Angler Company

For the Epic Dungeon content, see Epic Dungeon: Angler Company.

The Angler Company is a national-level arms dealer organization on Grandis. It gained a fearsome reputation for its cruelty and ruthlessness, and though the Company was publicly believed to have met its end after the explosion of its headquarters, it nevertheless persisted in the shadows and became business partners with Gerand Darmoor.

Story

Origins

The founder of the Angler Company was a man who was created as an experiment in Odium by the elders of Grandis. Through a combination of magic and cybernetics, his body was modified in order to be fused with a Godsphere and become an Adversary. However, he was ultimately deemed a defective Vessel by the elders, and he was thrown off the edge of the floating citadel, where he fell into the sea. Because of the heavy metal that plated his skin, he sank to the bottom of the ocean, where he was drawn by the light of an enormous anglerfish.

As a result of the experiments, he began losing his ego and sense of self, leaving him with a single-minded obsession with fulfilling his purpose to become an Adversary. Hoping to reach Odium once again, he began to build an enormous tower called Karote. Possessing infinite stamina as a result of the experiments that created him, the man spent years building the tower until he reached the surface of the ocean.

Upon seeing the sunrise, he believed that he had never been a failure, and that the elders had deemed him one because they had been afraid that they had unwittingly created an Adversary stronger than them. the man then continued building Karote until it reached high enough to enter Odium. However, Guardian Kalos, a sentinel left behind by the elders to guard the laboratory, deemed him to be unworthy and destroyed the tower, causing him to fall back into the ocean.

As the man fell once again, he realized that he couldn't reach Odium on his own, as he needed a true Adversary to lead him there. He placed a spell on the tower so that it would build itself continually over a lifetime, despite however many times Kalos destroyed it. In order to ensure that only a true Adversary could reach the top, he also stole several Guardians from Odium and placed them within subspaces that could be accessed by a true Vessel through statues placed on various floors of the tower. Upon leaving the subspace, the true Vessel would be able to access his memories of how he constructed Karote. In this way, the creator essentially transformed the tower into a magical artifact. In doing so, he hoped to lure a true Vessel into reaching the top, thus paving a path for him to enter Odium.

Eventually, he created the Angler Company, with its name and logo inspired by the large anglerfish he met at the bottom of the ocean, and gave himself the surname 'Angler'. Using magical technology stolen from Odium, the Angler Company developed powerful weapons that they sold to the warmongers of the galaxy. Over time, the company gained a fearsome reputation for its brutality. The Company founder also created four cyborgs and programmed them to obey him, despite them believing that they had free will: Senya, Nicky, Cosim, and Laha Angler. These four children would view the Company founder as both their father and creator.

Disappearance

Eventually, the Angler Company met its end with a mysterious cataclysmic explosion at its headquarters. The explosion severely damaged both the Angler Father and Cosim, the latter of whom was freed from his father's control because of the damage sustained to his body. Despite its disappearance, the Company's technology occasionally resurfaced, along with rumors of its continued existence in the shadows, making the technology both expensive and hard to offload. In the shadows, the Angler Father continued running the Company and forced his children, who were also injured to some extent in the explosion, to harvest large quantities of power in order to sustain him, as his power source had been damaged in the explosion.

The Heliogene Device

A Shadowdealer named Mr. Hazard began a working relationship with the Angler Company, from whom he would buy schematics for specialized weapons, which he would then assemble and sell to various clients, such as the High Flora. Soon after he seized control of the Savage Terminal branch of the Shadowdealers, an Angler Company Lab Tech delivered Report X-9, the schematics for a bioweapon known as the Heliogene Device to Mr. Hazard's cronies. However, the report was intercepted by Cadena, who stopped Mr. Hazard from completing the weapon, as it would have resulted in the annihilation of Savage Terminal.

Sea Lantern

In order to harvest energy for her father, Senya Angler planned to use a specialized weapon that emitted a gas which would react with the polluted seawater of Savage Terminal and cause the water to become acidic, effectively boiling all life-forms on the surface to death and leaving behind a pure source of energy for her father. However, her ship was shot down before she could carry out her plan. The Adversary was lured to Savage Terminal, where they and a gang leader named Toole met Senya, who explained that her ship had precious cargo.

The Adversary was sent by Toole to recover the cargo, and on their way, they met Detective Rave. Together with Rave, they began investigating the mystery of who Senya was and what had happened to the cargo. While being questioned, Senya lied and told Rave that she was part of an environmental organization called Sea Lantern, which traveled around the world to reclaim polluted places. She also told them that the cargo was for a powerful cleaning device that could boil the impurities out of any substance.

After finding the device, however, Rave and the Alliance member ran into Cosim, who told them the truth about the device. Though Senya activated the weapon and teleported herself back to her ship, Rave was able transport the weapon, which had grown unstable while attempting to be moved, aboard Senya's ship, which caused it to explode. Later on, Cosim wondered whether, between the resurfacing of the Angler Company and the Apostles of Gerand Darmoor making their move, it was time to see the elders in the realm of the sages.

Alliance with Darmoor

The Angler family's frequent excursions soon drew the attention of Gerand Darmoor, who followed rumors of the Company's actions and arranged a meeting with the Angler Father. There, he revealed that a new Adversary had been created, and that he was planning to destroy the Seal Stone within them. The Angler Father then allied himself with Darmoor, hoping to use the Adversary to build Karote and open the path to Odium. Some time later, the Angler Father created a new body for himself, as his original form had been damaged beyond repair. His new body was made in the image of the Constables - Anima-like puppets who maintained Odium in the absence of the researchers.

Reverse City

While making their way through the Arcane River, the Adversary arrived in Reverse City, a city from Earth which had been drawn into the Arcane River as a result of the three worlds converging. There, they encountered Nicky Angler wearing a mask and calling himself T-Boy. T-Boy was conducting experiments for a gravity machine, which had caused the city to turn upside-down. The Adversary also learned that T-Boy was planning to harvest Erdas from the upstream of the Arcane River, after which he planned to use extinction accelerators to create more Erdas upon depletion of the river before finally using the Erdas to concentrate gravity above the city in order to create a black hole.

However, the Adversary and Barr Granger, a survival author who had been trapped in Reverse City, worked with the people of the city to disable the extinction generators. Furious, T-Boy attempted to start his gravity machine without sufficient power, which would cause it to go critical and explode as if it were a giant extinction accelerator. While the Adversary destroyed the machine, T-Boy confronted Barr from inside one of his drones. Though Barr had him at gunpoint, T-Boy was confident that Barr would not shoot him. However, Barr shot him when he came to believe that the drone was unmanned.

Though the Adversary destroyed the gravity machine, the countdown still did not stop. Barr then took the machine and jumped up, with the reversed gravity causing him to fall up into the sky, far above the people of the city, and then used a teleporter that he took from one of T-Boy's drones to return to Earth as the machine exploded in the air. After the crisis was averted, the Adversary found T-Boy's mask stained with blood, causing them to realize that T-Boy really had been inside the drone.

Elsewhere, T-Boy flew back to headquarters in his ship with a cut from the bullet grazing his face, having failed to harvest the Erdas to power his father. Senya then contacted him and teased him about his loss, to which T-Boy told her not to tell their father. When Senya asked what he thought about the Adversary, T-Boy told her that he believed that the Angler Company could use them for their goal to complete Karote.

Hotel Arcus

A few months after the events of Cernium, Cosim infiltrated Ereve and told Neinheart that some of the answers that the Alliance sought about the Ancient Gods could be found amidst the deserts of Grandis. As Neinheart began mobilizing the Alliance, Cosim watched from afar and voiced aloud that they ought to hurry, as their quarry was the slowest of all, but faster than the hare.

When the Glory Guard made their way to Hotel Arcus and began investigating for clues on the Ancient Gods, Senya also made her way to the hotel and attempted to buy the hotel from Rusty. She joined the Glory Guard on their mission to find clues about the Ancient Gods, which led them to discover a treasure map that took them to the ever-moving train around Arcus, in which they found the treasure, a bomb that soon exploded. With no further leads, Rusty decided to sell the hotel to Senya, who immediately used the superior technology of the Angler Company to take control of the robots of the hotel, including Archelon.

While grieving about the loss of his hotel, Rusty learned that the real treasure was within the fragment of the bomb, a rusty screw. He then rushed back to find that Senya had forced Archelon to awaken enormous ancient robots from the desert, as he was the key to unlocking the Ancient Gods' power. However, when Archelon refused to harm his friends, Senya destroyed him.

As Rusty cried over Archelon's broken form, the rusty screw awakened Archelon's consciousness, causing his true body - a massive turtle-like Ancient God - to emerge from beneath the hotel. Senya was impressed that an Ancient God lay dormant beneath the desert, but as she could not control Archelon, she decided to sell the hotel back to Rusty. After Senya left, Nicky arrived with several other Seekers, adventurers that hunted for ancient artifacts, in order to lead the Adversary to Karote.

Karote

Nicky, pretending to be a Seeker, led the Glory Guard to Karote, explaining that the tower's completion was his father's dream. As the Adversary stepped foot in Karote, the tower recognized that a true vessel for the Adversary had entered, causing it to accelerate its rate of completion. As they scaled up the tower, the Adversary was transported to several subspaces, where they encountered several robotic Guardians who had been stolen and reprogrammed by the creator of Karote.

Each time that the Adversary left the subspace, they experienced past memories of the creator. Eventually, the group reached the top and found Watcher Kalos, who deemed the Adversary to be worthy of entering Odium. However, he recognized that Nicky, who had been created from the same materials found in the laboratory, was an unworthy vessel.

Nicky then revealed himself as the son of the creator of Karote and revealed himself as T-Boy. He then hacked into Kalos and forced the sentinel to attack the Adversary. The Adversary was able to defeat Kalos, but their fight destabilized Karote and caused it to break down. As T-Boy fell, his father called and asked about the status of the mission.

T-Boy told his father that the path to Odium was open, but he also confronted his father and asked whether his free will had been overridden, as he had found himself unable to help himself from hacking into Kalos. He also demanded to know whether his desire to be recognized as a worthy son had also been programmed into him.

After a pause, his father thanked Nicky for all his hard work. Satisfied, and believing that he was about to die, Nicky told the Adversary about the Angler Company's meeting with Gerand Darmoor, in which Nicky had learned that Darmoor had planned to destroy the Adversary's Seal Stone from the beginning, long before they had even reached the end of the Arcane River.

He then told the Adversary to go to Odium if they wanted to learn more about Darmoor's plans before calculating an optimal trajectory and pushing the Adversary away from him toward Cosim, whom he had noticed had appeared not long ago. Cosim then revealed to the Adversary that he had also been created by Nicky and Senya's father.

Odium

With the path to Odium open, the Angler Father ordered Senya and Laha to lead the invasion fleet so that they could claim the power source of Odium. He himself went to Odium and used his new body to pose as a Constable in order to trick the Adversary into leading him to the laboratory. Soon after, Kaling arrived in order to help the Company enter the laboratory, although she came in conflict over the power source: Hundun, the most powerful of the Four Perils created by Kaling and fused with the World Heart by the elders.

After the Adversary took the World Heart and escaped to Shangri-La, the Angler Father arrived with Senya and apologized to Kaling for Laha's actions. In order to appease Kaling, the Angler Father ripped out Laha's mechanical heart and crushed it before allowing her to take Hundun. He then ordered Senya to seize all the research in Odium, hoping to use it to fulfill his goals.

Known Members

Angler Father Founder of the Angler Company Alive

Senya Angler Daughter of the Company founder Alive

Nicky Angler (T-Boy) Son of the Company founder Unknown

Former Members

Cosim Son of the Company founder Disabled (Defected)

Laha Angler Daughter of the Company founder Deceased