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The last 3 installations of Dota Lore Spotlight have been largely centered around the mystical, the arcane, the partly incomprehensible. We’ve examined topics such as primordial minds, the birth of the universe, or even sentient expressions of fundamental forces. But in this latest edition of the column, we are going to tone the arcanery down a few notches, and instead examine a character whose nature is more relatable to any human readers out there.

When it comes to the Dota 2 universe, it’s easy to be somewhat dumbfounded by the amount of purely fictional elements that we as humans have no chance of relating to in our daily lives. The lore is rich with supernatural and divine elements, magic and mysteries, gods and demons, and separate planes of existence. All of which seem to be notoriously absent from everyday life on earth. Thus, it may be refreshing to some that for this episode, we are going to examine a character much more rooted in humanity, as opposed to the larger-than-life kind of characters the column has reviewed in the past episodes.

A wide array of races inhabit the Dota 2 universe, but none have achieved such a high degree of scientific proficiency as the Keenfolk. This humanoid race is small in stature, and cannot contend with most other races when it comes to physical combat, but possess unmatched prowess in fields like mechanics, engineering, hydraulics, aerodynamics, and virtually any other field of science one would recognize from real life. Notable Keens include scientists, inventors and innovators such as Tinker, Clockwerk and Timbersaw, as well as military men such as Sniper. Keen society also makes use of societal structures reminiscent of those seen in real life democracies, complete with universities, organised military, and social security measures such as providing retirees with pension.

One of these senior citizens was Aurel, a Keen engineer who served through many decades of military conflict until he one day reached the age of retirement. Having seen enough of both work and war, Aurel packed up his tools, trinkets, various odds and ends, and left the Keen homeland to settle down in the Ash Archipelago, a chain of tropical islands serving as a popular retirement spot for Keenfolk. Among the possessions he brought with him was an old schematic that had caught his attention in the past – the blueprints for a gyrocopter, the hypothetical contraption that would be the first manned, non-magical flying machine of the Dota 2 universe.

Having finally retired from war, Aurel finally had time to begin work on the far fetched idea of building a functional gyrocopter. The process did however prove difficult, and it wasn’t until a decade and a day after his retirement that his engineering work seemed to encounter some fruition. Throughout the decade that had passed, Aurel had built dozens of prototype gyrocopters that proved themselves to be failures. But after entering his latest attempt at creating the machine, expecting another disastrous failure, to Aurels great surprise the machine clumsily ascended skyward.

As the hours passed, Aurel had begun to master flight in his revolutionary new contraption, the worlds first functional gyrocopter – that is, until a cannonball clipped his wings. The old Keen survived the crash, and as he swam towards land he saw, much to his dismay, the perpetrator ship collecting the wreckage of his prized invention. Upon returning to his workshop, Aurel set to work on a new gyrocopter, one that would prove its worth on the battlefield. This updated gyrocopter, complete with guns, rockets, and missiles, is the contraption we see roaming the fields of endless carnage in Dota 2 matches today, with Aurel at the helm.

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