Umbralu

## Strategy

Umbralu
Sylvia

Umbralu
Sylvia
Gorestomp

Umbralu
Anya

Umbralu
Kon-Kon
Rhagavar

Umbralu
Anya

Umbralu
Sylvia
Mog

## Lore

*A Cure for Madness*

Umbralu had no faith.

In the many legends about him, his image is associated with viciousness, cruelty, and lunacy. Some even say that he is the most despicable person on the continent of Etryna because he turned on his own tribesmen.

No one knows that, in his early years, he tried to seek his ancestors, nature, and the Holy Light. At the beginning of this forgotten story, Umbralu was a weak troll child. His hometown, Tapulu, was a small tribe beside a tributary of Rhone River.

No one knows exactly when it began, but the Tapulu trolls discovered that their bodies were slowly mutating. It began with the children. The response of the children undergoing shaman training toward the ancestral power began to weaken. Even Zukatz, the grandson of the grand shaman and pride of the tribe, began to feel vexation at his inability to sense anything.

Subsequently, a strange agitation spread throughout the village. The trolls discovered that controlling their emotions was becoming more and more difficult. Mania and anxiety accumulated in their hearts and could not be dispersed until a fight released this thirst for blood, followed by long periods of weakness and fatigue.
The grand shaman was very worried about this situation. He planned an unprecedented ritual, calling on their ancestor Kulato to protect his people and disperse this demon with an unknown source. However, this ritual failed to awaken the ancestor, bringing instead dark clouds and heavy storms. The exhausted grand shaman fell on the cold altar for eternity.

All of the villagers witnessed this. Despair enveloped the village; the people believed that their ancestors had abandoned Tapulu.

However, Umbralu--weak, stiff, inconspicuous Umbralu, Umbralu who had worshipped the grand shaman since childhood--was reluctant to give up on the once quiet and peaceful village.

He could not forget the tableau of the grand shaman facing the billowing clouds and calling on his ancestor's spirit in the wind and rain. Umbralu decided that he would rescue Tapulu from the hands of this demon at any cost, whether he had to pray to his ancestors' spirits, the children of nature, or the Holy Light. He would find a way to save his tribe at any cost.

Umbralu set out on a long journey that would be far more difficult than he ever imagined. He initially sought help from the rhinok and orc clans, which have similar beliefs, but they could not understand his mysterious condition. In particular, after hearing what the grand shaman encountered, they were inclined to believe that Tapulu was abandoned by its ancestors. Without a doubt, they said, the villagers must have done something that violated taboos. Some were even worried that Umbralu would infect them with his condition.

The children of nature, who were occasionally the enemies of the trolls, nonetheless received Umbralu cordially. They were convinced that the Tapulu had been cursed, but were unable -- not unwilling--to lend a hand.

Meanwhile, Umbralu's physical condition continued to worsen, and episodes of mania broke out from time to time. The Holy Light was now his only and last hope.

When he saw that adorable elven girl quietly stealing some drunkard's purse, Umbralu had already been roaming around the human town for five days.

He wrapped himself up tightly in a huge hood and cloak. Considering that when he first appeared in nearby villages, he was met with screams and brooms, he felt that he should be a bit more cautious.

Just when he was hard-pressed to come up with a way of getting closer to the Holy Light, Vanessa appeared in front of him. He felt that he was being illuminated by a radiance he had never experienced before, and he believed that this was the Holy Light.

Without hesitating, he pulled Vanessa away from the crowd chasing her, while Vanessa laughed all the way. Umbralu had never heard such pure and joyous laughter. It surprised him and gave him an inexplicable kind of pleasure.

When they stopped, he almost didn't dare to look in her eyes directly when Vanessa was looking him up and down curiously.

She was a high elf! They enjoy the blessing of the Holy Light from birth and are the most beautiful, most sacred, and noblest race on the continent of Etryna.

The silver-haired little princess had her own worries, although Umbralu understandably believed these to be less severe than his.

Following Umbralu's counsel, Vanessa decided to return home and beat her chest while guaranteeing to bring her father to teach Umbralu the Holy Light. Umbralu watched Vanessa's back as she walked away and began to believe that his and Tapulu's misfortune would soon be past them. His new friend would bring him good luck.

Three days later, he arrived at the agreed upon location. Vanessa did not appear. Umbralu waited and waited until the intense mania began. The painful curse caused his weak body to burst with an amazing force. He destroyed tree after tree, pulling hares out from the hollows and tearing them into shreds. His consciousness gradually descended into chaos. The Tapulu tribe, the grand shaman, Vanessa...countless shadows intertwined.

Umbralu saw a majestic knight riding a dragon down from the heavens. He wished to kneel and beg the knight for salvation, but he involuntarily emitted a frightening roar. The dragon's flames burned him, and he lost his memory.

He awoke from the burning pain to discover that three red snakes were wrapped tightly around him, tightening into his flesh. The snakes continuously gnawed at his body, sucking out his blood. He screwed out of pain and fear only to hear a quiet whisper beside his ear:
"Shh! Be good, little fellow. Don't waste Aniya's gift."

He was unable to lift his head and could see only the corner of a black robe and hear only gloomy laughter. It was those black-robed sorcerers! He suddenly recalled the teachings of the grand shaman:
"Power received from the Darkness is full of evil. When you sign a pact with the Darkness, you must pay for it with the things most precious to you."

He cursed them loudly, only to be met with an even more satisfied smile from the black-robed sorcerer.

"My dear boy, I think you still don't understand. Aniya's gift can be the greatest power or the most terrifying toxin. You should rejoice that you encountered me today, otherwise your poor little body would certainly explode one day from being unable to bear such a generous gift!"

Umbralu felt the three snakes drill into his body. He wanted to rip them off and shred the black-robed sorcerer to pieces, but he gradually understood that he may have found a way to save Tapulu, a dreadful and tragic way...

--

On a rainy morning, the trolls of Tapulu found that a strange fellow shrouded in a black cloak had arrived in the village. He was exhausted and taciturn, coughing and shivering without end. He said he was Umbralu and had grown up there, but even Zukatz could not tell whether this was the truth.

He claimed to have brought a way to save Tapulu, but when he took off his cloak, screams sounded through the village--three red serpents sprouted from his back, flicking out their evil tongues. Umbralu tried to make the villagers believe that the serpents could digest the curses they bore -- but what he didn't say was that these curses would ultimately go through the serpents into his body, becoming dark pain and power.

The villagers accepted this treatment one after another. The process was difficult to bear, especially for Umbralu. He even harmed one child because he could not control the dark corrosion in time.

When the last treatment was completed, Umbralu felt that the entire universe was pressing down on him, pulling him easily like never before. He became very light and rose through the sky toward nothingness. At the end of this nothingness, he saw Vanessa's smile.

The sound of a knock on the door woke Umbralu from his beautiful dream. Zukatz invited him to the altar, where the villagers had prepared for him a grand celebration. He would become Tapulu's grand shaman, guarding them and enjoying their love and esteem.

The crowd escorted Umbralu onto the altar. He thought of the figure of the grand shaman many years ago and believed that he was among their ancestors watching him with pride.

Suddenly, he felt a burst of sharp pain in his right ribs followed by his left ribs, back, legs, and chest, with stings striking him one after another. He looked around in surprise and saw the fearful eyes of his tribesmen.

Innumerable spears and stones were thrown at him, and massive chains wrapped tightly around him. Raging fires erupted all around the altar.

"Demon!"

"Evil spirit!"

"You fiend, signed a pact with the Darkness!"

"Betrayer of Kulatuo!"

Endless curses and attacks destroyed Umbralu's mind, and anger and resentment ascended in his heart like never before.

Aniya was calling him from the Darkness. Umbralu broke his chains and wildly beat the altar and the people surrounding it. He screamed his denunciations repeatedly from the depths of his throat:

"I healed you! I cured you! I saved you! I HEALED YOU! I CURED YOU! I SAVED YOU!"

He shouted this over and over again until the roar turned into a heartbreaking sob.

--

Stories are like the wind. Nothing can prove that they truly transpired as claimed. Maybe that village called Tapulu really existed, or maybe it is merely a lie from the depraved.

However, the drunkard blacksmith Balimo swears that he heard a drunken whisper at the Dawn Tavern. The fellow was calling on Kulatuo while shouting the word "Padrino" and repeating a woman's name as if it were a mantra.

"That's what he said," Balimo whispers quietly, using an affected tone as if imitating a woman, "'Oh, Kulatuo! Can I love her? No, that damned Padrino! You idiot! A troll loving an elf, like the Darkness loving the Holy Light!' Haha, do you all believe that? He really said that! The Darkness loving the Holy Light!"

Balimo took another swig of ale. "Hahahaha, how ridiculous!"

## Synergy

Vanessa

Krash

Viscern

Bane