First appearance: S1E6 — Belly of the Beast — Viago v Tetra · watch it on YouTube
Viago is a towering, shirtless barbarian in a skull helmet who fought Tetra Kincaid in S1E6 — Belly of the Beast — Viago v Tetra. Everyone around him mocked him for supposedly being unable to count past two, and he spent the whole fight proving that being underestimated suited him fine. He shrugged off every attempt to stun him, wore a metal chair as a necklace, healed his own opponent out of pure arrogance and still walked away the winner.
Story
The Arbiter unveiled Viago from under a decorative sheet, like a statue, before the Grandmaster in her throne room. He said he had found the champion in “the wilderness,” and when pressed he insisted it was a real, very small place. Viago announced that he was ready to shed blood in her honor, and that he did it “with a lot of rage,” then threw up a rock-and-roll hand sign. The Grandmaster liked him on intimidation alone. Before entering the arena he played her at rock, paper, scissors and lost, which she took as a sign that he knew his place. The portal then delivered both champions into The Siren’s Nautilus, a living ship on the seabed, where they landed nose to nose. The Acolytes backed Viago from the start.
He opened by raging and turning into a dire wolf, and Tetra mauled him badly almost at once. When the Grandmaster summoned a moon to spotlight him and demanded a show, the wolf pounced onto Tetra’s shoulders and howled in her face, and the Grandmaster blessed him for it. The Acolytes then demanded chaos, and the Grandmaster dive-bombed him “like a falcon skydiving” with the Arbiter’s metal chair. The rusted seat gave way and left the chair hanging around his neck like a collar. Tetra used it to twist his neck and snap him back into his own seven-foot body. He wiped the blood from his lip and told her, “I’m glad you think I was stupid. That was the idea.” Twice, when Tetra tried to slip away, his great axe caught her and stopped her in her tracks. Each time she tried to stun him, he shrugged it off, once with a push from the crowd’s support and once with a perfect roll. In the most baffling move of the night, he dropped his rage just to heal her a little. “I don’t want you to die too fast,” he explained, and the Grandmaster loved the arrogance. When Tetra joked that she wore black because it was slimming and she didn’t want to embarrass him, the Grandmaster noted it had “drawn attention to an area of Viago I was not prepared for”: she had been “thinking behind, but apparently we were talking about in front.” Tetra then went for his “face… or scrotum, whichever is closer,” clawed him in the testicle (“specifically left one”) and sank more claws into his scrotum, to which Viago replied, “A little to the left. Oh, there you go.”
When the Arbiter had the ship tilt and pour both champions into its acid-soaked stomach, the acid seeped through Viago’s boots; he spat on the stomach in contempt and kept advancing. Tetra won a string of lucky strikes on a bouncy-castle floor and then climbed thirty feet up the wall. Viago enchanted himself to leap, sprang up after her, seized her from behind and suplexed her all the way down. Her slow fall turned the plunge into an oddly tender moment, and Viago told her, “You smell lovely.” Back on the ground he threw her over his shoulder into a green pool that turned out to hold a gelatinous cube. When she tried to tackle him into the cube and found his chest didn’t move, he asked her, “You understand why I wear the black pants now, right?” He punched her, healed her again, and slapped her on the backside. In the final round he even told her honestly that his reckless swings had given her the advantage, and he shrugged off her last stun, which earned him her nickname, “Viago the Stunless.” He looked up at the Grandmaster, the Arbiter and the cube, then spun and kicked her hard in the back. That was enough to drop her.
The Grandmaster rode the frozen cube up to the fans with him at her side while the crowd threw up rock fists and screamed his name. She told him he had “truly brought greatness to my field.” At the table afterward, his player admitted he had thought Tetra had more fight left, and that the kick was meant as an insult to goad her into fighting back. He had also hoped the room would flood, and had a giant octopus or a giant toad ready as backup forms.
Personality and Abilities
Viago stands about seven feet tall, shirtless, in black pants and a skull helmet, with horrible, moldy teeth and tusks. The Arbiter noted that the dentist on staff is better at ripping teeth out than putting them right, and the Grandmaster promised replacement teeth only to winners. On the show he is presented as a half-orc. In his player’s own world he is an Orochiath, half orc and half goliath, from a line “bred through love” whose founders were shunned by their clans and started their own. He is loud, cocky and a gleeful trash-talker who plays along with jokes about his intelligence until they become a trap. “See, these are real muscles. Those are pretend ones,” he told Tetra.
In battle he is a raging totem barbarian who shrugs off almost every kind of harm except attacks on the mind. He swings a great axe and punishes anyone who tries to run past him. He also has a streak of nature magic: he can turn into a dire wolf, cast small words of healing (on himself or, unwisely, on his enemy) and enchant himself to leap enormous distances. His favorite move is the suplex, from a wall, over a shoulder, wherever it fits. Asked for his secret after the fight, he credited proper stretching, eating his vegetables and “an ample amount of trash talking.”
Relationships
- Tetra Kincaid: His opponent, a feline brawler who tore him to shreds early, called him an “asshole” repeatedly, and named him “Viago the Stunless” before his kick ended her.
- Grandmaster Elusia Skypiercer: She cheered for Tetra at first, but blessed Viago’s wolf performance, smashed a chair over his head, loved his arrogance and crowned him victor.
- The Arbiter: Found him in “the wilderness,” handed over the chair that ended up around his neck, and bet on him because he was “bleeding less.”
- The Acolytes: Backed him from the opening moments and saluted his win with rock fists.
Memorable Quotes
- “This is too much rock and roll for one hand.” (S1E6 — Belly of the Beast)
- “I’m glad you think I was stupid. That was the idea. Now here comes the pain.” (S1E6 — Belly of the Beast)
- “I don’t want you to die too fast.” (S1E6 — Belly of the Beast)
- “See, these are real muscles. Those are pretend ones.” (S1E6 — Belly of the Beast)
- “You smell lovely.” (S1E6 — Belly of the Beast)
- “You understand why I wear the black pants now, right?” (S1E6 — Belly of the Beast)