WOLFSBANE ARTICLE 04: 'ORIGIN'

"You cannot live outside the box if you are still thinking inside it." ~ Delmorte 'Nyx' Skollbanks, to the Bosses before they were truly Bosses.





CRISIS AT BIRTH

- Not surprisingly, many details concerning Wolfsbane's founding are kept secret, if not tampered with for added protection. However, the Bosses were not particularly concerned with hiding an event that happened during the Network's infant stages. It's not so much them being able to afford divulging (they can) nor is it because they have been required to by someone (they aren't) as it is them proudly wearing the incident like a badge.

- The Bosses have revealed one of the reasons why the Wolfsbane Network was created, including the Wolfsbane Syndicate that ruled over it: a high-ranking Officer within the Wolfgang Mafia, codenamed 'Aurora', decided that she would begin the training of Operatives who belonged to her Syndicate-Section at a much younger age. Normally, and the Bosses have spoken of this only once, Junior Operatives are recruited by the age of twenty-five, which is when Senior Cadets formally begin their ascent up the hierarchy. 'Aurora' wanted to push forward the minimum age limit by a good fifteen years. She believed that the earlier Operatives were made to train, the more prepared they would be once they were actually inducted. The Official she answered to had mixed feelings about such an idea, but eventually, he and 'Aurora' came to the agreement. Youngsters who volunteered for such a training program would get it, but not within Wolfgang ranks.

- All Wolfgang attributes would be removed from the entrees, and they would sent to rule over a different organization, one created separately from Wolfgang. The mafia in question would be called Wolfsbane, in reference to one of its more important activities that its Bosses would be managing. Depending on their performance, they may or may not skip the Junior Operative Rank and graduate directly into a Senior Operative, that is, if they survive long enough to be 'hired' back into Wolfgang. There was no guarantee that holding onto their careers would be easy task; the Bosses would learn that lesson from the very start. But, as with every other time the Bosses have gotten into a difficult situation, it wasn't that someone outsider had come close to taking Wolfsbane away from them. It was actually much worse than that.

- Vidan 'Aristocrat' Marflow, Siegfried 'Panzer' von Eisenhower, and Delmorte 'Nyx' Skollbanks were the three Operatives enabled to Manifest by their superiors and ordered to aid and guide the members of the Wolfsbane Syndicate. They were not meant to be superiors so much as they were meant to be mentors. Problem was, one of them didn't like the idea of the Network being run by a bunch of brats not fit to represent Wolfgang. Delmorte believed that the Bosses were still way too wet behind the ears for such an undertaking. She took the fact that they volunteered for this kind of special training as proof of their pride and lack of common sense.

- It wasn't long before she challenged the Bosses outright.

- The Wolfsbane Syndicate was faced with disaster. Now that they no longer 'belonged' to Wolfgang, even a mere Manifestation of Delmorte was an invincible opponent. Fortunately, they had an ally in Siegfried von Eisenhower, who was a huge philanthropist even back then, with an almost-obsessive determination to keep safe human lives. Fighting off Delmorte was out of the question, much to his chagrin; she was stronger than even him, and worse, if the two had come to blows the Bosses would have been destroyed by the collateral damage, which would have defeated the purpose of protecting them in the first place.

- Besides, even if what Delmorte was doing was technically illegal, she had the support of many Wolfgang members. As mentioned in a previous Article, the Triptychs were incarnations of the negative opinions of individuals from the Triumvirate concerning Wolfsbane. 'Aurora' may have been able to prevent anyone from taking any overt action against the fledgling mafia, but it was not her place to change the feelings of others about such an undertaking. So when Delmorte came along with a hands-on solution to getting rid of the Network, other Operatives backed her up. Furthermore, they would prevent news of her actions from reaching 'Aurora', and once Wolfsbane was gone, they would pass the crime off as a tragic accident.

- The only person who could resolve this conflict was the third person tending to Wolfsbane: Vidan Marflow. The 'Aristocrat' was neutral on the matter. He didn't approve of Wolfsbane, neither was he against its creation. He knew that he had orders to help Wolfsbane, but at the same time the sadist in him relished the opportunity to see some carnage. He proposed that the Bosses decide their own fates by earning the right to remain Bosses.

- Vidan set up a tournament inviting all the organizations, individuals and empires within a 'certain vicinity' of his choosing. As the 'arena' selected would take place on the 'Mundane Level' to make things more entertaining, so too were the Bosses scaled down into lesser versions of themselves, barely any better than superhuman, and the same was done to their equipment.

- The Objective was simple: eliminate the competition. The Rules and Regulations were simpler still: there were none. This would be a free-for-all like no other, and the remaining party would obtain the power the Bosses had given up prior to entering, as well as the keys to the Wolfsbane Network itself. Enticed by the rewards, a myriad of factions joined. Everything from aliens to mutants assembled upon the Arena Orb, a gigantic planet that shifted forms every five days, created by the Wolfgang Operatives out of an entire star system. Siegfried and Delmorte were not to interfere with any of the competitors; even the slightest action on one Operative's part would immediately result in the victory of the other.

- It would be a fight that none of the Bosses would survive.





FUN AND GAMES

- The tournament opened with a bang. Literally. Someone smuggled in a weapon of mass destruction and detonated it nearly a week into the fighting. The Arena Orb was devastated right off the bat. A titanic crater was left in the face of a global desert, and those who were far enough not to be instantly carbonized were struck down by the radiation. And though the miniature nova created by device did take out a large chunk out of the competition, it claimed a Boss. Masserian sacrificed himself without so much as a split-second hesitation to move his friends far beyond the blast radius. Unfortunately, the means he used could only work on others, leaving him stranded. His death was painless; he took the explosion at virtually point-blank range. The remaining Bosses would not be so lucky.

- Before any radioactive waste could circle the globe, the Arena Orb made another shift, removing the effects of the bomb in the process, and the Bosses found themselves lost within a forest crawling with hostilities. Besides the myriad of competitors who survived, Vidan had made sure to infest the forest with all sorts of monstrous creatures. For the next few days, the Bosses did more running than fighting. There even came a point where they had to take refuge within a hill-sized mound of fecal matter that used to be an army of psychic aliens.

- Then, alliances began to form between contestants. Vidan did not take kindly to that. This was supposed to be a free-for-all. Those who did not abide by those rules only made things harder for everyone else, because the moment Vidan spotted the truces, he decided that he might as well put a stop to that kind of foolishness early on and brought all the trees of the forest to life. The pandemonium caused by the hostile vegetation wrecked whatever camaraderie had been born, but it wouldn't be the only thing. In an attempt to pull his sister to safety, Lee Northorn was snagged by a particularly thorny set of vines. Valeria was treated to a front seat view of her brother being mauled by the forest, a bright golden figure that soon turned a dark crimson in the midst of thrashing green, with long howls that seemed to continue even after the Arena shifted form once more, leaving only the survivors behind.

- All remaining participants learned their lesson quickly: this was a fight to the finish, and it would stay that way. Many asked to relinquish their chance to win the tournament in exchange for being released, but there was no reply from Vidan. Those who tried begging were sitting ducks for those who decided to focus on fighting, undeterred by the turn of events. Many died on their knees, crying for Vidan to let them go.

- Meanwhile, Valeria was down for the count. The trauma of her sibling's death left her near-comatose, an unblinking statue that had to be hauled around by her team. Zhao and Bellatrice tried convincing the others to leave her behind. The new Arena was a molten landscape; volcanoes and pools of lava permeated the place, and the skies rained down fire and stone. Some suggested leaving Valeria behind, reasoning that her death would be quick. Gerard forbade such a desertion, but the weariness showed even in his eyes. He would pay for his loyalty by losing his foothold at a crucial moment, during what should have been him preventing Valeria and the Boss carrying her from falling into a river of lava. Gerard took the plunge instead, and he'd have been glad to have burned quickly were it not for a spike of rock that caught him just above the molten rock. With his back broken, the ragged stone went from a convenient platform into a grisly skillet, one located too far down a steep cliff for the other Bosses to help.

- It was then that Dante assumed command. Up until that point he had been letting Gerard and Valeria lead the team, but with the two of them unavailable, he decided that now was the time for the Bosses to take matters into their own hands. The rest of his gang were in complete disarray, and some of them even refused to let Dante take the reins. All that ended when he put a bullet through Zhao's head, shooting him through the cheeks so that he didn't kill him, to show them how serious he was. Under his authority, the gang was able to make it through the next few Arena shifts.

- For a brief while, it appeared that the Bosses actually stood a chance. After years of non-stop bloodshed, only forty-four factions remained, and the Bosses were one of them. They had lost Bellatrice to a robotic assassin not very long ago, and Richard had been ritually sacrificed by a pagan cult trying to summon their gods some time before that, but they made it to the Grand Finals nonetheless. Then, something occurred that wasn't part of the program.

- Vidan forced the frequency of the Arena Orb shifts into overdrive. He wanted to spice things up; the battles had become 'boring' by now, and he longed to see some fresh action. The planet, bigger than any other, literally went crazy. The globe began to morph non-stop, down its very core. Those on its surface were trapped in a worldwide state of pandemonium as all the previous forms of the Arena Orb mashed, smashed and clashed with each other. Oceans thundered down the slopes of broken mountains as continents flipped over. Trees grew down from the heavens as cities rose and sunk into glowing mud. The finalists found themselves fighting not just each other, but their very surroundings.

- Instead of engaging opponents, the Bosses focused all their efforts into staying alive, letting the turmoil claim the competition one by one. It soon became obvious that their plan was to let the Arena Orb do the killing for them, and that they would simply finish off any survivors. For a short while, it worked. The other forty-three parties had been cut into sixteen by the time they realized what Dante had ordered his team to do, and at that point exhaustion had taken its toll. Victory seemed inevitable.

- And then Siegfried's dismembered head landed on Scheidel, giving him a heart attack when he recognized what he had caught.

- The following silence of the Arena Orb pausing mid-shift did not last very long. Delmorte descended upon the battlefield like a meteor, and she was no doubt furious. When the Bosses asked for the reason of her intrusion, Delmorte revealed that Dante had gotten together with Siegfried prior to the final round. The 'Panzer' had used a great deal of his power to keep the meeting a secret; he may not have been strong enough to beat his colleagues, but he was capable of hiding things from them. That was until the Bosses employed their strategy of avoiding fights while the Arena Orb went nuts, leaving the competition to eliminate itself for them.

- Delmorte guessed that they had to have been alerted somehow, since Vidan did not reveal that he intended the Arena Orb to undergo rapid changes. No one else had been prepared for that. First, she had to torture the information out of Siegfried. Then, she executed him for his unsportsmanlike conduct. After she had presented the proof to him, Vidan declared the contest results as invalid, wasting the deaths of innumerable participants, and allowing Delmorte to do what she wished to the Bosses.

- For their treachery, Delmorte did exactly that.

- Whatever atrocities she committed that day are not mentioned by the Wolfsbane Syndicate, even to this very day. But she did go through them, one by one while the others watched, ending their suffering when she saw fit. The other contestants, now nothing more than a bore to Vidan, were disposed of along with the Arena Orb.

- Delmorte saved Dante for last. His session at her hands was the most prolonged and most agonizing. However, despite her best efforts, Delmorte discovered that she could could not break Dante's will. No matter what she tried, there remained a dangerous glint in Dante's eyes; a defiant, devious spark that seemed only to sneer at her.

- Having lost interest in making Dante pay for his treachery, she took his own gun, shoved the nozzle into his mouth, and pulled the trigger.





EVEN IN DEFEAT

- What would happened next earned the Bosses Delmorte's respect and admiration. Even as the bullet tore through Dante's skull and continued through a nearby mountain, a sinister chuckle filled the air. Delmorte still remembers the chill that went down her spine. While it would be the only one she would ever feel, it still gives her the shivers every time she think about it, and she welcomes the memory as a reminder of the true nature of the people really worked with.

- On that day, she turned around from what she believed to be a dozen mangled corpses, only to come face to face with twelve unharmed members of the Wolfsbane Syndicate, with Siegfried grinning behind them.

- It took Delmorte a moment to process what exactly had happened. Dante used that moment to open a laptop and point its screen towards Delmorte. The scowling face of 'Aurora' met that of 'Nyx', and in that instant Delmorte knew that she had been outplayed.

- Turns out, the Tournament itself was Dante's idea. He knew that Vidan didn't really care about Wolfsbane, and he used this neutral stance to his advantage. Dante had only met Vidan for a short while, but that was enough time for him to figure out the guy was a sucker for a good bloodbath, and that entertainment was the only thing that could appease him. So when Delmorte tried to oppose the Bosses, Dante went to Vidan with a favor. He and the other Bosses could not hope to win a fight with Delmorte, even with Siegfried's help. Vidan didn't like participating in brawls so much as he did watching them, so he wouldn't attack Delmorte either.

- Instead, Dante would go to someone would could do so on his behalf: 'Aurora' herself. But with Delmorte and other Wolfgang members preventing Dante and his colleagues from contacting 'Aurora', someone else had to deliver the message. Someone who could bypass Delmorte's supporters and go straight to an Officer. That someone was Vidan.

- Of course, buying a favor from Vidan was no easy task. Since Dante and his team were stripped of everything they had when they belonged to Wolfgang, paying the guy was impossible. But as was mentioned earlier, Dante knew what the 'Aristocrat' liked. And while it is true that Vidan could simply create conflict for himself to enjoy, it wasn't the same as seeing others start it of their own volition. Furthermore, Vidan favored certain types of conflict more than others, with Colosseum-type combat being highest on his list. So when Dante willingly volunteered himself and his team to become sport for Vidan, in a tournament of such a massive scale, the offer was almost too good to pass up. It didn't even matter if the Bosses lost the tournament as long as they were able to provide a good show. In fact, Dante even asked Vidan to wipe the Bosses' memory clean, to make their fear and distress genuine.

- Dante had Vidan deliver his plea to 'Aurora' before the start of the tournament, behind Delmorte's back. His message asked 'Aurora' not to intervene immediately; she was simply to watch events unfold. This was because Dante wanted to uphold his end of the bargain to Vidan, and he also wanted to prevent any chances of Delmorte denying the allegations of her disobedience.

- Siegfried was tasked with informing Dante that Vidan would cause the Arena Orb to shift rapidly, but that too was part of the plan: Dante had already made the suggestion to Vidan. Not only would it provide the guy with more amusement, it would also serve to cement Delmorte's defeat. Dante knew that by having Siegfried provide the info before the final round, the Bosses would plan accordingly and their actions would rouse Delmorte's suspicions. While it may be true that anyone could have done what the Bosses did in the final round, they had reacted so impossibly fast and precisely that Delmorte knew they had have been tipped off. Siegfried himself would have to take one for the team, feeding Delmorte what she wanted to hear, while keeping Dante's true plot a secret as she tortured him.

- Regardless, the endgame would be Delmorte killing both Siegfried and the Bosses for their attempt to cheat. That would prove to be last straw for 'Aurora', who resurrected the Bosses and Siegfried immediately before proceeding to give 'Nyx' a piece of her mind, revealing how Dante had outdone her.

- Essentially, it was checkmate for Delmorte long before the chess game had started. Even if the Bosses had died before the final round, 'Aurora' would have seen enough to convince her that Delmorte had not followed her orders to support Wolfsbane, and in that scenario Dante would simply have provided Vidan with another way to enjoy himself after Delmorte was defeated.

- To play his very life, the lives of his team, and the lives of everyone else involved, as pawns to fulfill his plans: that gave Delmorte a glimpse of Dante's mettle. She knew then and there that he was no ordinary young man, and she would tell him that in what would be her first words of approval towards the Bosses.

- Dante had taken one look at an impossible situation and decided that he would solve it on his own terms, his own way. He would not play by the rules, and he would get away with it. That his team would agree to such a distasteful (if not equal parts simple and complex) plan told Delmorte that he would be fine working with them, and vice versa.

- What Dante would do next, however, was what really won Delmorte over.

- Instead of having 'Aurora' execute Delmorte for trying to sabotage her program, Dante requested that the Wolfgang Officer bind the latter to the Bosses via a Prisoner Contract. Delmorte was already under a Mentor Contract, but it was a casual one, and it wasn't binding enough to ensure her full compliance; up until recently, 'Aurora' trusted her to simply do as she was order to do. This new contract would be different. The Wolfsbane Syndicate could now command her as if she was a genie in a lamp.

- This mixture of favor and cunning that Dante displayed would be the final brownie point that Delmorte would award to the Bosses. To turn a defeated opponent into a helpful tool, as opposed to eliminating him/her out of spite, was a trait she admired. The fact that she was allowed to keep her life was very much appreciated, while Dante could still save face and state that it wasn't him being merciful, thereby claiming that this act was not a sign of weakness.

- With their first great hurdle overcome, the Bosses were free to formally establish the Wolfsbane Network. They refused Siegfried's offer to wipe the ordeal from their memory, and Vidan was let off with a warning; one of the terms in Dante's bargain with him was that he would ask 'Aurora' to consider the fact that without the 'Aristocrat', the Bosses would not have survived.

- Delmorte herself has become content to serve her sentence as the Bosses' personal helper. She may be cruel, but she is no sore loser. The whole reason she tried getting rid of the Bosses in the first place was because she deemed them unworthy to rule over Wolfsbane. Now, it's the exact opposite. On his part, Dante may have been a trickster, but he's not one to gloat. He and the others are just glad that 'Nyx' is on their side now.

- Contrary to popular belief, the Bosses didn't just have Wolfsbane fall into their laps while they idled under a tree, sipping coffee and nibbling on shortbread. While they were having a picnic when they learned of the program concocted by 'Aurora', they still had to willingly give up everything they had in Wolfgang to be a part of it. They began their reign in a flurry of blood, sweat and tears, but the hardships they had to endure have become medals of honor that they will never relinquish to the doubt and disdain of anyone, even to those within the Triumvirate who share Delmorte's former views.

- Before they could live outside the box, they first had to think outside of it. While this incident wasn't the last potential catastrophe the Bosses would face, it wouldn't the last they'd overcome. Beating the unbeatable: that was just the beginning.

- The Bosses work with Siegfried's to manage Firstgate-Earth. Vidan and Delmorte have a different set of responsibilities, aside their usual mentoring roles.





WOLFSBANE SERIES

ARTICLE 01: rafael-domination.deviantart.c…
ARTICLE 02: rafael-domination.deviantart.c…
ARTICLE 03: rafael-domination.deviantart.c…
ARTICLE 04: YOU ARE HERE
ARTICLE 05: rafael-domination.deviantart.c…
ARTICLE 06: rafael-domination.deviantart.c…
ARTICLE 07: rafael-domination.deviantart.c…
ARTICLE 08: rafael-domination.deviantart.c…
ARTICLE 09: rafael-domination.deviantart.c…
ARTICLE 10: rafael-domination.deviantart.c…

APPENDIX 01: rafael-domination.deviantart.c…
APPENDIX 02: rafael-domination.deviantart.c…
APPENDIX 03: rafael-domination.deviantart.c…
APPENDIX 04: rafael-domination.deviantart.c…