The Vandals are a small warrior race of demonic-looking and cannibalistic men.
History[]
Early History[]
Emerging some time before the fifth century, the Vandals became known as a warrior race comprised of small-sized men who preferred to work in pairs, use unorthodox fighting tactics, and consume the flesh of their enemies.
The Vandals quickly gained a reputation from the Four Legendary Kingdoms for their fierceness and cannibalistic tendencies, and were feared by many groups, such as the nuns of the Order of the Serene Maidens.
In the 5th century, the Vandals took part in the sacking of Rome.
Leading up to the modern day, the numbers of Vandals became increasingly small. Additionally, most began making their appearances more fersome and inhuman, undertaking surgical alterations to tattoo their skin red, implant a pair of horn-shaped bones on their foreheads, and filing their teeth into sharp points.
Prior to 2016, at least eight Vandals were captured and imprisoned at the Royal Prison of Erebus on the Wall of Misery. Another Vandal, Mephisto, did not enjoy working with a partner and killed his as a joke, and was later drawn into the service of King Anthony "Hades" DeSaxe of the Kingdom of Underworld as his "jester".
The Four Legendary Kingdoms[]
During the fourth Great Games of the Hydra, Mephisto occasionally tormented the Champions in the middle of some Challenges, including Jack West Jr. Following the conclusion of the Games, Mephisto snuck about Jack's plane, the Sky Warrior, and attempted to ambush the Australian. During their subsequent struggle, Jack shot the nearby window, and as the air rushed out, Jack threw the small Mephisto through the broken window, sending the malicious jester falling to his death.
The Two Lost Mountains[]
Once he had completed the Trial of the Cities, Sphinx decided to stop in at Erebus before beginning the next stage of his plan. In addition to freeing Yago DeSaxe from the Wall of Misery, Sphinx also had the eight Vandal prisoners extracted, but made sure that they were all chained and had leather gags over their mouths before they departed.
Soon afterwards, Sphinx assaulted the Novodevichy Convent in Moscow with his Bronze Guardians, bringing the muzzled Vandals along with him. When the sisters of the Order of the Serene Maidens beheld the eight horrific-looking men, most of them cowered because of their presence. Sphinx demanded the Siren bells kept there from Sister Beatrice, though the abbess insisted the bells were not there. Knowing the truth, Sphinx wagered that if Beatrice was lying and he found the bells in the vault, he would set the Vandals upon her and the other nuns.
Once Jaeger Eins opened the vault, revealing 14 huge gold-and-silver bells, Sphinx noted that Beatrice had lost their wager, and then shoved her into a side chapel before setting the cannibalistic Vandals on her. As the Vandals began nosily feasting on the screaming abbess, Sphinx decided to be merciful and have the other nuns executed by gunshot instead.
Later, as Sphinx and Cardinal Ricardo Mendoza prepared to enter the Supreme Labyrinth, the Vandals - along with Jaegers Sechs, Seiben and Acht - joined them as they made their way into the ancient maze so that Sphinx could claim the ultimate throne.
The One Impossible Labyrinth[]
As soon as they reached the First Cavern, Sphinx dispatched four of the Vandals to lie in wait in the other entry tunnels, telling them to feast upon whomever might come through them. Shortly after, when a monk from the Order of the Omega got caught in the greystone trap on their bridge, one of the pairs of Vandals moved in to feed on the hapless monk, skirting around the silver guardians and taking bites from his exposed sections but not killing him.
As they traversed down the correct path of the Endless Tunnel, Sphinx left the remaining four Vandals to further slow any rivals that would make it that far.
Nearly a full day after entering the Labyrinth, the second pair of Vandals were in the entry tunnel Jack and his team entered from, with the first leaping onto Jack and trying to bite his face. Jack struggled to hold the Vandal off before Zoe shot him from point-blank and killed the viscous man. The minotaur Easton then explained the nature of the cannibalistic men, but as Jack started to take stock of their situation, Easton interrupted to warn that Vandals usually worked in pairs. At this moment, the second Vandal attacked and sent himself and Jack tumbling down the steps, triggering a sliding stone trap. Despite its ferocious efforts, "Smiley", one of the "palemen" under Easton's control, grabbed the Vandal and broke its neck.
As they moved into the First Cavern, Jack and his group noticed the other pair of Vandals after being drawn by the screams of the still-alive and suffering Omega monk. When the pair noticed them in turn, they were delighted by the prospect of "new meat" and began making their way over to the other bridge. As Lily and Easton arrived at the well-shaft, the Vandals intercepted them, the first tackling the minotaur to the ground while the other leapt at Lily. Catching her assailant first, Lily then threw the Vandal into the shaft, where it was sliced to pieces by the super-fine threads of filament wire crisscrossing the shaft. Easton, meanwhile, managed to jam his pistol into his opponent's mouth and fired, killing the Vandal.
In the Endless Tunnel, one of the remaining two pairs of Vandals set up an ambush, removing some of the crimson orbs that lit the tunnel in order to darken the space around them. When Jack later appeared and investigated a still goldman and dying Omega monk, one of the Vandals attacked him in the darkened section while their partner attacked Lily and Easton, knocking off his night-vision goggles. Taunting him about not being able to see, the Vandal bit into Jack's left arm, but because it was a titanium prosthetic, he broke his teeth on it. Taking advantage of the Vandal's pain and surprise, Jack grabbed him and fired blindly at his head, killing the Vandal. Its partner was picked up by Smiley and thrown down the tunnel towards the goldman, which had been awakened by the first Vandal's loud taunt. Looking into its face on reflex, the Vandal was suddenly and painfully blinded, and could not defend himself as the gold automaton picked him up and ripped him in half, shrieking as he died.
The final pair of Vandals attempted an ambush near the entrance to the City-Maze, killing two of General Garthon Rastor's men before one was felled and the other captured. Rather than simply kill the final Vandal, Rastor had him handcuffed and tethered to a nearby obelisk with a crimson orb tapped to its back, with Rastor telling it to get as close to Jack as possible when he arrived, as the Vandal would be his farewell gift.
Once Jack's team arrived at the entranceway, the Vandal rose from the ground after Rastor's sniper fired at them and began to approach, taunting Jack by telling him what Rastor had ordered him to do and mentioning the "little red thing" attached to his body. As Jack realised what the Vandal was saying, Rastor's sniper hit the crimson orb on the Vandal's back, causing the mysterious object to detonate and kill the final Vandal instantly, though it failed to catch Jack's team in the blast.
Goals[]
The Vandals have no known goals of their own besides fulfilling their desire to prey upon and cannibalise people, which they typically do in pairs. Given that they are sometimes "kept" by the richest families of the Four Legendary Kingdoms, they may be employed as assassins or executioners.
The group of eight who were recruited into Sphinx's entourage were used by the Trismagi as a means of intimidating and executing his enemies in brutal fashion. After accompanying Sphinx's team into the Supreme Labyrinth, the Vandals were ordered to lie in wait for any of the Trismagi's rivals who might happen to make it into the Labyrinth and ambush them to kill them, or at least slow them down.
Trivia[]
- Mephisto, who had appeared in The Four Legendary Kingdoms, was only confirmed to have actually been one of their members in The One Impossible Labyrinth.
- The reason for the rarity of Vandals in the modern day presumably comes as a result of the collapse of their real-life kingdom during the Vandalic War of the 6th century.