Cerben



Cerben, more commonly known by his codename "Twelvehound" (although he disliked being called this), was an Imbiber and a member of the Dark Hunters. Known for his ten-member pack of procedurally reanimated Energy Hounds, he mostly served The Shadowed One as an assistant to "Eliminator", helping him track down incompetent or renegade Dark Hunters seeking refuge in the Southern Islands.

Early History
Like with all members of his species, Cerben began his life living on an unknown island in the Southern Islands. As other Imbibers quickly left their home and spread throughout the universe, however, he chose to stay close to his origin, living a rather peaceful life as a sport hunter. It was during this time that he began using his Rhotuka power to set up mechanisms for trapping game, although he would have a streak of mangled, unsellable kills before he was particularly precise or accurate with the practice. After several situations where he found himself almost able to kill another Rahi in a pack after killing one, he had a Great Tryna made for him and began using it to reanimate his kills and use them to his advantage.

Because of his macabre hunting methods, he gained a reputation among others as sadistic and subject to schadenfreude, even though this wasn't the case. After gaining an urban legend-like status among the local Matoran populations, they would begin trying to hunt him down. Only some would find him, and few of them would be courageous enough to try and slay him, even though he never fought back against the feeble attempts on his life. Eventually, he would begin using his Rhotuka to brutally and temporarily murder his hunters to discourage others from bothering him.

Dark Hunters
Cerben's first encounter with the Dark Hunters would occur when, in an attempt to frighten a local Matoran village, he used his Rhotuka to take the life of a Matoran. When Cerben was found by "Lurker", who had apparently been tasked with capturing the Matoran alive, the Dark Hunter grew furious with him and attempted to kill him. Cerben fought back, and luckily for him, the Matoran reformed before "Lurker" could succeed. The two parted ways without major injuries. Now somewhat fearful of the Dark Hunters and very curious as to what they did, Cerben decided it would be in his best interest to give up hunting and get recruited into the organization. He soon found Odina, met the training requirements, and was accepted into the organization. As his true, name already brought fear to many inhabitants of the Southern Islands, he did not submit a codename.

Although Cerben was enthusiastic about tracking down targets, he did not find enjoyment in other kinds of operations and began to feel melancholic between missions. He hoped to improve his tracking and pursuit capabilities and subsequently make him more likely to be chosen for such missions. After several experiments with his arsenal and methods, he settled on utilizing a twelve-member pack of Energy Hounds. This worked, but not to the extent he had hoped for, and he began expressing regrets about joining the organization.

On one of his most fateful missions, Cerben teamed up with fellow Dark Hunter Tayorús to track down and hijack an airship carrying unknown but reportedly very valuable cargo. Cerben would soon find out that a portion of this cargo was Antidermis, as he was knocked into a vat of it while battling a group of mercenaries hired to protect the airship. He absorbed a significant amount of the substance before Tayorús was able to pull him out without endangering herself. Immediately, his strength was increased, and his organic parts began to expand, most notably in his lower arms, where his armor restricted their ability to receive nutrients. Cerben then secured his success by tricking his opponents into falling into the Antidermis as well, causing them to become docile and receptive to his and Tayorús's orders.

Creation of "Twelvehound"
Having absorbed as much Antidermis as he did, Cerben gained access to the knowledge that all Makuta possessed and learned about the true nature of the Matoran Universe. "Virid", an incorporeal entity inhabiting his head, emerged from the incident and told him that, in order to fulfill his destiny of protecting the will of Mata Nui, he would need to make his way to Daxia. Initially, Cerben did not take the revelations lightly and refused to speak with anyone except The Shadowed One for several weeks. As his lower arms were deprived of nutrients during and after his mission, they were rendered weak and frail and were eventually amputated. Cerben attempted to explain his plight to the leader of the Dark Hunters (keeping a large majority of what he had learned a secret) but was denied permission to travel to Daxia for his own personal gain.

Desperate to fulfill his destiny, Cerben eventually considered attempting to leave the Dark Hunters, even knowing the consequences of doing so. He brought this up in a conversation with another Dark Hunter, who encouraged him to do so, stating that she wished to be the one who The Shadowed One would send to track him down and kill him. The interaction gave him the idea to dedicate himself to tracking down Dark Hunters attempting to escape the organization. A strong motivation for this came after a group of Dark Hunters successfully vanished from the organization's sights. Cerben grew envious of their fortune in escaping The Shadowed One's grasp and wished to hunt them down. Keeping his motivations hidden, he asked The Shadowed One to send him to find and kill them. His leader said he would consider it if he could prove his tracking abilities were adept enough that he did not need to spend time between missions training on Odina.

On his next few missions, Cerben discovered his Rahi Control and Ice Resistance powers and "Virid"'s ability to share the load of concentrating on using his Tryna. As his Energy Hounds were notorious for their high turnover rate, Cerben found that reanimating dead pack members was much more efficient than paying for and training living replacements. He became more efficient at tracking down targets, especially in the Southern Islands where his survival skills and familiarity with the region made it relatively easy for him to navigate. This proved enough for The Shadowed One to personally send him to accompany "Eliminator" in tracking down the deserted Dark Hunters, who had apparently taken refuge within the perilous Southern Islands. Within mere days the deserters had been tracked down and slain, although two of Cerben's Energy Hounds had been destroyed irreparably in the process. The Shadowed One was pleased by Cerben's competence and agreed to let him assist "Eliminator" in his endeavors when he was not going on missions others had hired him for. With his desires met and his capabilities boosted by the support of "Virid", Cerben decided against replacing the two casualties. Rather, he finally submitted an official codename to The Shadowed One, "Twelvehound", elaborating that the term referred to him, his ten Energy Hounds, and "Virid" as one entity.

Powers and Equipment
As an Imbiber, Cerben had immense strength and endurance, slight resistance to most toxins (including Pit Mutagen), the power to emit blasts of energy from his hands, and the ability to be physically enhanced after absorbing Antidermis. After his first and only absorption of Antidermis, he was gifted with increased strength, knowledge about the Matoran Universe, and the Kraata Powers of Rahi Control and Ice Resistance. He wore a Great Tryna, the Mask of Reanimation, which allowed him to give artificial life to corpses and control them as long as concentration was kept on it.

Cerben once bore a pair of secondary arms like all Imibibers, but they were amputated after his Antidermis absorption caused his armor to restrict the flow of nutrients into them for an extended period of time. He wielded the Whirling Blade, a large, double-bladed weapon that he could use to channel his energy blasts into more direct beams. The weapon also served as a Rhotuka launcher, allowing him to manifest and fire his Impermanent Obliteration Rhotuka. Upon striking a target, his Rhotuka would fragment either all of it or a portion of it, depending on how much power he put into it. After around 20 minutes, the target would reform back to its former, undamaged state. He could also choose to reform a destroyed target before 20 minutes were up, which was useful seeing as he couldn't fire a new Rhotuka if the power of the last one was still in effect. Most commonly, he would use it to set up traps: he would destroy a large structure with it, lure an opponent into the space it once inhabited, and reform it around them, causing its fragments to kill them as they flew back together. Although he was capable of killing an opponent instantly and controlling their corpse with his Tryna until they reformed, he was never able to accomplish this in combat since the intensity of battle stripped him of the concentration needed to keep his Rhotuka from damaging his target's central nervous system.

Cerben's most useful tools were his ten Energy Hounds, all of which were dead and in varying stages of decay. They bore prostheses replacing lost limbs and dorsal armor to protect their central nervous systems. When they were needed, he would use his Tryna to reanimate all of them, commanding them to do what he pleased. The amount of concentration required to reanimate and command all of them often made Cerben immobile. To counteract this, “Virid” would often bear some of the burden of concentrating on using the Tryna, giving Cerben himself the ability to fight alongside his pack. If he needed to accomplish more complex tasks with his Energy Hounds, he would also use Rahi Control to manipulate one or two directly, although this was often at the cost of his and "Virid"'s ability to keep the other eight-to-nine pack members undead.

Given his power of Ice Resistance and natural wide, webbed feet, Cerben was adept at working in the cold. If he needed to travel in the snow, he would sometimes forgo motorized vehicles in favor of dog sledding with his Energy Hounds using any sled he could buy locally. As he had access to all knowledge that the Makuta were given, he had a basic understanding of Rahi biology, which allowed him to adapt and armor his Energy Hounds to make them easier to control with his Tryna. In addition, he could use "Virid" to solve complex problems and make fast calculations in his head; combined with his natural observant behavior, he was very hard to trap, escape from, or outsmart.

Personality and Traits
Many were often confused about Cerben's more commonly used codename, especially considering the fact that he owned ten Energy Hounds rather than twelve. According to him, the word Twelvehound was defined as a “mindset” and a “state of being” (despite this, “Twelvehound” was still his official Dark Hunter codename). He further explained that Twelvehound was also a “collection of twelve entities with intertwined existences”. These entities were him, his ten Energy Hounds, and "Virid". According to him, he and “Virid” had some mental connection to each of his Energy Hounds, outside of his Tryna and Rahi Control power. Cerben was known for growing angry with those who repeatedly called him by his codename, stating that using it to refer to him was “erroneous” and a “product of misunderstanding”.

Befitting of his occupation, Cerben was stubborn, dedicated, studious, and curious. His ability to find clues frequently bled into his social interactions, as his tendency to study others and decipher their backstories from simple clues tended to draw ire to him. He rarely found personal interest in other people, but more often saw people as things to be learned from a disconnected, academic standpoint. In extreme cases, he would go as far as to purposefully offend another in order to extract more information and speculation from their reaction.

After he failed to find enjoyment in anything other than tracking missions, the revelation that he had a destiny that he needed to complete by traveling to Daxia remotivated him. His lifelong, forced loyalty to the Dark Hunters prevented him from even beginning to fulfill his destiny, however. Because of this, he held a great and envious hatred towards other Dark Hunters who had even considered going rogue. He strongly believed that if he couldn't leave then he should have ensured that nobody else could leave either. Since this belief was intertwined with the truths "Virid" had opened his eyes to, he had to keep it a secret, sometimes puzzling others who had previously identified him as apathetic toward his organization.

"Virid"
The space inside Cerben's head was shared between him and a being who referred to itself as "Virid". Similar to how Brutaka referred to himself with "we" after encountering the pit where the Makuta were created, "Virid" also manifested after Cerben's only experience with Antidermis, but chose to keep itself separate from him. It was possible that this separation was not absolute, given Cerben's definition of "Twelvehound" and the fact that knowledge of the Matoran Universe had come to him instantaneously. "Virid" did not seem to have much of a personality of its own and made no attempt to give its own opinions on anything. It was, however, adept at making calculations, and Cerben sometimes "handed" it mathematical problems to solve if he was too tired or preoccupied to solve them himself. Given this and the vast knowledge it provided, it could be reasonably likened to a computer within Cerben's head.

Trivia

 * After his secondary arms were amputated, Cerben had a pair of large faulds attached to his armor in their place. This was primarily done to make it hard for others to discern whether or not he had hidden arms.
 * Cerben and his page were created for the Dark Hunter MOC Contest.
 * He makes several references to the Cerberus of Greek mythology and other canine guardians of the underworld:
 * His name is based on the Cerberus.
 * His usage of reanimated Energy Hounds references the creature and its role in the underworld more overtly.
 * ”Twelvehound”, when read aloud, sounds similar to “hellhound”, a word describing any sort of mythological hound that guards the underworld.
 * Cerben was inspired by the character Sofia from John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, who owned two combat-trained Belgian Malinois and utilized them while fighting.
 * Initially, Cerben was written to have absorbed only a miniscule portion of Antidermis, with the resulting entity in his mind withholding the truth about the Matoran Universe from him. Although he had already decided on Cerben’s vendetta against fleeing Dark Hunters, Cap later found that Cerben wanting to fulfill his destiny but being unable to provided more strength to his motive.