#fillan

forgot to post yesterday, oops! Old art again - this time one of my favorite WiPs, the original file of which has sadly been lost to time

It was a weird stroke of luck that landed Fillan in the commander's seat. When news of Kralkatorrik's awakening and the new brandstorms reached them, they finally made the choice to return to the frontlines to help with this new impending threat. They can't clean their past of its lethal mistakes, but they had nobody to endanger except themself anymore, and if they died fighting the dragon or his minions, it would at least be a worthy way to go.

By the time Fillan made it to the Crystal Desert, the acting commander and their allies were occupied with the sudden and urgent threat of Joko and the scarab swarm. It's not what they were prepared for, but they had come this far, and every extra hand was welcome, so they just went along with whatever they were asked to do.

Unbeknownst to them, everything was about to go sideways very fast for Dragon's watch. The acting commander had a breakdown and fled without warning. Fillan was in the right place at the right time (or perhaps the inverse) to fill in for a mission, and aurene seemed to take a liking to them, so for Dragon's Watch, that simply had to be enough.

With Joko dead but Kralkatorrik quickly becoming a more urgent problem, there wasn't time to stop and try to find the acting commander (or the original, who had been gone for long enough that it was safe to assume he wouldn't be coming back). Fillan stayed in this fill-in position while Aurene did her best to connect with Fillan despite not having the innate tether shared with her original chosen champion. For their part, the charr tried just as hard to find and hold onto that connection. The barrier to it was like so many walls of cotton, but bit by bit they pushed through, and by the time Aurene had branded Caithe, Fillan was able to truly sense her on their own.

Shortly after that, all their effort seemed like a pointless exercise - some sick joke played on them by fate. Aurene's prediction of her own death came true, and yet again Fillan was responsible for the death of someone special to them - and this time, arguably the only hope anyone had had of keeping the world stable and stopping her grandfather.

They were so numb at the funeral that the pulse of life beneath the crystal spears was lost amidst that cotton layer they once tried so hard to push through. The shock of Aurene's resurrection had them certain they were experiencing some potent dream until she had them practically pinned to the ground with affectionate nuzzling. A wonderful surprise, but their confidence in their own decision-making remained more shaken than ever.

While Fillan had the skills and strength to be a competent warrior on the field, they were a little too soft-hearted to deal killing blows, which can be a problem when you're tasked with taking out, say, separatists. After a few too many times that this bit them in the ass (and it really only takes a few when you haven't been in the field long), they and their young warband were reassigned to lumber work.

Their 'band took on the Tree- suffix, and Fillan's surname became Treeclimber as a slight ribbing at their habit of slacking off napping in the snags too large and gnarly to be worth the effort of breaking down.

There was no resentment felt around the reassignment or their lax and distractable nature, but Fillan had a creeping feeling of regret and inadequacy beginning to take root. There didn't seem to be much glory in sawing trees. Later on, when the Pact had gained renown with their impossible victory in Orr and was handling the emerging mordrem threat, Fillan was the one to suggest to their warband that they join up and help out on the field.

They were all very good at this new work, and that pesky hesitance to end a life didn't apply to dragon minions. Fillan finally felt like they were able to make names for themselves and share a bit of glory.

Fillan was the scrawny lanky kind of adolescent and didn't fill out until much later. Their mane was especially messy and prone to mats as a consequence of infrequent brushing, meaning any trim inevitably came out bathroom-scissors uneven. At this point, their stripes are clearly visible but don't contrast much against the pale tawny base-coat. It's notable as well that their horns initially grew with only a slight curvature to them; the ram spirals they sport later in life are one of the few cosmetic alterations they've had done.

From as early as they could lift a weapon they showed promise as a warrior, but they were a little too reckless and easily distracted. When combat was no longer a practice game, their warband had to watch these little blind spots for them if things got a little too hectic. That isn't to say they're bad in a fight, though! They're quite skilled with greatswords in particular.

they won the poll, so it's gonna be seven days of this charr :V

as a cub they were very much on the runty side but had a big appetite! They weren't very sneaky, but that didn't stop them from getting into cookie jars and ration stores...sometimes with the evidence still smeared on their face when they were hauled out of something particularly messy.

[no new art today, was feeling a little blocked, so here're old sketches]

Some legion charr keep tabs on their cubs from time. Fillan's sire was one of them. He had never been close - had never even met them directly - and they looked different enough when Fillan was young that nobody instantly clocked the relation. As they got older a bit of a resemblance formed in the leonine facial structure and their similarly scruffy hair, but it's harder to keep track of someone when they run off with the Pact. It wasn't until Fillan returned after the incident in Maguuma that he saw them again. It was the first time they met directly, and it was fortunate that they did.

Fillan didn't have anywhere to go. A gladium didn't invite sympathy. Their sire offered them a place to stay in his very (very) small corner of the citadel. He didn't talk to them much, and wasn't home for most of his waking hours. It was still more than Fillan wanted from him and exactly what they needed. Here, without feeling watched and judged on all sides, they had the space to get used to navigating their environment without a tail and figuring out what mobility aids worked best. Here they could rest and sort through their demons (though they and their sire both called it 'wallowing' with all the baggage that carries).

Now we're getting to the LS2/HoT era! This is a long one, so no hard feelings if you scroll past.

At this point their limbs and neck start to fill out, but rations keep them lean. Unsatisfied and just a touch insecure with the slow and unimpressive growth of their horns, Fillan has them modified into ram spirals. (They get bigger with time, but it isn't a drastic change just yet.) By now, their characteristic large canines have fully grown out and give them a bit of a goofy smile :)

The switch to Pact duty seemed perfect. They and their warband were able to really show off what they could do on a battlefield when given a chance, and nobody had to know the more embarrassing moments of their past. The cruel irony is that this new glory became their brutal end. Fillan will never forgive themself for it.

Fillan and their warband were on one of the many airships shot down in Maguuma during the first advance on Mordremoth. One of their bandmates had the brutal misfortune of being impaled by shrapnel during the sudden crash. Another was severely wounded and partially skinned by thorny vines on the way down. Most of the others were caught in branches or died on impact with the ground. Fillan was absurdly lucky to survive the crash with the fewest injuries, and as such they were one of the key defenders of the remaining Pact survivors as stock was taken, bones were set, and plans were made.

It was only a matter of time until a mordrem patrol found them; it was mostly Fillan's blade that kept them safe. Nonetheless, the mordrem were relentless once a camp had been found, so the ragged group of survivors was forced to move and move again for even the briefest windows of peace.

Bit by bit the survivors dwindled. The skinned bandmate, though their wounds had been sealed, succumbed to an infection that had taken root beneath. In one of the relocations, the group had been ambushed, and a mordrem bolt through the skull kills too fast to be healed. They had no rations, and starvation hampers recovery.

In a final parting blow of cruelty from the jungle, the survivors had finally spotted and were making their way towards a fortified pact encampment when one last ambush cut them off. This one was smaller than the others but no less brutal: a powerful vinetooth had sniffed them out and was determined to finish them off. Fillan's last surviving bandmates were dead before they knew what hit them. In a frantic scramble, the group fled while Fillan stayed behind to buy the rest time.

There was no winning that fight, of course. Even the commander wouldn't have been able to take out a prime vinetooth unassisted, and Fillan was no commander. It should be considered a stroke of luck that they got away at all scaling a tree and worming between immobile vines in a makeshift barrier.

The vinetooth still got one final parting shot. After the beast moved on and the adrenaline receded, Fillan was hit with indescribable and insurmountable rush of pain that nearly knocked them out. When their head cleared enough to evaluate the damage, they discovered their tail to be broken in two places and partially stripped. Going anywhere with that kind of injury blinding them with every movement was a horrific prospect, but what else could they do? They had already seen what happened to untreated injuries in this jungle, and while they had been willing to die to let the others escape, they weren't willing to die now, exhausted and alone.

They forged on in the direction they thought the other crash survivors took and were very lucky that no additional mordrem or opportunistic predators caught them. Luckier still, the ones that had made it to the encampment had urged some of the Pact to search for Fillan.

Save for a hand's length from its base, the tail is unsalvageable. Amputation is swift and the wound is sealed quickly, but its loss is a permanent disability. They, like many charr, are top-heavy, and that new rack they were so proud of doesn't help. Tails serve to counterbalance. It's not enough to compensate with a more upright posture; their neck is naturally stiff for stability and their foramen magnum is positioned at the back, not the bottom, of the skull. Fillan had to grip nearby surfaces to stay upright or else stick with a quadrupedal stance. Later on, someone helps them out by lending a sturdy walking stick as a support. With or without, it's still not the most combat-ready arrangement for someone who specializes in two-handed blades. They have a huge amount of internalized ableism with this whole affair, and that's not something they ever fully work through, but it gets better with time.