Heroes

Roland thinks he’s the titans’ gift to ladies, but he’s got the arts to back it up. Hailing from a noble house that, inevitably, was ruined after Blightfall, he’s taken up the adventuring life. Having been taught by the best teachers in the world and with a particular affinity for magic, Roland is nearly untouchable on the battlefield. This, coupled with his vanity, has made him something of a germaphobe. He’s afraid of any blood, mucus or dirt spilling on his clothes or worse, his fair skin. He’ll have to get dirty, though, in order to fulfil his task of making the world a little prettier again by stamping out ugly evil.

Commander Clegg made a glorious career in a mercenary army, deployed by various human kingdoms before the Titan fell. He fought against the Titan, he fought against other units. In contrast to most wanderers and adventurers roaming the lands today, he has the benefit of military discipline, employing tactics and strategic wit (if his companions listen, that is). He enjoys engaging in combat, as long as it’s honorable and following the rules of engagement. He despises backhanded methods. His mission, which he carries with him from the old world, is to recompose his lost army.

Triss is completely pragmatic and committed to survival. New world, new rules! She and her brother Creen are willing to do whatever it takes to come out on top. This includes harassing, raiding or even knocking out other adventuring parties for loot or rations. They were orphaned when the Blight came, then raised and mentored by a tough mercenary who deserted the fifth regiment. This mentor figure was killed after years of training them, but not before giving Triss and Creen the skills to survive. Now Triss seeks revenge upon the creature that killed her mentor.

Tek’ka has fought many years against the Blight in service of Dena, the Twin Titan of the afterlife that shepherds the good souls beyond the Shimmering Veil. In all this time, he had become convinced that the Aetheri can and must be saved, trapped as they are in eternal twilight since the destruction of the sun.

Bu is a young scion of the Motonaga clan - an influential organisation operating in many of the shadier corners of humanity: human trafficking, selling stolen weaponry and possibly even dirtier dealings. Her story begins when she receives a message from one of her clansmen and learns that Otsumo has betrayed them. For reasons of honor, she couldn’t possibly oppose him directly, so she sets out to release the sacrificial lambs and cut off the supply. Tattooed with snake scales and a lidless eye on her forehead, as is customary in the crime family for her role, she works towards this goal.

Malborys has known nothing but violence in his life. From a young age on he was taken down into the mist to fight, by both his parents, as a ritual within his tribe. Nothing else mattered but their devotion to Siurd, the forge titan, and this constant fighting imprinted on the young lad. He recently arrived in these lands and finds himself incapable of working together. And friendship outside the battlefield? Casual talk and pleasantries? The very thought causes Malborys, the loner, discomfort!

Kromn is the last of the Sunwalkers, a nomadic tribe with a deeply held worship of the sun. Needless to say, the day it shattered so too did they. Having lost their object of worship, they fell on hard times, lapsed into despair and never recovered. Only Kromn, a young holy warrior brought up by the last remnants, was left and now roams the land. Not to spread his religion , for he has none, and neither to find new objects of worship, for he doesn’t care about the Aetheri - no, only to continue to live his simple life, a living testament to his tribe, seeking new balance with the shattered sun and the land. And all in the honor of Siurd, who supplied the tools and materials to build it. He’s come here to collect fragments of the sun, sun shards, hoping but not expecting to somehow restore it, one day.

Seirinne is a devotee to Zerrish, the Serpent Titan. She’s a highly skilled thief and highway robber, trained in the arts of stealth, archery and poison. This poses no moral quandary for her - she is herself a serpent and only follows her inherent nature. Her devotion to Zerrish is tested when she is poisoned herself by another rogue with an unknown poison, as revenge for the time Seirinne robbed the Motonaga Clan’s caravan.

Ziram was once a caravan guard, until the merchants got caught in Blight vapors. He sacrificed himself to pull the beasts of burden out, saving the merchandise but losing his health. He caught a strange and contagious strain of Blight that left his mind intact but ravaged his body with something akin to leprosy. Slowly falling apart, he was cast out by the very people he protected, and since then wanders the lands in search of a cure. He has grown spiteful over the years, hating that everyone winces as he draws near, afraid to touch him. He was drawn to these lands by a vision he received in his fevered dreams: the titan Kriusz, bringer of Blight, told him to take a pilgrimage to the sites around his corpse, whereupon he would undo the effects of the disease.

Ezzouhn is part of a community of mountainous people whose mages requisitioned magical Aetheri wards to hold off the Blight creeping up on the foothills. When the last mage died, the wards started failing and many of them ventured out in desperation, trying to find a way to repair them before their home would be overrun by Blight. Ezzouhn is one of those seekers, looking for help from a willing mage to try and rebuild his community.

Kujuk is a great mystery. His origin, age, where he was taught and what he believes are all unknown. It’s like he simply appeared one day out of thin air, stepping outside of time’s flow. Indeed, listen closely enough to his imperturbable voice and you’ll discover him a disciple of Oxuuxo, the Time Titan, whose followers believe time’s great Flow runs in two directions, converging at a single point - the only point where reality is real. The rest is a dream, growing foggier and less tangible as the stream flows away from the Moment. Nothing is real until the Moment comes, and when is the moment? In the center. Kujuk appears because he discovered a disturbance in time and seeks to brush the wrinkle clean.

Ever since I came here, I’ve been hoping that I wouldn’t need to descend into the Blight – but it can’t be helped. My research has hit a dead end. I have to go down...

Karue was a princess, whose parents and grandparents were among the ones who unleashed the Titan Kriusz. For this she seeks neither forgiveness nor a guilt trip - she had nothing to do with it. From the moment their eternal enemy, the Aetheri, evaporated beyond the Shimmering Veil, The Folk became just another lost and struggling human tribe. Karue may come from a high place in society, she fights just like the rest of them. What she seeks to do here is to find proof that the Aetheri were bad people and not worthy of human veneration.

Karrogh is a warrior of limitless potential and an expert in beast mastery. His roots lie in nature, where he roamed the high-up woodlands with a company of humans lead by his mother, Matriarch Wodania. She constantly reprimands him for his temper and his tendency to act before thinking, but he respects her more than anyone. Karrogh once slew a mighty wolf who threatened the tribe, a feat which earned him no end of admiration. He now wears the beast as a mantle. He recently lead a party of eight into the blight to slay a pack of chargers. This went horribly wrong: three abandoned the party in fear, causing the others to be overrun. Four of them were captured and only Karrogh managed to get back.

Scarlet comes from a faraway place and traveled to this land in search of a fabled Aetheri light weapon: the rumored knife Bloodslick that once belonged to a great general, but was lost when he was swarmed in the Gravemark. It is part of a set of two, the other knife already in her possession. With the combined set she’ll become more powerful than before, and one step closer to reclaiming the world for humanity.

Nilbous wants to do things quite differently. He’s a hermit holed up in the mountains, seeking solitude in order to consume enough Blight to invoke a trance, bringing him closer to Duron, who has all the answers of the afterlife and this life. Alas, he’s become a Blight-addict and needs ever greater hits of it to induce another mystical state. Nilbous’ plight is that he’s so close to reaching Duron, he couldn’t possibly give up now, even though the amount of Blight he consumes threatens to ravage his mind and destroy his body. But how else to uncover greater truths?

Wodania lost her sight when the sun shattered when she was an infant. She looked up in that instant and its splinters rained down into her eyes. Now she sees brightness always, instead of darkness. She had to learn to trust on others for guidance, being blind, but she soon found her other senses were awakened. In the dark years ahead, she roamed the mountain passes with her kin, learning to see without sight and fight by sound. In time, she married, had children, and rose to the rank of venerable matriarch. Now she is sought out by all for her wisdom - but don’t think Wodania will ever rest on her laurels. Even now she fights like the best of them.

Like his sister Triss, Creen loves his life in this post-apocalyptic world. Blightfall might’ve taken their parents away, it also gave them a new life full of endless possibilities. Their method of survival might entail ambushing and robbing others, with a ‘you keep way you kill’ mentality, to them it’s a pure way of life - one that does justice to the harsh world they inhabit.

Like all Of The Sand, Desert Mouse is a skilled warrior and a bit of a tomboy. She doesn’t take orders from anyone and refuses to compromise on her beliefs and desires. In her youth, she went berserk at times, flailing around and attacking people. However, she also has a playful side.

How easy it was for mankind to despair after the Titan fell! Immediately various doomsday cults sprang up among the remnants of humanity, seeking to embrace the new order of life while still fighting evil. The Apostles of the Miasma train their ranks in the ways of combat, but also disfigure themselves into warped versions of the monsters spilling out from the Blight. Wretch, for example, had his face scarified and altered to mirror that of a skeletal figure. It is, in his view, the only way to deal with monsters: get close enough to them that you understand and feel how they feel - then kill them.

Seer Rook was but a young priest when he helped in the summoning ritual that created the golem embodying Kriusz. For the rest of his long life, as Cimma’s Folk live longer than most humans, he advocated this was the right call and maintained devotion, even as part of his tribe fell to the Blight and became monstrous. If only they had let Kriusz live, none of this would have happened. He now sees it as his holy goal to protect Karue, princess of The Folk, from harm. He admits things went terribly wrong, but his intentions were pure.