#30. Nix

Lore

Freelance Reaper

"The Ravenous Sloor's time was up, but we weren't staffed for getting that kind of horror to slip the mortal coil. When we needed a specialist, we called Nix."

– Belzar, Ikruski God of Death and Volcanoes


"I've done work for Hermes, Orcus, Namtar, lots of smaller pantheon jobs. I did overflow work for Osiris – just helping out, really. I valkyrie when I can, I like it because it's 100% commission. I wouldn't say Brynn and I are friends, but I respect her work. Psychopomping ain't easy."

– Nix

As the story goes...

Many cling to unfinished business on the mortal plane, and all need a guide to their next destination. Nix combines unmatched skill at collecting the very powerful and very unwilling with a uniquely independent worldview. She snatched the Unmovable Titan of Heraklion down to Hades, and on the return trip dropped the ancient Sphinx of Alexandria off at Anubis' front door. She dragged The Hundred-legged Banshee of Donegal kicking and screaming to the Realm of Arawn. The Undead Lord of Elyria was her first repeat customer, and a nice source of steady work.

Disaster struck when she took a job collecting an entire pantheon whose time had come. When the dust settled, eleven of the targets were missing. Nix is not the type to miss a mark, and professional pride put her on a thousand-year hunt that has led her finally to Valhalla.

Odin's warrior heaven is home to all sorts of metaphysical rulebreakers and rogue souls. Nix sees an opportunity to turn a nice profit closing a few cosmological cold-cases like the half-bear viking, that smug mobster, and maybe even the golden knight. In the meantime, she fights in the Grand Tournament, knowing her quetzalcoatl quarry must be here somewhere.

Connections

• Sensing a common frustration, Nix has taken Artemis under her wing and the two often spar to hone their scythe skills

Context

One might call Nix the "Tim Burton-inspired" legend, if she didn't have such a unique take on the reaper concept. I know of few, if any, reapers of harbingers of death who span all pantheons and universes, both the popular and the obscure.

The connection of all these pantheons, as told on Nix's lore page, has huge implications for the Brawlhalla universe. Even if almost all the legends themselves are from Earth, the universe itself is brimming with the realms and dimensions of all these different pantheons, even smaller pantheons like Queen Nai's. Unlike just about every other character in Brawlhalla, Nix works on a cosmic scale, perhaps being the most prolific realm-hopper in the universe.

It is especially cool to see the phrases "metaphysical rulebreakers," and "cosmological cold cases" here. With all these varied pantheons and realms, surely there's something that keeps everything together. Does Nix answer to anyone or anything? Is she bound by a set of universal rules? What currency does she work with? More than perhaps any other legend, Nix's lore hints at the true possibilities of this universe in which multiple afterlifes exist and even clash.

Another reason to love Nix, hers is perhaps the easiest legend name to make puns ("nix the puns," etc.), which is fantastic.

For some reason, I see Brawlhalla fans on social media still contending that Nix is male. I believe a thorough reading of her lore makes it perfectly clear that Nix is female.

Nix mentions that "psychopomping isn't easy." What the heck is psychopomping? Is it a type of music or something? Turns out, a psychopomp (from a Greek word psychopompós, meaning "guide of souls") is a spirit, angel, deity, anyone really, who has the responsibility to guide and escort newly departed souls from Earth to their respective afterlife. It is a role taken on by Valkyries in Norse mythology, by Hermes in Greek mythology, and Anubis in Egyptian mythology.

Giving a scythe to the freelance reaper is a no-brainer, really. The popular image of the Grim Reaper, as this site explains, seems to have its origins in the time of the Black Death in 14th century Europe. Back then, skeletons were a symbol of death, and robes were worn by religious figures in funerary services. The scythe is an agricultural symbol, demonstrating an allegory of departed souls being reaped or harvested from the earth into the afterlife. To those affected by the plague, this grim reaper image became their symbol of death, and it has persisted to this day.

What about the blasters? Are there any connections between firearms and the grim reaper? None that I've found so far, but it makes sense that an independent freelancer like Nix would have her own way of doing things. Giving Nix a pair of blasters has done wonders for giving her a unique identity and image.