Rhodes: Combat References, Stories & Token

Rhodes was born into a family of craftsmen. From a young age, he trailed his parents into the workshop, starting out by fetching tools and watching the color of the flame, later learning to disassemble old machines and rebuild parts from blueprints. He seemed to have a natural gift for steam-powered mechanisms, and his family simply assumed he'd carry on the trade. By the time he came of age, he'd already converted a mining machine into a simple steam engine.

He did have one habit, though: whenever he finished something, he had to test it immediately—and his method of testing was, without fail, to wreck that one ruined wall in the workshop. Over time, the wall became riddled with dents and craters of every depth, each one a record of an experiment. His father never stopped him from smashing the wall; he'd only ask, whenever Rhodes boasted too much about some new invention, "Did you actually finish it?" He heard it often enough that it became his own standard—anything he couldn't answer for wasn't finished yet.

A few more years passed, and he grew restless. His hometown was only so big; he'd learned everything there was to learn. The townsfolk only ever needed the same few things—fixing farm tools, swapping out a pump, reinforcing cart wheels, year after year. But what he wanted to build was something bigger, something unheard of—the kind of invention that could be written down and carried forward by those who came after. That sort of thing could never be made in this workshop, so he decided to leave home. When his father heard his plan, he didn't ask many questions—just told him to be careful on the road.

To make something never seen before, you first need materials never seen before, and models worth studying—neither of which existed in the workshop. Only adventurers traveled far and wide, encountering every kind of monster and terrain, so he decided to join a guild.

On one of his earliest expeditions, he spotted a Radobaan beside an abandoned mine shaft. Something that heavy, rolling that fast, and still able to curl its body and pivot at the cliff's edge—by the time it rolled out of sight, he was still crouched there, the back of his blueprint covered edge to edge with sketches. That combination of raw power and flexibility was something he wanted to build into his own creations—so this was what adventuring was for. And yet, none of the small guilds he joined lasted more than half a year. Whenever something caught his eye worth recording, he'd stop dead in his tracks, even if the team moved on without him. Those guilds weren't much better anyway—always fretting over favors owed and who paid what, with barely anyone who actually wanted to build something real. Once, when the team argued endlessly over payment, he stood at the door listening for a while, then walked out with one parting line: "Do you lot even know what you're adventuring for?"

Afterward, he applied to a few of the larger guilds, but never heard back, so he took odd jobs here and there while asking around and waiting. One day, near a mining site, he was fine-tuning steam pressure at a critical moment when a few adventurers walked by. Without looking up, he told them to watch out for the pipes. They stepped on the pipes anyway. He leapt up ready to snap at them, but one of them—a woman—crouched down first, studying the still-steaming device for a long while before asking what it was for. The moment someone asked him a real question about his work, he spread out his blueprints right there and talked faster and faster, until he'd completely forgotten he was supposed to be angry. The woman listened all the way to the end, then finally asked, "How far are you willing to go for this?" He answered: "All the way."

That was the day the Crimson Crest Adventurers extended their invitation to him.

Even after joining the Guild, though, his habits didn't change one bit. If someone called him to eat, he'd pretend not to hear. If anyone touched an unfinished piece on his workbench, he wouldn't speak a civil word for the rest of the day. Most of his time was spent buried in the workshop—except when he ran into Stylia at the Gathering Hub, where he suddenly became a different person entirely. He'd straighten up, slow his speech, and use words so painfully formal that even people who knew him well found it strange—though he'd usually run out of things to say within a sentence or two. Blueprints he could talk about for hours vanished from his mind the instant she was in front of him.

Around that time, his invention kept stalling on the same problem: steam pressure couldn't be precisely controlled, surging and dropping unpredictably, and even a dedicated test rig failed to fix it. The day he wrecked yet another mining cart himself, he grabbed the device and hurled it as hard as he could. The steam burst violently inside the room, and the force of the explosion sent the device slamming into the wall, punching straight through and bouncing all the way into the meeting room.

Inside, everyone was discussing how to give weapons better armor-breaking performance against monsters. Freya held up the still-steaming device and asked Rhodes if he'd be willing to turn it into a hunting weapon. He refused on the spot. A device with no safety measures could never be handed to someone else—that was his principle, no matter who was asking. But the Guild kept growing, and he kept hearing the same thing more and more often: "If we had better weapons, hunting would be so much easier." He'd left his hometown because the people there only wanted things he could already make in his sleep; here, people were waiting for something that had never existed before.

Some time later, he sought out Freya and told her he was willing to develop weapons. This time, he worked slower than he ever had before, scrapping design after design—if there was even the slightest chance something could go wrong, he'd start over from scratch. The Guild's first generation of steam-powered weapons came out of that period, including the hammer he still uses to this day.

Once the steam weapons saw real combat use, more people started showing up at the workshop. Some would swing by before setting out to ask which one they should take; others would return, toss their worn-out gear on the table, and say it could still be improved. He still couldn't make small talk—he'd just listen in silence, hands already at work taking the thing apart.

Later, Freya sent a team to Rotfall Abyss to gather materials for their ultimate weapon, with Rhodes as one of its leaders.

There, he encountered Radobaan again—this one far larger than the one he'd seen back at the old mine shaft.

This time, he didn't crouch at a distance. He stood directly in its path, watching head-on as that tank of a body barreled toward him through the wreckage. His companions shouted for him to retreat; he didn't move. Not until someone physically hauled him backward, debris striking his back, did he finally give ground—and even then, he kept looking over his shoulder.

He'd come within a hair's breadth of being crushed. And inspiration was surging through him.

Back at camp, he locked himself in the workshop and didn't come out for days. Sheets of blueprints piled up beneath the door crack, one after another—none of them weapons. All of them wheels.

Someone asked what exactly he was working on. He said, "Something even more incredible than that hammer."

But he refused to say more—once it's done, the whole world will know.