application (the greening)

[aishen]

APPLICATION
OOC
Name: Shira
Age: 2020 has aged me at least 80 years (j/k definitely 18+!).
Contact:
• PM
• whatinthefuck
Character(s) Played: N/A

IC
Name: The Weeping Monk (the artist formerly known as Lancelot)
Canon: Cursed
Canon Point: 1.10: "The Sacrifice"
Age: Mid-20s*
*_{This is my guesstimate based on canon portraying "younger" versions of the characters before their Arthurian fame. Nimue is a teenager, Uther is still a young king, the sword isn't yet called Excalibur, etc.}

Appearance: Example. He's fey born, but the only physical indicator are the marks around his eyes that give him his "weepy-eyed" appearance. They pass as paint or tattoos but are actually birthmarks. Under the cowl he's a brunette with the shape of the cross branded into the back of his head. His back also has noticeable scarring from years of floggings (largely self-flagellation).

Side note: For the ease of reference, I'll be using "Lancelot" in the app but technically speaking he hasn't used that name in his adult life and most just refer to him by his moniker.

† History:

In this version of Arthurian Britain, the country is on the threshold of the Age of Men, mankind having slowly but surely eroded the hold of the native fey and driven them back into isolated clusters over the last thousand years. The Roman Catholic Church has declared war on fey kind and everything else under the pagan umbrella. To the general ambivalence of King Uther Pendragon and his profiteering knights, the pagan population lives in terror of the Red Paladins--the inquisitorial arm of the Church--who openly persecute them as abominations and run rampant over the countryside razing their settlements. Merlin is a capricious drunk fallen out of power and favor, Arthur is a young sellsword of no prestige or repute, there is no round table, and no order. Only a very powerful sword that everyone wants to either destroy or claim for themselves.

In line with some of his Arthurian source material, Lancelot emerges as one of the most admired warriors of the time, but the opposite of a courtly knight. A monk widely feared for his mercilessness and keen ability to uncover members of the magical populace, he serves Father Carden, leader of the Red Paladins. He's given one purpose: to hunt fey kind to extinction. His measures are so brutally effective he's earned a reputation along the lines of the boogeyman.

When the Sword of Power (aka: Excalibur) chooses the young fey sorceress Nimue as its next wielder, she declares herself queen of the fey independent of the Pendragons in a bid to unite the fey population against their oppressors. Lancelot is tasked with hunting down her and her fledgling rebellion, and he harries her and her allies every step of the way, present for the slaughter of her and Gawain's village, dismantling Morgana's efforts to smuggle fey to safety, starving the resistance out, and defeating both Arthur and Gawain in battle.

But as the fey born Gawain is appalled to uncover during one such confrontation, Lancelot is also a fey. One living hidden among the humans with his powers and knowledge of their culture, explaining why they can never seem to stay ahead of the paladins for long.

Born to the Ash Folk, a tribe so little known most fail to recognize the evidence of their marks on his face, his people were put to the torch many years before Nimue's and Gawain's when he was only a child. However, rather than execute him with the rest, Father Carden made the unorthodox decision to raise him as one of their soldiers. Because his heritage gave him preternatural gifts to sense the presence of others like him, Carden saw an opportunity to fight fire with fire and hone him into a weapon to turn back on the fey. Made to believe his kind are evil, and that he should be grateful that unlike most he has a chance to repent his origins, Lancelot came out the other end of a self-loathing re-education one of their most prolific killers, taught the dirty, difficult work of genocide is a necessary hardship on the road to salvation. If he had misgivings--if he felt guilt, or couldn't quite ever bring himself to harm the fey children who reminded him of himself as an orphan--then it was moral weakness making him too compassionate. Only he and Carden ever knew the truth... until Gawain, who has the chance to expose Lancelot's true nature, but refuses to do so in betrayal of another of his kind, even an enemy.

He challenges Lancelot to essentially put his conviction where his mouth is: if he really believes he's on a righteous path and that Carden's version of faith offers room to "forgive" a faithful follower, he would reveal what he is to his own comrades. They both know he can't; no amount of loyal service will buy mercy or acceptance, when the paladins are only truly interested in power and culling those in their way.

The combination of Gawain's honourable act and the paladins on the verge of torturing to death a fey child from Gawain's village ultimately provokes a crisis of conscience. He chooses to save the boy, betraying Carden and killing several of the pope's elite guards, exposing himself in the process.

What a perfect time to visit fairy land and find out fey overlords are just as shitty as human ones. 👏

† Personality:

Cursed's Lancelot is the product of an upbringing that was, at best, characterized by violence, brutality, and a thick layer of good ol' Christian zealotry. Heroism? Nope. Honour codes? Never heard of 'em. Conditioned for the sole purpose of becoming a warrior without equal, a follower devout enough to champion God's true children (i.e. humankind) over non-humans, and a weapon cold enough to turn off his empathy to kill without hesitation, he initially reflects the soil he was grown in: hella emotionally stunted, relentless, dutiful, disciplined, and willing to commit almost any atrocity if commanded to. Like any other kind of tool, he wasn't raised to think independently, but to shut up and do his job.

Given as much, at first blush he's on the extreme ends of soft-spoken reserve, seen at his master's elbow and not heard. Even his movements reflect an unnatural stillness and poise, distilled down to only what shifts in his body are necessary. With the fact he's often hidden under dark, obscuring robes, his enemies know him for his striking, unsettling visage on the battlefield like some kind of grim reaping Terminator mowing down opponents. Aptly so, for he's remembered for acts such as coldly and calmly torturing prisoners of war within earshot of their allies, forcing them to listen to their dying screams while taking cover.

As himself one of the many persecuted fey, Lancelot was ripped away from his own people, traditions, and gods as a young child and taught to view them--and himself--as opposing the natural order. Made to believe his own nature is a fault to overcome trapped Lancelot in a holding pattern rooted in shame and desire to prove himself worthy, and the only way out is casting aside emotion and hardening himself into the paladins' steel. Anything less, as he's told, is clearly a sign of his traitorous fey blood at work, to be battled and controlled with acts of contrition. In an instance he exhibits discomfort at finding out a fey family will be handed over to their most cruel torturer, Carden has him kneel in the freezing cold for hours to pray the twinge of conscience away. Even so, despite effectively leading the paladins in the field, he remains largely isolated from them as comrades, keeping no friends or formal rank, and viewed with varying levels of fearful respect or suspicious distaste--always a degree removed from meaningful connections. Until Gawain tries to get through to him, Carden purposely remains his one tie to the world, who oscillates between a loving father figure and an iron-fisted handler depending on how much course correction is needed. It restricts him to the single-minded, brainwashed view of the world and his purpose in it necessary to keep a child soldier trucking.

At his conflicted core, Lancelot is a true believer: he believes in God, and in earning God's and Carden's love by pouring everything he has into becoming their best, most holiest fighter at the sake of all else. Consequently, his faith and sense of self-worth have become destructively tangled up in these impossibly high standards of perfectionism--because for all the blood on his hands, he can't entirely turn himself into an unfeeling machine, or purge his own so-called tainted blood.

In reality, there's a well of emotion churning on the inside, and more and more as the series progress, it peeks out in glimpses and comes to loggerheads with the restrictive bonds placed on him. He continually battles doubts which manifest in small rebellions, such as refusing to harm fey children by his own hand, the one point of contention he resists Carden over. To shock and awe, there's (an albeit super screwed up) man with a personality trying to come up for air in all that broody cowl: one who has moments of dry humor; who takes pride in his skills and becomes almost playful and taunting in the presence of a worthy opponent; who lets glimpses of frustration and irritation and anguish slip through the stoicism (including an increasing awareness there's an irreconcilable disconnect between the paladins' cruelty and a loving higher power). In truth, he takes no joy in the killing, struggling to rationalize the more senseless acts of barbarism--something Gawain picks up on. It takes an enemy's act of mercy and a stupidly brave 10-year-old to make him finally take a hard look at his waning convictions.

In so doing, he shows he's the type who's all in or all out when coming to a decision--a decision that's actually his own. The moment he accepts he can't stand idly by any further, he breaks down and cries out of fear of damning himself by turning away from the Red Paladins that made him, but all it takes is one impulsive act to cut ties and go on the run after saving the fey child, earning himself a top spot as yet another rebel rouser on the Pope's hit list.

† Abilities:

• Canon is fairly vague regarding the array of fey abilities between different types and clans, but some fey are noted as having superhuman advantages over their human counterparts. Lancelot benefits from these physical enhancements, described as unnaturally fast and graceful.

• Combined with exceptional martial skills and a dexterous, acrobatic fighting style that allow him to pull off stunts like snatch arrows from the air and snap necks with his feet, he's a master swordfighter, considered one of the top warriors on either the human or fey side. Also an accomplished fey hunter.

• Unique to him, he appears to be a type of tracker fey (possibly inherent to the Ash Folk) with enhanced senses and ability to detect the presence of magic/feykind. This most commonly manifests as a scent, and he's shown using his keen nose to track someone via their discarded clothes and identify differences in animal blood, for example. Since fey are a magical people who can commune with and draw on the power of nature spirits (referred to as the Hidden), it's implied what Lancelot is actually doing is tapping into this connection.

• Some fey, Lancelot included, have a type of chameleon-like camouflage where their skin can turn the same color and texture of something they're touching, allowing them to seamlessly blend in. He accidentally reveals this in his fight with Gawain when he falls onto some green leaves, turning his hand green. This suggests a controllable effect that can slip out in moments of inattention.

† Sample(s):

Sample 1
Sample 2