Kingshot Marlin

Full background story

Even Forrest, a man not easily rattled, found himself puzzling over the great northern ship that had appeared in the harbor overnight. Its hull carried dents of every size, and a single massive gash ran from midship clean to the bow, as if something enormous and sharp had driven straight through the timber. Any child who wandered too close, any villager who lingered a moment too long, got chased off by an old man in a black tricorn hat and a red woolen coat who seemed to have claimed the wreck as his own.

The mystery held until Quinn, who had seen more of the world than most, took one look at the hull and named her: The Santiago, a ship lost at sea for thirty years. The old drunk guarding her turned out to be her captain, Marlin, once one of the Four Great Captains. In his best years Marlin had commanded close to ten ships and near a thousand sailors under his flag, a record the royal court itself had rewarded with that title. Sure of himself and his fleet, he once set course for open, uncharted water and, as was his habit before any long voyage, sent one last letter back to shore. "The waters before us seem calm, but I sense there is more to them than meets the eye. Be prepared, everyone! May glory be with the Santiago." That letter, creased and yellowed now, still sits in the royal library. Marlin and his ships sailed into the fog and were gone for thirty years, and nobody could say what had become of them.

The stretch of sea where the Santiago disappeared came to be called the Misty Tides, for the fog there never lifted. Over the years, men chasing the story of the lost fleet sailed in to find out what had happened, and none of them sailed back out; each one became one more name in the sea's grim tally. When the deaths climbed too high, the royal court closed the waters entirely rather than let panic spread. Word of it traveled inland all the same, and the region picked up other names along the way. Some call it the Demon's Delta. Others call it a door to the underworld. Nobody, after all, has come back from it alive to argue.

Except, of course, for the man telling the story to anyone at the bar who'll sit still long enough. "There's nothing down there. You ever hear of sea fog? Cold air meets warm air, that's all it is." A belch, a pause. "Won't clear, you ask? You know anything about magnetic fields? The field's all tangled up out there, traps the fog in place. That's what got us stuck too." "We have to believe in science," he'd insist, red in the neck from the effort. "There's no such thing as demons." He never once managed to talk science into a bar full of people who wanted a ghost story instead, and one by one they drifted off once it was clear there'd be no juicy tale tonight, until the old drunkard sat alone again in the quiet. "Demons? If there'd been one out there, me and my crew would've handled it ages ago. Wouldn't have stood a chance against us."

Skills

Conquest skills fire in the Arena. Expedition skills fire on rallies and the world map. A hero who carries one can be dead weight in the other.

Conquest

Tidal Rush

Hits a group of enemies for Attack×200-280% AoE damage and immobilizes them for 1.5s.

Fermented Blow

Tosses an explosive concoction dealing Attack×50-70% AoE damage.

Lucky Hit

Passive: automatically stuns the target for up to 0.5s after every 5-8 basic attacks land.

Expedition

Wild Card

Up to 40% chance to increase all squads' damage dealt by 50%.

Rumhead

20% chance to reduce total Enemy Squads' Lethality by up to 50% for 2 turns when attacking.

Dynamo

50% chance to increase squads' damage dealt by up to 50% (name confirmed on kingshot.wiki/kingshot.net, not visible on kingshotdata.com's own list — flagging the minor source gap).

Best pairings

• Tidal Rush's AoE immobilize and Lucky Hit's passive stun lock enemies in place, opening the window for Petra's high-variance Change of Fate to land its full roll.
• Rumhead's Enemy Lethality strip stacks with Eric's Holy Warrior for a double debuff on the enemy's counter-hit.
• In the paid Gen 2/3 arena team, his crowd control complements Jaeger's own stun kit so at least one lockdown lands even on tankier targets.

• Petra
• Eric
• Jaeger

Other Generation 2 heroes

• Hilde
• Zoe

Frequently asked questions