Howling Pothos

Biodata

Power Progression

Level 1 Attributes

These values come from his newly expanded player panel and subsequent point allocation 131 132.

Background

Howling Pothos was a professional gamer before entering World of Disorder. As a teenage prodigy, he relied on exceptional reactions and the ability to maintain concentration for long periods. His professional prime was short, and younger competitors eventually displaced him 520.

The game’s tangible attribute system allows him to rebuild the style he once excelled at. When rumors emerge of a real-world World of Disorder tournament, he commits his resources to immediate combat strength, hoping to distinguish himself as an individual competitor 520. The Jack-of-All-Trades Club is later identified as his former employer 788.

Personality

Pothos is analytical and pragmatic. He tests enemy attack patterns, studies unfamiliar mechanics, and assigns teammates roles according to their attributes rather than relying on enthusiasm alone. His early companions already regard him as their regular battle planner during the Rat King encounter 16 44.

He treats experimentation as a practical tool: feeding an aberrant plant with his own flesh, testing prolonged submersion, and searching for renewable resources all serve concrete goals 35 136. His business instincts are similarly results-oriented; he eventually realizes that organizing other players’ services can earn money without consuming all his own training time 553.

Despite his competitive priorities, he will sacrifice personal advantages for others. After nearly six months without a death, he deliberately abandons his original body to finish helping Enzo’s family escape Fir City 547. He also values combat-earned experience over heavily subsidized accounts, dismissing guild-backed competitors as “feed-raised” 614.

Abilities & Skills

Soul Returner

His innate Soul Returner ability permits repeated resurrection through suitable bodies 131.

• His strength depends on his current body, not his soul.
• A summoner must mediate between soul and body; the summoner’s death forces him back into soul form.
• Abandoning a body leaves its equipment, carried items, and money behind 131 547.

Directed Alienation — Plants

Pothos gathers psionic energy through thought to reshape his body along plant-related lines. Its effectiveness depends on Willpower, Plant Compatibility, and Psionic Energy Compatibility 131.

• Weapon formation: Creates wooden knives and daggers; later produces a hand-mounted bolt launcher 126 132 790.
• Defense: Forms a palm-sized buckler and later a bark shield for landing after a fall 182 791.
• Utility: Makes a breathing tube for underwater work and a wooden strip to lift a door bolt 542 551.
• Speed: By Duolin’s test, his transformations are considerably faster than those of ordinary newly trained players, though still slower than Duolin’s 181.
• Limits: Requires recoverable psionic energy and cannot itself produce the conspicuous increase in arm volume achieved by his Deadwood Vine implant 126 182.

Symbiotic Plant Control

He supplements bodily transformations with implanted plants, using their growth as armor, anchors, and rescue lines 182 183 791.

• Deadwood Vine: Rapidly proliferates from his left arm to absorb and redirect a sword strike 182.
• Strangler Figs: Two plants around his legs root underground, supporting an otherwise mechanically impossible backward dodge 183.
• Anchoring and retrieval: Roots himself to solid ground while extending other vines toward players trapped in a weightless field 791.
• Estimated maximum reach: Oil Vines approximately thirty meters, Deadwood Vines twenty-five meters, and Strangler Figs twenty meters at the time of the rescue 791.

Combat Analysis and Leadership

Pothos combines fast reactions with an ability to identify attack cycles and organize coordinated responses 16 44 181.

• Converts an early Deadwood Vine fight into a repeatable sequence of attacks and dodges 16.
• Allocates Rat King battle roles after collecting his teammates’ four basic attributes 44.
• Recognizes the wooden house monster’s rooting attack and physically pushes two companions clear of emerging spikes 88 89.
• Passes Duolin’s five-move test through blocking, redirection, and evasive movement. Duolin holds back his strength, so this is a successful test rather than a victory over him 182.
• Identifies poison as a central part of Antiya Lisi’s abilities during their confrontation 674.

Prolonged Submersion

His plant-person body tolerates a lack of breathing far better than a real human body 136 541.

• Completes a five-minute underwater test and estimates that ten minutes should be achievable with training; the latter is his estimate, not the test result 136.
• Uses this tolerance to investigate Fir City’s river entrance 541 542.
• Remains vulnerable to cold, stiffening limbs, and stamina depletion. A breathing tube extends his working time but does not eliminate hypothermia 541 542.

Infiltration and Reconnaissance

He uses disguises, improvised cover stories, and environmental observation to penetrate restricted areas 524 525 527.

• Maps Fir City’s residential district and collects a glowing streetlight plant for Ed 524.
• Impersonates a cleric and invokes the archbishop’s authority to bypass questioning 525.
• Holds his breath while activating a Paralysis Bomb against his own chest, exploiting a narrow corridor against two guards 527.
• Organizes a relay-style surveillance operation against Antiya Lisi after concluding that a lone observer would be too vulnerable 587.

Equipment & Items

Custom Symbiotic Armguards

Do Some Farm Work builds Pothos’s first custom forearm weapon for two gold coins. Blood-Drinking Thornbush thorns penetrate his skin, consume nutrients from his body, and establish a nerve connection to its mechanisms 521.

• The armguard’s underlying feeding causes continuing HP loss, which he offsets with bandages and resin 521.
• By the Antiya Lisi battle, he wears a bracer on each arm 674.
• His relatively high Plant Compatibility supports permanent bark soft armor unavailable to less compatible users 772.

Other Notable Items

• Ability Blessing Card: Consumable that raises one or two attributes to Ed Adrian’s corresponding values. One attribute lasts one minute; two last thirty seconds. Pothos spends it on Psionic Energy Compatibility 677.
• Nutrient-Rich Resin: Restores health spent feeding his equipment and supports repeated launcher use 674 791.
• Paralysis Bombs: Used against chapel guards and a room of Thorn Rats in the cathedral dungeon 527 715.
• Enhancement injections: Uses high-concentration Trenbolone, Anadrol, and Hisron before fighting Antiya Lisi; later purchases a basic-stat enhancement without Dragon Transformation for the Muller battle 674 852.
• Corpse poison crystals: Swallows a handful to trigger Blood Corpse transformation 677.
• Plant seedlings: Carries dried Deadwood Vine and Strangler Fig seedlings for implantation and emergency use 791.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Early Exploration and the Rat King

Pothos participates in the beginner expedition, learning to descend the castle’s gravity-distorted stairs with the other early players 14. He soon establishes himself as a tactical organizer by analyzing Deadwood Vine attacks 16.

Concerned that harvested resources may not regenerate, he places a living vine fragment and flesh cut from his own body into a stump. The fragment’s recovery becomes the basis for his monster-breeding experiment 35. When the Rat King threatens the unfinished farm, he plans the group’s response, assigning himself and Great Wei Boxing Champion to lure it using blood and expendable loot 44.

Wooden House Monster and Early Recognition

During the wooden house monster battle, he spots its underground rooting attack and saves two nearby companions 88 89. A later wooden spike pierces his right chest and pins him to the ground; by the rescue, one leg has also been crushed. Litang’s Supremely Fierce Tiger plugs the chest wound with a vine bandage, after which Pothos directs him to recover Do Some Farm Work’s remains for resurrection 92 95.

In the apostate-capture emergency quest, he personally restrains one target and assists with two others. His settlement records an S rating, ten points of Ed’s trust, and twenty silver coins awaiting collection 99.

Plant Farming and Duolin’s Training

Pothos continues raising a baby Deadwood Vine in a protected tree hollow. Dawn Ah supplies paralyzed Thorn Rats as feed and takes an interest in the experiment 119 120. Pothos then learns Directed Alienation from Duolin and becomes the server’s first player to level up 126 131 132 181.

His five-move performance against Duolin strengthens his reputation among the closed-beta players 182 183. By his later farm-sale negotiations, he owns fifteen Deadwood Vines and three Strangler Figs. He asks one gold coin for the operation and estimates approximately thirty silver coins in monthly net income with adequate nutrition; no completed sale is confirmed 256.

Fir City Infiltration and Enzo’s Family

Equipped with his custom armguard, Pothos infiltrates Fir City and investigates a chapel’s hidden underground facilities 521 524 527. He deceives the researcher Zarke into leaving with him, collects research materials and specimens, and brings him back bound beneath a Soldier Bee 527 528 529.

With Epic-Level Giant’s help, he establishes a riverside supply station and cuts an underwater passage through Fir City’s metal grate 541 542. Inside the city, he encounters Enzo, a Living Wood who retains his reason and wants to protect his family 543.

Pothos arranges the family’s evacuation by Soldier Bees. To get ahead of them and finish the arrangements, he voluntarily abandons his original body—his first death after nearly six months of play 546 547. He later returns to Enzo’s house, finds his former corpse still on the bed, and proposes using the house as a private meeting point 551.

Supply Business and the Avengers

Pothos proposes monetizing the hidden river route through paid passage and smuggling, alongside fish trading and an expanded roadside supply business 553. His shipping service later handles stolen Holy Crusader documents for a ten-percent commission 606.

When the Holy Crusaders destroy the supply station and capture the players there, he joins Good Times Don’t Last’s Avengers group 614. Selected as the group’s “sharpest blade,” he confronts Antiya Lisi to expose the enemy’s symbiotic abilities 645.

After identifying Antiya Lisi’s poison, Pothos uses the Ability Blessing Card, triggers Blood Corpse transformation, and offers his body to Antos. He relinquishes control knowing the possession will destroy the host, then records the resulting battle for potentially valuable footage 674 677 678.

Following the Fir City fighting, he relays Howard’s location to Ed and later joins the cathedral dungeon expedition, incapacitating Thorn Rats with Paralysis Bombs 695 715.

Chariot Race and Wilderness Expedition

Unable to ride a Hoofed Beast successfully, Pothos turns to a carriage and recruits Zhongde, Litang’s Supremely Fierce Tiger, and Easily Soluble in Water for a race against two club teams 787 788. The ensuing conflict leaves players trapped in a weightless field. He escapes through launcher recoil, then begins assisting the others with implanted vines 790 791.

During the expedition, he questions Silvis closely enough to expose the earlier force’s failure against Grand Duke Antos 806. He also helps arrange a combat commission that doubles as a stress test for an unfinished troop carrier 826. In Klaf City’s tunnels, he identifies an overlooked lead: the digging Blood Corpses may have been summoned by a powerful member of their kind 938.

Imperial Service

Pothos later leads a ten-person squad serving the Empire. Despite having reached Middle Tier, he cannot overcome an ambush by seventy or eighty skeleton soldiers supported by opposing players 1281. His squad subsequently investigates reports that the Skeleton Alliance animates bodies with souls other than their original owners 1282.

He fights a Middle Tier fortress knight, and his squad’s successful fort raid earns an opportunity to report military merit. Viscount Alfonso summons him as a decurion alongside Centurion Practice More If You’re Bad 1287 1294.

His stated origin in Green Forest Territory and use of a symbiotic plant lead Imperial nobles and soldiers to treat him as an uncivilized outsider. The players find this stereotype useful as a cover for their unusual names and behavior 1294 1315. He also leads a party involved in a second arranged match near Sandcastle Number Fourteen. Later, Practice More If You’re Bad cites Pothos’s supposed detection of a demon while persuading Alfonso to perform the ritual that summons Duma 1305 1320.

Relationships

• Ed Adrian — Summoner and faction leader. Pothos relies on his faction’s resurrection system, gathers samples and intelligence for him, and eventually uses his Ability Blessing Card 131 132 524 677 695.
• Duolin — Directed Alienation instructor and combat examiner. Recognizes Pothos’s talent and approves his five-move performance 126 182 183.
• Good Times Don’t Last — Early teammate, business collaborator, and Avengers organizer. Respects Pothos’s tactical leadership and initially excludes him from the revenge operation to avoid slowing his progress 44 553 614.
• Do Some Farm Work — Longtime friend, custom weaponsmith, and proposed business partner. Gives him a discounted custom armguard because they have both played since launch 521 553.
• Dawn Ah — Experimental collaborator. Supplies feed for his vine and assists with the underwater test in exchange for debt cancellation 119 136.
• Epic-Level Giant — Riverside supply-station partner. Supports his underwater infiltration attempts, rescues him from the freezing river, and provides food and equipment 541 542.
• Enzo — Living Wood ally. Entrusts Pothos with evacuating his family and later agrees to meet privately at his former home 543 546 547 551.
• Litang’s Supremely Fierce Tiger — Rescuer and later racing teammate 95 788.
• Antiya Lisi — Major enemy whose poison abilities Pothos exposes through a deliberately high-risk confrontation 645 674 677.
• Antos — Blood Corpse progenitor whom Pothos invites to possess his body as a sacrificial weapon against Antiya Lisi 678.
• Practice More If You’re Bad — Imperial centurion and fellow player; works with him on military reporting and the events leading to Duma’s summoning 1294 1320.

Notable Quotes

“If we can successfully breed monsters ourselves, you know what that means, right?” 35

“How can those feed-raised derp accounts compare to me? Only improvements earned through combat fit your body best.” 614

“I hadn’t wanted to use this. But I don’t want to lose.” 677

“My turn, draw!” 677