Cynlan

"Loyalty and love. Valor and piety. These are the virtues that make a chivalrous knight. Without them, you're just another warrior."
Full Name: Cynlan Athanidor Dawnstrider
Age: 74 (or in human terms, his early adult years)
Occupation: Champion of the Blood Knight Order, First Sword of the Sun's Wrath, CEO of DawnStorm Enterprises
Languages: Thalassian, Orcish, some Common
= Physical Description =
Long ebon hair is unbound to cascade freely to Cynlan's lower back, and a thin strip of finely groomed facial hair decorates his handsome face. He carries himself proudly with his shoulders back, head held high, as much from his military training as from his noble birth. Though the fel power that threatened to consume him has since been purged of his body, the side effects of its taint remain in the form of his pale but powerfully muscular physique and glowing green eyes. While on-duty, he dresses in meticulously polished plate armor with his recently reforged ancestral blade close at hand. Off-duty, he wears only the finest clothes hand-tailored by his wife, Sindrael, with the ranseur that marks his status as a Blood Knight strapped across his back. His golden dragon-shaped wedding ring is worn constantly, but only visible when his gauntlets are off.
Cynlan sometimes pulls his hair back into a ponytail before going into a major battle, to better keep it from distracting him in the midst of combat. He has also been experimenting with combining his technical skills with a rudimentary knowledge of smithing to turn his own armor into an engineering marvel. The Dawnstrider Powered Plate Armor is currently in the Mark III phase and looks much like the Titan-forged armor found in battlefields throughout Northrend, with a few odd wires, pistons and plates to give him enhanced capability in combat. His attire is also adorned with a gleaming pin that shows two crossed swords in crimson over the golden sun, with arcane sigils surrounding them. This is the crest of the blood elf military unit Anar'alah Belore, also known as the Sun's Wrath.
= Personality =
Cynlan puts the “knight” in Blood Knight. He strives daily to embody the chivalric sin’dorei virtues of loyalty, love, valor and piety to the best of his ability, but he doesn’t hold others to that high water mark unless they’re fellow knights. He unwinds with the best of them, however, and can sometimes be found joining his friends in drunken revelries around Silvermoon City or Dalaran. He smiles often and laughs easily, but takes his honor seriously.
Champion Dawnstrider is fiercely devoted to the sin'dorei, who he calls "my people." He demonstrates the utmost loyalty to the Horde, but not over the needs of the blood elves. The sole exception to this is his hatred of the blood elven traitors who stood by Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider's side as he tried to destroy the world. Only slightly less hated are the traitorous high elves who hid deep in the Alliance instead of devoting themselves to avenging their fallen brethren. He has no love for the Alliance and condemns them for abandoning the elves in their darkest hour, and even less for the Silver Hand that gave the world their greatest evil, Arthas the Lich King. He does, however, have a fondness for Gorlocs and Taunka, a wary appreciation for the Naaru, and a deep respect for the Argent Crusade.
= Current Status =
Despite his deep involvement in preparing the Sun's Wrath for the inevitable assault on Icecrown Citadel, Champion Dawnstrider is nowhere to be found in Northrend. Indeed, he's not even in this time period. The Bronze Dragonflight, in a rare proactive move to stop the Infinite Dragonflight's plans to undo the timeline, recruited this renowned dragonslayer to lead an assault on their meddlesome opposition several hundred years in the future. Cynlan has not been seen since, leading those closest to him to believe that he is either still on assignment with the Bronze flight, or fallen on some future battlefield.
= History =
== Great Expectations ==
Born into the sprawling Dawnstrider family by a magister father and a priestess of the Holy Light, Cynlan grew up a privileged quel’dorei with a fine education that spanned a great deal of noble pursuits. While he had inherited his mother’s penchant for diplomacy, however, he failed to manifest his father’s arcane prowess as his parents had hoped. Instead, he developed a talent for crafting metal instead of magic, ranging from small bladed weapons to crude armor. With greater study, he found a more fulfilling pursuit in creating complex devices and explosives to mimic his father’s magical abilities.
As the Third War gained momentum, it was this talent – along with generous monetary donations from his family – that Cynlan used as a means to join the many other hopefuls who sought entry into the Knights of the Silver Hand. Ever since he first saw the paladins marching through his homeland on their magnificent steeds as a boy, he longed to join their ranks and make his parents proud. To this end, he trained extensively in Lordaeron, and in the course of his studies he met and fell in love with a flighty young high elf priestess named Thaleia. Unfortunately, his skill with bladed weapons could not compensate for his inability to fully grasp the philosophy that the Silver Hand followed with such fervor. Cynlan was denied knighthood by Lord M. Praetorius Straub and sent back home to his family, discouraged and disgraced…
…And straight into the hell that was left in Quel’Thalas by Arthas’ wake.
== The Fall of Quel'Thalas ==
As luck would have it, Cynlan’s departure from Lordaeron and circuitous route back to Silvermoon City likely spared him death at the hands of Arthas and his Scourge army. Whispered words of plague convinced him to avoid populated areas where it might gather, and the dread anticipation of his parents’ reaction to the news of his latest failure as a son guided him to take the long way home, unintentionally giving him a wide berth around the evil forces marching on Quel’Thalas. That dread, however, was replaced one day with a sudden craving for mana that had not been there before, a need that grew stronger with every passing day. Unsure of what it could mean, Cynlan decided that he could no longer dawdle on his way home, picking up the pace in his need for answers.
It was with a great deal of shock, then, that he discovered a small unit of undead guarding the gates into his homeland. Eager to put his training to good use, Cynlan boldly attacked the undead, seeking to end them on his way through the gates into Quel’Thalas. Practice against target dummies had hardly prepared him for facing combat against the real thing, however. The handful of Scourge might have added him to their ranks if not for the timely intervention of a band of Farstrider survivors, striking the walking dead with a ferocity he’d not seen from their number. They destroyed the undead and brought Cynlan back to the hidden remnants of the high elven race, informing him of recent events along the way.
Shock gave way to anger as he heard the account of Arthas’ invasion and saw firsthand the destruction the death knight’s Scourge army had left in its wake. Familiar landmarks that stood as shining beacons in his memory were now burned beyond recognition, or destroyed altogether. What set his blood to boiling, though, was the utter lack of bodies left from the carnage. So many elves dead – so many of his friends and family gone – and so very few bodies left to show for it, having been raised to swell the Scourge’s forces. The young Dawnstrider could hardly stand the thought of Arthas’ evil deeds. As one of the greatest of the Silver Hand, the human paladin should have known better… or perhaps the knights were not as pure and noble as everyone had thought. With his thoughts clouded by grief, hatred and mana addiction, he cast aside his teachings from Lordaeron and sought a path to avenge the deaths of his loved ones. It’s unsurprising, then, that the moment Prince Kael’thas returned to gather the remaining warriors of his people into an army of newly dubbed blood elves, Cynlan found himself eagerly volunteering his skills to the cause.
== Curse of the Blood Elves ==
His time in the Alliance military was brief, but far from unremarkable. Working as an enlisted engineer to supply the war effort with devices and explosives, Cynlan traveled with Prince Kael’s army to join the Alliance forces combating the Scourge threat around Dalaran. The emptiness inside him from mana addiction was poorly filled by his growing hatred for Arthas and the Scourge, and neither helped him think clearly. As such, he thought nothing of the fact that their ranks were curiously absent of Alliance soldiers until the fighting began in earnest, and arriving only after they were waylaid by a band of night elves hunting for a demon known as Illidan. Still, he learned much working with the few Alliance engineers that aided them in repairing Dalaran’s Arcane Observatories before being called to the front lines. That knowledge, he would soon find out, would prove invaluable.
Cynlan still had enough presence of mind to question the ramifications of his prince allying with the naga, but loyalty kept him from voicing his doubts openly. Instead, he fought beside them when the rest of the Alliance had apparently left the elves to die in the face of an undead invasion, their numbers lacking as Lord Garithos had withdrawn the human and dwarven support troops to bolster his own attacks to the west. Had he voiced his concern, would the young Dawnstrider’s words have made a difference in Prince Kael’s decisions? Would they have been caught consorting with Lady Vashj and her naga by the Alliance Field Marshall? Could he have kept the Alliance from finding reason to distrust them, despite all that the elves had done for them in wars past? Likely not, but these questions weighed heavily on his mind as the blood elves were declared guilty of treason and marched to the dungeons of Dalaran to await execution.
== Out of the Frying Pan... ==
Imagine having your connection to one of the greatest sources of arcane power in the world severed abruptly and without warning, leaving a deep and needful craving for mana that clouds your mind and judgment. Now imagine being incarcerated in a cell that is designed to hamper the magical energies remaining within you, preventing you from drawing on ANY sources of mana. Cynlan, along with Kael’thas and the rest of the blood elven army, languished in just such a prison, cut off from even the slightest touch of the arcane. As his ability to shape and manipulate the forces of magic were already tragically poor compared to the average elf, the young Dawnstrider was ill-prepared to face the full onset of magical addiction that came over him deep within Dalaran’s dungeons. His mind could hardly comprehend the hunger overriding all other desires, his body shaking from an all-consuming need beyond anything he had ever felt. Emotions ran rampant, from numbing sorrow to burning hatred, pulling from him either tears or rants. Of all the blood elves trapped with Kael’thas and awaiting their doom, Cynlan was among the worst off.
Finally, his term of incarceration came to an end, but not in the way he expected. The cell door was opened not by Dalaran guards, but by his chief engineer. Freed by the same naga who had helped them before, Prince Kael’thas and his officers quickly released the captured elves from their torturous imprisonment and stormed up into the ruined city of Dalaran, killing any man or creature that stood between them and freedom. All of Cynlan’s combat training was finally brought to bear against the very Alliance that trained him, the very Alliance that had betrayed them and sentenced them to death. If he felt remorse for his actions, it was eclipsed by the rage that had been building in him since the destruction of his homeland.
Knowing full well that Lord Garithos would order the Alliance military to kill them on sight for their actions, the decision was made to use the same portal that Archimonde used to gain entrance to this world as a means to escape. In order to do so, however, a means of keeping the Alliance at bay was needed to ensure that everyone would make it through in time. Cynlan, along with his fellow enlisted engineers, was put to work building defensive towers to ensure the portal’s safety. Time was of the essence – any delay in erecting the towers meant doom for his prince and his people. Fighting the withdrawal effects of his mana addiction with every breath, the young Dawnstrider pushed himself as he never had before, forcing his mind to focus and his body to steadily and quickly build the means of securing their freedom. Finally, with the Alliance breathing down their necks and death close at hand, the portal was forced open and the evacuation begun. The elven engineers worked tirelessly and desperately to maintain the towers and construct yet more, until they too were called back and through the portal.
This time, there was no questioning of his prince’s orders. Cynlan knew what awaited them if they should remain in Dalaran or try to leave the city any other way. He ran through the shimmering portal without looking back, trusting blindly that anywhere was better than there.
== ...And Into the Hellfire Peninsula ==
TO BE CONTINUED!
Under Construction!
Category:Horde
Category:Blood_Elf
Category:Paladin