Jason Andresen (order #1578489) - Jump page for Jubei

Introducing Viktor Pendrake
Legends tell of a hero of men—a man so possessed
with his thirst for knowledge that he would barehanded
scale a hundred feet of cliff on the Broken
Coast simply to recover a perfect feather from the
nest of a massive saqu. The same man, it has been told, has
wrestled a rampaging gorax, ridden bareback on a dracodile,
and plucked the spines off a sleeping spine ripper. Nothing
could be further from the truth, and I was there to see it all.
The cliffs were much higher, the
gorax was a frenzied mother protecting
her young, and the spine
ripper wasn’t sleeping at all. I won’t
even go into the dracodile—I had
my eyes closed half the time!
To say that Professor Pendrake
is a man possessed of a thirst for
knowledge is to say that a bloodstalker
has only a slight taste for
human flesh. By any normal standards,
Viktor Pendrake is utterly
mad. Did I not know him myself,
I would think that he must be two
different men, indeed.
The man the students know,
the professor of renown who has
brought Corvis University such
esteem, is a pensive, engaging character
who speaks on the subjects of
extraordinary beasts with infallible
expertise and in a tone so carefully
metered that one is nearly lured
into a trance-like state by his cavernous
voice. The Viktor Pendrake
I know, however, the one who pursues
the most fearsome inhabitants
of this land out of simple curiosity,
bears no resemblance to that
wizened scholar buried beneath an avalanche of dusty scientific
tomes in his dimly lit study.
Pendrake began his life as the son of a junker roaming
the borders between Khador and Cygnar scavenging orphaned
machine parts and scrap metal. His interests lay elsewhere,
however, and he possessed none of the mechanikal acumen
of his brothers or father. Often, he was known to wander off
from a scavenging party, investigating strange tracks that he
had not yet sketched within his journal.
At the still naive age of fifteen, Pendrake’s wanderlust led
him right into the middle of a violent confrontation between
218
skirmishing Khadoran mercenaries and a crippled detachment
of Cygnaran outriders pinned down in an almost impassable
thicket. Ever quick on his feet, Pendrake led the Cygnaran soldiers
to safety, easily traversing trails only known to someone
who had haunted the region as thoroughly as young Viktor
himself.
His obvious resourcefulness and natural wilderness
expertise immediately garnered Pendrake employment in the
Cygnaran army as a junior scout.
Happy to leave behind the life
of a junker, Pendrake joined the
scouts and quickly rose through
the ranks. He was given command
of an entire company of
Cygnaran rangers just before his
twentieth summer. Sadly the company
met a miserable demise, but
this event marked the beginning
of a legend.
Pendrake’s scout company
was deep in the heart of Khador,
working a patrol circuit that
monitored the deployment of
this violent kingdom’s most elite
units. The scouting company had
just completed its assignment,
and Pendrake prepared to move
his men back to Cygnar, carrying
with them vital intelligence desperately
needed by the war council
back home. A traitor in their
ranks, however, sold the company
out for a handful of crowns.
A full battalion of Khadoran
regulars ambushed the scouts,
and in the end, all were slain save
Pendrake.
With only two parchment tubes containing the critical
intelligence grasped in each hand, Pendrake ran for the
hills, the crackling report of Khadoran rifle-fire chasing him.
Eventually finding the lowlands, Pendrake wound up caught
between a small horde of pygmy trolls and the bloodthirsty
battalion. With only his instincts to save him, Pendrake
stripped his body bare of his tattered clothes and covered himself
in thick mud and leaves. Mimicking the stunted trolls, he
waded into their pack and lost himself among their numbers.
The Khadorans, seeing little to gain in engaging the scores of
creatures, withdrew from the area to continue their search for
Jason Andresen (order #1578489) 9