Gargoyle

Story so far

Gargoyle is the race Volteeg selected on the third floor, replacing his Sturnus birth race. The change finally made his brain churn — images resolved into sense, strategies coalesced, a sense of self took form — but it also meant he could no longer sing, which he calls a terrible, terrible mistake, and it opened up a world that had been simple and black-and-white into something bigger, scarier, and more complicated than his old brain could comprehend.

In the dungeon the race has real advantages: nobody actually wants to fight a gargoyle, and a gargoyle can sleep for long periods without anyone knowing, which carried Volteeg through 26 seasons of numb NPC guard duty. Outside the dungeon those magical properties simply stop working — something nobody tells you before you change your body, and a change that cannot be reversed. Volteeg could no longer sleep long, no longer turn his skin to stone or disappear, and in gravity heavier than half his original planet's he would start to collapse in on himself, needing a brace just to stand. His racial abilities returned when he was brought back to the surface for Faction Wars.

Appearance

Stone-skinned humanoids with heavy, misshapen heads and grating voices; able to harden their skin to stone and go still enough to vanish, but ill-suited to heavy gravity without bracing.

Role

Volteeg's adopted race, the source of both his survival and his deepest regret.

Relationships