PERSONAL

Gender: Male

Kit: Elemental

Location: Dead Center, Little Lovecraft

AFFILIATION

Alignment: Villain

Team: Solo Villain

VITAL STATS

Strength: standard (rank 1)

Agility: standard (rank 1)

Mind: ultimate (rank 4)

Body: standard (rank 1)

Spirit: standard (rank 1)

Charisma: standard (rank 1)

RECORD

Infamy Points: 0

Personal Wins: 0

Personal Losses: 0

Team Wins: 0

Team Losses: 0

Tourney Wins: 0

Tourney Losses: 0

STATUS

Status: Active

Pseudonym

Jeremy Saint-Jeremy stood at the edge of the pit at Dead Center. There was a wooden ladder extending down into the darkness. Jeremy could only see three rungs below his feet before the darkness swallowed the rest of it. The hole stank. The smell of death wafted up into his face. Jeremy sheathed his sword and kicked a pebble down into the pit. He watched it disappear into the darkness.

He never heard it land. A bead of sweat rolled down Jeremy's forehead. He looked back over his shoulder at the rest of the city he'd just carved through and swung his legs over the edge of the hole. Jeremy steadied his hands on the edge of the pit to prevent himself from falling. He could feel something in the pit pulling him forward. If he lost concentration for a second, he knew he would fall in and go tumbling into the abyss never to be seen again.

Instead, Jeremy took a deep breath and began his descent on the ladder. His sneakers slipped on the slimy vines that wrapped around the rungs of the ladder. The wood squeaked under his weight. As he climbed farther down, the light of the full moon penetrated less and less into the pit until it was merely a sliver of light illuminating the rung right in front of him. One of the rungs that he saw had writing carved into the wood. He paused and squinted to read it, eyes scanning the jagged letters over and over again. The handwriting wasn't particularly easy to read. His mouth worked as he tried to sound out the letters. When he got it he recoiled so hard he almost lost his grip. TURN BACK, it said.

Jeremy swallowed and considered his options. He needed the information at Dead Center. The lives of three men depended on it. But perhaps his life depended on him making the decision to turn back and run as fast as he could out of Little Lovecraft. The choice was obvious to make. Jeremy did as a hero does, swallowed his fear and moved his arms and legs down to the next rung.

The light disappeared soon thereafter. Jeremy continued climbing in the dark. A low rumble started to emanate from the bottom of the pit.It was like an animalistic growl that vibrated the ladder and shook Jeremy to the core of his heart. He tried to focus and calm down. He heard a voice talking far too quickly to be understood and then realized it was him. "You can do this. You just fought your way through countless zombies, a whole coven of vampires and seventeen royally pissed off spirits. You can do this. You can do this. You can do this."

He continued spewing his mantra as he continued down the ladder. The growl began to sound like a chuckle. and it was getting ever closer. Jeremy swung his foot down to meet the next rung and found solid ground beneath his feet. He was on the floor at Dead Center.

"Hello," Jeremy shouted into the dark. "I'm looking for the Oracle in Dead Center."

"Is that what they're calling me these days? It's been so long since I've seen a mortal being. The names change every half-century or so." Out of the darkness, a gray skinned beast presented itself. Though nothing else could be seen, not even the walls, Jeremy Saint-Jeremy could see this being clearly. It's head alone was as large as he was. It stood on limbs that looked far too spindly to support it. Rows of dagger-sharp teeth stood out, blinding white, in the creature's huge face. It loomed over Jeremy dwarfing him. Jeremy pulled out his sword and held it in a defensive stance.

"Put down the toothpick," commanded the beast. "It's been a long time since I've seen a living being down here. My name is Jejj the Kavator."

"O, Great Oracle Jejj, I have but one request of you."

"Stop." Jejj held up his hand. "I am not an oracle. I am a very knowledgeable being. In some men's eyes, I am a god. To call me an oracle is to imply that I serve mankind and that will not do. If I hear that word out of you again, I'll rip out your soul and take it to the darkest hell I can remember off the top of my head. And I've been to many, many hells."

Jeremy stood still. His breathing was shallow and quiet. His sword hung loose in his uncurled fingers. "How? How shall I refer to you then?"

"I am a Kavator." Jejj said, disappearing into the darkness. His voice alone stood for him as he continued to speak. "It's not a word you would know. It was invented in a far away hell many centuries ago."

Jeremy resheathed his sword. "Well then, Kavator. I was told to come to Dead Center if I want my questions answered. Was I mislead?"

Jejj's deep throaty chuckle echoed out from the abyss. All the darkness in the pit dispersed and showed Jeremy that the walls were lined with books: old dusty tomes that seemed full of knowledge. Jejj sat atop nothing in the middle of the room framed by the bookshelves that made up the walls. Jeremy turned around to check the wall he had climbed down and saw that it was just rock wall as he'd expected.

"I've been known to answer a question or two."

"Oh, that's great-"

"For a price." Jejj smiled and reconvened the darkness of the room so it was just himself and his prey.

Centuries of Learning

     Enhanced Intelligence: ultimate

Jeremy took a deep breath. This was it, the culmination of all his work and strife. More than just the trek into Little Lovecraft which had been a day long affair of hacking and slicing, but before that: the funeral, the months without him. Jeremy took another deep breath and then looked up to make eye contact with Jejj. "Is there anyway to bring someone back from the dead?"

Jejj did not hesitate. "No."

And just like that, Jeremy's quest ended. Hours of searching and fighting were all reduced to nothing. The time would have been better spent.moving on. Jeremy felt a weight press down on his heart as any hope of bringing his father back disappeared. He fell to his knees and hung his head. As he did so, he noticed the ground was strewn with human bones. Legs, arms and ribs cluttered the floor around him, but no skulls.

"You knew that would be my answer," Jejj said. Jeremy didn't look up. He had picked up a long, skinny leg bone and started to absentmindedly fiddle with it. Jejj continued to speak, " Look around you. You're in the heart of Little Lovecraft: a city dedicated to the failed art-science of resurrection. I've been searching around the Ethereal Plane for millennia. I've martialled powers of death beyond the wildest imaginations of men. If there were a way to come back to life, you and I would be on the same side of the Great Forgetting. I'm sorry, mortal. There is much I can do, but I can't do that."

The Taking of Souls

     Darkness: ultimate (rank 4)

• Ranged Attack
• Long Ranged Attack
• Target Seeker

Jeremy got to his feet, brushing the dust of the dead off the shins of his pants. "Well then, I have one more request to make of you. Can you kill a man? Any man?"

Jejj leaned forward, stood up from his seat and leaned forward. "Aye, now you see why they call me Kavator."

"No, I don't. You never explained to me what that means."

"Name a name and death will come to him."

"Jacob Keynsman. The man who killed my father. I want you to kill him."

Jejj smiled.

***

Jacob held his knife and fork in closed fists like a caveman, licking his lips excitedly and glancing aside at his giggling children who sat on either side of him.

"Daddy," crowed his daughter with her palms plastered against her forehead, "that's not how we eat."

Jacob smiled at her and fixed his fork and knife. Rosemary, his wife appeared out of the kitchen and put a glass of orange juice at everyone's place in the table. Jacob pecked her on the cheek to a chorus of ewws from his children and then extended his arms out toward them. Dutifully, they took his hands and bowed their heads. Jacob shared a glance with his wife sitting across from him. Her smile still pierced him to the heart so many years in. She bit her lip, showing the slightest hint of teeth. He couldn't help but smile back.

Their son began to recite the Lord's Prayer as they did before every meal. "Our Father, who art in Heaven."

Jacob felt it seize him. A cold shock struck his heart and then started to spread upward toward his neck. He cleared his throat loudly, then his head started swimming. The room spun lazily around him. Rosemary's concerned face flitted in and out of his vision. Jacob slapped a hand down against the table to steady himself. The boy stopped praying and looked up at his dad.

"I want you to know I love you all." Jacob said quietly. And then he collapsed, the side of his face resting in his mashed potatoes.

His soul was dragged out of his body by the claw of the Kavator in Dead Centre and it was pulled through the entirety of Khazan to make its home in a dank, dark pit.

"..to kill him," Jeremy finished.

"It is done," the Kavator replied immediately.

Jeremy nodded and began his climb out of Dead Center. He dimly recognized in his weariness that the trip out of Dead Center was likely to be just as difficult as the trip in.

Soul Artillery

     Mythic Physiology: superior (rank 2)

The Kavator left the plane of corporal existence and crawled along the Etheral Plane for light years until he was at his cave. In his calloused hands, the soul squirmed back and forth screeching about the unjustness of it all. They all did, each and every soul he took. A Kavator learned to either tune the screams out or take enjoyment in their suffering. Jejj tried his hardest to focus on the task at hand.

There was a room in the back with a cannon that extending out of a slit in the wall of the cave. There was a flap on the back of the cannon that hung open. Jejj stuffed the soul inside and shut the flap, muffling its protests. Through a scope mounted on the cannon's barrel, Kavator jejj took aim at a the wall of a floating castle far in the distance: a heaven he wasn't allowed in.

He'd been there once and tried to take it over. The angels repelled him. Jejj lit the fuse and it started to burn slowly away. Jejj crouched, ready to slip into another part of the ethereal plane. It would only take him a second to get their once the walls came down. A better life was on the other side.