Mathias Blackflail

When the Skinwalker Plague came to Arnoc, the Free City was torn apart. Citizens were butchered in the thousands as rats rose from the sewers and ravenous, slobbering man-beasts attacked the city. Thousands succumbed to the disease’s ravages, adding to the misery and slaughter. One survivor was a boy named Mathias. Broad, tall, and strong for his age, he had been the pride and joy of his mercenary captain father, a man of rough humor and immense bulk. Before the plague, when not learning to fight, Mathias explored Arnoc, beating up and even killing ‘sewer rats’ — a term he used for both rodents and the city’s poorest boys and beggars. It made his father proud. All Mathias’ malice and brutality counted for nothing during the Plague. He was helpless as his sire was ripped limb from limb in front of him by rat-Skinwalkers. Bitter and furious tears streaming down his face, he fled the city, making for the safety of the Land of Rebirth, home of the Sacred Order. Revenge soon became Mathias’ obsession. He demanded he be given arms, excelled in the Order’s brutal training regimens, and bullied his way to dominance over his comrades and fellow orphans. Years passed, and Mathias grew to be a towering brute of a man, merciless and ruthless in victory and furious in rare instances of defeat. He attracted dozens of lackeys, each cruel and sycophantic, who became his closest followers. He regarded them all as pathetic, but they worshiped him, and so he kept them. When word came that a purgation crusade had been declared against Skinwalkers, Mathias’ roars of elation echoed throughout swathes of the Eternal Citadel. His vengeance was finally at hand. At the Retaking of the Granite Bastion, Mathias was the first to storm the Orc-held ramparts. There he cut down a score of the ‘creatures’, buying time for more Order warriors to climb the ladders set against the fortress’ walls. When he learned that hundreds of Orc civilians were hiding inside the central keep, he set the first torch to it, delighting in purging ‘vermin’ in such fashion. At the Kyron Ravine Massacre, he led the charge against a ragged column of Ogryn and Lizardmen refugees and set upon them with wild, bloody abandon, cursing every last one. He spent an hour culling enemy wounded as they lay helpless on the blood-soaked ground, never stopping for rest or water. For four more years, Mathias slaughtered his way around Kaerok, his every kill an act of vengeance for the slaughter he beheld in Arnoc years before. Then, fighting against a monstrous bovine Skinwalker during the Langden Town Uprising, the creature severed his sword-arm at the elbow. He hacked the beast to a bloody pulp in a pain-fueled rage and fought for another hour, suffering more wounds before retiring. Mathias demanded the Order’s healers make him fit for battle. They cauterized his injuries with iron made hot in the fires of burning Skinwalker corpses and chanted praise to Lumaya over his stump while treating it with holy water and crushed herbs from sacred gardens. At the same time, he ordered smiths to provide him with a weapon he could use in lieu of his blade. What they produced, which they revealed to him scant a day after his wound was declared healed, brought a wicked smirk to his face. A black iron flail as large as a battle helm, integrated into a false forearm. Mathias longed to wield it in anger, and he soon had his chance. Crusaders, searching for Skinwalkers, discovered the Bone Temple in the Free City of Narbuk and swept through it with Mathias among them. He pulverized heretic after heretic with his flail and shield, splattering their brains and shattering their spines against catacomb walls. He considered every kill a holy smiting sanctifying the city. ‘The Blackflail’, as he became known, disappeared shortly after Narbuk was purged. Stories spread that he was murdered in the night by weasel-like Skinwalkers too cowardly to face him man—to-man. But the truth is that the Arbiter saw Mathias and knew, for all his brutish, murderous nature, he was a weapon she needed. Siroth’s hosts were full of loathsome monsters, and she knew only beasts of her own could counter them. Mathias has only been released from his Shard four times — alongside warriors such as the fanatic, Errol, and other Red Crusaders known for savagery and bloodlust – for the most desperate and dangerous purgation missions. On each occasion, he ruthlessly bloodied the forces of Darkness. It has not escaped the Arbiter’s notice that with every unleashing, Mathias has appeared even more frenzied. She fears that with barely a handful more battles, he will be impossible to control.