The Glorious Championship! [S3G5] [Round... Uh, Seven? The Oasis]

Originally posted on MSPA by engineclock.

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Username: Engineclock

Name: Cailean Lachlan. Say it: kay-lin laCCHHHHHHHlan

Gender: Dude

Species: Human

Associated Color: #3C5500

Weapons/Abilities: A sacred dagger given to him by Taccha Maowyn, resembling a stylized white feather with small runes carved into the hilt. Its blade can cut cleanly through any and every material found on earth so long as its user is under the protection of Maowyn, to the point of being able to easily carve through a solid stone wall. The dagger tends to flash immediately after ending a life, and is much heavier than it looks. He also has a sizable flask of whiskey, but that’s more of a coping strategy than a weapon.

Maowyn’s “blessing” keeps Cailean from inflicting physical harm on any living being without feeling the same on his own body, regardless of his intent. Acting to defend himself is included in the curse, and leaves him essentially helpless unless he wants to feel his enemy’s injuries to their full extent. The only exception to the blessing is in the case of people who have been mortally wounded; Cailean can feel the pain of the dying even when he has had nothing to do with their condition, and is instantly compelled to end their suffering- usually with Maowyn’s dagger. In cases such as these he's been seen to fall into what closely resembles a berserker rage, moving with uncanny speed and agility and ignoring all but the worst injuries dealt to him, including those by the victim. Whether this is result of Maowyn's blessing or simply a desperate attempt to escape further agony is debatable. A mercy-kill is the only injury he can inflict on another person without experiencing its effects, and it instantly stops him from feeling anything else from the victim.

Along with this mixed blessing comes a tenuous connection to Maowyn herself. Fiercely possessive of anyone under her control, the Taccha has at least some awareness of Cailean’s current condition, and doesn’t take very kindly to anyone attempting to harm her champion beyond what she considers acceptable damage. It’s extremely rare for her to intervene directly, however, and unfortunately for Cailean her favors never come for free.



Description:

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Youngish-looking, probably somewhere in his early twenties, Cailean is and looks like a career soldier, though he’s admittedly not been afforded the best training. He's familiar with a number of basic weapons and decent in a fistfight, both of which aren't much of much use to him now. Despite being somewhat on the lanky side, he’s in the best physical condition that can be had from a life of poor nutrition and frequent skirmishes and is used to surviving on long marches with terrible food and worse liquor. Due to Maowyn’s blessing, his skin is permanently marked in the shape of the bloodstains resulting from his wounds, which run down half his face and cover most of his chest and arms. He wears a battered and mismatched set of light armor, mostly consisting of a plate mail chestplate and a few other pieces that have seen better days. Depending on the light and the sensitivity of the viewer to such things, Cailean may or may not be seen to have a very faint aura of holy light. It’s probably not very flattering on him.

Cailean’s place as a favorite of Maowyn has nothing to do with his personal choice, and his attitude towards the whole situation is mostly dull resignation. He’s not an especially violent person, despite it being his job to be one, and would much rather be left alone then have to constantly bring Maowyn’s particular brand of mercy to any nearby person whose life is in immediate danger. If he wasn’t positive she'd do something worse to him for it, he would probably resent the Taccha for saving him in the first place, since protecting himself from any attackers is now a rather difficult and painful task. For this reason, he tends to be somewhat reclusive and cagey around new situations, and will invariably shy away from violence unless someone is dying and he has to go stab them in the heart because he really doesn't want to have sit through an exact simulation of their death.

He’s also a bit jittery around herons, unsurprisingly. Maowyn was never very good about announcing her visits in advance.

Biography:

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Born in a land of marshes and near-constant war, Cailean was trained in the local lord’s army from an early age as a cavalry lancer. Not especially strong or fast, he survived mostly by being able to dodge his opponents’ weapons and avoid the main front of the battle- not the most courageous strategy, but it kept him alive long enough to see the start of the first great war for the kingdom’s crown.

The army Cailean belonged to was unceremoniously grouped with the other forces of the current king’s youngest son, who sought to wrest control of the kingdom from his older and less militant brother. Cailean, naturally, knew very little of this conflict except that it meant the upcoming battle would be the largest of his life, and that there was an outstanding chance that the next time he entered the field it would be the last. His fears were realized at noon on the first day of the battle; blinded momentarily by the sun and focused on controlling his blood-panicked horse, a soldier belonging to the other side scored a massive blow down the side of Cailean’s face and deep into his chest.

Fortunately for Cailean, the grass he fell on was fresh and away from the worst part of the battle, and the man who had struck him assumed him dead and galloped off; unfortunately, the blow had been fatal, though not immediately so, and none of his comrades-in-arms were willing or able to assist him. Blood bubbling on his lips, Cailean desperately tried to crawl away from the fighting, miraculously managing to make it to the edge of a nearby lake. A single white heron watched impassively as he managed to plunge a shaking hand into the water an instant before collapsing into unconsciousness, face down in the lake’s shore. His blood slowly stained the water a dull red, tarnishing the holiness of the particular waters sacred to a goddess of mercy, the Taccha Maowyn.

The Tach of that land are not particularly benevolent figures. Something like gods, their interests are entirely their own, and except in certain rare cases their feelings towards humans are neutral at best. Maowyn, seeing Cailean’s blood drain into her lake, was at first infuriated at this sacrilege and moved to pierce his skull with her beak, for of course she had been the heron that watched him approach. However, a breath of life still existed within him; stirred by this and feeling something that was not quite pity so much as desire, Maowyn healed the dying soldier’s wounds with a sweep of her wings and brought him back to the world of the living.

Cailean awoke to the sight of a terrifyingly beautiful heron standing over him, its silver beak flashing in the sunlight as it cast an unreadable gaze over his face. Speaking without words, it told him that he had been saved by the mercy of Taccha Maowyn, and that all she asked in return for his life was for him to show the same mercy to all those that he would lay eyes upon, for as long as he may walk the earth. The soldier could not refuse, for surely the Taccha’s mercy was better than her wrath, though in secret his heart sank. Maowyn was a goddess of mercy but she was by no means a kindly being. Warriors prayed to her for a clean death in battle, and the blessings she gave ended the life of the receiver as often as they saved it.

He rose from the mud and water and saw that his skin was stained a deep crimson where his blood had been spilled, though all other signs of his wounds had vanished. Maowyn, mantling her wide, white wings, told him that her blessings did not come without a price. He was one of hers now, and all would know it by the marks on his skin. She vanished in a flurry of feathers and Cailean was left alone by the lake, free of the death that had so recently seemed certain to claim him.

Returning to the field of battle, he saw that more time had gone by than he could have guessed. The battle was over and surely days had passed; corpses littered the ground like fallen reeds and the ground was wet with blood. Far above him, vultures circled in the still air as he checked the faces of the dead for those he knew; he saw none, and stained with earth and blood he could not tell which of the bodies had been his fellows and which had been his enemies.

Distantly, Cailean heard a voice and looked up to see a soldier approaching him from out of the forest, sword in hand. His uniform was the blue and gray of the opposing side and his arms were soaked up to the elbows in the blood of the recently dead; his face, equally as gory, was twisted into a snarl of hate. Wearily, Cailean snatched up a nearby abandoned spear and prepared to fight. As the man began to run towards him, he stumbled for just a second, and Cailean threw the spear straight into his torso.

Instantly he felt his chest explode with pain, as though he had been the one wounded, and dropped to his knees in agony. He clawed at his armor but it was unbroken; there was no wound, and as he listened to the dying screams of the other man he felt sure that his meeting with Maowyn had been a hallucination, that he had never been healed and was still dying on the field somewhere, and only dreaming that he had ever had a chance to survive…

A feather alighted delicately on the ground in front of him, brilliant white against the blood-stained mud; another joined it, then another, and the Tachha Maowyn appeared in all her terrible glory as a heron-headed woman with massive, sweeping wings beating the air behind her back. Coldly she stared down at him, and through his pain he heard a ringing voice reminded him of the conditions of his blessing. He was a knight of mercy, now, and he could not lay harm on another being while it still breathed unless it was to ease its passing into the world of the dead. Reaching for her wing, the Taccha plucked out a long, fine feather and dropped it to the ground; it landed as a dagger, point down in the earth.

Shaking and with black spots flickering at the edge of his vision, Cailean pulled the dagger from the ground and began to walk towards the dying man. He saw his opponent’s eyes glazed over in fear and pain and his hands claw at the ground and the shaft of wood sticking out from his chest. His gaze went briefly to Cailean but it was clear he saw nothing, and as the blessed soldier plunged the dagger into his heart they rolled back into his head and he breathed his last.

From that day onward, Cailean’s life was a blur of conflicting orders and inexplicable agony. The commander of his army, seeing that a Tach had blessed one of his soldiers, made Cailean into a standard bearer, forcing him to go out into the field of battle in order to intimidate the opposing forces with the supposed divine approval of his cause. That Cailean essentially spent each battle running around frantically stabbing downed warriors with his dagger and screaming about mercy and herons and blood wasn’t of any real concern, and when the blessed soldier vanished suddenly in the middle of a skirmish the commander took it as a sign that the Tach had grown tired of the war and were signaling its impending end. He won the decisive battle in the following months, and Cailean was completely forgotten in the subsequent chaos.

Theme song: “The Kingdom”- Jesca Hoop