When Grae had been newborn, he was a small, pink thing. A tuskling. Many tusklings were born to his generation, amidst the foul slime and ever-present rot of the Miasmic Dungeon. To them it was a playground. Grae fondly remembered digging his snout into rotting piles of garbage and tussling with his brothers and sisters for prize scraps.

Their dungeon-home was beneath a massive city. In fact, it was the most important part of the city; it was where things were thrown away and left to be forgotten.

And they were happy.

…

It had been three centuries since then.

…

Grae was old and dark now. His once-pink skin was covered by layers of shaggy gray fur and his tusks were long, requiring him to spend hours each day scraping them away against the sides of the tunnels to keep them from becoming unwieldy.

His brothers and sisters were dead.

Killed by the swords of adventurers.

But if Grae had once hated the humans with all his might, that hate was dead now too…

Because the dungeon was empty.

Silence filled the tunnels. The lovely bouquet of garbage and filth was gone. The city above had forgotten the Dungeon underfoot, and now there was no trash, no waste, from which new generations of tuskling could be born.

The air was dry of mana.

Desolation and death filled the corridors.

Grae walked through a massive room. Once, it had been a temple. Bronze burners had held green tongues of hellfire and demons had ruled from the massive stone altar. Now, it was empty. Bloodstains littered the floor and skeletal remains lingered in the corners, thoroughly chewed.

Grae’s only company was the scuttling of rats. His long arms shot out and snatched up a tasty little squeaker, catching the rat by its head and watching the hindquarters thrash.

He dropped the squeaker into his knapsack.

He continued his patrol. His usual route carried him through the fungus oubliette, past the empty cells of the prison, and through the river of slime. Grae wandered them all, tasting the faint scent of memory on the air…

Once all these places had been alive; bursting with activity and newborn life. They had fought tooth and nail against the hated humans.

They had lost.

And after centuries, the survivors of the Great Defeat had begun to die of old age. One by one they had lay themselves down to sleep…

And they had not woken up again.

Grae had survived the Great Defeat because his task was to guard the secret chamber. Pushing against a secret stone, he watched as the stones rasped, moving aside to reveal a hidden door. Slipping inside, Grae returned to his sanctum and his home- a room filled with dripping candles burned down to stubs, bones gnawed to the marrow, and rags of old armor and clothes arranged into a filthy nest.

The true prizes of his collection were a set of glowing gemstones he’d pushed into breaks in the brickwork, filling his den with light.

It wasn’t much.

But it was home.

Grae believed he had survived so long simply because he did not want to die; he loved this place and believed life would return to it someday, so long as he remained. The others had lost hope, and after losing hope, what point was there in living?

They had lain down and died willingly, of old age and exhaustion.

Building fire out of dried moss, Grae lit it with a wand he’d found on a robed corpse. The wand was running out of power, but it still produced a few sparks, enough to set his carefully-prepared kindling ablaze. Feeding the burgeoning fire with roots and thorns, Grae lifted a steel helmet onto the flame and filled it with water.

In went his rats. He crushed their skulls and dropped them into the boiling bubble, mixing in tubers, fungus, and little blobs of sticky slime. It all made a gruesome stew.

And he was happy.

In the depths of his small, lightless world, Grae was content.

*ding*

Grae Mangefur

You have obtained the title - Eldest

Your fur turns gray and your tusks turn yellow. No living being in the world is older than you, and thus, you attain this lofty title.

+ Massively increased cognition and introspection.

+ Increased mana replenishment.

Grae Mangefur

You have unlocked a Constellation of Two Stars

“The Open Eyes”

Granted to all beings who achieve five or more Titles. Passively grants the ability to use Inspect.

Blessings be upon you.

Grae Mangefur

You have unlocked a Constellation of Six Stars

“The Gentle Beast”

Achieved for gaining full sapience as a monstrous beast and going 100 years without slaying a sapient being. Passively grants the ability to understand and speak Common.

Blessings be upon you.

The words hung before Grae’s eyes, written on windows of light.

He closed his eyes.

And when he opened them, he saw the world anew.