typical for that part of Outremer. The time of the year when everyone who can stays inside at day and starts enjoying himself in the cooler evening hours. The pits were set for a tournament that would include only the best of the best and go on for days, a real eyecatcher for the whole of Portus Cruor in the light of countless torches and a full moon.

Vaught was there as well, but from the very moment he stepped onto the gray sand there was that uncertain feeling of something being different. Maybe it was an illusion caused by the dim and irregular lighting, but his eyes didn't seem brown anymore. They appeared red: not that kind of passive red of an albino, but a wicked red that almost seemed to glow."

The magister smiled, almost laughing slightly as he waved his hands as if to stave off something.

"Oh yes, I know what people with too much imagination like you might think: The full moon, it certainly has something to do with it! All those superstitions common people like to stick to... No no, trust me: I'll come to the point where you'll see that it's not what you might think it is!

So, where was I ? Ah, yes, when Vaught entered the arena. Now of course he had sustained a lot of injuries in past fights just like everyone else, but as he stood there with nothing more than a piece of fur and an improvised girdle covering his hulking body people started to wonder whether they simply couldn't see them or if there indeed were no more scars on the man's skin. And the gray sand beneath his feet ? Soon after the intial fight had begun it wasn't gray anymore, but red and wet by anybody's blood. And when I say 'anybody' I mean 'anybody' because Vaught didn't stop after he had gutted every man and woman he was supposed to kill, but he then climbed over the high metal fence and started a massacre on the stands. Just like in every arena they were arranged in a large ring, hence the name of the occasion."

The student's eyes widened as he continued listening, now seemingly more attentive than before.

"You think he must have been killed within seconds by some guards ? That there must have been preparations in place just in case one of those highly trained and imprisoned killers would go crazy just like that ? You're right about about the latter, but not about the former. Vaught went beyond 'good' when people saw how arrows and bolts shot at his naked skin could slow him down, but not stop his murderous rage until everyone was either dead or had managed to flee. Vaught escaped from the pits and continued on his path through the narrow streets and alleys. At some point they just gave up pursuing him, probably when it became evident that he wanted nothing but leave the damn place.

I can see you wondering why I'm burdening you with all that nonsense. Well... that's because I'd like to add some more literature to your workload, but not without at least some actual motivation to read it. So may I hand you this pile of my personal handwritings you've been sitting in front of for the whole time ?"

The old magister leaned back in his chair, just looking at his student as the latter slowly picked up the parchments in front of him, each of them filled to the brim with a dense mixture of letters and drawings.

"I want an independent opinion about my work so far. I feel like my writing style might be a bit too complicated, but the matter is serious: Did you ever hear the term 'primordial chaos' before ?"

The student shrugged his shoulders, looking at the magister whom had invited him into his personal office so unexpectedly with curious eyes.

"It's about metaphysics so to speak. A theory one of my predecessors here has put up but which has never received much attention for it's quite abundantly abstract and speculative. It's about how, between gods and demons, the world itself has come to be. I never gave much about mere speculation, but once I stumbled upon this Vaught I remembered that, at some point, the author of this theory starts arguing that this process of the world's becoming might not yet have reached completion and that some remainders of this 'primordial chaos' might still exist in the most unexplored corners, just never having transitioned into a state we humble humans refer to as 'matter', 'magic' or just somehow meaningful for us.

But what would happen if one bit of this 'chaos' took one of us humble humans as a sketch for itself to finally gain consciousness, but only to end up surrounded by cruelty without mercy ? Wouldn't it do everything to defend itself before it's newfound shape is destroyed and while it still is flexible enough to assimilate and incorporate whatever kind of improvement it can find that could help with that ? I'm talking about Vaught, because let's not forget that The Greatwood is one of those most unexplored places we know of. Who knows whether this process of continuous adaptation and improvement had already reached its limits when he fled from Portus Cruor or if said city has only witnessed an intermediary stage of it ?

I'm convinced that Vaught's mind might already have been set much earlier, but that it was only this night when he realized that he couldn't learn anything from the pits anymore. Now it's just me and my ramblings of course, but I think we had a chance to become friends with something great and unique, but instead we trained it how to view us as enemies that need to perish at all costs. It all happened almost a decade ago, but the thought still hurts."