Category: Characters

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

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Deva Falc

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Deva Falc once despised Nirva Iniv.  In the early days of the War of Reunification, the Arch Demon Baroness of Barithania led an army against the Palle Empire.  Before its ascendance gained momentum.  Had things gone differently, perhaps Deva might have claimed dominion over her own empire.  She held all manner of dark ambitions.

No more.

Nirva used the dark language of Hrolish to negate Deva’s will.  She is now Nirva’s dispassionately loyal bodyguard.  The enthralled baroness only wants what the Empress of Palle wants. 

That includes transforming her mind with an immaterial creature, giving her artificial psionics.  And perhaps even altering her body into something stronger, something worse.

Whenever it finally tatters her mind, no matter.  Nirva cares not, and neither does Deva.  Because she can’t.

If any hint of the true Deva remains, it is buried deep in the darkness of her fraying psyche.

And if someone should find that lingering shred, then Deva may just speak her mind.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Jasphir Iniv

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Jasphir Iniv stands out in his family of conniving and abhorrent Demonic royalty.

He’s a decent person.

Naturally, they want him dead for that alone. 

His partnership with Ashe Stelfire and love affair with Nunaker only moved him to the very top of their hit list.

He’s a Human-like Sokenti who can see in all directions in his vicinity despite his race’s innate bleeding, eyeless sockets.  He covers this horrible aspect of himself with a white blindfold and white leather armor that never get stained with his viscera, or that of others.

Despite his affability, Jasphir radiates menace.  The assassin uses his panoramic natural sight to find weak points in the strongest of foes with his etherea-infused daggers.

But his many family members aren’t as easy to dispatch. 

They stalk him and his fortune hunter allies.

And their reach is long.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Nunaker

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Nunaker finds sentient bipeds fascinating.  So much so that she usually takes the form of a woman in formfitting armor.

She has no true shape.  She is a Lokna.  A being of silvery liquid.  Capable of forming all manner of weapons upon her body.  Simple ones, like blades.

Or more… elaborate instruments of harm, such as her dual, barb-covered tentacle whips that can rip through flesh with uncanny ease.

She partners with Ashe Stelfire’s team of fortune hunters for the thrill of the raid.  It exhilarates her.

As does the love of another partner, Jashir Iniv.  Her romance with the Sokenti assassin is vibrant and intense.

And woe to any who might take away the happiness it brings her.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Ricardo Alterv

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Ricardo Alterv can’t take the stress anymore.

He’s been a member of Ashe Stelfire’s partnership for years.  The money has been good.  The team respects his talents with guns.  His family heirloom, the Alterv Gun, fires burning bullets that can penetrate the advanced armor and the hard flesh of Demons.  The revolver never runs out of ammo.

The same cannot be said of Ricardo’s nerve.  With each horror he faces on the partnership’s fortune hunting raids, the more his nerve frays.

The latest incursion into an ancient and sentient forest portends nothing good.  Especially the bipedal Lizard lurking within it.

Ricardo needs to retire.  But he fears to consider a big question.

Will Ashe let him?

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Dell Marrs

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Admiral Dell Marrs commands the Crush.  The flagship of the Union Cities.

He is a Red Chromatic, a Post Human species that emerged following the Eruption centuries earlier.

Marrs is never far from coffee, which he prefers burnt and borderline non-potable.

While not completely aligned with the Grells and the Chan’la, he is a reliable ally within Lan Thedin, the largest megalopolis of the urban confederacy.

Decades ago, Marrs worked with the Forever Guard during the War of No Hope.  And many of the Forever Guard consider him a friend.  Een, in particular, finds his gruff good humor most endearing.

More often than not, the Grells call him Stick Man, due to his lanky frame.  He uses a multitude of nicknames for them.  Eeny Meany being his favorite for Een.

His city soon finds itself in need of his old allies when Hekati’s horrors emerge from its lower reaches.

Stick Man has nicknames for those as well.  None of them pleasant.

Players of the Game Creature Spotlight: Ulli

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It’s time for another look at one of the monstrous adversaries who confront the Players of the Game throughout the series.

The fly-like Ulli demons are quick, like their insect cousins, but they are far harder to swat.  They are among Sufrinzon’s airborne troops that fill the dingy, orange-brown skies.

They can spit acid, but more often will use high-tech beam weapons or magnet guns.

The buzz of their wings never portends anything good.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Durduun

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This god of death savors the finer things in life.

Durduun is not as antagonistic to the Brigands as one might expect.  Does he grow in power as more of his unliving cultists join under his banner?  Of course.  Does he enjoy sharing fine wine and good food with interesting company?

Most definitely.

He is a doting brother to his sisters, Suso and Dhalia.  A conflicted onetime lover of ViRauni.  And an uneasy ally of Ashe Stelfire and Welt.  Mainly because they share a common enemy.

Corsis.

Durduun knows the Game and despises it.  He also knows that the threat of Sufrinzon’s Palle Empire will only grow as time elapses, because the Master of the Game secretly backs it.  These foes will one day cross the Ocean of the Lost and encroach on his island’s shores.

So Durduun opts to strike them first with the Brigands.

And perhaps have a few good dinners along the way.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Avril Enzali

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Avril Enzali is one of the primary characters in the Players of the Game series.  She seeks out Ashe Stelfire, the father she’s never met, to implore him to help her free her imprisoned goddess in the beginning parts of Repenter. 

It does not go well for her.

She clashes with not only agents of Corsis, but also her despotic mother, Nirva Iniv.  She does not emerge unscathed from her struggles against them.

The picture above is derived from how she appears in The Brigands.  The flower wreath is significant, but you’ll need to read the novel to find out why.

She also had romantic fling with Harry Mang long in the past.  But the embers of their intense affair still glow.  Perhaps one day, they’ll burn anew.

Avril has trained in the art of combat, both with bladed and ranged weapons as well as potent mancy hexes.  She also becomes well versed in the subset skills of astramancy, which involves manipulating aspects of mind and spirit on this plane of reality and those connected only by thought.

Avril knows the Game all too well. 

It’s taken much from her.  She strives to end it.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Een

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Een is a Chan’la, the all-female warrior sect renowned for their fighting prowess and their ability to bend space.

Like the Long Lived Grells, she has walked the world for millennia.  She also serves as the field commander for the younger members of the Forever Guard, including the Burnhelt brothers, Fernallus, and her daughter, Tamona.

She strives to head off her daughter’s insightful but recckless impulses with varying degrees of success.

She and Vick Burnhelt had a brief affair following the death of his wife.  They ceased pursuing the relationship due to Vick’s lingering survivor’s guilt.

And then there’s Corsis’s vendetta.

The Master of the Game would target her as he targets all women connected to the Burnhelt family if the relationship became known.

That doesn’t dissuade Een.  She’s a woman who knows what she wants. 

And she’ll wait as long as it takes to get it.

Players of the Game Character Spotlight: Hellington

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Sergeant Hellington may not look like it, but he’s someone you want covering your back. 

He is a Sharaith denizen of Sufrinzon that can swim and breath the corrosive auv of its rivers and oceans as easily as walking the surface and taking in the wretched air.

As a squad leader of the Velsuvian Marines, the Sarge provides the Brigands unflinching support in their many conflicts against the ever-expanding Palle Empire.  Ashe Stelfire heeds this respected comrade’s grizzled advice and considers him a friend.

But there’s something off about Hellington.

Superior officers are visibly fearful of him.  He has been known to make orders that admirals then scramble to voice as the official  word from the official chain of command. 

He never faces repercussions for this seeming insubordination.  Then again, the Sarge may have other secrets that motivates the superior officers’ deference to him.

One thing is for certain.

Calling him “Shark Boy” is a bad idea.