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A young man sits alone in his cave. At the center of the cave is a fire. Oddly, this fire sheds no smoke. Were it not for the blizzard raging outside the young man's home, we would surely assume the fire shed no actual warmth , either, and had been placed solely for decoration. Seeing the young man hunched over the fire like his life depends on it, though, I think one can assume it indeed does.

The young man himself is a massive, musclebound monster. He wears a patchwork suit of hides from various furred and scaled creatures, and his sizable mane of black hair defies an obviously great effort to keep his chin and upper lip bare. Quite a few nicks can be spotted, exposing that his effort has been made despite a lack of reflective surfaces.

Although it was over seventeen years ago that this young man entered his frigid world, it is only today he shall be given a name. Such is the custom in their world. As we appear to be the only ones around, perhaps the duty of name-giving must fall to us. Or, rather, to you. What shall his name be?

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Name Unknown - featherweightOrganism
speaks with very little emotion; never cares enough to properly end sentences;

Your name is BANDOS, not that you care what others call you. They basically exist to serve you, after all, so why should it matter? You do enjoy being called MASTER, of course, but...

...well, to be honest, of the NINE WEAKLINGS you regularly have contact with, only one acts anything close to obedient. And you, NOT BEING AS STUPID AS PEOPLE SAY YOU ARE, are pretty sure that weakling is just mocking you.

Besides your MAGIC FIRE, your cave is filled with WEAPONS OF ALL KINDS. Everyone you know has a STRIFE SPECIBUS used to determine what weapons they know how to use. SWORDKIND. RIFLEKIND. KNIFEKIND.

You fight with WEAPONKIND. Nothing more specific than that. If people use it to kill other people, you can use it to kill even more people. You're Bandos. That's what you do. Not that you have anything nearby to kill. No people, anyways.

Oh, that reminds you. You also have a MAGIC BOX (which you're pretty sure isn't actually magic) that lets you communicate through INTERNET. That's how you communicate with the NINE WEAKLINGS. They're pathetic, but at least they're company.

Not that you get lonely up here. That would be a sign of WEAKNESS.

Other than the WEAPONS, the FIRE, the MAGIC BOX and the HOWLING OF THE EASTERN WIND, this part of the cave is empty. What do you do?

You look outside.

Snow swirls through mist. Scalding steam rises from the cracks separating your cave from the world beyond. The revenants of those slain by you float around aimlessly--pale ghosts of beasts both ordinary and horrendous.

It's a bunch of goddamn white.

These are the Pale Lands, your home. Poisonous gases from beneath, freezing snow from above, blinding mists from all around, and ghosts from all the monsters you regularly have to kill. Gods, but you hate everything about this awful--

Wait.

What is that?

A shape looms out of the white. The shape of something unimaginably large. A gray, spiky horror of exposed muscle and bone. It's bizarre. It's terrifying. It stares at you, golden eyes cold and wary.

Like the other ghosts, this beast is incorporeal, but something about it is...different. For one thing, it's a whole lot bigger.