First appearance: Playtest 5 (Pre-Launch) — Bawser v Grakas (Mudcat v Caustic) · watch it on YouTube
Grakas is a half-elf swordsman and warlock with blue hair, a blue beard, an inhaler and a master’s degree in computer science. Dropped into a rain-soaked forest to face the hulking Bawser, he spent most of the fight trying to hide and the rest of it accidentally being far tougher than his opponent. He was cowardly but deadly. He lost, survived, and was buried, renamed and reborn with a head of flaming orange hair.
Story
Grakas made his debut in Playtest 5 (Pre-Launch) — Bawser v Grakas (Mudcat v Caustic), in a drizzly forest where his rival had just landed “like a comet” and claimed the whole map. Grakas’s first move was to hide behind a tree. “Oh, I don’t like this… What am I doing here?” he muttered, shaking his inhaler. “If we just stay behind the tree, nobody can see us.” His attempt to climb it ended with him slipping in the hibiscus-scented mud. When Bawser roared his name across the forest, Grakas panicked (“He knows my name. How does he know my name?”) and trembled so hard the tree shed its leaves. He kept his nerve long enough to send Bawser a ghostly whisper (“You’re so stupid for trying”) and scramble twenty feet up into the branches. There he clung “like a monkey” while Bawser punched a cliff in frustration below.
Then the coward turned dangerous. Grakas dropped out of the tree with two short swords, laid a curse on Bawser, and met his grapple hand to hand before shoving him off. That wounded the big turtle’s pride. Grakas struck him with a blow so wrathful that Bawser was left wondering, “How did you become the scary one on the field?” The fight swung back and forth from there. Bawser’s looming presence frightened Grakas in return. Grakas blinked back into the tree and blurred into a smear of blue hair and beard, lamenting, “This is not what I signed up for when I took fencing lessons.” Bawser vowed to “eat you up, spit you out, then eat you again, and then poop you out,” and a spear knocked Grakas out of the branches. Shivering, he coated himself in a layer of ice. When the dam broke and flooded the field, Grakas backflipped to safety on the rocks (“All those tumbling classes are really paying off”). Bawser, meanwhile, slipped on the ground made slick by his own tears and was swept to the edge of the map.
By then Bawser was weeping behind a rock, because being the strong one was his whole identity and this small blue man was out-strengthening him. Grakas took pity on him. “This seems like it means a lot more to you than it does to me… Just go ahead and hit me,” he offered, explaining that he was buried in student debt and the job market was bad anyway. Bawser, deeply touched, hugged him and threw him twenty feet into the air. Grakas decided he “didn’t really care for it” and fought back. Then lightning set the whole forest ablaze. Bawser held him in a burning tree, swearing, “We will burn in this fiery hell together.” Grakas’s blue hair burned orange. One last strike nearly turned the fight, but he fell.
“You win, you win, you win,” Grakas conceded. Bawser carried him out of the flames by the neck, praised him as “wheezy and small and blue” but mighty, and invited him to feast at his castle, on the one condition that he tell everyone Bawser beat him. Then Bawser buried him up to his head to “heal” him, declared “Grakas” a terrible name, and carved “Baby Bow Bow” into the dirt. Grakas clung to life, and the dirt turned out to be medicinal. That night a hand burst out of the ground: “I am Baby Bow-Bow!” His hair and beard flared into living orange flame, and he walked off like a glowing torch toward Bawser’s castle.
Personality and Abilities
Grakas is a nervous wreck with excellent training. He is asthmatic and reaches for his inhaler at the worst moments. He frets out loud and treats hiding as his first, second and third plan. He is also a man of credentials and regrets: a master’s degree in computer science, crushing student debt, and fencing and tumbling lessons he never expected to use in a fight to the death. That weariness made him generous. He handed his opponent a free hit because the win seemed to matter more to Bawser, and with his debts he figured he might as well.
In a fight he is a whirl of twin short swords backed by dark magic. He curses foes and lands frightening blows. He can blink from place to place, blur his own outline and raise shields of crossed steel. He also whispers insults in an eerie voice and drags enemies toward him with lightning. His terror even helps him: he once shivered so hard he coated himself in protective ice. With his burned orange hair over his blue, he came out of the fight orange and blue together, which Bawser declared meant he was “fire and ice.”
Relationships
- Bawser: His opponent, who fell apart emotionally when Grakas proved the stronger fighter. Bawser beat him in the end, then buried him, renamed him Baby Bow-Bow and claimed him as a pet for his castle.
Memorable Quotes
- “If we just stay behind the tree, nobody can see us.” (Playtest 5)
- “I have a master’s degree in computer science. This is not what I signed up for when I took fencing lessons.” (Playtest 5)
- “I’m shivering so much that I’m creating this ice layer.” (Playtest 5)
- “This seems like it means a lot more to you than it does to me… Just go ahead and hit me.” (Playtest 5)
- “Of all the ways that you could die, I always thought that fire would be the worst.” (Playtest 5)
- “I am Baby Bow-Bow!” (Playtest 5)