#badgehunting

Day 10 - Na'Vi; Natus Vincere

Valve announced the first edition of The International on August 1, 2011. Sixteen teams were invited to compete in the tournament, which would also serve as the first public viewing of Dota 2. It started with a group stage in which the winners of each of the four groups were entered into a winner’s bracket, and the other teams entered the loser’s bracket. The rest of the tournament was then played as a double-elimination tournament. The final of this first tournament was between Ukrainian team Natus Vincere and Chinese team E-Home, with Natus Vincere winning the grand prize after beating E-Home in three out of the four matches.

The players on Na'Vi during the tournament were XBOCT, Dendi, Puppey, LighTofHeaveN, and Artstyle. The final match against E-Home they played a team comp of Chen, Beastmaster, Slardar, Weaver, and Puck.

Badge design by Rebecca Sharkey
21 days until The International, 2014.

Day 8 - Karroch, the Beastmaster

Karroch was born a child of the stocks. His mother died in childbirth; his father, a farrier for the Last King of Slom, was trampled to death when Karroch was five. Afterward Karroch was indentured to the king’s menagerie, where he grew up among all the beasts of the royal court: lions, apes, fell-deer, and things less known, things barely believed in. When the lad was seven, an explorer brought in a beast like none before seen. Dragged before the King in chains, the beast spoke, though its mouth moved not. Its words: a plea for freedom. The King only laughed and ordered the beast perform for his amusement; and when it refused, struck it with the Mad Scepter and ordered it dragged to the stocks.

Over the coming months, the boy Karroch sneaked food and medicinal draughts to the wounded creature, but only managed to slow its deterioration. Wordlessly, the beast spoke to the boy, and over time their bond strengthened until the boy found he could hold up his end of a conversation—could in fact speak now to all the creatures of the King’s menagerie. On the night the beast died, a rage came over the boy. He incited the animals of the court to rebel and threw open their cages to set them amok on the palace grounds. The Last King was mauled in the mayhem. In the chaos, one regal stag bowed to the boy who had freed him; and with Beastmaster astride him, leapt the high walls of the estate, and escaped. Now a man, Karroch the Beastmaster has not lost his ability to converse with wild creatures. He has grown into a warrior at one with nature’s savagery.

Badge design by Rebecca Sharkey
23 days until The International, 2014.

Day 7 - Slardar, the Slithereen Guard

Slardar is a Slithereen, one of the Deep Ones, guardian of the great wealth of sunken cities and the ancient riches buried there. In the lightless gulf of the great ocean abysses, the Slithereen Guard carries his lure-light with him through the secret treasure rooms. Subaqueous thieves (sent into the deeps by covetous dryland sorcerers) are drawn in by its friendly glow, never to return. He is utterly loyal, and his taciturn nature hides deep knowledge of the most secret places of the sea. He rises to the shallows in spite of the pain caused him by brightness, to commit reconnaissance, to make sure no one is conspiring against the depths, and sometimes in relentless pursuit of the rare few who manage to steal off with an item from the Sunken Treasury. Because he has spent his whole life at great pressure, under tremendous weight of the sea, Slardar the Slithereen Guard is a creature of great power.

Badge design by Rebecca Sharkey
24 days until The International, 2014.

Day 6 - Chen, the Holy Knight

Born in the godless Hazhadal Barrens, Chen came of age among the outlaw tribes who eked out an existence in the shimmering heat of the desert. Using an ancient form of animal enthrallment, Chen’s people husbanded the hardy desert locuthi, a stunted species of burrowing dragon that melted desert sands into tubes of glass where twice-a-year rains collected. Always on the edge of starvation and thirst, fighting amongst their neighbors and each other, Chen’s clan made the mistake, one fateful day, of ambushing the wrong caravan.

In the vicious battle that followed, Chen’s clan was outmatched. The armored Knights of the Fold made short work of the enthralled locuthi, who attacked and died in waves. With their dragons dead, the tribesmen followed. Chen struggled, and slashed, and clawed, and perished—or would have. Defeated, on his knees, he faced his execution with humility, offering his neck to the blade. Moved by Chen’s obvious courage, the executioner halted his sword. Instead of the blade, Chen was given a choice: death or conversion. Chen took to the faith with a ferocity. He joined the Fold and earned his armor one bloody conversion at a time. Now, with the fanaticism of a convert, and with his powers of animal enthrallment at their peak, he seeks out unbelievers and introduces them to their final reward.

Badge design by Rebecca Sharkey
25 days until The International, 2014.

Day 4 - Raijin, the Storm Spirit

Storm Spirit is literally a force of nature–the wild power of wind and weather, bottled in human form. And a boisterous, jovial, irrepressible form it is! As jolly as a favorite uncle, he injects every scene with crackling energy. But it was not always thus, and there was tragedy in his creation. Generations ago, in the plains beyond the Wailing Mountains, a good people lay starving in drought and famine. A simple elementalist, Thunderkeg by name, used a forbidden spell to summon the spirit of the storm, asking for rain. Enraged at this mortal’s presumption, the Storm Celestial known as Raijin lay waste to the land, scouring it bare with winds and flood. Thunderkeg was no match for the Celestial–at least until he cast a suicidal spell that forged their fates into one: he captured the Celestial in the cage of his own body. Trapped together, Thunderkeg’s boundless good humor fused with Raijin’s crazed energy, creating the jovial Raijin Thunderkeg, a Celestial who walks the world in physical form.

Badge design by Rebecca Sharkey
27 days until The International, 2014.

Day 3 - Crixalis, the Sand King

The sands of the Scintillant Waste are alive and sentient–the whole vast desert speaks to itself, thinking thoughts only such a vastness can conceive. But when it needs must find a form to communicate with those of more limited scope, it frees a fragment of itself, and fills a carapace of magic armor formed by the cunning Djinn of Qaldin. This essential identity calls itself Crixalis, meaning ‘Soul of the Sand,’ but others know it as Sand King. Sand King takes the form of a huge arachnid, inspired by the Scintillant Waste’s small but ubiquitous denizens; and this is a true outward expression of his ferocious nature. Guardian, warrior, ambassador–Sand King is all of these things, inseparable from the endless desert that gave him life.

Badge design by Rebecca Sharkey
28 days until The International, 2014.

Day 2 - Ethreain, the Lich

In life, the frost-mage Ethreain (not yet a Lich) had used the threat of destructive ice to enslave entire kingdoms. His subjects, aided by a few desperate magicians, eventually grew bold enough to ambush him. Armed with enough charmed rope to bind him forever, they tied the frost mage to adamant weights and dropped him in a pool known chiefly for being bottomless. It wasn’t. He only fell for a year or so before an outcrop snagged him. There he rested, dead but undecaying, until the geomancer Anhil thought to verify the legend of the supposedly bottomless Black Pool. Anhil’s plumbline snarled with the ropes that bound the drowned magician, and up he hauled an unexpected prize. Thinking that by rendering the dead undead, he could question the Lich about the properties of the pool, he removed the bindings and commenced a simple rite of resurrection. Even the descendants of Ethreain’s enemies were long forgotten by time, so there were none to warn Anhil against imprudence. But he learned the error of his judgment almost immediately, as Lich threw off the shackles and consumed him.

Badge design by Rebecca Sharkey
29 days until The International, 2014.

Day 1 - DotA 2

Established (officially released) in 2013 after that year’s The International competition. Owned and developed by VALVe. 

Badge design by Rebecca Sharkey
30 days until The International, 2014.