The Wanderer

Behind the gate run the ones who lived «sanza infamia e sanza lodo» (Inf. III 36), and the file is long: the valley is full of gullies, somebody breaks off, and whoever breaks off has nothing left to follow. So he follows the only thing that changes down here, the trace of a living body, and when he finds it he takes hold of it. He does not want to hurt you, he wants to be carried away: it is the punishment fitted to a man who never chose in life, and now he gets himself dragged.

He does not know where you are. He climbs the field of scent, which settles and spreads on its own: run and you leave it behind, stand still and it piles up and he arrives, step into the brook and he loses it. The only time the player appears in his code is the question «is there something here in front of me», and the answer is a shove. When the trace slips away from him he plants himself and smells the air, because losing you has to be visible.

He is the first moving target in the game, and he is there to teach the difference between the two weapons: the arrow pins him where he stands, the censer scatters him and wastes grains, running works if you have somewhere to run. The blow he gives is the same slap every soul in the game gives, raised half a second in advance: a blow that lands out of nowhere was the thing players complained about.