While the early top rankers were definitely greats, most of the heroes and villains of the first age wouldn’t unearth themselves from their surrounding muck for some time. This included, among others, those who needed time to build up their strength, those who weren’t combat-focused, and those who had yet to come upon their fortuitous encounters.

Stefan Sommer - the Chronicler - Heroes and Villains of the First Age

____

Silas followed the grey giant by his own accord, his eyes darting across the corridor, searching for a weapon he could use. The beast hadn’t even bothered to restrain him, so he was wasting an opportunity if he did nothing. He stopped dead, however, as he spotted Faris watching the parade through his cell, o-faced.

The bald beast stopped a few steps ahead and turned, its face gently creased. It followed Silas’s gaze and peered into Faris’s cell, causing the archer to shrink back. He did not seem to be the brave commando Silas had imagined him as at the start of their journey, but the Duellist could hardly blame him.

“Wallah, I am the nastiest snack you could find here, my friend. My beard will get stuck in your teeth and my toes have gone unwashed for thirteen days now,” Faris said, backing up to the wall. “Now, look at Silas and notice how beardless and yummy he looks.”

Thankfully, the beast ignored Faris. “This is your friend, Silly-us?”

Hearing Faris’s moving speech, Silas had no reason not to nod. “My dearest and tastiest friend - best suited for soups and, dare I say, roasts if you’re feeling adventurous.”

“Silaaaas!” Faris yelled, getting on his knees. “Tell him you’re lying now, tell him!”

Unmoved by the drama, the beast unlocked the cell and urged Faris over. When the archer flinched away instead, it groaned and ducked its way into the cell. Silas was wondering whether to run or attack its unguarded back when he heard its grumblings. “Kore tells Grum to release prisoners, but what Grum do when prisoners don’t want to leave?”

“Wait, you’re going to release us?” Silas asked, shocked. He had expected many things but not this.

“Yes,” Grum said. Woozy from his nerves, Faris could hardly resist as it wrapped its hand around his waist and dragged him out. “Mistake in locking you up, they say. I don’t know - I just look after the prisoner.”

“Then do you know where the other two who were with us are now? Two women?” Although this situation seemed too good to be true, he didn’t think Grum was lying about releasing them either as it didn’t seem intelligent enough to come up with such a fib.

Scratching its head with its free hand, Grum answered. “They are taken to women section before. Maybe they released as well, I don’t know.” There was a pause before it continued. “Take care, Silly-us. Void magic is Themir’s magic.

“What?” he replied with a frown. “Do you mean Raven?”

“I don’t know,” Grum repeated with a giant shrug. “But Themir always eats you, remember, gives power but eats mind.”

Silas didn’t know whether to take its warning as words of wisdom, or just simple-minded superstition from a simple-minded beast. Either way, they had reached the end of the corridor, and Grum opened the metal door by clicking its nail against the frame. Peeping past the giant, Silas saw a large, well-lit room. There were several doors leading out and a massive wooden table in the centre. He immediately spotted his and Faris’s equipment lying on its surface, only then noticing a fully cloaked figure lounging by the table.

“I get your stuff back,” Grum offered, releasing Faris. “So wear and go. I am tired.”

“You’re always tired,” the cloaked figure called out, its voice soft like a whisper but chilling as a threat. Although it had only a faint aura, Silas sensed it had been tampered with to give a false image.

Grum snarled, thunder rumbling from its throat. However, it didn’t launch itself and attack, nor did it even bother to reply as it instead trudged to the corner of the room. Standing there, it made a point of looking everywhere except at the cloaked figure.

Using their conflict as a distraction, Silas lunged for his spear and made himself space. This entire situation stunk, and he was particularly worried about the cloaked figure which remained indifferent even now as he pointed his spear at it. Slouching on its chair, all it did was raise an arm and put a thin tube to its mouth.

On the other hand, Grum’s response made Silas flush with shame as the giant face-palmed and shook its head like a disappointed parent.

The thin tube must have jogged Faris’s memory as he gasped and pointed. “That’s the guy who got us, him and his gang. They came out of nowhere and surrounded us after we killed the trolls.”

The figure smirked. “That was your mistake - those trolls were under the Order’s protection.”

Eyes widening, Silas’s mind finally pieced together the obvious: they had been caught by a well-trained force belonging to one of the other intelligent races, an intelligent race that almost certainly showed up in his Dangers section. While he couldn’t make changes to Riverside’s menu from here, he could still hastily bring up the information.

Ratkin - very high

Shaerd - medium

Order of Tyr - medium

Drakkar - low

Armoured Bear - low

…

“You’re the Order of Tyr,” he exclaimed, not quite understanding why it mattered but knowing that it did nonetheless.

“And you’re Silas Wycliffe, mayor of Riverside,” the figure replied.

“What do you want with us? Why did you ambush us?” he shouted, the tension getting to him. He felt vulnerable that they knew so much about him; he felt vulnerable that he was as bare as the day he had been born; he felt vulnerable knowing there was a giant beast at his back and an even more dangerous one at his front. Although he had trained hard not to get caught with his pants down again, they had just gone and ripped his pants off and thrown them into the abyss.

“You killed our allies - you should be grateful I haven’t killed you in return. As for what I want from you, I want to take you to our mayor, and then I hope to never see your pale ass again.” Finally, the figure stood and Silas noted how short it was, at least two heads below him. Despite this, his sense of danger didn’t lessen. “So put your spear down, put some clothes on, and let’s get going already.”

“Fuck,” Faris said, working his impressive vernacular. “Double fuck.”

****

Gawking, Silas felt faint as they drove through the streets of Lyfort. Immediately after exiting the underground prison, the cloaked figure, who Silas had since dubbed the masked man on account of the dark and featureless mask hidden under his cloak, had pulled them into a wheel-less carriage which resembled a white pill bug.

While there was comfortably enough legroom inside, there wasn’t much else other than the plush leather cushions. The unadorned vehicle appeared to be exclusively made of one-way mirrors as they could clearly see the outside, including the ground on which they floated on, the only exception being the driver’s seat which was blacked out. Considering the masked man hadn’t hesitated in getting in with them, nor taken their weapons away, Silas figured that there were hidden defence mechanisms inside as well.

“Allahu Kabeer,” Faris said, looking around in wonder. “How does this even work? I thought Winnie was a gem, but this outshines her by ten country miles. No, twenty!”

“Manastone,” the masked man curtly answered.

“Of course, of course, manastone,” Faris said, brushing his hand through his wavy hair. “Manastone indeed.”

Although Silas didn’t care much about the vehicle, he did care greatly about the crowds walking outside. They were made of many races, but Silas summed most of them into four distinct types.

The first were grey giants similar to Grum, seven to eight feet tall, with varying levels of musculature and paunches but all entirely hairless. Some had fierce facial features perfect for scowling, while others had softer, friendlier faces. Both men and women wore the minimum amount for modesty’s sake but no more, although their clothing was far more stylish than Grum’s dusty slacks and boots.

The second were midgets similar to the masked man. By and large, they were skinny but with unnaturally striking edges to their figures that Silas accredited to their protruding bones, creating what appeared to be an exoskeleton. Their clothing was bright and colourful or dark and secretive like the masked man’s with little in between.

The third were women and solely women with enchanting appearances: their expressions were sultry and their figures perfectly proportioned. While they had countless shades of brightly coloured hair and skin, they wore little clothing on top just like the giants. Some, in fact, threw away modesty altogether and walked nude, stirring his desire.

The fourth were the exact opposite as they were solely made up of men with muscular human torsos and hairy, hooved legs. They had great horns, some straight and pointed, others curled and rounded. Their appearances reminded Silas somewhat of satyrs, although few had red skin like the devil as most shared the same shades as humans.

While these were the main four, there was plenty of interbreeding between them as he saw all sorts of combinations, and there were also some other distinctive races sprinkled between. Altogether, however, there were hundreds and hundreds of them on the streets they crossed, perhaps even thousands, and it quickly dawned on Silas that Riverside couldn’t even hold a candle to Lyfort. Whatever the Order mayor demanded, he would simply have to roll over and let happen unless he wished to risk a massacre.

____

Solomon Kebede, the Revenant, was originally a carpenter from Ethiopia. He passed the normal tutorial without significant issues and set up in Faama, Babah Bangura’s village, on his arrival on Idroa. Although at first, Solomon got by through carpentry, helping in the construction of fences and traps, he eventually got tangled up in a plot to oust Babah and was caught with his co-conspirators before the plan reached fruition.

To punish them, Babah ordered them to be thrown down a nearby chasm as a public spectacle. They were chucked in one by one, and spectators recall the way you could hear their screams all the way down until they softened to little more than whistles. Solomon was dropped in just the same, and all thought he had splattered on some rock-face on his way down and died. While we are not certain of what happened in the chasm, what we do know is that Solomon climbed out of his grand grave that very night and murdered Babah in his sleep.

When the morning came, the villagers walked out to see Babah’s head skewered on a pike in the central square, Solomon dozing off beside it. The ex-carpenter had changed, his ebony skin marked with bulging purple veins, his eyes streaked with red, and his once thick hair now thin and clinging to his head. Waking up to the commotion, the Revenant regarded the crowd around him with a crooked grin…

Stefan Sommer - the Chronicler - Heroes and Villains of the First Age