Vainglory Lore: Glaive

Yeah, if you need to hire muscle, I have some recommendations. Just keep your voice down. Maybe you need someone stealthy – someone who can hide in the underbrush and attack outta nowhere, never see them coming? Got an assassin girl in the rafters that’ll make ribbons of a body in seconds. No, not quite right. But getting warmer, am I? You want to make a big splash, do you? Leave a real impression. Maybe the target’s friends will think twice… leave town to save their own heads?

Then you’ll be wanting Glaive.

He’s the big guy in the back. Yup, that one sitting next to the heavy metal engine on a stick in the corner. But he doesn’t come cheap. You gotta wonder about a Grangor in these parts, sweating his arse off likely, hell-bent on some trophy-hunting mission, keeping to himself, making enemies.

Grangor don’t take naturally to mercenary work, in my humble… whassat? That blindfold he wears? Glaive don’t have eyes, they say, or at least he can’t use ‘em if he does. All kindsa stories about how that particular misfortune found him, none of ‘em bedtime stories for young pups if you know what I’m… I don’t particular know how he does it, but he never misses his mark. They say a creature loses his sight, he gains power in his other senses.

Sure, sure, he’ll make a show of the corpse. Scare off your trouble. But I ain’t have any experience with that. Go on and talk to him, but if you’re planning on getting a discount on account of his blindness, I’ll call up the cleaning crew in advance to sweep up your skull bits from the floor. And hey, a word of advice: Don’t look right at him. Grangor don’t take kindly to that. And yeah, he’ll know if you do.

You thought you could call me beast from across the cantina. If you whispered it, you thought I wouldn’t hear. You thought that distance would give you a running start. And now you are at my feet, drunk little carnie fool. That’s why you lose at the dice tables, and why you return to lose again: You are only good from range.

But now my axe has knocked you close, so while you’re at my feet clutching at that nasty bruise, why don’t you insult me again? Ah, good, good. There’s some courage in you. I can respect a man who spits in the face of a beast.

Perhaps, though, you should think on what you consider beastly. True, my kind lives in the treetops and mountain caves. The patterns in our fur hide us in the vines, brush and thorns. Weaker creatures feed us. But you pockmark our mountains with your mines, draw out the crystal and the gold, then fight over the wells while the mountains crumble. The avalanches draw the beasts, as you call us, closer and closer. Which path is truly less civilized?

Shh, stop shaking, little carnie. This is not the end. There’s still a trophy to claim.

Get up off the ground, you cowardly shivering leaf, and let’s have a roll of dice to prove we can play nice. You can have all my gold if you win. But if you lose, I’m taking that side arm. Oh, it’s special to you, little Ringo? Then you’d best not lose.

And you’d best not cheat. I can smell every move.