First appearance: Skypiercer Part 1
Atalantos was a former pit gladiator who rose to general of Cor’thun. He was a spear-and-shield soldier who bled for his allies and longed, above everything else, for a glorious warrior’s death. He fought beside Elusia and Kaja to end the reign of The Shadow King, and he held the tyrant still with his own body so the killing arrow could land. He was knighted as one of the new Knights of Chaos and helped set the standard for the very first Deathmatch. Long after his death, the Shadow King dragged his bones out of a sarcophagus to fight one more time, and he got the death he had always wanted.
Story
Skypiercer Part 1
Atalantos first appeared in Skypiercer Part 1, leading his soldiers through burning streets while trebuchet fire rained on Cor’thun and the Eastern Gate fell. Through the breach came the Cursed Juggernaut, a silent, regenerating giant in a metal raven mask. Atalantos placed his shield between it and Elusia, lent her his openings, and taunted it: “You seem to be a juggernaut. Let us put that name to the test.” He cut his own blood to wreathe his allies in crackling crimson lightning, including two of the zombies Kaja had raised. When the monster flattened them, he used a blood curse to lift the zombie the crowd had named Kevin for one last swing. “You had the heart of a Corthunian,” he told it.
After two scythe blows, he dropped his spear and shield and roared, “Tonight, we dine in hell!” He drew a greatsword he said he only ever used in such moments, and his eyes lit up, one gold and one purple. He also took a stray blast from Kaja in the back through the smoke. Elusia finished the Juggernaut from between its legs, driving her short sword up through its butt and pushing in the lightning arrow she had already shot into its butt, and it collapsed face-first onto the tip of Atalantos’s spear. “Relentless juggernaut… We are still standing.”
At the victory feast he told the tale to Emperor Thornos, who called him “a pillar, a rock … a cornerstone of this city and its defense.” Thornos named him a General of the Champions of Honor alongside Kaja and Elusia. Elusia told him “everyone studies your words. You are the standard for the training.” When a very drunk soldier named Lucien tried to autograph Atalantos’s chest in gravy and then fell asleep in his hand, Atalantos drafted him into his brigade: “Training begins at four in the morning.” Later that night the party turned down the politician Glotun’s scheme for Plintos. When Vythorn arrived to ask Elusia to return to The Void, Atalantos pledged to go with her.
Skypiercer Part 2
In Skypiercer Part 2, Atalantos spent his last days in Cor’thun settling his troops. He found Lucien passed out in a tavern and asked another soldier to look after him. When Elusia wondered whether she was worthy, he told her he had been “just a simple gladiator at first,” then a soldier, and had worked his way up: “Simply just do. Be the best that you can be today.” At the gold-plated Plintos estate he wasted no time demanding “your finest diamond.”
The portal dropped them in a dead forest in The Shadowlands, with The Dread Fortress glowing on every horizon. While the others flew or leapt across a chasm of rope bridges, Atalantos walked. A board broke under him and a shadow tendril seized his ankle, but he pulled free. When shadow creatures attacked, he set his spear alight and kicked one so hard its chest folded through itself. He also turned his frost on Elusia’s bow just to see whether cold would work on them. It didn’t. “Sometimes sacrifices must be made for knowledge.” Then a Nightwalker climbed out of the chasm, and Atalantos read the danger at once (“This thing will fuck your entire world”). He made sure everyone got clear before he ran himself.
In the rebel camp of Atheranon, where Craven Eldonbridge led them, the party opened a chest bearing Faucius Golden Shield’s insignia, smuggled out of the Dread Fortress. Atalantos received Defender, also called Groundbreaker, the golden longsword that had belonged to Elusia’s grandfather and then her father. Over the following weeks he trained some five hundred troops and learned all their names. “We will win as brothers in arms.”
Skypiercer Part 3
On the cliff above the lava field in Skypiercer Part 3 (finale), Elusia asked how he could face death so calmly. “There is no shame in death. In fact, there should be celebration.” He kept his old, worn gear on purpose, reasoning that losing to a man with “only a stick” puts fear in an enemy. Inside the fortress, The Dragon Knights slipped through the walls and shadows. Atalantos bear-hugged one out of the darkness so Kaja could blast it, and he branded another with the symbol of Cor’thun.
In the throne room he drew Defender: “Today, I fight as the sword of the Empress.” His tide of blood wiped out the acolytes Agdrel had been feeding on, which cut the Shadow King off from fresh life. At the climax Atalantos drove his spear through Agdrel and through himself, pinning them together so the tyrant could not escape. He told Elusia: “Shoot him, shoot me if you have to, but he dies here and now.” She did, then dropped her bow and finished her uncle by stabbing an arrow into his eye and face again and again. Vythorn reversed time on Atalantos’s wound to save him, though only partly, and the strain turned his black wings white. At the coronation, Elusia knighted Atalantos and Kaja as her Knights of Chaos: “My trusted kin, for you are family to me now.”
S4E1: Shadows Reign
Centuries later, in S4E1 — Shadows Reign — Atalantos v Kaja, the restored Shadow King gave the chained Grandmaster a cruel birthday present. Two stone sarcophagi rose from the shadows holding the skeletons of Atalantos and Kaja. With a snap of his fingers their flesh regrew, wrapped in shadowy etherealness. Atalantos woke ready: “You raise my bones. You give me life once more. But if more death must come, then I will surely bring it.” Fighting Kaja suited him fine. “If it’s to be against one another, then personally, I’d have it no other way.”
In The Shadow King’s old home, a blood-soaked obelisk with a watching, laser-firing door, Atalantos frosted his blood rite over and simply let Kaja strike first. When the door fired at him, he deflected the beam off his shield with a perfect roll and never took his eyes off her. He nearly took her ear off (in fact he did take it), cut her leg, and dragged her out of the air by the ankle. When the door complained that nobody had knocked, he threw Kaja at it as his knock, and the door turned out to be a mimic. He seared the symbol of Cor’thun into her and smashed her over a railing with his shield. When the hastily made new Box of Chaos, filled with the soul of an Acolyte named Robert Hartley, coughed up a dingy yellow robe of eyes, it ended up on Atalantos as a Death Club crop top. “It does make my abs look bigger.” He gave Rob his dusty old first dagger, a gift from his uncle.
The fight turned when Kaja’s blasts left him bloodied and afraid. The crowd chanting his name steadied him, and the Shadow King, sensing “one shadow being to another” in his shadowed eye, flooded him with healing blood. Atalantos asked the floating dead to lend him their aid, and when Kaja raised them as skeletons he switched to his greatsword. “The spear of Cor’thun will turn into the blade of Cor’thun.” He turned one of her own skeletons against her, but the others cut him down. As Kaja’s final blast came, a small smile crept onto his face. He was not sad or angry. He was happy and proud to see his friends one more time. Kaja then shaped the flames consuming his body into the Sword of Cor’thun and hurled it into the Shadow King’s chest in his honor.
Personality and Abilities
Beneath his helmet Atalantos was scarred, with a small mohawk. He had one divine golden eye and, by his last fight, one eye writhing with shadow. He was a teacher at heart, and his creed was “every scar is a lesson.” He handed out those lessons in battle, along with dry, deadpan threats, and he cheerfully called himself “an old man.” He believed death was something to celebrate, and he wanted nothing more than to meet it gloriously.
He fought with spear and shield and was a master of shoves, grapples and throws. He drew his greatsword only when he meant to trade defense for raw killing power. As a shield sentinel of the Order of the Sacrificent (“I bleed for my allies”), he worked blood magic. He spent his own blood to wreathe his weapons and his friends’ weapons in lightning, frost or flame. His blood curses could blind a foe, raise a fallen ally for one last strike, or turn an enemy’s minion against its master. His greatest rite was a tide of blood that drained life from the creatures around him. He also carried Defender, the golden sword of Elusia’s family.
Relationships
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Fellow general, friend and sworn knight, whom she called “my trusted kin.”
- Kaja: Comrade in arms through Skypiercer and his last opponent, who killed him and then struck at the Shadow King in his honor.
- Lucien: The hopelessly drunk soldier he drafted into his brigade.
- The Arbiter: As Vythorn, he guided the party into the Void and saved Atalantos with time magic.
- The Shadow King: The tyrant he pinned with his own spear, who later raised him from the dead and healed him as a fellow shadow being.
- Craven Eldonbridge: The rebel leader who led the party to Atheranon, where Atalantos received Defender.
Memorable Quotes
“Tonight, we dine in hell!” (Skypiercer Part 1)
“Every scar is a lesson. And if we are to do battle, then I will teach you many.” (S4E1 — Shadows Reign)
- “There is no shame in death. In fact, there should be celebration.” (Skypiercer Part 3)
- “Shoot him, shoot me if you have to, but he dies here and now.” (Skypiercer Part 3)
- “And you look very good in dead.” (S4E1 — Shadows Reign)
- “Finish this warrior. I know you can.” (S4E1 — Shadows Reign)