Duros

Duros with his trusty axe

**Duros** was a minor antagonist featured in the BG one-shot and in the fourth arc of SOTE, Wrath of the Wastelands. He was an orc fighter who was Captain of the Watch in the town of Gravenfall and after his death, reappeared as a roving spirit in the Spirit Fields.

## **Biography**

### *Captain of Gravenfall*

Living in Gravenfall with his wife, Margaret, and his daughter, Darla, Duros trained with the watch to guard the village and defend it from any possible monster attacks. While living there, he gained fame for being the best soldier in the village and became the pride of it quickly thereafter. Since the village was isolated from most threats, Duros could spend most of his time outside of training enjoying the company of his family.

### *The Horde's Attack*

One day, while the forces of Gravenfall were resting from a rigorous day of instruction, a goblin under the allegiance of Eltric organized an attack against the village. With him was a hulking black warforged and a mysterious hooded drow that slaughtered guard after guard. He heard the bellow of a horn as more goblins continued to descend on the village walls. In retaliation for his comrades' deaths, he killed as many attacking goblins as he could. After numerous killings, Duros finally confronted the robot and the drow. Overestimating his abilities, he started to gloat in both their faces. However, once the battle actually began, Duros quickly found himself outmatched. The drow dodged his attacks and fired arrows with incredible speed, while the robot's slashes of his axe wore him down. Duros couldn't give up since he was the last line of defense for his friends, his family, his livelihood. As he braced himself for more attacks, the robot's axe swiftly cleaved through his neck. His head fell to the ground as his body slowly followed. The village's greatest guardian had fallen and Gravenfall soon collapsed with it. Margaret and Darla were both killed in the aftermath.

### *Castle Waelmore*

As a regretful soul wandering the world, Duros mysteriously ended up in the Spirit Fields. He spent most of his time wandering aimlessly, pondering on the destruction of his village. During his aimless adventure, he encountered the goblin that ordered the attack on his village. In a desperate attack of retaliation, Duros attempted to banish the goblin's soul from the Spirit Fields by killing him as a spirit. Unfortunately, the goblin escaped and he missed his chance at revenge. That is, until later, when the goblin came back with a party of adventurers (which included the warforged who murdered him.) Fate had given him one more attempt and he wasn't gonna screw it up. Even though he was outnumbered even more so than his initial battle with the warforged, he fought valiantly and damaged the robot heavily. However, his party turned the battle in their favor and Duros's spirit form had his head blown off by their elven wizard. As his defeated spirit drifted away, he only thought of how he failed his family.

## **Description**

### *Appearance*

Duros is a muscular orcish man with a jet black mohawk hairstyle and a slightly cutten up face from years of battle. He usually wears a red vest on top of a brown long-sleeve shirt buckled with two straps to a belt that holds up his brown trousers. Although his shirt is long-sleeved, Duros almost always has them rolled up to show off his tattoos on his forearms, which are of a tribal nature. He ends the look off with necklace of a dragon claw, which he believes gives him luck in his battles.

### *Personality*

Although his hometown was being attacked by ravenous goblins, Duros still displayed extreme arrogance and taunted the incoming horde. It was only until after the warforged and the drow assassin gained the upper hand in battle that he realized how dire the situation was. After he died in battle, he went through a deep depression, regretting his arrogance in battle and how he failed his family. When he encountered the warforged and his party again, he saw it as a second chance to redeem himself, so he engaged them with complete seriousness. Even though he died again, it satisfied him knowing he battled with all his might.

## **Relationships**

### *Margaret and Darla*

Duros behaved like a bachelor, but his love for his wife and daughter were completely genuine. It can also be inferred that he tries very hard to keep his work life and his family life separate, as if they were to collide, it would be devastating. This was technically proven during the invasion of Gravenfall, when both Margaret and Darla will killed by Eltric's Horde. As a spirit, Duros mourned for them every day and apologized to them when he lost his second battle with the warforged.

### *Benster Shmenster*

As an accomplice to BG, Duros hated the drow just as much as he despised the warforged. Though his arrogance in the beginning of their battle blinded him to the danger of the two, he quickly came to fear them both as well, since they were quickly degrading his chances of victory. Benster didn't deliver the final blow to him, but that did not reduce his animosity of the drow. While in the Spirit Fields, Duros dreamt of the day he could find Benster again and kill him (unbeknownst to him, Benster was already dead). That day never came however, as BG and his new party exorcised his spirit.

### *Grobit*

Grobit and Duros never engaged in battle, as the power difference between them would've overwhelmed Grobit, but Duros was still aware of the fact that Grobit had orchestrated the attack. Once he finished off the warforged and the drow, he planned to plow through the horde and take Grobit's head to display as a trophy in his home. Sadly for him, he fell in battle and the goblin mastermind went unpunished.

Duros and Grobit reunited under the Spirit Reaper's domain and Duros immediately began to attack the helpless mook. Grobit, always so quick and swift, managed to evade his attacks and escape his wrath. Duros once again seethed in regret for losing his chance to right his past wrongs, but died before he had the chance to retry.

### *BG-8253*

Duros's has an intense hatred for BG, due to the fact that he seemed to be the horde's trump card and from watching him sadistically cut apart the Watch's forces. In Benster's case, even though he killed many of his comrades, he did it with a speedy efficiency that ensured the soldiers didn't suffer. BG didn't care about how brisk his kills were, he even intentionally dismembered or crippled soldiers to use their screams of agony to lessen the morale of the rest of the Watch. So even though he masked his anger with arrogance, it eventually shown through near the end of their first battle. BG beheaded him and went to destroy the rest of the village, leaving Duros as a spirit.

In his ponderings as a spirit, Duros had the most thoughts about BG (all of which included his head being chopped off). However, when he reconnected with the warforged once again, he prioritized his internal motivation for the battle to be avenging his family and hometown rather than blind vengeance. This esteem booster ended in tragedy and Duros never achieved any of his goals.

## **Trivia**

* Duros was the first named individual to be fought by one of the Sovereign Slayers outside of a backstory, as the BG one-shot happened (in real world time, not Alymerian time) before The Lost City of Orion and Sins of the Empire.
* The reason why Duros was so arrogant was because The Historian had a lot of faith in him as a worthy opponent to BG and Benster. However, he did not expect the duo to be so strong (overpowered), so his arrogance was cathartically silenced very quickly.
* His favorite color is green.