The origins of Sir Caligo are somewhat unusual. During my first playthrough of Ogre Battle 64, I didn’t know a thing about the Chaos Frame or how to act to set your alignment. (The fact that your Chaos Frame data is hidden from you until after the end of the game doesn’t help.) As a result, I simply stormed my way through the missions and was completely blindsided when everyone started turning on me in the end. The heroes from the original game fought me and the leader of the resistance who owed his position to my efforts denounced me. It was a complete and utter betrayal. Add that to the typical civilian grumbling you get in Japanese fiction and I became wrathful, wanting an add-on campaign where I would march my army from one corner of the land to the next and raze the villages of all those bloody ingrates. (I later learned that you have to march on villages with units of matching alignment to “liberate” rather than “conquer” territory and so my second run was a much happier one.) Anyway, I decided to use this scenario in one of my stories and so Sir Caligo was born.
Narkissos of Karas was a young soldier who served with distinction in the Herakles War, where a colony of the Herakles threatened to overrun Euros. Later, when King Euromakhos’ twin sons Castor and Pollux refused to rule jointly as per their father’s dying wishes, the Gemini War broke out. Narkissos served in the cause of King Pollux, who was favored by the aristocracy, and with his elite Companions at the core of his army, he handily crushed the plebeian forces supporting King Castor. When his victory was complete, Narkissos found himself bitterly hated by the people and in a bid to appease them, King Pollux stripped Narkissos of his honors and exiled him while his Companions were thrown into prison.
Stewing in his anger in exile in the Eurean colony of Thessalonica (whose short-lived bid for independence was ended by none other than Narkissos himself, so there were no friends to be found in the city), he saw an opportunity when the Thessalonians suffered the predations of an ancient vampire they called the Miastor Prince. As you know from Caligo’s prologue, Narkissos challenged the Miastor Prince, was defeated and turned into a vampire himself. However, he succeeded in killing the Miastor Prince shortly after being turned and by drinking the ancient vampire’s heart’s blood, he received a power boost much greater than any newborn vampire, even one sired by an ancient, should have. With this new power, he was able to return to Euros, free his Companions and exact his revenge on the people who betrayed him.
While revenge sounds sweet, one of the themes I tend to reinforce in my stories is that however cathartic revenge might be at first, it’s ultimately empty or at very least it takes more than it gives. When Narkissos’ campaign of revenge was over, the rich nation of Euros was in ruins, its people all dead or fled, and there were no plans to build anything in the wake of this destruction. His Companions stuck faithfully by his side, desiring a share in his immortality to take on the world, but Narkissos didn’t share that ambition and quickly came to realize the true nature of his curse. He refused to grant his loyal followers their wish and so they grew old and died, then the ruined Kingdom of Euros was visited by the Black Dragon Xargos and cursed to become the Darklands.
Lacking ambition, Narkissos’ talents could only be used in service of a superior and so he became Sir Caligo the Knight of Chaos. He served Xargos and then the Dark Elf king Zanil who followed him. Were it not for a vampire’s inability to cross open water (without some trickery as demonstrated by Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel), the invasion of Notos would’ve likely gone quite differently, but being left in the Darklands, Caligo could do little as Zanil’s hubristic overreach led to his downfall and the collapse of the Chaos Dominion.
Caligo may well have spent the rest of eternity in hibernation were it not for the Dark Eternal raising him to serve the Monarch Lich. While there was some joy to be had in fighting once more, it was a fairly hollow thing conquering the various monsters and fell races of the Darklands. The prospect of fighting the Zephyrians stirred a little of the old passion, though, and while he found Duke Cronos to be a disappointing opponent, he was intrigued by Ionathas and started playing the game that ultimately ended in his self-engineered demise.
I definitely wanted to play up the parallels between Caligo and Ionathas. It wouldn’t have taken much of a push for Ionathas to go down the same path and there may well be an If Arc story in the future that explores that possibility. Anyway, even with Caligo seeking his own death, there’s no way an ordinary human could stand a chance against an ancient vampire of Caligo’s power, so I contrived the revival of Caligo’s Companions, their destruction at his hands and the Monarch Lich’s punishment for his disobedience. Being brought down to the level of a newborn vampire, Ionathas wasn’t quite so ridiculously outmatched but still didn’t stand much chance if Caligo wasn’t intent on dying by Ionathas’ hand. The one condition was that Ionathas could not surrender no matter how hopeless the fight seemed. Ionathas passed the test and so Caligo handed over Soul Drinker bring about his destruction.
As evidenced by the fact that his section is the longest, Caligo is my favorite character in TTWC2. I may well explore his past in greater depth in as of yet undeveloped stories. Next time we’ll be looking into the tragic figure of King Orguz. Stay tuned.
