SavantReport
English：Savant · Characters
A Scorchlander who calls himself a doctor and leads a band of Skeletons convinced they are human; he feeds living people into a Peeler Machine purely to stitch a "soul" onto a machine.
Savant is the leader of the Skin Bandits (also called the Skinned), based at the Skinhouse HQ in the Sonorous Dark in the far south-east of the continent. He sits on his throne or lies in his bed surrounded entirely by Skeletons — while he himself is a living Scorchlander male.
That combination is the heart of this entry: a human ruling a pack of machines that firmly believe they are human. An entire organisation whose faith is "becoming human", with the only real person in it sitting at the top[V1 0:03:21].
The Skin Eater's wanted poster
The United Cities poster names him "Savant the Skin Eater", charged with the disappearance of hundreds of people in the restricted lands south of the Great Desert — bodies recovered with the skin and outer flesh stripped away in sheets. The same poster admits that the authorities know nothing of the culprit's appearance, origin or affiliation.
Eighty thousand cats is the highest of any cult leader on the continent. Matching that figure is his isolation: the Skin Bandits are simultaneously at war with the Skeleton Bandits, the Reavers, the Crab Raiders and the United Cities, without a single friend[V2 0:05:47].
Because almost nobody outside the restricted lands knows the Skin Bandits exist, their work has long been blamed on mythical creatures. A player squad entering the Stormgap Coast will have characters mention the legend of "skinless corpses found in the Pits"; a Tech Hunter's notes record Stone-Head, the last survivor of the Ash Drifters — he describes what happened to his companions when they met the Skin Bandits, stops halfway through, stares into the air for ten minutes and cannot be roused again.
The ash theory
As long as the player is not human, you can have a perfectly pleasant conversation with him. He will happily explain his "medicine".
His theory begins in the Ashlands: the ash drifting from there across the whole world is toxic to any mind. Human skin blocks most of it, and the little that gets in through wounds and breathing is washed out by the "healing by-products" of activities such as eating and pleasure, which also reset the moral judgement the contamination has corrupted.
Skeletons, meanwhile — no skin, a pile of extra components, unable to laugh, eat or take pleasure in anything — are in his view the least protected race of all. His evidence is the berserk, rampaging Skeletons of the Ashlands: that is not age, that is poisoning.
And so this self-appointed "Savant doctor" invented his treatment: give a Skeleton skin, and give it a soul.
I studied Skeleton psychology for three years when I was ten, you know…
The line reveals both his self-image (genius) and his actual condition (a maniacal personality). Physiologically his account does not stand up for a moment, but narratively it works beautifully: he gave a group of Skeletons an answer they could act on, and they acted on it.
Some researchers argue that this boast is in fact the most reliable clue to his real background — he has no reason whatsoever to brag about his credentials to a crowd of malfunctioning Skeletons[V1 0:06:12].
The Peeler Machine and human skin
The instrument of the treatment is the Peeler Machine — a device that "slowly and carefully removes the outer layers of whatever is placed inside it". It runs in three stages: first it destroys the victim's clothing, then it deals cutting damage to the limbs, and once every limb is at zero it starts destroying the organs. It does not require the victim to be alive; it runs either way.
The products are Human Skin and the Human Skin Suit. The item description calls it "the perfect disguise", but the game's own text cannot help adding a note: for some reason, fleshy races can still tell at a glance that the wearer is a Skeleton.
Savant carries the blueprint for the whole technique, the Skeleton-Human Transformation Bible — his own "secret alchemical formula". Take him down and take the blueprint, and the player can manufacture Peeler Machines and Human Skin Suits.
Who gets in, and who gets peeled
The rules at Skinhouse HQ are quite clear, and quite darkly funny:
| Race | Safe to show your face | Can join |
|---|---|---|
| Skeleton | Yes | Yes — he only "operates" on Skeletons |
| Shek | Yes (conversation only) | No |
| Hive | Yes (conversation only) | No |
| Human | No | No, and you are treated as fresh material on the spot |
Shek and Hivers are not attacked unprovoked, but the moment one is knocked out — or is stupid enough to lie down on the repair bed inside the HQ — they get picked up and thrown into the Peeler Machine all the same. As for humans: if one really does sneak all the way to him and start talking, he is baffled by that degree of stupidity, and then summons his "flesh brothers" to collect the new skin.
Stay away from that big pit ringed with torches, you can see it from miles off — go around. — Tinfist
Combat ability
His Strength is only about 30, on the low side for a boss; but with Toughness around 75, Dexterity around 82 and Martial Arts around 90, plus a Meitou-grade nodachi and an armoured coat, he is the classic fast-and-durable type.
In practice he has a fatal weakness: he sleeps. Walk up while he is lying in bed and you can simply pick him up and carry him off, with no fight at all. The "Skin Eater" who terrifies the whole south-east most commonly ends up hauled off in his sleep and cashed in for the bounty.
After he falls
Killing or imprisoning Savant triggers a chain collapse:
- Skinhouse HQ is reduced to ruins, and the valuable loot in it disappears with it
- Of the two Skinhouses, one is destroyed, and the other is taken over by the Southern Hive if the Queen of the South is still alive
- Skin Bandit patrols vanish, replaced by a Southern Hive Prince with eight guards
- The Skin Harvest and Big Skin Harvest raids on the player's outpost stop entirely
Drifters in bars also change the subject. Their version goes: "Apparently the Skin Eater was just some poor guy held hostage by a bunch of skeleton cultists…"
That rumour is wrong in an interesting way — it inverts cause and effect completely, while describing the composition of the scene almost exactly. And nobody would believe the correct version: that the human was not a hostage but the mastermind. Seen from another angle, this counts as one last success for him: put the victim's mask back on, and every crime can be blamed on the madness of the Skeletons[V1 0:07:19].
A mirror of the Elder
The Elder is a genuine Skeleton leading a group of humans conditioned into believing they are Skeletons; Savant is a genuine human leading a group of Skeletons persuaded that they ought to become human. Their bases are not far apart, the two factions are hostile to one another, and yet they share a single structure: the leader is lucid, the believers are mad, and the leader uses the believers' madness to get what he wants. One research channel puts the parallel more bluntly: the Skin Bandits are the exact mirror of the Skeleton Bandits — machines brainwashed into believing they are human; and sitting on top of them is a Scorchlander male who claims to have been studying robot psychology since he was ten[V2 0:03:52].
Two schools of inference circulate about why he preys specifically on his own kind. The first holds that it is personal: he bears some old grudge against Tech Hunters, mechanical scholars or humanity as a whole, and would rather keep company with Skeletons. The second holds that he actually sympathises with Cat-Lon and the Second Empire exiles in the Ashlands — Skinhouse HQ sits squarely at the entrance to the southbound route, which amounts to intercepting large numbers of human scavengers and Tech Hunters on their way to dig up ancient technology[V2 0:05:08][V3 0:24:59]. The second version also incidentally explains why the Skin Bandits unilaterally regard the Skeleton Legion as friendly (the Legion does not reciprocate and attacks on sight). Neither account has direct in-game evidence.
Unsettled: where he came from
The game never accounts for Savant's origins, leaving only that one boast and a landscape of skinless corpses. One channel has assembled the available clues into a complete arc of degradation — all of the following is inference, not setting.
The starting point of that inference is a Tech Hunter out of the United Cities, exceptionally gifted and exceptionally greedy; his life's aim was to get rich enough off ancient technology to stand above the nobility, so he funded his own expedition deep into the Ashlands[V1 0:07:52]. The turn came on that expedition: the party was wiped out by the Skeleton Legion and he alone walked out, with no supplies, no companions and no loot. The proponent stresses that what broke him was not nearly dying but the outcome — going home empty-handed to remain at the bottom[V1 0:09:35].
What follows is the most theatrical scene: a group of deranged Skeletons surrounded him and forced worship on him, making him a god and a prisoner at once. He took the role, half to stay alive and half because it was exactly the power he had wanted all his life. The trigger, on this reading, was mundane — he told the Skeletons to find food, and what they brought back was a whole party of travellers' corpses and luggage[V1 0:11:52].