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ushahinPLAYER
Player name: Shade
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Characters currently in-game: Ivar Ragnarsson, Leo Flynn
CHARACTER
Character Name: Ushahin Dreamspinner
Character Age: Unknown, but over 1,200 years old.
Canon: The Sundering
Canon Point: The end of Godslayer
History: The history that Ushahin finds himself caught up in starts long before he is born. It starts with a war between the gods. To quote the wiki article on the background of his world,"The Shapers are the gods of this world. The world is the body of the first being, Uru-Alat, who had a mystic jewel in his forehead. After Uru-Alat's death, the Shapers sprang from his body. Each shaper coming from a different part (Head, heart, etc.) Haomane, who came first and from the head, is the god of thought; he claimed leadership of the Shapers. Out of love for Arahila, his sister, Satoris refused Haomane's command to remove his gift (reproduction) from the race Arahila created (mankind) This led to a fight between Haomane and Satoris, during which the mystic jewel shattered and the world was sundered in two. The largest shard of the jewel was like a sword and was named Godslayer. Oronin Last-Born stabbed Satoris in the leg with Godslayer, but the wound was only crippling, not mortal. Satoris seized Godslayer and fled the realm of the Gods to the newly isolated realm of mortals. Haomane, afraid to follow himself for fear of the sword, sent agents to the mortal lands in order to recover Godslayer; he provided his agents with tiny fragments of the mystic jewel."
Satoris' forces, including the other races of the Fjeltroll and Were (a form of werewolves), help to beat back and kill two of the three agents that Haomane had sent. The third, Malthus, went into hiding, to prepare for a day when the prophecy that killing Satoris would bring back the other Shapers would be fulfilled. Many years later, possibly thousands of years, a delegation of Men was sent to form an alliance with the Ellylon (similar to elves). A man raped an Ellyl woman, producing the son that would become Ushahin. The rape caused the alliance to fail and strained relations even further, as children who were half-Ellyl, half-man were one of the outcomes of a condition of the prophecy. The Ellylon outright refused to take in the child, considering him to be an abomination, and forced the man's family to care for him. They barely tolerated him at the best of times, outright ignoring him at others.
This all changed when he was around seven or eight. The child went out into the city and was set upon by a group of children. They formed a mob and chased him down into an alley, where they proceeded to stone him and shatter his bones. They left him for dead, but the child wasn't. Driven insane through the pain, he dragged his broken body into the forest. There, he was found by the Grey Dam, the matriarchal leader of the Were. Her own cubs had been brutally killed by the king of men and she was still mourning them. Taking pity on the child she found, she named him Ushahin, which means "Broken one" in the tongue of the Were, and raised him as her own.
Ushahin grew up with the Were, broken, twisted, and utterly mad. They taught him many of their ways, including how to use his psychic and dreamwalking abilities. Then he felt someone calling to him within his mind. Satoris called to him, seeking three beings to match the ones his brother had set upon him many years ago. Ushahin answered the call and went to the land of Darkhaven. Here, Satoris offered to heal his body and mind, doing so many times over the years. Ushahin refused. He also offered him a boon for answering him, which he did accept. He requested that place be made for the mad ones, rejected and all alone. Over the years, Ushahin would send out a call, letting his madlings come and serve him in the castle. Around this time (and possibly before, the book only states they all arrived around the same time), two other Men named Tanaros and Vorax answered the call. All three were made immortal and served Satoris for over 1,000 years.
This is when the first book Banewreaker begins. A sign of the prophecy is seen, a star set high in the sky. Satoris decides to strike first before his enemies can destroy him. He sends Tanaros and Ushahin to kidnap a Ellyl maiden, Cerelinde, before she can marry a man, Aracus Altorus, thus bringing about one of the conditions of the prophecy. To give them enough time to get away, the Grey Dam fights Aracus and dies in the attempt to kill him. Losing his adoptive mother devastates Ushahin and he is inconsolable for most of the trip back. When Cerelinde summons the ghosts of a long-dead Ellyl city to attack their forces, Ushahin is overwhelmed by the ghosts who attack his mind. When Tanaros quiets them, they find Cerelinde has tried to flee on a Darkhaven horse. Ushahin sends out a psychic command to bring the steed and their captive back. They arrive back at Darkhaven and Ushahin goes to spend time among his ravens, searching the land to see what else is going on.
In the meantime, Aracus' forces have been fooled into thinking that Cerelinde was taken by a powerful Sorceress named Lilias who aligned herself with Satoris. They go to set siege to her fortress, with Tanaros planning an attack that will catch them unawares as they take them from behind. The Were, previously aligned with Satoris, end their alliance as a new Grey Dam is chosen. In order to travel to the Sorceress' fortress, which lays on the other side of the country, they must use a complicated teleportation system made up of tunnels called nodes that run beneath the land. An anchor must be present at one end, so Ushahin is sent to the desert to wait for Tanaros' forces to come through. But coincidentally, Malthus and a small group is going through the nodes at the same time. The two groups collide, breaking off the connection, leaving most of the forces stuck at Darkhaven, Tanaros and a small group stuck in the nodes, and Ushahin alone at the other end.
Discovering that Malthus' small group is carrying sacred water that could bring about the prophecy, Satoris desperately asks the Were to help kill them. When they refuse, he orders Ushahin to force them to bend to his will. Ushahin gets his adoptive people to obey, but at the cost of being outcast from them. Hurting from this rejection, he begins the long journey back to Darkhaven by himself.
Finding himself in a swamp, he encounters the Eldest Dragon, one of the oldest beings in Urulat. Rather than eating the half-breed, the dragon shares with him the wisdom of dragons, something that apparently expands Ushahin's mind, though the narrative never truly describes what it is. He leaves the swamp and finds a Darkhaven horse. Galloping through the land, he leaves a trail of nightmares in his wake as he dreamwalks through the dreams of men.
This is where the second book Godslayer begins. Ushahin meets up with Tanaros again, who has escaped the node. They return to Darkhaven and prepare for war. The Were are encountered by Aracus and are forced to make a sadistic choice due to their previous dealings with Satoris: they can't procreate and will be left in peace, or they can refuse and be hunted down to the last Were. They agree to the first term as long as the current Grey Dam lives. Ushahin feels the echo of this through the connection he still has with his people. He disagrees with them, but notes that the terms only last as long as the Grey Dam lives. He suspects that unlike his adoptive mother, this Grey Dam will not have a long life.
While Satoris focuses on keep trying to destroy the sacred water, Ushahin decides enough is enough. Cerelinde is still a prisoner, and if they kill her, all this will end. Disobeying the order from his master not to harm her, he sends one of his madlings to poison her. The attempt fails and Ushahin claims he acted alone to spare his madlings from being harmed.
Satoris responds by using Godslayer to brutally heal Ushahin's left arm, crushing the bones to dust and then reshaping them. Rather than having him be in the back of the battle, as his gifts are usually used while Tanaros and Vorax are in the front, he intends to have him fight alongside his "cousins". Aracus' forces arrive and the battle begins. In the first wave, they lose Vorax, and so are forced to retreat back towards the castle. They still have a chance of winning when Aracus finds a power source that can be used against them, turning the tide of the battle. One of Malthus' force, Blaise, a distant relative of Tanaros, challenges him to single combat. While everyone is focused on the duel, Ushahin tries to use the Helm of Shadows to turn the tide of battle in their favor. This fails when Blaise destroys the Helm at the cost of his life.
With the battle all but won, Tanaros and Ushahin flee to the castle. Ushahin still desperately thinks that if Cerelinde dies, they can all survive this, and live to fight another day. But the sacred water is used, allowing Godslayer to be picked up by Cerelinde. Satoris, wishing for his enemies to remember that they struck down an unarmed opponent, allows Cerelinde to kill him. Furious, Ushahin tells Tanaros to kill her. He can't do it, but he honors the vows he made to Satoris by telling Ushahin to save himself. Ushahin leaves the castle with the broken Helm of Shadows and Godslayer, comforting his madlings one last time before he flees on a horse. Tanaros goes out to face the forces by himself. He dies after slaying many of them by himself.
In the epilogue, Fetch the raven finds Ushahin, and shows him Tanaros' death. Now the last of Satoris' three, Ushahin heads for the swamps of the Eldest Dragon. Bitter as he is to be all alone, he is comforted that by denying his enemies Godslayer, the prophecy can't fully be fulfilled, leaving them a hollow victory without their gods. He muses over what is to become of him? Shall he become like his master and raise a force to oppose all his enemies with the weapons he now possesses? Shall he simply disappear and quietly live out the rest of his days, putting his past behind him? The future is open with possibilities as he continues down the road.
Personality: Ushahin is a character who is defined by madness. Originally, he was a typical child, if a bit quiet and withdrawn due to knowing himself to be different. There was also a curiosity about the world around him that would follow him into adulthood. Anything else he might have been was wiped out when he suffered the immense trauma of nearly being stoned to death around the age of seven or eight. As a result, both his mind and body were broken beyond repair. His moods are mercurial, his perspective on situations strange, and he doesn't always make sense when he tries to put his thoughts into words. One could say that he's never truly been happy, even when he was a child. All he's ever tried to is survive and exist as best he could.
Rather than let himself be healed in body and mind by his master Satoris, he's mentioned as turning down the offer several times. He relishes in his pain and madness, for he gives him a perspective that no one else possesses and allows him to use abilities that nobody else has. It's easy to see that his madness is a way for him to get into the minds of others and manipulate them, which would make anyone a little insane. In a world where so much store is set by physical abilities, Ushahin can't compete. But on a mental level, he can outmatch them all. He sees the threads that connect the world and where they will lead, even if he is powerless to stop them from coming true. This both torments and frustrates him as none of his companions believe the warnings he tries to give them.
Despite supposedly being on the side of "evil", part of Ushahin's character is that he continuously acts according to his own twisted set of morals. He genuinely cares for the dark lord Satoris he serves, his "cousins" Tanaros and Vorax, and his adopted mother the Grey Dam. He grieves for all of them when he learns that they have, one-by-one, died. He feels a sense of powerlessness, thinking that their destinies were written in stone, unable to be changed. This isn't to say his thinking is completely white and moral. He does do things like try to kill Cerelinde, a woman who is unarmed and Satoris' guest, on multiple occasions. This isn't done out of malice, merely practicality, for she is a link in the prophecy that will destroy his master and home. While this is the only attempted murder shown, it's implied he's done the same to others in the past. He has tormented others into insanity merely because he could and is not above invading people's minds just because he feels a petty sort of anger or jealously towards them.
He has trouble connecting to people, though when he does find someone who can withstand the strangeness of his personality, the loyalty he feels will last a lifetime. Friends are as close as family to him and he'll risk everything he has if they're in danger to rescue them or protect them from harm.
While he serves the dark lord in his world and would gladly slay every last one of his enemies, he's not without a compassionate side. While his companions Tanaros and Vorax serve for vengeance and wealth, respectively, Ushahin comes to Satoris because there is nowhere else in the world he belongs. He requests that a place be made for those in the world that have been driven mad through neglect, cruelty, or just luck of the draw. He genuinely cares for his "madlings", and while he does use them sometimes for his own purposes, he is never malicious or cruel to them. When he defies Satoris to kill Cerelinde and uses his madlings to do so in a failed attempt, he claims that he acted alone to spare them punishment. At the end of Godslayer, when he is forced to leave them, he gives them one last blessing to set their minds at ease.
Despite his many close brushes with death, Ushahin survives the entire book, the only member of Satoris' forces to do so. He's got a determined streak that allows him to survive when anyone else would have died. There's also a deep streak of contempt in him for the other races. Though it's not necessary to do so during his journey, he makes a point to enter the dreams of people as he passes through the land and give them nightmares as he passes through. He's the "child of three races" without truly being a member of any of them. While he would gladly find a place he could belong if he could, the other races see him as an abomination. Without being able to find a place, he grows bitter after time and takes up the role of the boogeyman of their dreams. It is a role he revels in, seeing it as a way to get revenge on all those who did nothing to stop the torment he received as a child.
Inventory: -Fetch, a Darkhaven raven. Fetch is one of the many ravens Ushahin has a special affinity for. He was saved from freezing to death as a chick by Tanaros and repaid the man by giving him his loyalty. As a dying gift, the Grey Dam, Ushahin's adopted mother, gave him a power similar to Ushahin's own psychic one. He can form images in his mind and put them into other people's heads, showing Ushahin, for example, exactly where and when Tanaros died. It is limited by his intelligence, which is still only that of a very smart bird.
-The Helm of Shadows. Originally used by the enemy, Satoris claimed it after a great battle and warped its purpose. When used by psychic types like Ushahin, their range and affects of their powers are greatly amplified, at the cost of feeling Satoris' phantom pain. Even regular men can use it in a limited fashion with training. It was shattered during the final battle and its two halves were taken by Ushahin. Though its powers can no longer be used the same way they once were, it exudes dark energy.
-Godslayer. A small dagger that was broken off from the jewel that helped to create the world. In the right hands and with the proper training, it can reshape the world around it, both flesh, plants, and non-living matter alike. Even if someone can't control it, it still has the basic powers to wound immortal flesh permanently and kill immortal creatures, including gods.
-A sword. No magical properties or anything like that. Just a typical steel sword.
Abilities: -Dream-related abilities: He can enter the dreams of others while he's awake or sleeping, with distance being no factor, seeing as how he psychically travels the whole of the entire continent trying to find certain people. While in the dream, he can manipulate, change, or even put his own thoughts into the dreamer's head. He has an affinity for giving people the same nightmare that he's prone to have of being stoned to death from a first-person perspective. Fortunately, his ability affects nothing in the real world, leaving only the dreamer's mind vulnerable. The only defenses shown to be strong enough to drive him off are powerful magical wards.
-Psychic-related abilities: He mentions several times that he can "scry the minds of others", which basically means he can read minds to some extent. He's shown doing so only a few times in canon and the only experience fully detailed almost kills him, since the creature he attempts it on is a dragon. He sees the mind as a landscape he can travel through, selecting memories to view, manipulate, and change as he sees fit. Another favorite tactic of his is to find out a person's greatest fear and make them experience it in the real world, such as when he makes the vain immortal sorceress Lilias experience the sensation of her own mortality and growing old. He's shown to push his own madness and despair on other people, giving them an emotional state that can confuse them for several minutes, a handy tool to have in battle. Another ability he has is what he calls "the glamour". Basically, he puts an illusion over himself, making him seem harmless to the person or animal looking at him. People see only a normal human-being while animals tend to forget he's even there.
-Ravens: He's got an affinity for the birds. He uses them to either see through their eyes to spy on people, can combine them to form a giant "Ravensmirror" that allows him to view things going on elsewhere, and uses them as a psychic ladder made of tiny, linked minds back to the real world when he goes too far inside someone's mind.
-Immortality: He has a form of immortality granted to him by Satoris burning a brand into him with Godslayer, which is basically a chip from an object that helped to create the world. It's immortality more along the lines of the Norse gods than the Greek. He doesn't age, but he can still be killed.
-Practical skills: While he's no master of the blade, he did spend over a thousand years watching one of the greatest swordsman in the world, Tanaros, wield one. He's shown to be able to wield one in canon adequately enough to disarm an opponent, albeit a little awkwardly since he can only fully use one arm. He's also a fairly good horseback rider, being able to get inside the animal's head, even the Darkhaven mounts that are temperamental and don't let most people ride them.
Flaws: Ushahin is mad and it shows in the way he acts with people around him. He invades their minds, twists their thoughts, and generally has no qualms at all about driving them as insane as he is. He's killed people before, either at the commands of his god or his own twisted whims. And the worst part about all of this is that some part of him has enjoyed this.
SAMPLES
Action Log Sample: The madman sleeps, and while he sleeps, he dreams. Going from one mind to another is an easy, reflexive way for Ushahin to travel. He pictures himself walking down a road and turning onto various paths that jut out from the main one. This place is strange and the minds that come with it are even stranger. The monsters are simple. They all seem to have the same instincts and desires: eat, kill, destroy. Ushahin stays away from them. They have no dreams to interest him, prowling away in their tunnels.
The people here are a different story. Each one is unique, their minds providing landscapes for him to travel along. He sees many things he doesn't understand inside them: wagons that travel through the land without animals in front of them, strange metal creatures the size of dragons that fly in the sky, and entire cities made up of buildings that are each the size of Darkhaven. He doesn't fully comprehend all that he sees or how it all fits together.
Moving onto other minds, he sees more. This time, he focuses on the lands they've all left behind. He sees a place where legends and myths that live among men, a strange race that travels through time and space out among the stars, a place where killing is a sport to be watched by the masses, and a land where kings are killed and replaced like so many cattle. Amusing places, one and all, but nothing like the home he's left behind.
The emotions are easier to focus on, for those don't change no matter what differences they might all have. Things like fear, joy, and rage are common to all beings. In this, the Dreamspinner finds comfort. If he chooses to do so, he will rip their minds apart one by one, leaving them screaming and sobbing in his wake. But not tonight. As he opens his eyes, Ushahin allows himself one small, crooked smile.
Player name: Shade
Contact:
Characters currently in-game: Ivar Ragnarsson, Leo Flynn
CHARACTER
Character Name: Ushahin Dreamspinner
Character Age: Unknown, but over 1,200 years old.
Canon: The Sundering
Canon Point: The end of Godslayer
History: The history that Ushahin finds himself caught up in starts long before he is born. It starts with a war between the gods. To quote the wiki article on the background of his world,"The Shapers are the gods of this world. The world is the body of the first being, Uru-Alat, who had a mystic jewel in his forehead. After Uru-Alat's death, the Shapers sprang from his body. Each shaper coming from a different part (Head, heart, etc.) Haomane, who came first and from the head, is the god of thought; he claimed leadership of the Shapers. Out of love for Arahila, his sister, Satoris refused Haomane's command to remove his gift (reproduction) from the race Arahila created (mankind) This led to a fight between Haomane and Satoris, during which the mystic jewel shattered and the world was sundered in two. The largest shard of the jewel was like a sword and was named Godslayer. Oronin Last-Born stabbed Satoris in the leg with Godslayer, but the wound was only crippling, not mortal. Satoris seized Godslayer and fled the realm of the Gods to the newly isolated realm of mortals. Haomane, afraid to follow himself for fear of the sword, sent agents to the mortal lands in order to recover Godslayer; he provided his agents with tiny fragments of the mystic jewel."
Satoris' forces, including the other races of the Fjeltroll and Were (a form of werewolves), help to beat back and kill two of the three agents that Haomane had sent. The third, Malthus, went into hiding, to prepare for a day when the prophecy that killing Satoris would bring back the other Shapers would be fulfilled. Many years later, possibly thousands of years, a delegation of Men was sent to form an alliance with the Ellylon (similar to elves). A man raped an Ellyl woman, producing the son that would become Ushahin. The rape caused the alliance to fail and strained relations even further, as children who were half-Ellyl, half-man were one of the outcomes of a condition of the prophecy. The Ellylon outright refused to take in the child, considering him to be an abomination, and forced the man's family to care for him. They barely tolerated him at the best of times, outright ignoring him at others.
This all changed when he was around seven or eight. The child went out into the city and was set upon by a group of children. They formed a mob and chased him down into an alley, where they proceeded to stone him and shatter his bones. They left him for dead, but the child wasn't. Driven insane through the pain, he dragged his broken body into the forest. There, he was found by the Grey Dam, the matriarchal leader of the Were. Her own cubs had been brutally killed by the king of men and she was still mourning them. Taking pity on the child she found, she named him Ushahin, which means "Broken one" in the tongue of the Were, and raised him as her own.
Ushahin grew up with the Were, broken, twisted, and utterly mad. They taught him many of their ways, including how to use his psychic and dreamwalking abilities. Then he felt someone calling to him within his mind. Satoris called to him, seeking three beings to match the ones his brother had set upon him many years ago. Ushahin answered the call and went to the land of Darkhaven. Here, Satoris offered to heal his body and mind, doing so many times over the years. Ushahin refused. He also offered him a boon for answering him, which he did accept. He requested that place be made for the mad ones, rejected and all alone. Over the years, Ushahin would send out a call, letting his madlings come and serve him in the castle. Around this time (and possibly before, the book only states they all arrived around the same time), two other Men named Tanaros and Vorax answered the call. All three were made immortal and served Satoris for over 1,000 years.
This is when the first book Banewreaker begins. A sign of the prophecy is seen, a star set high in the sky. Satoris decides to strike first before his enemies can destroy him. He sends Tanaros and Ushahin to kidnap a Ellyl maiden, Cerelinde, before she can marry a man, Aracus Altorus, thus bringing about one of the conditions of the prophecy. To give them enough time to get away, the Grey Dam fights Aracus and dies in the attempt to kill him. Losing his adoptive mother devastates Ushahin and he is inconsolable for most of the trip back. When Cerelinde summons the ghosts of a long-dead Ellyl city to attack their forces, Ushahin is overwhelmed by the ghosts who attack his mind. When Tanaros quiets them, they find Cerelinde has tried to flee on a Darkhaven horse. Ushahin sends out a psychic command to bring the steed and their captive back. They arrive back at Darkhaven and Ushahin goes to spend time among his ravens, searching the land to see what else is going on.
In the meantime, Aracus' forces have been fooled into thinking that Cerelinde was taken by a powerful Sorceress named Lilias who aligned herself with Satoris. They go to set siege to her fortress, with Tanaros planning an attack that will catch them unawares as they take them from behind. The Were, previously aligned with Satoris, end their alliance as a new Grey Dam is chosen. In order to travel to the Sorceress' fortress, which lays on the other side of the country, they must use a complicated teleportation system made up of tunnels called nodes that run beneath the land. An anchor must be present at one end, so Ushahin is sent to the desert to wait for Tanaros' forces to come through. But coincidentally, Malthus and a small group is going through the nodes at the same time. The two groups collide, breaking off the connection, leaving most of the forces stuck at Darkhaven, Tanaros and a small group stuck in the nodes, and Ushahin alone at the other end.
Discovering that Malthus' small group is carrying sacred water that could bring about the prophecy, Satoris desperately asks the Were to help kill them. When they refuse, he orders Ushahin to force them to bend to his will. Ushahin gets his adoptive people to obey, but at the cost of being outcast from them. Hurting from this rejection, he begins the long journey back to Darkhaven by himself.
Finding himself in a swamp, he encounters the Eldest Dragon, one of the oldest beings in Urulat. Rather than eating the half-breed, the dragon shares with him the wisdom of dragons, something that apparently expands Ushahin's mind, though the narrative never truly describes what it is. He leaves the swamp and finds a Darkhaven horse. Galloping through the land, he leaves a trail of nightmares in his wake as he dreamwalks through the dreams of men.
This is where the second book Godslayer begins. Ushahin meets up with Tanaros again, who has escaped the node. They return to Darkhaven and prepare for war. The Were are encountered by Aracus and are forced to make a sadistic choice due to their previous dealings with Satoris: they can't procreate and will be left in peace, or they can refuse and be hunted down to the last Were. They agree to the first term as long as the current Grey Dam lives. Ushahin feels the echo of this through the connection he still has with his people. He disagrees with them, but notes that the terms only last as long as the Grey Dam lives. He suspects that unlike his adoptive mother, this Grey Dam will not have a long life.
While Satoris focuses on keep trying to destroy the sacred water, Ushahin decides enough is enough. Cerelinde is still a prisoner, and if they kill her, all this will end. Disobeying the order from his master not to harm her, he sends one of his madlings to poison her. The attempt fails and Ushahin claims he acted alone to spare his madlings from being harmed.
Satoris responds by using Godslayer to brutally heal Ushahin's left arm, crushing the bones to dust and then reshaping them. Rather than having him be in the back of the battle, as his gifts are usually used while Tanaros and Vorax are in the front, he intends to have him fight alongside his "cousins". Aracus' forces arrive and the battle begins. In the first wave, they lose Vorax, and so are forced to retreat back towards the castle. They still have a chance of winning when Aracus finds a power source that can be used against them, turning the tide of the battle. One of Malthus' force, Blaise, a distant relative of Tanaros, challenges him to single combat. While everyone is focused on the duel, Ushahin tries to use the Helm of Shadows to turn the tide of battle in their favor. This fails when Blaise destroys the Helm at the cost of his life.
With the battle all but won, Tanaros and Ushahin flee to the castle. Ushahin still desperately thinks that if Cerelinde dies, they can all survive this, and live to fight another day. But the sacred water is used, allowing Godslayer to be picked up by Cerelinde. Satoris, wishing for his enemies to remember that they struck down an unarmed opponent, allows Cerelinde to kill him. Furious, Ushahin tells Tanaros to kill her. He can't do it, but he honors the vows he made to Satoris by telling Ushahin to save himself. Ushahin leaves the castle with the broken Helm of Shadows and Godslayer, comforting his madlings one last time before he flees on a horse. Tanaros goes out to face the forces by himself. He dies after slaying many of them by himself.
In the epilogue, Fetch the raven finds Ushahin, and shows him Tanaros' death. Now the last of Satoris' three, Ushahin heads for the swamps of the Eldest Dragon. Bitter as he is to be all alone, he is comforted that by denying his enemies Godslayer, the prophecy can't fully be fulfilled, leaving them a hollow victory without their gods. He muses over what is to become of him? Shall he become like his master and raise a force to oppose all his enemies with the weapons he now possesses? Shall he simply disappear and quietly live out the rest of his days, putting his past behind him? The future is open with possibilities as he continues down the road.
Personality: Ushahin is a character who is defined by madness. Originally, he was a typical child, if a bit quiet and withdrawn due to knowing himself to be different. There was also a curiosity about the world around him that would follow him into adulthood. Anything else he might have been was wiped out when he suffered the immense trauma of nearly being stoned to death around the age of seven or eight. As a result, both his mind and body were broken beyond repair. His moods are mercurial, his perspective on situations strange, and he doesn't always make sense when he tries to put his thoughts into words. One could say that he's never truly been happy, even when he was a child. All he's ever tried to is survive and exist as best he could.
Rather than let himself be healed in body and mind by his master Satoris, he's mentioned as turning down the offer several times. He relishes in his pain and madness, for he gives him a perspective that no one else possesses and allows him to use abilities that nobody else has. It's easy to see that his madness is a way for him to get into the minds of others and manipulate them, which would make anyone a little insane. In a world where so much store is set by physical abilities, Ushahin can't compete. But on a mental level, he can outmatch them all. He sees the threads that connect the world and where they will lead, even if he is powerless to stop them from coming true. This both torments and frustrates him as none of his companions believe the warnings he tries to give them.
Despite supposedly being on the side of "evil", part of Ushahin's character is that he continuously acts according to his own twisted set of morals. He genuinely cares for the dark lord Satoris he serves, his "cousins" Tanaros and Vorax, and his adopted mother the Grey Dam. He grieves for all of them when he learns that they have, one-by-one, died. He feels a sense of powerlessness, thinking that their destinies were written in stone, unable to be changed. This isn't to say his thinking is completely white and moral. He does do things like try to kill Cerelinde, a woman who is unarmed and Satoris' guest, on multiple occasions. This isn't done out of malice, merely practicality, for she is a link in the prophecy that will destroy his master and home. While this is the only attempted murder shown, it's implied he's done the same to others in the past. He has tormented others into insanity merely because he could and is not above invading people's minds just because he feels a petty sort of anger or jealously towards them.
He has trouble connecting to people, though when he does find someone who can withstand the strangeness of his personality, the loyalty he feels will last a lifetime. Friends are as close as family to him and he'll risk everything he has if they're in danger to rescue them or protect them from harm.
While he serves the dark lord in his world and would gladly slay every last one of his enemies, he's not without a compassionate side. While his companions Tanaros and Vorax serve for vengeance and wealth, respectively, Ushahin comes to Satoris because there is nowhere else in the world he belongs. He requests that a place be made for those in the world that have been driven mad through neglect, cruelty, or just luck of the draw. He genuinely cares for his "madlings", and while he does use them sometimes for his own purposes, he is never malicious or cruel to them. When he defies Satoris to kill Cerelinde and uses his madlings to do so in a failed attempt, he claims that he acted alone to spare them punishment. At the end of Godslayer, when he is forced to leave them, he gives them one last blessing to set their minds at ease.
Despite his many close brushes with death, Ushahin survives the entire book, the only member of Satoris' forces to do so. He's got a determined streak that allows him to survive when anyone else would have died. There's also a deep streak of contempt in him for the other races. Though it's not necessary to do so during his journey, he makes a point to enter the dreams of people as he passes through the land and give them nightmares as he passes through. He's the "child of three races" without truly being a member of any of them. While he would gladly find a place he could belong if he could, the other races see him as an abomination. Without being able to find a place, he grows bitter after time and takes up the role of the boogeyman of their dreams. It is a role he revels in, seeing it as a way to get revenge on all those who did nothing to stop the torment he received as a child.
Inventory: -Fetch, a Darkhaven raven. Fetch is one of the many ravens Ushahin has a special affinity for. He was saved from freezing to death as a chick by Tanaros and repaid the man by giving him his loyalty. As a dying gift, the Grey Dam, Ushahin's adopted mother, gave him a power similar to Ushahin's own psychic one. He can form images in his mind and put them into other people's heads, showing Ushahin, for example, exactly where and when Tanaros died. It is limited by his intelligence, which is still only that of a very smart bird.
-The Helm of Shadows. Originally used by the enemy, Satoris claimed it after a great battle and warped its purpose. When used by psychic types like Ushahin, their range and affects of their powers are greatly amplified, at the cost of feeling Satoris' phantom pain. Even regular men can use it in a limited fashion with training. It was shattered during the final battle and its two halves were taken by Ushahin. Though its powers can no longer be used the same way they once were, it exudes dark energy.
-Godslayer. A small dagger that was broken off from the jewel that helped to create the world. In the right hands and with the proper training, it can reshape the world around it, both flesh, plants, and non-living matter alike. Even if someone can't control it, it still has the basic powers to wound immortal flesh permanently and kill immortal creatures, including gods.
-A sword. No magical properties or anything like that. Just a typical steel sword.
Abilities: -Dream-related abilities: He can enter the dreams of others while he's awake or sleeping, with distance being no factor, seeing as how he psychically travels the whole of the entire continent trying to find certain people. While in the dream, he can manipulate, change, or even put his own thoughts into the dreamer's head. He has an affinity for giving people the same nightmare that he's prone to have of being stoned to death from a first-person perspective. Fortunately, his ability affects nothing in the real world, leaving only the dreamer's mind vulnerable. The only defenses shown to be strong enough to drive him off are powerful magical wards.
-Psychic-related abilities: He mentions several times that he can "scry the minds of others", which basically means he can read minds to some extent. He's shown doing so only a few times in canon and the only experience fully detailed almost kills him, since the creature he attempts it on is a dragon. He sees the mind as a landscape he can travel through, selecting memories to view, manipulate, and change as he sees fit. Another favorite tactic of his is to find out a person's greatest fear and make them experience it in the real world, such as when he makes the vain immortal sorceress Lilias experience the sensation of her own mortality and growing old. He's shown to push his own madness and despair on other people, giving them an emotional state that can confuse them for several minutes, a handy tool to have in battle. Another ability he has is what he calls "the glamour". Basically, he puts an illusion over himself, making him seem harmless to the person or animal looking at him. People see only a normal human-being while animals tend to forget he's even there.
-Ravens: He's got an affinity for the birds. He uses them to either see through their eyes to spy on people, can combine them to form a giant "Ravensmirror" that allows him to view things going on elsewhere, and uses them as a psychic ladder made of tiny, linked minds back to the real world when he goes too far inside someone's mind.
-Immortality: He has a form of immortality granted to him by Satoris burning a brand into him with Godslayer, which is basically a chip from an object that helped to create the world. It's immortality more along the lines of the Norse gods than the Greek. He doesn't age, but he can still be killed.
-Practical skills: While he's no master of the blade, he did spend over a thousand years watching one of the greatest swordsman in the world, Tanaros, wield one. He's shown to be able to wield one in canon adequately enough to disarm an opponent, albeit a little awkwardly since he can only fully use one arm. He's also a fairly good horseback rider, being able to get inside the animal's head, even the Darkhaven mounts that are temperamental and don't let most people ride them.
Flaws: Ushahin is mad and it shows in the way he acts with people around him. He invades their minds, twists their thoughts, and generally has no qualms at all about driving them as insane as he is. He's killed people before, either at the commands of his god or his own twisted whims. And the worst part about all of this is that some part of him has enjoyed this.
SAMPLES
Action Log Sample: The madman sleeps, and while he sleeps, he dreams. Going from one mind to another is an easy, reflexive way for Ushahin to travel. He pictures himself walking down a road and turning onto various paths that jut out from the main one. This place is strange and the minds that come with it are even stranger. The monsters are simple. They all seem to have the same instincts and desires: eat, kill, destroy. Ushahin stays away from them. They have no dreams to interest him, prowling away in their tunnels.
The people here are a different story. Each one is unique, their minds providing landscapes for him to travel along. He sees many things he doesn't understand inside them: wagons that travel through the land without animals in front of them, strange metal creatures the size of dragons that fly in the sky, and entire cities made up of buildings that are each the size of Darkhaven. He doesn't fully comprehend all that he sees or how it all fits together.
Moving onto other minds, he sees more. This time, he focuses on the lands they've all left behind. He sees a place where legends and myths that live among men, a strange race that travels through time and space out among the stars, a place where killing is a sport to be watched by the masses, and a land where kings are killed and replaced like so many cattle. Amusing places, one and all, but nothing like the home he's left behind.
The emotions are easier to focus on, for those don't change no matter what differences they might all have. Things like fear, joy, and rage are common to all beings. In this, the Dreamspinner finds comfort. If he chooses to do so, he will rip their minds apart one by one, leaving them screaming and sobbing in his wake. But not tonight. As he opens his eyes, Ushahin allows himself one small, crooked smile.
