Adelantado Predator: Tactician Of Isla Matanzas
Adelantado was a male Yautja in Steven L. Sears's Isla Matanzas, from Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey. Stranded Spaniard Jorge Rodriguez de Aviles named him for his tactics after three hunters arrived from the sky to fight monkey-born Xenomorphs on a Caribbean island in late March 1770. Jorge called the largest hunter Gigante and the quickest Assessino. Adelantado almost died on a cliff above an English slave landing, then fought beside commander Nan and her Dahomey Minos until the three hunters took heads at dusk and left.
Biography
Island Hunt
Eggs appeared on the jungle floor of Jorge's island after the wreck of the Hesperia, and a Facehugger leapt at him before he cut it away with his father's machete. Monkeys made easy hosts, and the adult Xenomorphs took to the canopy. Three Yautja arrived with wrist fire, shoulder beams, and cloaks, and Jorge read them as Nephilim sent against demons he called Malvados. Of the three, Adelantado showed the clearest tactics, while Gigante fought as pure strength and Assessino as speed, and the trio often competed for trophy heads instead of hunting as one pack.
Canopy numbers wore the hunters down across repeated fights as the Malvados swarmed pine and palm limbs like the monkeys that had hosted them. Jorge watched from a cave behind a waterfall and judged that hope was slipping even as the Nephilim kept taking kills with fire and lightning. Their spectral cloaks failed more often as the swarm pressed them. Adelantado still pressed for ground that limited the Xenomorphs' tails and climbing, and that habit shaped the morning fight that almost killed him.
Crevasse And Cliff
In late March 1770, Adelantado baited three Xenomorphs into a rock crevasse after already killing one whose acid smoked on the jungle floor. He mounted the rocks above them, extended his spear, and cut the first climber with wrist blades while driving the spear into its chest. Acid sprayed his thigh when the dying creature clung on, and the other two forced him up the mountain toward a cliff over a cove. Below that cliff an English slave ship dropped anchor and sent longboats ashore.
Jorge raced to warn the landing party, but Adelantado was already fighting on the rim. A Xenomorph jawed into his side, the ground gave way, and he fell through trees onto the beach with his spear stabbing upright in the sand beside his head. His armor was ripped open from thigh to chest, and another wound gaped below his shoulder blade. The Englishmen treated the fallen hunter as a strange animal worth money until more Xenomorphs hit the sand and the hull.
Beach And The Minos
The chained Minos, elite female soldiers of Dahomey, formed a facing-outward circle, unlocked their collars, and closed around the Xenomorphs with knives and swords taken from the dead slavers. Adelantado rose again with his mask gone, roared a challenge, and used one Xenomorph as a shield while his wrist blades cut the spiked tail from another. Inner jaws broke one of his mandibles, and acid and claw wounds poured green blood down his thigh before the Minos commander Nan stabbed upward with the severed tail spike. Adelantado finished that Xenomorph's head, then collapsed before he could reclaim his mask.
Nan stopped her sisters from killing him. They shaded him under trees, packed tree sap into his wounds, and cauterized the thigh with a burning brand. When he woke roaring, she opened a path into the jungle rather than force a fight, and he vanished into the brush. Jorge told her about Gigante and Assessino, the wooded ground that favored the Xenomorphs, and the open stream clearing where the hunters sometimes gathered at night.
Mask Returned
That night Nan took only Jorge to the stream clearing with a pouch holding Adelantado's spear, the beach trophy head, and his mask. Clicking moved around them in the moonlight before Gigante stepped from the dark with one blade broken and a jagged gash across his mask. Assessino arrived with tendrils ripped from the right side of his mask. Adelantado emerged bare-faced in front of Nan and watched her return each piece without a spoken word between them.
She asked whether the marks on the mask counted his Xenomorph kills, then lifted it beside the scars above her own eyes. He touched her forehead, took the mask, and sealed it to his armor with short tubes. He offered her the spear, and she accepted it as the sign of a shared hunt against the trees. On Jorge's map they traced a dusk plan that would burn the egg grove, force the remaining Xenomorphs onto a narrow mountain path, and put the three hunters behind them.
Egg Grove Trap
At sunset Jorge signaled from his cave with pine-sap fire grenades while Nan and four Minos burned the egg grove and drew about twelve remaining Xenomorphs onto bare rock. Adelantado's spear killed the lead Xenomorph when one Mino slipped, and Nan pulled her sister onward. At the crest the Minos dropped over the cliff on thinned longboat ropes into a sharpened-stick killing field on the beach. Adelantado, Gigante, and Assessino sealed the path from behind, pushed the swarm with spears and blades, and took severed heads as the light died.
By morning the three hunters were gone from the island, their mission finished in Jorge's eyes. Jorge navigated the empty English ship back toward Africa with Nan and the surviving Minos, stayed eight years in Dahomey, and later carried an elongated skull and his written account to Spain. Cardinal Cartega burned the papers and kept the skull rather than risk a truth outside the Bible his church already taught. Adelantado's own fate after lift-off is not shown beyond that dusk victory.
Appearance And Weapons
Jorge never learned a Yautja honor name for him. Adelantado is the Spanish title the castaway chose for the most tactical of the three Nephilim. Unmasked, he showed small eyes for his frame and four mandibles around a wide mouth, and one mandible broke when a Xenomorph's inner jaw struck his head on the beach. His mask carried kill marks Nan read as a tally, and he resealed it to his armor with short tubes after she returned it.
He fought with an extendable spear, wrist blades, cloak, and the wrist fire and shoulder beams Jorge saw from the cliffs. Acid scars and a cauterized thigh marked the crevasse fight, and he tapped that sealed wound with the spear after Nan's gift as if testing the heal. Gigante and Assessino stayed his companions through the alliance, even though the three had competed for heads before the Minos forced a shared plan.
Similar Predators
Adelantado ranks with hunters who finish a Xenomorph ground war by fighting beside humans rather than through them. Dachande blooded Machiko Noguchi after a Queen fight in Prey, and Scar marked Alexa Woods in Alien vs. Predator. Keeper is the other named Ultimate Prey male profiled here, a living-trophy collector who dies in his own biome instead of leaving with allies like Nan after their shared dusk hunt on the rocks.
Bo'kui trains Youngbloods through a Xenomorph crash site in First Hunt, another Ultimate Prey story that keeps its named hunter alive at the close. Gigante and Assessino share Adelantado's island campaign but have no separate pages on this site. They remain the brute and the quick blade under the names Jorge gave them, companions through the cliff fall, the night gift, and the dusk head-taking that cleared the last Malvados from the rocks.
Behind The Scenes
Steven L. Sears wrote Isla Matanzas for the 2022 Titan anthology Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey. The story is framed as Jorge's testimony to Father Lorenzo, later burned by Cardinal Cartega. Adelantado, Gigante, and Assessino are Jorge's Spanish labels for three unnamed Yautja, and the narration never supplies clan names or honor titles beyond those. Sears sets the decisive landing in late March 1770, about two years after Jorge's shipwreck.
Conclusion
Adelantado was the tactical hunter of Jorge's island, the Nephilim who baited Xenomorphs into rock, fell to a cove beach, and rose again beside Nan's Minos. He took back his mask, gave Nan his spear, and closed the dusk trap with Gigante and Assessino until the last heads rose in the dark. By morning the three hunters were gone, and Jorge sailed the empty English ship toward Dahomey with the women who had refused to die in chains.
Appearances
- Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey, "Isla Matanzas" by Steven L. Sears (anthology, Titan Books, 2022)
Tag Categories: Individual Predators | Predators From The Novels | Predators Who Survived | Predator Lore
