Gyraci
"Thank you, that’s very kind. But I’d just disappoint you.”
***
What does it mean to be a warrior when at heart you long for peace?
This is the question that plagues Gyraci. He was once a glatorian, about the same age as Gresh, so he is still considered young by Bara Magna standards. Like Gresh, he spent a long time in training as a glatorian for the Ice Tribe. He eventually came to be known as a prodigy in the art of combat. While all glatorian are skilled fighters, few studied swordplay as carefully and ardently as Gyraci did. He pored over the old books of technique from before the shattering left by Certavus after his passing, and he mastered every one. He could best almost any opponent in a duel while he was still a rookie, and with more speed and grace than glatorian twice his age.
But glatorian did not merely duel. In the harshness of the wastelands, they also had a duty to protect their villagers from attack. As a test in the final days before their induction as a full-fledged glatorian, Gyraci and some of his fellow trainees were tasked with defending a supply caravan crossing the desert, carrying food, water, and exsidian from Tesara to Iconox. Part of Iconox’s reward for a won arena battle.
In the middle of the desert wastes, a swarm of Bone Hunters attacked the Caravan. Gyraci prepared to cut them down... and all of a sudden, he could not lift his sword. This wasn’t the arena any more; he would have to kill these hunters or they would kill him. Was this one caravan really worth killing and dying over? All he could do was hide behind his shield as the bone hunters fell upon him and his friends. For his whole life he had studied to become one of the best warriors in his tribe, but up to this point all of that training had been so sterile and academic. The brutality of actual combat made his heart falter and his stomach turn.
Thankfully, no one died that day. But because of Gyraci’s hesitation, the supplies were lost and many of his fellow warriors wounded. Once the shining star of Iconox’s glatorian trainees, Gyraci was branded as a coward and stripped of his title and his future as an arena warrior. Though he was not banished, Gyraci could feel that he was not liked in Iconox any more. He wandered off into a self-imposed exile. He had a lot of thinking to do anyway.
Gyraci still wanders among the Matagori. He’s made his living taking small jobs here or there, but he has nothing to his name but his sword and shieldstaff, and no real skills except those he is unwilling to use. He wonders on many things. On his cowardice, on death, on the way of the warrior. He wonders especially why he became a warrior in the first place. These new people, the matoran... their religion speaks so much of destiny. What is Gyraci’s destiny? What destined him to study the art of combat, if the very idea of practicing it now sickens him? Could it be that someday, he will find a cause worth fighting for?
***
It’s a new MOC for ROO. YEET.
This was the guy that was giving me writing troubles for so long. I knew the basic kind of backstory I wanted him to have, but I was struggling with really articulating it. And I’m still not sure I’m entirely in love with his name.
That being said I think he’s one of my favorite ROO mocs visuals-wise. I feel like torsos are always the most boring thing about my mid-sized MOCs cause I don’t know how to make good custom torsos and I always end up just defaulting to a standard set build. But with Gyraci, even if he is just an Inika build underneath I was able to give him some really unique armor. I was gonna make him more normally proportioned, but he ended up with this bulky, rounded look around his torso that I think is actually pretty cool. Kinda like the knights from Fire Emblem. If there’s anything that really discontents me with him it’s his upper arms. His weapons were VERY loosely inspired by the ones T’Challa uses in the duel scenes in Black Panther.