#31. Octavius "Mordex"

Lore

The Ravenous

"And to think my Order's own quartermaster, Octavius Mordex, was a stinking werewolf all along."

– Diana telling Ada the story of her betrayal.


"Yeah, well, she should have suspected something when she found me sleeping under the porch."

– Mordex

As the story goes...

It is not easy to become a lycanthrope on purpose. A werewolf bite rarely works, because the bite is almost always followed by being eaten by a werewolf. So when Octavius Mordex, Master Hunter of the Order of the Exalted Lion, was ordered to take his team into the frozen north to hunt down a plague of werewolves and frost giants, he knew he had to plan his treachery carefully.

Mordex had wormed his way into the noble Order not to do good, but to get closer to the monsters whose powers he so desired. He overthrew the Cult of The Ice Witch but reported their Tome of Rituals “lost in the fire.” He destroyed the Wraith of Darkmoor but secretly took the fiend's great scythe Cull for himself. And now he saw his chance to gain power of a whole new sort.

A year later, Mordex returned from the north with a tale of horror and victory. Trapped in an unholy ice storm, his team surrounded by werewolves and giants, he told a tale of starvation, desperation, and heroic battle. He was the only survivor. No one questioned that Mordex himself seemed quite well fed.

Acclaim and promotion followed. Soon, only the vigilance of another hunter, Diana, stood between him and his ultimate target: the Geminius Virens — a cursed artifact hidden in the deepest vaults of the Order. Calling on dark magic, he ambushed Diana and escaped with his prize.

In Valhalla, Mordex is horrified and delighted to find the monster is his true form. Valhalla forms strange alliances, and Mordex finds himself in accord with the likes of Thatch and Azoth, much to the fury of his nemesis.

Connections

• Diana was betrayed by Mordex, and seethes that monsters like Azoth and Mordex are allowed in Valhalla, she plots their destruction
• Fait's foresight of a flattened werewolf (Mordex?) led her to lure a vampire general into Avalanche Gulch
• Yumiko recoils at the sight of Mordex

Context

Mordex is the werewolf. Werewolves seem to have even older roots than other classic Gothic horror monsters (reaching as far back as the origin of the word "lycanthrope" in Lycaon from Greek mythology, if not even further back than that). Even so, werewolves were a source of legitimate fear back in the day, from the numerous reported werewolf attacks in 16th-century France to its subsequent "witch trials" held to oust the monsters.

Mordex actually has a fun development story behind him that has nothing to do with his lore. Rather than explaining it here, I'll have Dolchay, one of the developers, share the story.

Scythe and gauntlets are interesting choices for a werewolf character. It seems that the scythe is purely lore-based (because Mordex took the scythe Cull from the Wraith of Darkmoor). Gauntlets, on the other hand, makes perfect sense for a werewolf. A lycanthrope in animal form would generally resort to the natural weapons of claws and teeth in a battle. Since Brawlhalla doesn't have a bite weapon (though katars could be argued to be very large teeth or something), gauntlets more accurately reflect the way Mordex the werewolf would fight.