How Many Ants Would You Crush to Survive?
Going into the third Kinfire Delve Box, Callous’ Lab, I was in the home stretch for the initial planned run of Delve boxes, and I wanted to end on a strong note. Like all of the Kinfire Delve products, I started by designing the Well Master, Callous. Since everything in Delve flows from the Well’s Master, it’s extremely important to have a strong concept for the Master, both personality- and appearance-wise. I wanted this Master to be a scientist, as a nice foil for Vainglory’s artist and Scorn’s ruler/warden vibes, but a dispassionate, totally logical scientist just didn’t want to come together for me. It felt like he wouldn’t be able to stand on the same stage as the others - his personality was too soft and quiet.
Enter the plague. Taking a bit of inspiration from Batman’s Mister Freeze, and Jim Henson’s the Dark Crystal, we came up with the idea that Callous had caught some kind of strange disease that is slowly killing him. As an immortal being that has never known the fear of death, it quickly consumed him, the search for a cure becoming an obsession with no limits. A good villain needs a core of something for the audience to empathize with. Vainglory is desperately lonely. Scorn seeks justice for horrible wrongs inflicted upon him. Callous doesn’t want to die. It’s what the villain does in response to these emotions that makes them a villain, and Callous immediately began draining the life from other beings in order to slow the disease while he sought a cure.
With the basic concept fleshed out, Callous really started coming together. I imagined him processing his fear in bouts of irrational rage and depression, but as an incredibly brilliant being, he would keep coming back to his core of narcissism. Mocking the Seekers, challenging their minds in various insulting ways, and always smugly sure that he will defeat them. A bit of Edward Nygma (another Batman inspiration), a dash of Vizzini (Princess Bride), and he was fully formed.
The art team took his arrogance in a visual direction by giving him draconic traits that come out more and more the angrier he gets. His outfit was simple and practical, just a lab apron to keep him tidy. There was some struggle with the plague, as I wanted it represented visually, but didn’t want to dredge up anyone’s real world traumas, but in the end we depicted it as greenish crystals growing from his skin, slowly taking him over and turning him into a jagged crystal statue.
As for Callous’ Well, I wanted to bring a very different look to it from the other two, so the keyword I gave the art team was “haphazard”, as opposed to “beautiful” and “imposing” for Vainglory and Scorn, respectively. I wanted to represent a ‘cluttered’ thought process, and I asked for lots of classically “scientific” locations, such as libraries, labs, planetariums, etc. Most of the enemies are the result of Callous’ experiments. That said, there are some outliers, which include both creatures that Callous was unable to control, and the physical manifestations of Callous’ fear of death.
Mechanically, Callous and his Well are designed to ambush and outwit you. Like a combo deck in a CCG, the challenges interact with each other in surprising and potentially devastating ways. Callous’ core mechanic represents his search for a cure by placing progress tokens on his card at the start of the game. If they ever run out, he has cured his disease, and then turns his attentions to Atios as a whole. This gives the players an extra resource that they have to manage to avoid this instant loss, and is one of the reasons that I held off on Callous til last in release order, since it’s a slightly more complicated Well to manage.
In terms of Callous’ exhaustion cards, they mostly interact with Callous’ progress tokens, but they also help to set up and intensify the combos that I described above. Anything bad that can happen to the Seekers, can be made worse by Callous’ exhaustion cards. More damage, more discards, etc. Unusually, some of Callous’ exhaustion cards take effect and then get shuffled back into the deck, where generally exhaustion cards come out and stay out. In a weird way, this makes exhaustion mitigation that much less effective against Callous.
As with the other two Masters, Callous also makes a guest appearance in Kinfire Council, where he’s actually one of the most devastating threats Din’Lux can face. While he takes a long time to trigger, if he goes off, odds are really good that the Cult is going to win that game.
Lastly, I’d like to just point out my favorite joke in the box, which is the Sapience Test challenge. In the art, I was very insistent that it should have three seashells, since as any Demolition Man fan knows, “Don’t you know how to use the three seashells?”
Will there be more Delve boxes? Hard to say, and it depends on how the three initial boxes sell, ultimately, but I have some ideas socked away just in case. In the meantime, seek out victory, and return safely!
-Kevin Wilson