Category: Characters

Learn more about the Players of the Game saga’s characters!

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Ed Burnhelt

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Ed Burnhelt can reach the horizon well within a second.  But he can’t outrun what awaits him.

He’s grown a beard in an attempt to hide the scar that Corsis’s Lizard avatar gave him at the end of The New Players.  But that doesn’t really work.  The claw marks on his cheek light up with blue flames when he uses his hyper powers.

That’s the least of his problems.  The Holy Alliance is staging another invasion.  And a focal point is again in the beleaguered frontier city of Findenton.  And even if he and his friends fend off disaster.  There’s the matter of a Skin Bot named Vermillion.  

The Grellish spy discovered secrets vital not only to the battle against the Holy Alliance but also to the Game itself.  Vermillion is being held and interrogated in the pico realm of Inparadis.  Locked behind many, many layers of security.

Find out if Ed and his friends can reach Vermillion in time in The Breakers.

Art by Ringasure.  This is an older version of Ed’s armor that has way more plating and silver, rather than its streamlined mesh and blue revised appearance.  But this rendering still looks rad with his pose, face, and swords.  So I wanted to share it.

Other more current versions of Ed will show up in future installments.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Kixie Artis

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Kixie has never met a stranger.

The Cetari sea ranger pilots a submarine named the Toff that can withstand immense pressure.  Which the Breakers will need when events conspire to make them take an indirect route on the way to Inparadis.

Ed Burnhelt derives immature and copious enjoyment out of the Toff’s full name.

The Pistoff.

This immediately endears Ed and the rest of the Breakers to Kixie.  The dolphin-hybrid humanoid becomes their staunch ally against her distant royal family members’ skullduggery in the subterranean sea nation of Yintu.  Plus, her galley has the BEST fruit.

Kixie will also show up in later books in the series.  And at the risk of slightly spoiling things.  Let’s just say she brings more to the table than just a fun sub.

Meet Kixie in The Breakers.

Art by Ringasure.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Avril Enzali

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Avril Enzali has trudged through hell.

Figuratively, in the form of getting stabbed in the head, becoming a living ghost, and losing decades with the temporal warping of a Time Tunnel.

Literally, in that she fought aside the Brigands through a Nether Realm in a struggle that culminated in a one-on-one duel with her despotic mother.  A fight that Avril won in recovering her sword to restore her physical body.  But also a fight she lost.  She fled with Ashe from the war they’d just lost in Sufrinzon.

But her mother’s war is behind her now.  And in front of her looms the task that has motivated her every action thus far.

The liberation of her goddess.

Celsis Kri in chains.  Deep in the bowels of an extra-dimensional dungeon made of unbreakable ice.  The frigid material can only be melted by Flames of Tumult.

A wild power that both Ashe Stelfire and Ed Burnhelt wield.

And Avril will do everything in her considerable power to get these men to her goddess.  To break her free.

Find out if Avril reaches Celsis Kri in The Breakers.

Art by Ringasure.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Tamona of Muné

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Tamona carries a lot of weight on her shoulders.

Her goddess, Muné, perished centuries ago during the Eruption cataclysm that forever altered Trojis.  Among her other powers and skills, Muné possessed a sixth sense that granted her insights that should have been impossible to know.  Far-off events, the words someone will speak minutes from now, dangers that haven’t yet revealed themselves.

It’s called Perceptia.

And Tamona inherited her goddess’s hyper power.  More than that.  She looks exactly like Muné.  Like a twin.  She’s also blind.  But the Perceptia more than makes up for it.

That power.  Knowing what should not be known.  That is more of a threat to the Game than anything else.  

More than Ed Burnhelt and Ashe Stelfire’s Flames of Tumult, or Harry Mang’s peerless mastery of all weapons, or Candice Quentra’s life force depletion, or Avril Enzali’s soul-tethered, hex-amplifying sword.

Corsis has always known this.  It is why he has kept Muné’s pristine and preserved body in the ice maze of Inparadis.  And Czar Balpors, Corsis’s secret avatar, has toiled for centuries to resurrect Muné as his undead thrall.  To learn how to duplicate or deceive Perceptia.

Tamona knows all of this.  And the tension coils within her.  Outwardly manifested by her normally flowing platinum blonde hair, now bound in a braided ponytail.  She and her friends must recover Muné’s body before Corsis enacts his dark plan through Balpors’s cruel hands.

Find out if Tamona stops the Czar in The Breakers.

Art by Moonarc.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Glime

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Glime just wants you to hear them out. 

Listen to their syrupy words as they switch between female alto and male baritone voices.  They won’t burn you.

Really.

Glime is an asexual Psyspecter in league with Corsis specializing in ultrakinesis, telepathy, and pyrokinesis.  Azure Flames of Tumult comprise their otherwise immaterial body.  Identical to the flames Ed Burnhelt vents from his eyes.  Glime has no compunction about prying into people’s minds and exposing their fears.

People like Ed.  If only he’d stop running from Glime.  They could have such a nice talk.

Find out what Glime has to say in The Breakers.

Art by AraborArt.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Harry Mang, Arms Master

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Harry Mang refers to himself as an unremarkable man.  

He associates with hyper-powered champions of western Jeea.  In his reckoning, he is a mere mortal among gods, rogue Dragons, and Weird Ones. 

These very beings, these very friends, disagree with his self-assessment.

Harry is the Arms Master.  The man who the God of Protection imbued with peerless ability to wield all weapons, simple and complex.  He survived the War of No Hope in his younger days.  More recently, he held the line against Corsis and Hekati’s horrors in Findenton during the events of The New Players.

The aftermath of that fight left his pilfered Grey Jack armor wrecked, so Vick Burnhelt gave him an upgrade of green-and-black armor.  Self-contained and durable.  Two attributes he will need in the days to come.

And he’ll need more than defensive gear.  The weapons of the Victory Arsenal are his to claim.  Both in a forgotten open grave in the Fire Well and in the Protector’s mountain stronghold.

But all of that will pale in his estimation when he crosses paths with an old flame.  A woman he’d thought was long dead.

Avril Enzali.  

Both of them will have words for each other.  More than words.

Find out more about this reunion in The Breakers.

Art by Ringasure.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Lancelot

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Lancelot deplores herself for many reasons.  But she’ll never tell them to anyone.  And that suits Corsis just fine.

He crafted her as a being of spite after all.  His pretty, relentless killer.

Her hatred of Ashe Stelfire and Vick Burnhelt is hardwired into her mind.  Though her motivations for that loathing are different for each man.  Rivalry for the man called Repenter.  Love and lust twisted by contempt for the Prime Mechmancer.

She has ample tools to enact that hatred.  A jagged sword of unbreakable ice through which she channels frigid hydromancy hexes.  Her white mask grants her vast strength and speed. Her many baubles allow her to shift her body into intangible spectral matter or grant her invisibility.

The kliost-cloned assassin has much knowledge in the ways of killing, but little experience.  Which is why Balpors assigns a partner to her.

Frulgrath.

She dislikes the dispassionate, three-armed Demon immediately.   But there’s nothing to be done for it.  She’s stuck with the Hatchet Man.

Find out more about their partnership and their mission in The Breakers.

Art by Ringasure.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Frulgrath

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Frulgrath looks like something out of a nightmare.  A description he might even self-apply.

A lanky demon with dried-out, dingy tan skin and needle-width pointed teeth.  Armed with hand-axes that can penetrate energy shields, armor, and the flesh of dragons.  He also uses trinkets and various oils to render himself invisible or to add additional potency to his attacks, depending on the foe he fights.  His insides are full of dust, and he can heal from nearly any form of harm.

But not all harm.  His own axes are just as dangerous to him.   Frulgrath once had four arms.  He lost one when Ashe Stelfire lopped it off with the Demon’s own axe during the climax of The Brigands.  He remains exceedingly deadly with his remaining three.  And he craves payback against Ashe for the maiming.

Payback he aims to collect.

He has another name that Thebes gave him as a joke back when they were on the same side in Repenter.  But it’s since become far more serious to anyone who encounters him.

Hatchet Man.

He has served as Corsis’s agent throughout the ages.  He kills with ruthless efficiency, but he doesn’t revel in it.  Frulgrath is pragmatic and possesses a keen sense of what is realistic.  He also has a dry sense of humor, which Corsis enjoys.

Frulgrath is one of the few people who can speak bluntly to the Master of the Game.  Corsis will even sometimes listen to him.  But not always.

And Corsis has a new job for Frulgrath.  One that he’ll relay to the Hatchet Man through Balpors.  Find out about Frulgrath’s latest assignment in The Breakers.

Art by Ringasure.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Balpors

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Czar Balpors rules the Holy Alliance with infamous cruelty.

He and Starm, the Dragon God of Power, came out on top following the cataclysmic upheaval of the Eruption centuries ago.  Their empire gradually spread across the eastern half of the supercontinent of Jeea.

And now they want the west.  All at once.

They have upgraded their armed forces with improved weapons.  Their Dragons are among the most powerful combatants in existence.

Balpors intends to take back Findenton from the Free Jeea Coalition as a matter of pride.  And pride is costly.

He is more than willing to have others on both sides pay that bloody price.  The geopolitics and conquest are secondary to him.  Balpors may lead the foremost world power on the planet of Trojis.  He may be a Dragon in the guise of a Human ruler wearing impregnable stone armor.  He may pretend to serve Starm.  But his true motivations serve another.  The one with whom he shares a mind.

Corsis.

He is a drone of flesh controlled by the Master of the Game, but with his own bellicose and misanthropic impulses.

Everything he does serves to keep the Game in a state of constant turmoil.  A role he loathes more and more with each passing year.

But he can never stop because he cannot help himself.  His will is not his own.  And he vents his frustration with his lot in life on all he encounters.

Learn more about the harm Balpors inflicts in The Breakers.

Art by Ringasure.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Ashe Stelfire

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It all started with the man called Repenter.

Ashe Stelfire started out as a selfish and cruel person.  The worst person for the job of helping Avril Enzali, his long-lost daughter, to save her goddess from eternal imprisonment in an extra-dimensional dungeon of unbreakable ice.

Things did not go as planned.

Avril and Ashe both suffered great harm.  The daughter far worse than the father.  All at the whims of Corsis, who toyed with them from the periphery of a dark empire’s rise to power.  Before he could embark on the quest to free his daughter’s goddess, Ashe had to fight through a hellish world war to reclaim the means to heal Avril’s wounds.

Ashe changed along the way.  

He lost his innate pyromancy, transformed himself with a transfusion of silver blood, and claimed the legendary Retributor axe.  And he donned the monstrous bronze mask fashioned from the face of his old mentor.  Of far greater significance, he put aside his greed for fortune hunting as he learned of the magnitude of Corsis’s threat.  He strove to be better.

To repent.

He and his allies achieved a bitter victory in the final battle, where the means to heal Avril was at last recovered.  Although they triumphed in that smaller goal, they still lost the war against the dark empire backed by Corsis.  Ashe, Avril, and several of their friends fled to another world in the aftermath.  A brighter world.

A world with the entrance to a certain ice maze.

Ashe and Avril will at last embark on the quest to break out the imprisoned goddess.  One they had originally intended to perform by themselves.  But the past hard years have imparted another hard lesson.

When it comes to the Game and all the things it touches, going it alone is folly.

They will need help.

Find out how they get it in The Breakers.

Art by Hokunin.