Dark Caster

You're sitting on a chair that's too large for you in a dungeon room sloppily decorated with some torches, two tables with three chairs, a shelf with some books and bottles, and some bones in the corner. A green slime is sleeping on the table you're sitting by, two goblins in leather armor are sitting at the other table and a ramshackle skeleton warrior wearing about half a rusty iron armor is leaning against the stone wall, having a one-sided conversation with a disease-ridden giant rat.

And then there's you. You're slightly taller than three feet, your fragile body draped with a wide, dark purple robe that makes you look fatter than you are, your hands covered with a pair of black gloves with pointy fingertips and your somewhat oversized head hidden by the hood of your robe, which makes your face appear as nothing but a pitch-black void with two glowing red dots which you see through, also referred to as eyes.

You're a dark caster, the first spellcasting monster most heroes come across. Lore-wise you're essentially the magical equivalent of a footsoldier, your kind trained in massive groups and only taught to cast a few basic spells before you're thrown out to aid other monsters in battling heroes. Gameplay-wise, however, you're more of a late tutorial enemy, meant to teach players to deal with enemy spells and status effects. This is your expertise. Or well, novice... tise. You pull up your stat menu, as if you even need a reminder of what you can do, and more importantly, can't do.

Dark Caster
Lvl: 4
Melee Attack: 0
Ranged Attack: 0
Armor: 0
Weakness: Melee
Special Abilities:
Hex: Reduces target's damage resistance by -25% for 20 seconds.
Curse: Reduces target's attack damage by -25% for 20 seconds.
Ward: Increases target's damage resistance by +25% for 30 seconds.
Empower: Increases target's attack damage by +25% for 30 seconds.

Your arsenal of spells makes your purpose blatantly obvious: You're a support class. You exist to cast buffs on your allies and debuffs on your enemies. You can't even attack on your own, making you even more dependent on other monsters, and being a mage enemy you have really low health and armor as well. Your weakness stat is what you find the most insulting... It might as well say "Weakness: Attacking".

You desperately want more, both as a mage and as a monster. You want to learn flashier spells and be able to hold your own in a fight. You have heard gossip that there are higher-level dark casters deeper into the dungeon, and they have more spells that are apparently also more useful. Leveling up would probably solve all your problems, but that's easier said and done. First of all, you're a low-level monster whose combat strategy is completely dependent on other low-level monsters. And in the rare cases where you and your coworkers do manage to kill a hero, you never notice a difference. Since you can't attack, you can't directly kill a hero and thus cannot get the XP for doing so. You've heard that there are some vague algorithms giving you part of the XP if a slain hero was under the effect of your debuffs or the monster that killed them was under the effect of your buffs, but you wouldn't know since you've never leveled up. If XP is supposed to feel like anything, you don't get enough from it to notice.

You would attempt to go deeper into the dungeon and try to talk with the higher-level dark casters, but the rules are strict. Monsters stay in their assigned areas of the dungeon. They may move around those areas as they please, but never cross into another.

As such you are now sitting in this room with a bunch of other losers, awaiting the next hero. You're not bound to stay in that one room, but it's a rather popular hotspot for this dungeon section's monsters, which is good for you as it gives you lots of allies to buff and a higher chance of victory. Your Killed Hero/Killed by Hero ratio still isn't great though. In fact, it's kind of pathetic.

You fold your arms on the table and lean your head onto it, poking the slime idly. It jiggles slightly each time, making for a moderately entertaining pastime compared to what you're used to. It comes to an end after a few minutes when the slime wakes up and squirts some of itself in your face. You wipe it off while muttering some non-magical curses and toss the glob of slime back at its owner.