Shekmati

4V 4A 4D

**Shekmati** is one of the 22 Heroes in Chroma: Bloom and Blight.

## Lore

Yes, penitent. I must make up for my own foolishness. I must be better.

Though I don't recall it myself, I am told I was a strange boy: nervous, passive, quieter than usual. That is why, just as soon as I was large enough to perform the duties, I was sent to become a page. My master was a wise, clever, cruel, arrogant, caring man. In so many ways, he was a paradigm of a Garani lesser lord: great in so many ways and so small in some others. But I loved him. I loved him like a servant loves his king. It was perhaps easier to love him than to fully appreciate his cruelty and his arrogance and the chilling disdain he carried for the people below him. His name was Tsel.

I served him. In turn, he raised me. I do think that he really cared for me. Once, I remember, I asked why his words always had a sort of spitting timbre when he spoke to me, and why although he almost never directly insulted my family, words like "low" and "dirty" always hung about their memory. He said that he did not mean to mock me or them, only to help me to be better, and that if he really thought me of poor character, he would simply have sent me back to them. But he believed in me, he said, and wanted to help me. That was the day he asked me to become his squire, and of course I accepted. Tsel was a complicated character, though at the time I don't believe that I grasped that. Like I said, love was easier.

Tsel went riding one morning. Morning turned to noon, then to night, and to morning again, and he had not returned. I went searching, and I found him laying in the shade of a tree some miles from his estate. He was dying. I will never forget how small he looked then-the mighty lord Tsel, my master of nearly ten years, pierced clean through his stomach and crumpled in the grass. And there was something else. Its full-moon eyes glared as I ran. It was the one that told me he was dying, and that no medicine could save him. It told me that it could. It told me that it could show me how, if only I gave it something of mine. I don't remember what I gave the sphinx, but isn't that the point? In return, the sphinx gave me a strange power to save Tsel. It made me like itself.

I could smell the contours of Tsel's character. I could reach into his soul and take pieces of it-if only I knew what to take-and put them somewhere safer than his dying body. By then, having spent hours bleeding and burning in the Garani sun, Tsel could not counsel me, so I reached into him and pulled out as much of his soul as I could think to, binding it to the only thing I had that could hold a consciousness: a mana battery. I did the best that I could. But I loved him.

I saved Tsel's kindness, his wisdom, his wit, But I left his pride and cruelty. I could not see them. So when Tsel faded from his body and manifested in magic before me, something was wrong. Those faults, for all of their vice, were parts of him; and they were missing. I had brought back an outline of my master but in not shading in the dark parts, I left him incomplete. The ghost had Tsel's memories, and he shared them with me, from the dark wraith that had slain him to the tales of his noble youth. He has Tsel's cunning and valor. But he was not Tsel. He is not Tsel. Tsel is dead.

This is why I must be better. This is why I act in penance. My master is dead. His soul has been perverted into only the brightest shade of itself. And it is my fault.

## Notes

* The Ultimate Ability has a different icon in Step 2.
* If Tsel's Protection redirects damage to Shekmati, Shekmati's Primary Ability will be able to target the source of that damage.
	+ For example, if an opposing companion attacked or used a damaging ability on an allied companion under the effect of Tsel's Protection, or if the opposing hero uses a damaging spell or hero Ability on said companion, they would be valid targets for Shekmati's Primary Ability.
	+ The same can also happen if you attack an opposing companion with the protected companion, or Minerva when she has the effect of her secondary.
	+ If a damage source does not decrease Shekmati's health due to only removing Plating or by other means such as the damage protection effect of Fists Filled With Light, then Shekmati's Primary Ability will not be able to damage that source.
* If a companion that had previously damaged Shekmati was destroyed and then brought back from the ashes to the Story through the effect of cards such as Second Chance, Shekmati's Primary will still be able to target the companion, even if it had not damaged Shekmati again after being brought back from the ashes.
	+ It is unknown if this is an intended interaction or a bug at the moment.