How one plucky Kreen never quite made a difference

It's embarrassing to admit, O my g'tokmma'aks, but one of the most useful pieces of advice I've ever been given came from something I was once about to eat:

"Boy, if you plan to live another year, you better get yourself a personality transplant."

At the time my near-meal was referring to my little floating food-fights in Tyr. For the last six or so months I've been honing my kak-tho in untaxed (and therefore illegal) gladiatorial games -- most of them put together by none other than the advice-dispensing morsel itself, Mutami "Malik" -- but though I had never lost a match, I found that I was becoming less and less popular among the sweaty throngs of wagering riff-raff, and was even booed when I took the head off the local champion. What was the problem? I wondered. Did I not kill my opponent, as I was supposed to? Was I not quick and efficient, wasting no time like some of the other pit fodder was wont to do? Was it just that I was Kreen?

The problem, I later realized, was one that has haunted me since I first clawed my way out of the tok some four years ago: I have all the charisma of a bucket full of ranike sap.

It started like this.

Et Tu, G'tokmma'ak?

My g'tok saw its first kos-riik a few days away from Tyr. Like most To'ksa g'toks, mine was left to its fate the moment it was laid. Fully sixteen of the original twenty-seven toks survived to hatching, though. I was one of the first to come out, and right away started organizing my fellow g'tokmma'aks into a formidable -- if larval -- tek, a hunting pack destined to rule the region outside Tyr by the time its members reached adulthood, I knew, universally feared as it would be on account of its ferocity and ruthlessness. Whosoever lived and breathed on our lands would do so at our say-so alone, and none would interfere with our right to hunt as much as we cared to for the rest of our days.

Four months after hatching, though, and my little dream of hunting unchallenged in the Tyr region died before its own shell got the chance to crack.

"G'tok-kyor," my clutch-second Dej-hoz called -- for "G'tok-kyor" was how I was known back then -- "Our g'tok is bigger than most teks, and yet we're little better off now than when we started four months ago. You keep us from joining other, more experienced teks, and consequently all we know how to do is what we were born knowing how to do. This is no way to survive."

"I thought we agreed that we didn't need outside help," I reminded Dej-hoz. "'One g'tok, one tek,' we said."

"The fact that we're all unskilled sand-bugs wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for your personality, though..."

"...?!..."

"G'tok-kyor, I speak for the whole g'tok when I say that you're obnoxious and disliked, and that it's time you knew it. I would challenge you for leadership if the leadership were in question, but since it isn't, I'll simply inform you: As of now, I am g'tok-hoz, and the g'tok is moving west tonight to join up with the Riikjidz-tek. So I need you to make sure we've all had something to eat before we set out..."

And just like that, your humble Narrator was brought down from the heady heights of hoz-dom to tik-dom, and all because my personality falls short of dazzling.

But it didn't stop there.

Goose-stepping to Greatness: The Bugs from Brazil

A year and a half after joining the Riikjidz-tek, O my g'tokmma'aks, the pack's newly increased size was making it a bit unwieldy and game was getting scarce. There was talk of splitting into two packs, but more than that our new tekmma'aks were grumbling about having taken on so many new members as they did when they accepted our g'tok into their numbers. What to do? It was then that Jidzjav spoke up. Jidzjav had been a gladiator in Tyr and had developed an intense hatred of all dras during his stay there, and offered this final solution to our problems: kill all the dras.

At first no one took the idea seriously, but Jidzjav had a way of weaving words that ensnared the whole tek as if by a spell. The Kreen, he said, are an endangered species. Every day the hunters are being hunted by their own game, and why? Because the game -- the clever zertrin -- have learned to organize themselves more effectively than even their Kreen betters. A third of their lives is spent in helpless unconsciousness, and yet they are arguably the true masters of Athas. How can this be? he asked. How can we allow this to be? If tighter organization has enabled a species as unfit as the dra-kind to reign supreme, then imagine what it could do for the Kreen! Are we not pre-ordained to lord over this world, to see to its protection and feed on the bounty it so generously provides us with? Are we not men? Let us now take up the arms of adulthood, he urged, and forge a pan-Kreen confederation that would later be the birthplace of a mighty nation, a nation that would bring the zertrin and other game to heel and restore order to Athas. Let us do now what no Kreen -- perhaps not even the Great One himself -- has done before, and save Athas from herself.

Anyway, you get the gist. And as you might have guessed, the whole tek swooned at the beautiful picture Jidzjav painted. The only one not intoxicated by the prospect of world-domination was the current tek-hoz, Zerqhari. I, too, your humble Narrator, might have said something, but I knew no one would listen, since even my new tekmma'aks felt me to be obnoxious and disliked. No matter -- a short but lethal challenge later and there was no one left to protest our shared molting from Riikjidz-tek, oversized hunting pack to Kano-kek, zertrin-eating raiding pack.

The kek's strategy was simple:

1. Ally with the other teks and keks in our area.
   
   
2. Attack all passing merchant caravans, effectively putting an end to inter-city trade. Of prime importance was making sure no iron ore ever left Tyr.
   
   
3. Learn from the caravans the locations of the merchant bases outside the cities, and destroy those bases.
   
   
4. Having grown more powerful at the city-states' expense, ally with all remaining teks and keks in the Tyr region.
   
   
5. With the combined forces of the new pan-Kreen nation, attack the city-states and restore order and balance to Athas.

So for the next year my days consisted of hunting, raiding, and occasionally torturing merchants for information. Life was good. Alliances were being struck with other packs, though not as quickly as Jidzjav had hoped, and so far there was very little organized resistance to our raids. It seemed that Jidzjav was right: a little re-organization had made us unstoppable.

That is, until Tyr decided that enough was enough.

Our scouts reported the armada long before it ever reached us, O my g'tokmma'aks, but knowing that it existed at all was enough to predict our immediate futures. Part of our strategy had been to leak exaggerated reports of our numbers, and the armada sent out to deal with us was prepared to fight a lot more of us than there actually was. Because of the difficulties involved in allying with other Kreen while still maintaining hegemony, we had not bolstered our strength enough to deal with the possibility of a serious counter-attack, and in any case our long string of successes lulled us into believing that our luck would never end. So it did. And now our only choice was to retreat to safety and concentrate on building up our forces.

But Jidzjav would have none of it. This was our moment of truth, he declared, our chance to prove to the world and ourselves that an armada of highly trained zertrin was no match for even a handful of highly trained, united Kreen. If we could not snatch victory from the approaching million-meat march, he taunted, then we did not deserve it. Any Kreen that did not join him in this holy war against the zertrin was a g'tokxhko*, subject to summary execution at the hands of his personal kiks.

It was at about this time that I realized that the chip on Jidzjav's shoulder regarding the zertrin had somehow gotten lodged in his brain.

"Jidzjav," I said, "By fighting the zertrin now you jeopardize everything we've fought for this last year. You jeopardize the Kreen nation. We have to move back now so we can fight them later on our own terms." And then, though I could scarcely believe the words even as they left my jaws, "For the good of the kek, I challenge you for temporary leadership."

"Drako*," Jidzjav replied, addressing me by my new kik name, "It is recognized that you have a strange and generally unfunny sense of humor understood only by you, which is why we never invite you along when we go to meet and negotiate with other packs. I hope for your sake that this is simply another example of that humor." He didn't even bother to turn around to face his challenger, nor did he have to. There was no way I could hope to beat him if he didn't simply stand down.

"For the kek's sake, not my own, this is not a joke," I said.

"Drako*," Jidzjav condescended, "Drako* -- whom I've taken under my wingcase for, what, a year now? -- even if you became kek-hoz, who would follow you? You're obnoxious and disliked, surely you realize that."

He had a point.

"Now stop kidding around and get yourself loaded up," he said, glibly glossing over the whole incident as if it had never happened. "I have a little kalak job for you."

Perhaps I was still reeling from not being denounced as a g'tokxhko*, but for whatever reason I didn't dwell too long on the fact that I was no kalak, that there were other, legitimate kalaks among us who should have been given the assignment, or that the assignment did not seem to have any practical purpose. In short, I was to simply watch the ensuing battle from a safe vantage point and "assess the situation".

Looking back, I suppose Jidzjav knew that he was doomed, and my protest marked me as the one sane Kreen among us, O my g'tokmma'aks. That may have been why I was spared, why I was chosen to bear witness to his suicidal last stand and preserve its memory. I don't know. A few days later it didn't much matter -- those marching morsels cut through us like we were a flock of erdlus. Not that we didn't take a lot of them with us, but a ten-to-one match is hardly a match at all, even for Jidzjav's master race of Kreen.

After it was all over, after the Kano-kek was sent to its titular homeland and its broken bodies looted and defiled by the zertrin, your humble Narrator was left there to himself in the hills, a kik without kek or tek. Washed up at three years old. What to do?

After a day of meager hunting -- no doubt the zertrin army had consumed most of the area's game -- I found myself still following in Jidzjav's footsteps: I followed the meat militia back to Tyr to seek work as a gladiator.

The Old Man and the Silt

I once heard a story about a Kreen hunting silt worms. He hadn't caught anything for days, but finally his luck changed and he pulled out the largest worm he had ever seen. He was just about to bite down on it when suddenly it spoke to him: "Spare my life," it pleaded, "And I will grant you three wishes."

I don't remember the rest of the story, but I had a similar incident on the way to Tyr. There I was, taking a break to get a bite to eat, when I spotted an elf relieving itself behind a rock -- or rather, I spotted its hair, a bright white thicket that stood straight up on its head as if to advertise the free meal beneath it. And it occurred to me then that after all this time raiding merchant caravans and killing elves for the future Kreen nation, I had never personally gotten to eat one. Somehow the elf-portions never spread far enough among the kek to include me. Now was my chance to elevate myself from the common rabble and acquire some sophistication and class, for it's not every Kreen in the Tyr region that gets the opportunity to appreciate fine meat. But as I crept up close enough behind it to make sure there were no surprises awaiting me before I leaped on my meal, the elf spoke as if it had been aware of me the whole time:

"Boy, I hope you're not gonna do anything stupid like try to eat me, you dumbass bug motherfucker."

I knew enough Common to get the gist of its words, as well as to realize that some of them were probably insulting, and stopped in my tracks, still crouched and ready to leap. How could it possibly know I was there?

"I was beginning to think there weren't any of you left after y'all got your asses whooped a few days ago," it said. By now it had finished marking its territory and was re-cinching its pants.

I continued to hold.

The elf turned around. "Yeah, we spotted your loud, crunchy ass this morning. I guess you're probably not one of the scouts," it said. "Or maybe you were, and that's why you lost." It gave a hearty chuckle, as if it had no fear whatsoever that I was moments away from ripping into it. "Now lookie here," it said, its weather-beaten face now growing serious, "I know what y'all were trying to do out here, and I applaud it. I applaud any brother who takes a stand against the prejudiciosity of the jukkete, the gall of the gotii, the tyranny of Tyr! My people have had a long history oppression, repression, and depression at the hands of the jukkete, so I know all about where you're at, my brother. You didn't do anything to deserve getting squashed out there; you were just trying to claim what was yours, ain't that right, my brother?"

I could only follow every other word, but I got the sense that it was sympathetic to my plight.

"You ain't much of a talker, are you?" the elf smiled. "Kinda the strong, silent type? A proud, buggy warrior just trying to make his way in life. But your friends didn't appreciate you much, did they? No, quietude in a man's never appreciated. You probably did all the work and never made a sound, and because of that you never got the credit you deserved. I'll bet they even thought of you as kinda obnoxious and disliked, ain't that true?"

I rose from my crouched stance, amazed at what my antennae were registering. How did it know? Was I so transparent?

"Your own people treated you like shit," the elf declared.

"Actually," I started to protest. "Shit" seemed a little strong.

"Like shit!" the elf shouted. "Boy, I can't help you unless you can recognize and affirmatize where you came from. Now let me hear you say what you already know: 'My friends treated me like shit.'"

Thinking about it, they were a little rude for the most part, I guess. I mean, I ... how did this elf ... but ... aw, screw it. "My friends treated me like shit," I repeated.

"And your enemies just killed all those athuum motherfuckers, didn't they?" grinned the elf.

"Well they were outnumbered like ten-to-one, you know..."

"So I guess that makes you a free motherfucker now, doesn't it?" It was clear that the elf thought it was going somewhere with this.

"Right."

"Wrong," the elf said sternly, pointing a finger at me for emphasis. "As long as you live and breathe, baby, you're always gonna have to worry about the jukkete, always. 'Cause they simply won't tolerate a proud, strong, buggy warrior like yourself having any kind of power. That's a threat to them, you see? They pretty much call the shots for the whole Tyr region, and no way are they gonna give that up for some bug, nuh-uh. It's in their best interests to keep you a slave, like they try to keep me a slave, like they try keep all motherfuckers not crammed into a city a slave. You can't see the chains of your slavitude, but as long as you have to live in fear of the jukkete finding out who you are and squishing your sandy ass for what you tried to do, you're a slave all the same, my brother."

The elf raised an interesting point. Here I was, blithely working my way to Tyr as Jidzjav had done before me, when any Kreen in the city would spot me for who I was and have me put to death. Suddenly I was overcome with a deep sense of hopelessness.

"But you don't have to be a slave if you don't want to be, baby," whispered the elf. "You can beat them at their own game, topple their egregious, mendacious, and helacious society from within its very foundation. You come with me, and I'll make it so you can kill all the jukkete you can handle and those same motherfuckers will pay you for it!"

I was interested, but skeptical. "What are you talking about?" I demanded.

"What am I talking about? What am I talking about? I'm talking about the blood-stained sand, baby! The sting in the ring. The matinee murders. I'm talking about the arena, my brother."

Hmm.

"I was actually already thinking of going to Tyr as a gladiator," I said. "But any Kreen there is likely to recognize where I'm from..."

The elf dismissed this with a wave of its hand. "You don't gotta worry about that, baby, that's where I come in. I take bugs like you in all the time. It's what I do. I can fix you up and give you a whole new identity. You think you're the only bug in Tyr? Fuck no! I got a whole nest of you motherfuckers that can go to work on you and turn you into someone else like that."

"And just who are you?"

The elf straightened its shoulders and cleared its throat, as if about to announce arriving royalty. "I'm Mutami, Tyr's first and biggest elven promoter of arenal entertainments. The people there call me 'Malik', which means 'king' in their jukkete language, and that's what I am, baby, the king of all motherfuckin' entertainment. Of course, every jukkete motherfucker in Tyr hates my guts because I'm an elf and I'm more successful than they are, but any time I promote a match they come running and they pay whatever I ask for, because at heart they're all a bunch of motherfuckin' jukkete hypocrites." The elf took a moment to wipe its forehead, as this was apparently something it was rather passionate about.

"Just say the word," the elf continued, "And I'll have you fighting the jukkete from the inside in no time. Just say 'Fuck you, you jukkete motherfuckers!'"

All this "jukkete-this" and "jukkete-that" was making it very difficult to ignore that I was being pitched by a delicacy.

"I don't even know what jukkete really means," I protested. "Is that some sort of meat--er, elf--word?"

"Naw, baby, that's our word. You and me -- the people who don't live in the cities and fuck the earth on a daily basis. That's our word for them. When we go into Tyr, we have to speak their language and pretend to follow their rules; jukkete is the only word of ours they left us. It's what we got, my brother, and for some of us, it's all we got."

I had no idea what the elf was talking about, but somehow it sounded like it made sense.

"So say it," the elf urged.

"Jukkete."

"Say, 'Fuck you, you jukkete motherfuckers!'"

"Fuck you, jukketes," I repeated.

"'FUCK YOU, you jukkete motherfuckers!'"

"Motherfuckers!" I shouted.

"Now I just need you to sign here, my proud, strong, warrior brother..."

Mr. Personality

I know you probably think your humble Narrator was duped by a conniving side-dish, O my g'tokmma'aks, and I was. But then again, if you don't care that nearly all your money is being siphoned away by your manager, is it really being duped?

Alright, maybe it is. But it's not like I wasn't getting anything out of it. After all, I was now under the tutelage of Chak'sa-ko*, a former champion in Tyr's shadier arena circuit, and was learning to kill zertrin and Kreen alike in ways that had never occurred to me before. Sooner or later my fame would attract my own pack of groupies, and once I had that, I'd be back in business again as pack-leader. And wasn't that, after all, the whole point of my coming here? Sure, Mutami, Chak'sa-ko*, and their stupid errand boy Hasdrubal were all a bastardly bunch, but if I had a chance at becoming tek-hoz again, I'd put up with much in the meantime, O my g'tokmma'aks.

Still, things weren't entirely working out as planned. I had changed my identity as much as possible -- I was now going by the name "Zertik" -- and yet I still felt this animosity from the crowd whether I won the match or not. So one day Mutami sat me down while he and Chak'sa-ko* analyzed the situation.

"Chaky, my man, my boy here isn't bringing in the numbers he should be," Mutami said, clearly reciting a rehearsed conversation. "What do you think the problem is?"

"Well that's easy, Mutami," answered the Kreen. "Your boy here is obnoxious and disliked."

"That's just what I've been thinking, my brother!" Mutami said cheerfully. "Boy," it said, turning to me, "If you plan to live another year, you better get yourself a personality transplant."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean there's a reason that half the seats are empty whenever I have you booked. It's a snore watching you, my brother -- you stand there all motionless and shit, and then when you move, the fight's over. There's no drama, no excitement, no show. If you can't put asses in the seats with your charm alone -- and trust me, you can't -- then you have got to put on more of a show. You need a stage persona, a gimmick, something to make you more interesting."

"Like what?" I asked.

Mutami paused thoughtfully a moment, then: "Look at me. You see this hair? You think it just grows that way? No. I made it that way, and I tell people that one morning I just woke up and found it like that, a hairy crown for the 'Malik' of entertainment. It don't matter if people believe it or not. You just need something to create a buzz, 'cause where there's a buzz, the honeypot ain't far away. You, on the other hand, got no buzz, as big a bug as you are."

"So you're saying I should wear a wig to make me more interesting?" I wasn't sure if the Kreen way of registering sarcasm would come through or not.

"Don't be stupid, you dumb motherfucker."

Chak'sa-ko* chimed in with a thought: "Maybe we went about this all wrong in covering up his Kano-kek ties. Maybe we should emphasize them, you know, make him into a badass villain that people would want to see."

Another thoughtful pause.

"Yeah," Mutami agreed. "People want to see heroes and villains, and no way are you gonna be anyone's hero around here."

"We should paint him up, too, make him look more fearsome," Chak'sa-ko* added. "Maybe give him a new name, like 'Drakcha' or 'Dralaj'."

"Perfect!" Mutami squealed. "You'll be 'Drakcha Kano-kek', the jukkete-hating, jukkete-eating, badass bug that even the Tyrian army couldn't kill. And if you just play with your opponents in the ring a little more, and really convey a sense of hatred and loathosity for anything with a skeleton on the inside, you could be the biggest thing to hit the arenas since that Jidzjav idiot left the city."

"Yeah, whatever happened to him?" Chak'sa-ko* wondered.

And so it was that I became "Drakcha Kano-kek", O my g'tokmma'aks, a more interesting version of myself. And indeed, the crowds do seem to like it more than my former persona, what with all the posturing, paint, and pit theatrics -- to be perfectly honest, sometimes I think even I like it more. All the same, when I'm not in the ring, I'm still dull Zertik, worker of odd day jobs (mostly being the tik-tik for a local brothel). How long I'll be able to tolerate working with these zertrin I can't say; on the one hand, I think I've grown to understand and even appreciate them a little more now that I'm up to my antennae in them, but on the other hand, sometimes I think that maybe Jidzjav had the right idea after all. I don't know. Once I amass a following here, I suppose, we'll see whether it becomes tek or kek...

Addendum

It just occurred to me that, while Ocelot (the presumed reader of this page) has the Kreen book and might be up on all the jargon there, he doesn't have the Athasian Elf book. So reproduced below is the handy "Elf Insults Table", specimens from which pepper this page.

While I'm at it, I suppose I should throw in an abbreviated version of the Kreen glossary:

For what it's worth, the hypothetical Tyrian word for "king" -- malik -- I pulled from Phoenician on the assumption that Tyr is based on the Phoenician city-state of Tyre, just as Urik seems to be inspired by Mesopotamian Uruk, Nibenay by Nineveh, etc.

Roleplay Persona

Uncomplicated in his desires, Zertik is a generally cheerful, optimistic, trusting, and receptive Kreen, and needs his surroundings to be as uncomplicated as he is. He wants no obligations in his life, no duties tying him down, no confining promises, no rules telling him what he may or may not do. He's one of those creatures who must be free to do his own thing at all times, to leave whenever the impulse strikes and possibly never come back. Not that he's some rebel forever fighting for his independence -- he never deliberately defies any rules. He just never pays them any mind.

Sometimes Zertik can come off as a quiet loner, especially now that he lives in the "meat" city of Tyr, but in fact he loves the company of his own kind and is fiercely loyal to them. Nor is his own kind necessarily Kreen -- any hunter or warrior with a deep appreciation for the profession's art (for "art" is certainly how Zertik looks at combat and hunting) is, in Zertik's eyes, a clutchmate of sorts, deserving of the utmost respect. For this reason he will not generally eat his adversaries if they are also sentient warriors or hunters. (Note that this peculiar chivalry does not apply to his opponents in the ring who, for the sake of showmanship, are habitually treated with the most shocking displays contempt and disrespect he can devise.)

As might be expected of someone given to impulse, Zertik is also a fearless thrill seeker, and loves nothing more than to pit himself against the strength, speed, and battle savvy of another creature. However, whereas most Kreen are content to satisfy this same need by hunting the various non-intelligent creatures of Athas, ever since Zertik's hunting pack turned to raiding, Zertik has seldom been able to get the same rush from hunting anything but humans, elves, and any other clever prey he can find. There's simply no glory in hunting something that can't hunt him in the same way, and glory -- above all else -- is Zertik's heroin.

And as a glory-junkie, Zertik can never have enough syringes at his disposal: the gythka, chatkcha, zerka -- anything that can efficiently cut or knock the ghost out of someone. While preferring the killing devices of his own kind, he's fascinated by the inventiveness and precision of other, more exotic instruments as well, and has made himself proficient in virtually every weapon he's come into contact with. He takes great pride in his martial prowess, for this is easily the one thing that he does well.

Unfortunately, because he's a creature of action and little else, certain skills that others take for granted have gone undeveloped in Zertik, most noticeably speech and social graces. Zertik, while of average intelligence, would probably be put in a special class for children with learning disabilities had he been born a human in the modern world, for he seems socially retarded, shows little interest in talking beyond the terse, focused exchanges between comrades in his profession, and has never been much for any sort of academic learning. Still, while no Great Communicator, he can nonetheless be a great leader, for his fellow warrior-types see in him (or will when he gets to 9th level) a master of his art, a virtuoso of violent death -- and a likely bringer of victory on account of his tactics of expediency and disregard for convention. Like Patton's soldiers, they might hate him personally, but they'll follow him to hell and back as long as he continues to deliver success in the field.

Career

Zertik's metamorphosis into "Drakcha" was a recent one, so he is still relatively unknown. If he fought in the legitimate arena, he'd be bringing in 1 cp per fight. Ocey says Zertik makes 1 sp in the underground arena, but he more or less made the number up and may want to think about it. Other factors to consider are the healer's fee (1 sp/month), trainer fee (perhaps 10 cp/day), and the various fees imposed by Mutami.

How often does Zertik fight? The Complete Gladiator's Handbook says he must fight a minimum of 3 fights, though it doesn't say how often. The more famous Zertik becomes, though, the fewer appearances in the arena he's required to make.

Zertik's income will eventually be affected by his fame (or, in his case, infamy, since his persona is that of Kano-kek Enemy of the People). Since the birth of "Drakcha", Zertik and Mutami do what they can to put on a good show, which more or less looks like this: Drakcha, completely painted in black and white stripes with bright red edging (looking a bit like a painted grasshopper), emerges from the gladiatorial entrance chained and chomping at the bit. He is held in check by three handlers, all of them tugging at the chain while seemingly terrified of getting too close to him. On the say-so of one of the handlers, another produces chain-cutters and severs the leash, then the three of them all flee back into the entrance while Drakcha springs forward like a starved, rabid animal. He makes various inflamatory taunts to the effect that everyone in the audience will eventually pass through the bowels of his conquering raiding pack, that the flesh of his opponents' mothers are still wedged between his teeth, and so forth. On killing an opponent, he habitually decapitates it and drinks lustily from the head before tossing it contemptuosly aside. Previously he would also empty his bowels on the corpses, but few could figure out what it was that he was doing, so he stopped. For his finale, six handlers come in with nets and drag him off the sand. What the actual numbers are regarding Zertik's fame (as per The Complete Gladiator's Handbook) is still undetermined and up to Ocey, but I would suggest the following to start with:

But Zertik's career in the arena is only part of his "true" career -- that of Kreen raider. It is his long-range goal to amass enough followers on account of his gladiatorial fame that he would effectively command a small army, with which he dreams of one day leveling the various meat-cities of the Tyr region. But unlike Jidzjav, who hoped to unite all Kreen at the expense of the humans and demi-humans of Athas, Zertik is an anarchist, and seeks not to unite the Kreen but to force all sentient life on Athas -- zertrin and Kreen alike -- to live in primitive hunting packs as Nature intended. Moreover, Zertik has no plans of any direct assault on the city states, at least not unless he manages to secure an army large enough to do the job; the doomed "horde of locusts" strategy of Jidzjav's administration has been traded in for the sabotaging "termite infestation" approach of Fight Club's "Project Mayhem". Tyr and the other cities will be toppled not by the Kreen outside their walls, Zertik reckons, but by his Kreen followers already residing within them.

Vital Stats

Character: Zertik/Drakcha Kano-kek	Alignment: Chaotic neutral	Race: Kreen (To'ksa variety)
	Class: Kik (Gladiatorial)	Level: 3

Home: Great Alluvial Sand Waste	Family: Dej-hoz clutch	Fame: Up to Ocelot
Pack: None (originally Kano-kek)	Patron: Mutami "Malik"	Reaction Adjustment: +2 (Kik penalty)

Sex: Male

Age: 3 years

Height: 6' 11" (10' 11" long)

Weight: 459 lbs.

Game Stats

Combat Skills

				Damage			RANGE
Weapon	Type	Speed	THAC0*	S-M	L	ROF	S	M	L
Gythka**	P/B	9	14	2d4+5	1d10+5	3/2
Thrown**	P/B	8	15	1d6+3	1d8+3	3/2	1	2	3
Chatkcha**	S/P	4	14	1d6+5	1d4+5	1/1
Thrown**	S	4	15	1d6+5	1d4+4	2/1	3	6	9
Claw	S	1	15	1d4+3	1d4+3	4/1
Bite**	S/P	2	14	1d4+5	1d4+5	3/2

* Includes bonus for Strength, Dexterity, and/or specialization
** Specialization

• Automatically proficient in all weapons
• 4 point modifier to punching and wrestling attack rolls
• At 5th level, bite paralyzes for 2d10/2d8/1d8 rounds (S/M/L) on failed save vs. paralyzation
• Can leap 20' straight up or 50' forward

Non-Combat Skills

• If wore armor, would know how to optimize his armor at 5th level
• Attracts gladiatorial groupies at 9th level
• Gains 10 percent bonus to experience points earned

Psionics

DEVOTION	SCORE	COST	RANGE	PREP TIME	AREA	PREREQUISITE
Conceal Thoughts	Wis	5+3/rnd.	0	0	3 yards	none

Possessions

A belt and pouch, few cps, and little more