Artslam day 9 by ramblingheartwood

Sketch of a character named Kel’chathr

‘chathr was a recent revival into the heartwood. He was scrapped a long time ago, but I was recently bemoaning my lack of a proper mage character and I thought of him again. No I cant bring him back I thought, the changelings are now allergic to magic he could not be a mage.

Well why the hell not?

Bringing back Kel’chathr brought so much more depth into the magic and the entire continent he was meant to be from, far more to put into this post. For a start however he introduced the full-body covering style of the desert natives, an entire culture choosing to dress completely hiding every feature for the sole purpose of protecting their changeling mages from their  own kin’s persecution of elven magic users. That in turn established that the northern desert tribes have a much greater scene of interspecies unity than anywhere else in the heartwood world, and to pay tribute to Chathr’s part in that I made him the prime reason why that is so.

Chathr himself however, is a relic of a gone age, once the silver tounged likable High-clanchief until his entire city was the first to be wiped from the map during the first ever battle of the heartwood war. After he was poisoned by one of his closest advisors and his own wife, he was twice betrayed when they opened the city gates for the approaching army’s. A population of several hundred million people was reduced to under a hundred survivors in less than a week, completely decimating the culture.

very few people know that Kel’chathr was once the well loved historic figure of Chathr’Rhanarga (due to various naming conversions of the changelings I wont go into it changed). In the current era of the heartwood he is known to most as only a bitter cantankerous old warmage. He’s never really forgiven himself for surviving the death of his people (he certainly made a very valiant effort not to during the event, but was dragged unconscious and beaten from the battlefield), but he’s never really forgiven the world for not living up to his moral idealism either. During and after the war he told all social expectations where to stick it and began to delve deeply into the study of magic (something that most other eleven communities will not hesitate to kill one of their own kin for practising), throwing himself into studies of the arcane to distract himself from his own loss and growing dislike of social interaction. Finally his character undergoes a complete reversal and becomes a socially dysfunctional introvert as well as an arcane enchanter of unsurpassed skill. He is my Nicola Tesla, the heartwood’s very own reclusive mad scientist.

I really have really come to love this new version of KelChathr. He’s such an utter bastard to everyone, but it is all a front for a utterly ruined and downtrodden man, trying desperately to bury his hopeful and compassionate nature, and a lifetimes of horrible memories, he only returns to his old passionate, cheerful and optimistic self when he is buried in the work that he loves.  Hopefully I will find use for him in the stories to come, but whether or not I do I am grateful to the horrible old bastard for all that he has brought with him into the heartwood.