Myrmidons · Assassin · rank II

Tenodra

A mantis from the caste of cleaners, sent by the hive to break the Lantern. She hung above it for forty days and never struck. Now she waits in ambush and strikes first, finishes off wounded enemies and guards wounded allies

People: Myrmidons
Calling: Assassin
Rank: II, costs 2 salt
Role: waits in ambush and strikes first, finishes off wounded enemies and guards wounded allies
Main attribute: Agility
Synergies: Myrmidons and Shadow

The hive has a caste no one speaks of, not even by smell: the cleaners. They are mantises. Their ancestors were once bred in the old greenhouses against aphids, so cleaning is what they have always done. Cleaners do not hunt outside, they hunt inside. The hive does not heal, the hive cleans. Whoever the Queen smells as sick, wounded or gone grey from the Haze, a cleaner comes to at night. Tenodra was the best. She would hang upside down for a whole day in a ventilation shaft above the passage where the marked one was to crawl, and never once stir. The strike took less than a breath. Nothing goes to waste in the hive: the cleaned went to feed the larvae

Brakhin once turned his sprayer on his own, the hive burned him and his light went into the Lantern, and the hive still smells him in the glass. It was after that smell that the Queen sent her best: find the Lantern and break it. Tenodra walked to the Lull on foot, as everyone does whose wings were gnawed off, climbed under the roof of the platform and hung above the hook the Lantern hung on. All that was left was to wait until old Selma stepped away

She waited forty days. Selma stepped away, and every time a voice sounded in her head, not the Queen's. The voice said “not yet.” All the winged ones of the hive once flew to the light of Eru and burned over the Spire, and Tenodra hung right above a light, stared into it without blinking and did not fly anywhere. On the forty first night other cleaners came for the Lantern: the hive had understood that she would not strike. Then the voice said “now.” Tenodra met them under the roof one by one, the way she had been taught, and fell last, right under the hook. Her light went into the glass

In the glass that very smell was waiting for her. Brakhin understood at once who had come for him and gave her a name the way he once gave one to himself: after her kind. In the old greenhouse handbooks her kind was called tenodera, and Brakhin cut the name short

She is motionless. She can stand half a day without moving a single segment, and she answers a question after a long pause, as if waiting for more. She has no eyelids and never blinks. She turns her head after whoever is speaking, sometimes almost backwards, and newcomers shudder at it. Her blades are always folded before her chest as if in prayer, and everyone in the squad knows it is not prayer. She smells a wounded one before they notice their own blood and speaks in a whisper, always politely. Before a battle she still waits for Brakhin's word out of hive habit, and Brakhin always answers the same: “Decide for yourself.” At their first meeting Marta told her: “We don't finish off our wounded, we pull them out.” Since then Tenodra stands over her wounded in battle and waits for those who come to finish them

Abilities by rank

Trait

Ambush

Tenodra strikes first. While she stands still she is in ambush, with an icon of folded blades over her head. An enemy that ends up on a cell next to her at once takes a blade strike out of turn, and that strike is always critical. It does not matter whether the enemy walked up, leaped, teleported or was pulled in. The ambush strike is an ordinary attack, only out of turn, and her own attacks go on as usual. The ambush is spent on the strike and sets again once Tenodra has stood still for 2 s, and any movement of hers, her own or forced, resets it. She starts the battle already in ambush

Awakening at level 100: when she kills an enemy she is back in ambush at once, without the 2 s of standing still, and in a tight brawl she strikes in a chain: whoever steps into the place of the fallen takes the next strike

Ability 1 · mana 70, starts with 10

Strike

Tenodra freezes for an instant and throws her blades forward in one straight strike, like a real mantis. She hits the most wounded enemy within 2 cells, by share of health, without leaving her cell, even over the head of an ally: physical damage. If after the hit the enemy has less health than the Execute threshold, it dies. There is no step, so her ambush stays set after the Strike

Rank	From level	Damage, % of attack	Execute below, % of health
I	1	270	10
II	20	351	11
III	40	432	12
IV	60	486	13
V	80	540	15

Ability 2 · when an ally within 2 cells drops below 25% health, at most once every 6 s, opens at level 30

Threat Pose

When an ally within 2 cells of Tenodra drops below 25% health, she rears up into a threat pose right on her cell, like a mantis before a predator: she rises to her full height and spreads her blades wide, showing their black eyespots. Enemies on the cells next to that ally get Fear and run away from the wounded one. She does not leave her cell, and her ambush stays set

Rank	From level	Fear
I	30	0.75 s
II	55	1 s
III	80	1.25 s

Stars make her stronger on top of the ranks: attributes ×1.4 at ★2 and ×1.9 at ★3, and Strike grows with her attack

Stats at level 1

Strength: 15 (+1.7 per level)
Agility: 23 (+2.7 per level)
Intellect: 15 (+1.7 per level)
Health: 440
Attack: 45
Base attack time: 1.5
Armor: 3.3
Magic resist: 20%
Mana at start / max: 10 / 70
Move speed: 2.6
Range: 2

Look

the tallest and thinnest in the squad: a mantis taller than a man, standing straight as a candle and swaying a little like a stem in the wind, with two legs and four arms like all the Myrmidons
a small triangular head on a long narrow neck, with huge pale yellow green compound eyes, each with a black false pupil, so wherever you stand she seems to look straight at you
the upper arms are her blades, mantis forelegs that fold into a groove like the blade of a folding knife, with two rows of pale spines and a hook at the end, always folded before her chest as if in prayer
a black eyespot with a pale middle on the inner side of each blade, seen only when she spreads her arms, and thin three fingered lower arms folded on her belly
a pointed hood and a long layered cape of chewed paper and concrete, like the walls of a wasp nest, over her head, shoulders and long striped abdomen, with the gnawed stumps of her wing covers sticking out of slits
black lacquer and dark green chitin with a bronze sheen, and long thin spiked legs that she stands on the very tips of

How to play

Put her in the second row right behind someone sturdy: her blades strike over his shoulder, she does not have to go anywhere, and her ambush stays set all the time. Next to rangers and mages she is even more useful: an assassin who leaps into the back line lands right next to her and takes the first critical hit. She wants allies who wound many enemies at once, she finds whom to finish by herself. Marta's winch drags an enemy right into her ambush, Brakhin strips its armor, Varga marks the prey, and the Strike finishes it. When an ally next to her sinks low, the Threat Pose drives enemies away from it, and Tobrin has time to patch it up

She is fragile, 440 health. Knockbacks and pulls that reset her ambush, Silence before her first Strike, ranged enemies who never come near her and one thick target with no wounded around it work well against her: on a boss Execute works only in part

Lines

Hired: “Tell me whom to wait for”
Battle starts: “I freeze”
Ambush: “Now”
Strike: “You are wounded”
Threat Pose: “Do not touch him”
Victory: “No one got through”
Death: “I waited”

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