First appearance: S3E6, Homunculus - Coen v Alfucius · watch it on YouTube
Coen is a tall, softly spoken tiefling who arrived in the Void, got distracted by a snail, and turned out to be the quiet menace of her Deathmatch. She came with one friend, made several more terrifying ones over the course of the fight, and talked her opponent, Alfucius the Everbright, into an uneasy friendship. The match ended with no death between them, a destroyed ghost dragon, and both champions promised their wishes.
Story
S3E6, Homunculus - Coen v Alfucius
Coen stepped through the Arbiter’s portal into a courtyard of The Dread Fortress, where magic had conjured a sunny day underground. Her first words were “Oh, it’s finally good to be here.” When the Grandmaster asked whether she was well-versed in battle, Coen lost the thread completely, first to the sound of crickets and then to a passing snail. She defended herself: “You telling me you don’t like the atmosphere? It’s beautiful. It’s nice and crisp.” The fight’s opening rolls were made with dice, and Coen picked up a vaguely dice-shaped rock and rolled that instead. That won the Grandmaster over (“I have a thing for rocks”), and she granted Coen a blessing. Then Alfucius woke from his trance and bowed deeply, and the Grandmaster took the blessing back and gave it to him: “You like rocks, but he bowed to me.” Before the fight had even begun, Coen quietly tripped the old wizard. He fell face first and broke his nose, and the first blood of the match was drawn.
The arena floor melted into lava, and the champions ended up on rocks facing each other across it. A chaos event brought a porcelain doll hatching out of a stone, asking “Will you be my friend?” Coen answered by transforming her. The doll grew fur over her body, her eyes grew bigger and glassier, and under the fur she hid a beak full of tiny sharp teeth. Coen named her Aragorl. That doll was Dolly, who turns up in many matches, and in Coen’s hands she became a weapon. When Coen was hurt, she vanished with the fiendish friend on her shoulder, reappeared in a burst of sparks right beside Alfucius, and gave him a jolt of lightning that lit him up “like a Christmas tree.” She apologized at once: “It’s just, I wanted to introduce you to someone.” He threw gold at her feet to buy peace. Coen caught two coins and threw them back. He offered an alliance, and she replied, “I have one friend.” After a full minute of listening to the crickets, she let Aragorl bite him, pumping poison under his skin.
Coen then changed tactics. She sang “Never gonna give you up” inside Alfucius’s head, dashed up to him behind a floating dragon skull, lit a bonfire at his feet and patted the ground for him to sit with her. Over that campfire Alfucius admitted he knew no magic at all and had planned to shoot her in the face. Coen took it calmly and offered to give him “lots of friends” in exchange for not killing him. She never gave up her own goal, though: “I would like the wishes for me.” The Grandmaster lost patience with the plotting and demanded blood, and the Arbiter half-heartedly raised a ghost dragon from the bones in the lava. Alfucius tried to run. Coen grabbed his ankle, then used the faith of The Acolytes to calm him through her familiar, and his hostility toward her faded completely.
From there the two fought side by side. Coen summoned a greater demon that looked exactly like Aragorl, only twenty feet tall, with bug-like legs and crab claws. It wore pink Barbie stilettos and a little tutu, and it kicked the dragon in the face in a ballerina spin while the Acolytes threw roses. Alfucius finished the dragon with a gunshot, and it burst into floating fairy lights. The Grandmaster still wanted blood. Coen cheerfully offered, “I can cut you,” but before either champion could stab the other, the little Aragorl bit Alfucius’s arm until it bled. “Well… that will do,” the Grandmaster said. Toothed tulips sprang up where his blood fell. When one snapped at Alfucius, Coen bit the heads off the tulips, and the match was declared a shared victory with wishes for both champions. When the Arbiter, angry that no one had died, flung a goblin out of the stands to its death, Coen called after it in its own tongue: “Goodbye.”
Personality and Abilities
Coen is very tall and lean, with pale bluish-green skin, cloudy long blue hair, and horns that curl out from under her locks, hung with golden chains and charms. She wears a sleeveless green belted coat with dark feathers on the shoulders, leather bracers and knee-high boots, and she has a long, pointed tail. She seems vague and easily distracted, drifting off to listen to crickets or watch snails. She loves rocks and finds creepy creatures “beautiful,” calling Alfucius’s diamond homunculus exactly that, and she watched the ghost dragon burst into light in absolute awe. She is polite to a fault and apologizes even while electrocuting someone. Under the gentle manner, though, she was the quiet menace of the match.
In the fight she used a shocking touch, a defensive trick that turned her invisible and blinked her across the battlefield whenever she was hurt, and telepathic speech, which she dedicated to “the power of Rick Roll.” That last one prompted the Grandmaster to say she would love a warlock with Rick Astley as a patron. Coen can also conjure a bonfire, calm an enemy’s hostility through her familiar, summon a towering greater demon in her favorite doll’s image, and speak the language of Goblins. Her real strength is persuasion: she won the fight mostly by refusing to fight her opponent at all.
Relationships
- Alfucius the Everbright: Her opponent. She tripped him, shocked him and had him bitten, then befriended him over a bonfire and fought the ghost dragon beside him. She still took his arm off her shoulder at the end.
- Dolly: The doll that hatched from a rock. Coen transformed her, renamed her Aragorl, and fought alongside her. At the end she placed the little Aragorl on Alfucius’s shoulder as a gift of “Friendship.”
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Blessed Coen for her rock, took the blessing back for Alfucius’s bow, and finally granted Coen her wish. She kept a careful distance from the twenty-foot Aragorl.
- The Arbiter: Told Coen early on that Alfucius “might just die on his own,” and she agreed. He was angry that nobody did.
Memorable Quotes
“Yes, every girl would like to have a turn with you. And now it’s her turn.” (S3E6, Homunculus - Coen v Alfucius)
- “I don’t need gold when I have the most priceless gift.” (S3E6, Homunculus - Coen v Alfucius)
- “I have one friend.” (S3E6, Homunculus - Coen v Alfucius)
- “All legs, baby… Honestly, she’s a leg model.” (S3E6, Homunculus - Coen v Alfucius)
- “I don’t know if you noticed, but she’s fashion, sweetie.” (S3E6, Homunculus - Coen v Alfucius)
- “I can cut you.” (S3E6, Homunculus - Coen v Alfucius)