It’s been years since Ardan was released for Vainglory, but he still resonates so strongly with the community that I think of him as a franchise character, second only to Catherine. Ardan is a perfect storm of a character: great look, fun (and almost always meta) kit, and a deep story.
Ardan’s dilemma resides at the base of every new father’s gut. I was tasked to handle the deep fear of having to choose between protecting a child or a wife. The designer who created him reiterated this point more than once. There needed to be no third option, and the results had to be tragic. And because the kiddos were coming out in the next two updates, Ardan's impossible decision was predetermined.
Creation comes from a vulnerable place. You may find, working with someone else’s story, that you’re developing something that your designer’s afraid of, or attracted to, something they don’t even admit to themselves. It’s important to recognize this as a gift, to protect it, to do your best with it, and to honor it with enough skill that the person with the original inspiration feels that it was done well. It was important as hell for me to get Ardan right, for all the fathers I love.
But I also needed Ardan to speak to me, narratively and literally, since I was also writing his VO script. So I took his original concept and kit and started freewriting.
I began with Ardan’s main archetype: “Dad.” Everything about his story linked directly to his twin kids, Celeste and Vox. The first line I wrote for him was, “Nothing comes between me and my children.” “Get off my lawn” was an easy quip. In his casting sides, we asked for something like “Liam Neeson from “Taken.”
And Ardan started talking to me.
Before the development of Taizen Gate, I wrote about he and his kids fleeing a city whenever they were recognized. In early drafts, Ardan argued with his dead wife, Julia, as if she were sitting beside him. His history as a former Technologist soldier who’d been instrumental in the civil war against Gythia explained his armor and technologically advanced ultimate ability. I was working through a draft of what would become the final lore when someone suggested that Ardan be really into... cooking.
Fatherhood wasn’t aspirational enough, they said. They figured he’d been a cook in the army, and his armor got so hot that he could actually cook off of it.
“Got it,” I said, and sat down to write.
“I’m not a damn cook,” said Ardan.
“Look, Ardan, with all due respect, I’m new here,” I said. “I’m getting paid to write and I’m not going to screw that up by arguing with people who have been doing this longer than I have. Sorry, but you’re a cook.”
“Fine,” said Ardan. “Here’s how I cook.”
He told me about cooking for his kids, alone in a smoggy city, the three of them struggling without Julia. He broke the yolks. He burned the toast. Defeated, they ate cereal together in silence. They went out for ramen in the Taizen market, awkward together under neon signs, and Vox tried to make the other two laugh.
“Come on, man,” I pleaded.
“I’m not a cook,” said Ardan.
“I know,” I sighed. Writing Ardan as a cook was a lie, a lie that my readers would feel.
So, I pivoted. Who was Ardan, besides a dad? He'd been a Technologist rebel before he met Julia. What had he been doing for a living since?
I don’t remember who suggested that he be a mechanic, but it fit. He wore machinery from twenty years prior, so he must have known how to maintain it. I wrote about the MECHANIC sign blinking into Celeste’s bedroom window and that back room of the garage where the power armor was upgraded and overclocked.
I could have forced the cook story. Writing is just putting words down on paper, one after the other, after all. I cannot explain the invisible hand that forces me to stop when I’m doing it wrong, but it exists and I have learned to submit to it. There have been times that I didn’t, one time in particular that erupted into a heated yelling match in an echoing hallway between me and my editor, who did not deserve my stubbornness on the subject of one small line of dialogue, but I had a barbarian lady yelling in my inner ear. I didn’t win that one, and that one stupid line, gone forever, still itches at my brain. In Catherine’s “What Must Be Done” story, an early draft had Julia going on and on about how the Gythian region just didn’t have the right terroir for wine; this got cut, but still my noodle can’t let it go. Somewhere, in some other dimension, Julia and Catherine had that conversation, and I didn’t record it faithfully.
Making Ardan a mechanic rather than a cook did more than fit his personality and fill out his voiceover script. It made him the kind of guy who fixes. When the Gythians and the Stormguard attack, he reacts by getting into his power armor and angrily running straight into the battle, catching his falling children just in time. He bulldozes over Celeste’s ambitions and shoves Vox aside. Keeping this line of honest communication open with Ardan allowed him to make human decisions. It made him a real parent. Despite his signature voiceover line, “Nothing comes between me and my children,” he sent them away and risked everything for the Technologist rebellion against Gythia. Whether you see this from the perspective of a parent who struggles to maintain autonomy or as a kid who is angry at her own father for going back on his word, this story demanded my own blood. That’s why I listen. Because my readers deserve nothing less than blood.
Thanks so much to allhunterr vg for allowing me to use his collection of Vainglory voice lines and to Owen Thomas for voicing Ardan.
Also please check out Halcyon Masters’ video on Ardan’s family lore.