- “My new world has no need for old heroes. It will do just fine with only one: the Grandmaster!”
- ―Grandmaster
The Grandmaster was the main antagonist and final boss of Boss Rush. Once a revered hero of ancient Delphi, the Grandmaster was tainted by knowledge of the future through No Name, leading him to eventually seek out Prima Materia in an effort to harness its powers for his plans. However, the ancient substance deemed him unworthy of using its powers for such a mission, causing him to be cursed and frozen in time within Delphi for thousands of years.
Years later, the Grandmaster was able to transport various heroes and villains from across the Nexus with a small trace of Prima Materia he could successfully manipulate to Delphi, allowing him to begin a tournament in the city that would forge the key to unlocking the artificial Sentinel Artifact binding him to his curse through the battles between light and darkness. Before long, the Grandmaster succeeded, and in an attempt to prove himself worthy of using Prima Materia fully, soon engaged the heroes in a final battle. However, the Grandmaster would fail in his objective, leading to his final passing.
Biography[]
Origins[]
In ancient Delphi, Greece in 490 BC, a young man who would one day be called the Grandmaster spars against several training dummies with a sword while his father watches his progress. After slicing apart some of the dummies and displaying masterful swordsmanship, the man turns to face his father, who nods. The man pierces the sword into the ground and approaches his father, who tells him he will one day make a fine warrior and leader. The man is skeptical, saying he doesn't feel like he deserves to be one, asking how could he be a leader if he believed he lacked those qualities. The father chuckles, saying that perhaps he needed some motiviation before holding out his hand and materializing an ancient sword, gifting it to his son.
The father explains that the weapon was known as No Name, and it had been passed down from owner to owner for thousands upon thousands of years, telling his son that he was now the new owner of No Name. Curious, yet amazed by the weapon, the man asks how this weapon would allow him to become a leader. The father smiles, and tells the man to gaze into the eye of the weapon. The man soon glares into the blue cat-like eye embedded in No Name's head, and soon began to see brief visions of events to come, such as the man's rise to power in Delphi and the beginning of his research of Prima Materia. After the man returns to his senses and gasping after witnessing what he has seen, the father asks the bewildered man if he knows what he must do. Looking back at the weapon before back to his father, the man responds that he does, saying that he now knows how important he is.
As the city came to grow and thrive, so did the Grandmaster, who was revered as a hero of the city. He began to delve into research on an ancient substance known as Prima Materia, the essential element and building block of the universes. However, the Grandmaster would become corrupted by his research, seeking to claim the substance for himself in order to reshape existence to his own image, believing himself to be its destined savior from its current shackles. During his searches, he came to find a mine containing a small amount of Prima Materia just below the city of Delphi. When the Grandmaster attempted to obtain the Prima Materia, the substance deemed him unworthy of using its knowledge and power and proceeded to curse him and the nearby city of Delphi, imprisoning them in an artificial Sentinel Trial.
While the city soon came to sink underground and was soon lost from history, the Grandmaster was given a special Sentinel Artifact which served as the gateway to exiting the trial and freeing himself from his curse. However, the artifact could not be activated until the Grandmaster was able to forge a key to activate the artifact, which could only be created after a great battle of pure light and darkness raged on the grounds of Delphi itself, with Prima Materia itself being unable to craft this key or free him from the curse in its purity.
During his curse, the Grandmaster attempted to commit suicide as a mean of escaping the curse and to end his suffering, having lived roughly 1000 years in near isolation. However, despite being killed, he was resurrected by the Prima Materia binding him to the trial, much to his frustration. Despite this, the Grandmaster saw this as a sign that he needed to remain, as the destined battles he so craved would come soon enough.
Boss Rush[]
Over two thousand years later after the start of his imprisonment, the three main Sentinel Artifacts and trials were completed by Vindicta. The Grandmaster, alerted to this due to his deep connection with Prima Materia, saw this as the perfect opportunity to begin the battles between light and darkness by utilizing the heroes that completed the trials in addition to various other heroes and villains either connected to each other or not. Manipulating traces of the newly-generated and thus not completely biased Prima Materia from the ultimate trial remotely from Delphi, the Grandmaster summoned numerous heroes and villains from across the Nexus to Delphi, providing the fallen with reflections to ensure they remained long enough to fight.
The Grandmaster would oversee all of the battles, which occurred at the Delphi Amphitheater, with each one of their conclusions creating a small portion of the key. When the last battle concluded, the key was completed, and the Grandmaster was able to use the key to activate the Sentinel Artifact he was given, which ultimately allowed him to conclude his imprisonment within the artificial trial. Wishing to deem himself worthy to the remaining Prima Materia within the world and reclaim his destiny that he believed was taken from him, the Grandmaster challenged the heroes to a final battle. However, despite the Grandmaster's best efforts, he was ultimately defeated before fading away. With the Grandmaster's death, everyone was allowed to return back to their original points in time within the universes.
The Final Chapter[]
The Grandmaster is briefly mentioned by Ignotus when recounting how he came in possession of No Name.
Personality[]
Before his corruption at the hands of Prima Materia, the Grandmaster was a well revered hero of Delphi, though his heroic nature would mask his greatest weakness: his insecurities of the future. When provided the knowledge of some of his future by No Name, the Grandmaster would evolve past his flaw, though as a result of his precognition of events yet to come, the Grandmaster slowly became consumed by power, filled with arrogance caused by seeing part of his future before his very eyes. In his arrogance, the Grandmaster believed that he was chosen by destiny himself to harness the power of Prima Materia to reshape the world and remove its flaws in his own image.
Upon being frozen in time with the rest of Delphi after being cursed by Prima Materia, seeing him as unfit to use its powers, the Grandmaster would slowly go mad, though he never let go of his belief on what he believed destiny wanted him to do. For thousands of years, the Grandmaster's heroic traits deteriorated away, leaving only a shell of a man consumed by a constant cycle of false beliefs. At one point in his solitude however, the Grandmaster would briefly question whether or not he should carry on, and attempted to end his existence and suffering through suicide. However, upon being immediately revived by the substance, the Grandmaster once again believed that destiny wanted him to stick around until he succeeded. When the time came for him to enact the Boss Rush tournament, the Grandmaster harbored no care for any of the villains or heroes he amassed to fight other than the outcomes of their battles, though he did seem to have some interest with the villains of the Roach Chronicles multiverse, as it was the only group of villains he properly assembled into a single organization.
When the tournament had finally ended and the Grandmaster managed to free himself from his curse, the Grandmaster, in spite of his newfound freedom, still delusionally clung onto his beliefs on destiny, seeking to use his freedom and subsequent fight against the heroes as a test to prove himself worthy to use all of Prima Materia en masse. In the end however, the Grandmaster would fall, leaving him to question his true role in fate as he faded away. With the Grandmaster's death, he left behind No Name, which would inadvertently trigger a chain of events to unleash an even greater threat, which, in a cruel twist of fate, served as the Grandmaster's true role in fate as he had once asked.
Theme[]
References[]
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