First appearance: S1E3 — Blood Mage — Sunozar v the Shadow of the Arbiter · watch it on YouTube
Sunozar is a seven-foot-tall half-orc blood hunter with heavy plate armor, a greatsword that growls, and a pink mohawk you must never, ever mention. The Arbiter found him at a Ruby Tuesday in Omaha. The Grandmaster named him her chosen champion, and he went on to decapitate The Shadow of the Arbiter, a piece of the Arbiter himself. He describes himself simply: “I just like kill things.”
Story
Sunozar was the only champion the Arbiter managed to bring that day. The other recruit had claimed to be a boxer and turned out only to own boxers, the dogs. The Grandmaster’s answer was to make the Arbiter fight. He tore his own shadow out of his chest to stand in for him. Sunozar arrived laughing, threw his greatsword in the air, backflipped, bowed, and greeted the wrong city (“Hello, New York… New York was last night? My bad”). Then he introduced himself as the man who once chopped off a man’s head for stepping on his toe. The Grandmaster declared him “my chosen one for this battle,” and he replied, “Cool. I’m not sure what that means, but cool.” She tried the slang anyway: “It’s lit, yo.” The arena was The Disregarded Cliffs, a ruined mountaintop fortress studded with golden crystals and a humming blue portal.
The fight started badly. Sunozar flipped the Shadow a double middle finger, then fumbled his start so completely that the Arbiter suggested he had just died of a heart attack. When the Grandmaster offered him a second chance at a price, he turned it down: he was “just out here to kill some people.” He asked the dragon skull on his sword to “really cut people this time,” sliced his own bicep, and set the blade roaring with flame: “I heard people like metal here, so if you want metal, you get metal!” When a rainbow piñata with glued-on anime eyes dropped into the arena, he smashed it open and burned it, which left only five of its candies. They were legally distinct Snickers that healed, and Sunozar was not grateful: “I fucking hate kids.” He laid blood curses on the Shadow, which it kept shaking off. He branded it so he could always track it, and he nearly took its nether regions with an upward swing. The Shadow had to turn back time to save them. The Grandmaster thought the brand was a “spell of castration.” It was castigation, though he is a bull rancher who once killed a man for stepping on his toe, so he may have removed some things as well.
Then the Shadow got into his head. With a glow of red eyes it suggested they kill the Grandmaster together, and Sunozar went along with it. He reasoned that the Shadow stood between him and her, so it still had to die first. He asked her to come down; she said her wings were tired, but promised to come down to him if he won. The spell broke when the Shadow summoned a shadow of its own, a winged creature that looked like Ryuk from Death Note. That spawn hit him hard with a great shadowy sword that dealt freezing damage, though a contest of sword sizes still went to Sunozar. Then the Grandmaster called in Theodore the Giant, who scooped the battlefield into the clouds in the palm of his hand. Sunozar asked whether he could call him Teddy, then whether now was a bad time to mention he was afraid of heights. It was a horrible time. Despite his new speed and balance, he lost his footing and fell through the clouds.
Mid-fall, he prayed: “Look at how awesome your wings are. They’re so perfect. You should show how perfect they are by coming to save me.” Moved, the Grandmaster dove, caught him like a small baby, and had Teddy put the ground back. She set him down beside a bush, so the greenery would contrast nicely with the blood. The Arbiter announced, “Here at D20 Deathmatch, we love bush and we know it,” and Sunozar agreed: “It’s all about bush and castration here.” In the last exchange the Shadow made one final mistake and mocked the pink mohawk. Sunozar ran straight at it and swung his sword like a baseball bat, smashing through its magical shield and into its head. As the Shadow faded, crying a single shadowy tear, Sunozar ate the last piece of candy in its face. “I decapitated a shadow.” He thanked the Flamesword (and, after a pointed gesture, the Grandmaster’s wings), and she raised his hand as the champion.
Personality and Abilities
Sunozar is big, blunt and cheerfully homicidal: “a simple half-orc” with little charm and no interest in titles he doesn’t understand. He listens only to metal and is touchy about his mohawk; he killed the last person who mocked it, and hinted that he castrated him too. He is afraid of heights, which he mentioned at the worst possible moment, high above the clouds on Theodore’s hand. At the table, the player admitted this was improvised from a running joke with friends about a tall bridge to the casinos at Lake Charles, Louisiana. Now, he said, Sunozar “is now afraid of heights forever.” He has a showman’s streak: backflips, bows and, after a mutagen boost, a spot of riverdancing that earned him the title “the Lord of the Riverdance.”
By his own account he was an orphaned street urchin who never knew his mother. He befriended an old man who turned out to be a powerful wizard, and together they saved several cities from demons, goblins and trolls. Statues of the two of them stand in a couple of cities, one cast in bronze and one in marble. When they killed the dragon whose skull now sits on the hilt of his greatsword, his friend sacrificed himself, and his soul lives in that skull. Sunozar calls it “buddy” and talks to it in battle, and it growls back. When he cuts his own bicep with the blade, it bursts into flame or crackles with lightning; he calls it “the Flamesword.”
He fights in heavy plate with the greatsword and a crossbow, striking twice in quick succession. His blood-hunter craft includes curses that bloat a foe in agony, mark it for extra pain or muddle its mind. He also uses a seared brand that lets him always sense which way his target is, even when it’s invisible, and alchemical mutagens that sharpen his speed or harden him against cold.
Relationships
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: Named him her chosen champion, caught him when he fell from the sky, and promised him steaks and a dictionary.
- The Arbiter: Found him at a Ruby Tuesday in Omaha and brought him to the Void. He tried to relieve Sunozar of his armor and was turned down: “No, I’m good, homie.”
- The Shadow of the Arbiter: His opponent, who briefly talked him into plotting against the Grandmaster, then made the mistake of insulting his mohawk.
- Theodore: The giant whose hand carried the fight into the clouds. Sunozar called him Teddy, and he liked that a lot.
Memorable Quotes
- “I once chopped a man’s head off for stepping on my toe. I once cut a man’s toe off for touching my head. It doesn’t matter.” (S1E3 — Blood Mage)
- “Is now a bad time to mention I’m afraid of heights?” (S1E3 — Blood Mage)
- “Look at how awesome your wings are. They’re so perfect. You should show how perfect they are by coming to save me.” (S1E3 — Blood Mage)
- “Never, and I repeat, never talk about my mohawk.” (S1E3 — Blood Mage)
- “Hey, we did it again, buddy. Good job. Proud of you.” (S1E3 — Blood Mage)