First appearance: LIVE at GCX Orlando 2023 — Navik v Ragu (Prego) · watch it on YouTube
Navik, the self-proclaimed Lord of the Undead, was a skinny, robed necromancer who fought Ragu live in front of a crowd in LIVE at GCX Orlando 2023 — Navik v Ragu (Prego). He barely lifted a finger. He let the audience do it for him, raising Acolytes as his undead minions and sending them in to claw, bite and sweep the legs out from under his opponent. He ended the night as champion and turned his beaten rival into one more member of his horde.
Story
The Arbiter brought him out “all the way from wherever the hell he lives,” and Navik greeted the room as his own: “I am Navik, Lord of the Undead. And you, my minions, will do as I say.” When the Arbiter asked whether the title was self-appointed, Navik explained that “it’s a hierarchy, and it starts at the top.” The Grandmaster immediately asked, “You’re middle management?” A wounded Navik pointed out that they had talked about this beforehand, and that she had promised not to bring up the middle management thing. Things did not improve from there. His poison test came up a 10, declared “average… it happens to most necromancers,” and the Grandmaster said “all my girlfriends want to talk about how average a man is.” His summons of “Army of the Damned, rise!” drew a lethargic response (“It’s early”), and when the crowd voted on who would get the edge going into the fight, a sea of Ragu squats beat Navik’s raised hands. “Turns out nobody likes me,” he conceded.
Ragu struck first with his nunchucks. Navik deflected the opening swing with nothing but a raised hand, though the next blows landed and Ragu’s sweat seeped into him like death. Navik answered with crackling lightning and thunder (“Are you awake yet, Minions?”). When one of his minions failed him, the Grandmaster had a claw drop that Acolyte into a deep fryer, and Navik only remarked, “They taste like chicken.” The crowd’s insults bounced off his bony exterior. Ragu tried to rip off his pretty red hand, and Navik rolled a perfect 20 to stop him: “Ragu, instead of a hand, how about a finger?” Ragu shot back, “I’m not trying to be the guy that gets fingered.” Ragu’s roots around his “ugly boots” fared no better. Navik kicked them off like dust and declared, “Strong boots. Weak branches.”
From then on, Navik let the dead do his work. He raised a young, freshly buried dragonborn who tore into Ragu, and then a skeletal centaur druid that Ragu could only compare to Motaro from Mortal Kombat. When the Grandmaster pulled Ragu aside for a pep talk, Navik asked, “Is this a fight or a Pilates class?”, and Ragu announced, “I think I just sharted.” A blue-haired minion swept both of Ragu’s legs out from under him, and Navik seized the moment for what he called a “villainous surge.” He raised six crowd members, among them “one of my undead horde generals.” They crawled toward the Deathmatch die together, landed the blow, and crumbled into sparkling dust, which the janitor then swept up. When Ragu called up all his friends for help, Navik took them too: “I pulled forth what remained of their souls… And now all Ragu’s sweet little friends are mine.” The Grandmaster told Ragu he knew what Caesar felt like now.
Ragu came back fighting as Prego, and the two traded a beam of energy that Navik absorbed and fired back, burning them both. When a child from the crowd became Prego’s human shield, Navik went all out. “If I have to somehow destroy a child, I might as well go overkill,” he said. He booped the child to death and raised them as a minion, and the Grandmaster mourned that the child would never grow up and go to prom. Prego still landed a splash of acid and dodged two of Navik’s zombies with acrobatic back-kicks, and a few pink cubes from the crowd caught Navik (“It’s always the pink shit”). It wasn’t enough. Navik raised his beaten foe to “join the army of the damned,” and the zombified Prego kissed his ugly boots. The Grandmaster crowned Navik “our winner, our champion,” and he closed the show with “Evil always wins!”
Personality and Abilities
Navik was tall and bony: “nothing but bones,” “a tall Skrillex,” with makeup the crowd did not rate. He wore robes, a ring on his pretty red right hand, and a pair of boots he really had pulled off a dead guy (“I did”). He played the grand villain with relish, practicing an evil laugh that the Grandmaster made bigger every time. Underneath, he was a little touchy about being called middle management, and he worried that his minions were “embarrassing me in front of my friends.” The Arbiter noted that he asked his minions for things instead of telling them.
His power was necromancy. He could raise the living and the dead as thralls (“Rise, my thrall!”), with summons ranging from a dragonborn and a skeletal centaur to a pair of zombies the Grandmaster named Mario 1 and Mario 2. He could also call down lightning and thunder. He would spend his minions freely, burning through six at once for a single blow, and he could steal the souls of his enemy’s own allies. His philosophy fit in three short sentences: “I’m done. I don’t need to do anything anymore. That’s what you all are for.”
Relationships
- Ragu: His opponent, who fought on as Prego. Navik stole his friends, beat him, and raised him as a minion who kissed his boots.
- The Grandmaster: Teased him about middle management and his performance. When Navik asked how much she had bought the Arbiter for, she offered to give the Arbiter to him.
- The Arbiter: Introduced him and traded jabs with him. Navik pointed out that the Arbiter was middle management too, and asked whether he was tax certified.
- The Acolytes: In Navik’s eyes, his minions, raised one by one or six at a time to fight and fall for him.
Memorable Quotes
- “Strong boots. Weak branches.” (LIVE at GCX Orlando 2023 — Navik v Ragu (Prego))
- “I’m done. I don’t need to do anything anymore. That’s what you all are for.” (LIVE at GCX Orlando 2023 — Navik v Ragu (Prego))
- “If I have to somehow destroy a child, I might as well go overkill.” (LIVE at GCX Orlando 2023 — Navik v Ragu (Prego))
- “I liked it better when you missed every hit.” (LIVE at GCX Orlando 2023 — Navik v Ragu (Prego))
- “Ravenclaw’s better anyway.” (LIVE at GCX Orlando 2023 — Navik v Ragu (Prego))
- “Now, I know what dead looks like.” (LIVE at GCX Orlando 2023 — Navik v Ragu (Prego))