The Colonel

## OTHER TITLES

- The Tribune of Scars
- The Scarred Captain
- The Scarred One
- The Chiliarch
- The Cartographer of Scars
- The Great One

**WF Catalogue Entry**

 *'We call upon the Colonel, who is blind; who is scarred; who cannot be denied'*

**The Colonel** is a fierce, patient, and cunning Hour, who took part in the Lithomachy and helped open the Mansus to humanity. He was responsible for killing the god-from-stone known as the Seven-Coils, where he was blinded and scarred beforehand to make him impervious to the powers of that Hour. He was involved in the founding of Mycenae, and had a hand in the matters of both Greece and Rome. He was the teacher of the Lionsmith, and is hinted to also be his father. Since the Lionsmith shattered his sword and betrayed the Colonel at Issus, the two have been at war. The Colonel also serves as the guardian of the Worm Museum, and fights to preserve the status quo of the world and the Mansus. His aspects are Edge, Winter and Lantern. His hour is 7 a.m.

## Events

* **The Lithomachy:** The Colonel had a key role in overthrowing the gods-from-Stone, slaying the Seven-Coils with the help of the Mother of Ants and entering the Mansus by force.
* **The Colonel’s Descendants:** The Colonel is often tied to the development and military activities of the Greco-Roman world. He is the founder of Mycenae (the precursor civilization to the Greeks), was involved in the conquests of Alexander, and guided the Unnumbered Legion of Rome.
* **The Training of the Golden General:** A mortal from the Shadowless Empire traveled west to train under the Colonel. After seven years he returned to his homeland and became their Golden General.
* **The Battle at Issus (333 BC):** In one History, when Alexander led his armies to war with the Shadowless Kings, the Golden General refused to fight against his teacher’s descendants. But King Darius revealed to both the Golden General and Alexander “a secret of great betrayal.” The Golden General shattered his sword, and ascended to become the Hour known as the Lionsmith, locked in Corrivality with the Colonel, while Alexander ceased his conquest of Persia and returned to Macedonia.
* **The Worm Museum:** The Colonel has been charged by the Hours with the defence of the Worm Museum, which exists both within and without the Mansus. This duty is so important that even the Lionsmith does not challenge him there.

## Servants

* **Biedde:** A Name of the Colonel, in some accounts said to be a surgeon-highwayman from the 18th century. The name may be the bastardisation of the word “mosquito” in Arabic, and his blade is able to cause grievous wounds that do not stop bleeding until healed.
* **Quirinus:** A Roman god sometimes considered to be the deified form of their founder Romulus. Quirinus is also used as an epithet of the two-faced god Janus. He is a Name of the Colonel that can be encountered in the Exile legacy, wielding a two-headed spear who can impart wisdom on the player.
* **Histids:** A category of servants belonging to the Colonel, who appear to use darts made from skaptodon’s teeth, a technique they taught to the Tragulari.
* **Striges:** Also called Many-Winged Ones, striges are Edge Names who gather around fallen warriors, who they honor by consuming their flesh and bringing their souls to the Hours of the Corrivality. They can be encountered at shrines to both the Colonel and the Lionsmith.
* **The Tragulari:** Also known as Dartsmen, the Tragulari are immortal-hunters who learned from the Colonel’s Histids. They were thought to be wiped out by a group called the Troissaint Company, though not in every History it seems.
* **Kanishk:** In his quest to become a Name Kanishk betrayed his lover, Lok Kahuli, at the Spider's Door. After this, the Colonel forced Kanishk into his service, though whether Kanishk became a Name or not is not specified.
* **Shattered Risen:** A type of undead animated for a time by a rending force, raised from a corpse by the Colonel.
* **The Unnumbered Legion:** A secret army that protected Rome from the Shadowless Empire, whose Legate answered to the Colonel.
* **Lars Westergren:** An explorer and murderer who recorded his expeditions to the Mansus and eventually became a Lantern-Long who abandoned his physical form. He is favoured by both the Colonel and the Meniscate, and can be encountered in the Apostle Entheate legacy as an enemy Long.
* **Lalla Chaima:** A Berber woman who hunts monsters in the name of the Colonel, who can be recruited as an ally in the Exile legacy. Her father Navil, a servant of the Lionsmith, can also be encountered.
* **Duffoure:** A Reckoner Lord of the occult underworld who had dealings with the Colonel, though he discouraged his mobs from visiting his shrines and largely stayed independent of the affairs of the Hours. While not a true immortal, Duffoure dealt in Stolen Years, which helped him maintain his youth and strength, and was an Antaean, “the Blood of the Earth”. He is the Foe of the player in the Exile Legacy, as well as their father, and likely the father of Teresa Galmier. Information about Teresa’s parents describe him as “an itinerant French-Italian noble remittance man.”

## Relationships

* **The Seven-Coils:** The god-from-stone which the Colonel slew in the Lithomachy, with the aid of the Mother of Ants. The Colonel was blind, deaf, and scarred across his entire body to protect him from the Seven-Coils, and likely inherited some element of the old god’s power in his ascension to an Hour.
* **The Mother of Ants:** The mortal priestess who helped the Colonel slay the Seven-Coils and who rose from his blood as a fellow Hour. Together the two forced their way into the Mansus and opened the House to humanity, and swore an oath “to protect their ancestors, their descendants, and themselves”. Scars are sacred both to them, to the Colonel as a weapon and symbol of experience and to the Mother of Ants as a door to be opened.
* **The Lionsmith:** The Lionsmith is the Colonel’s greatest rival, his former student who rebelled after learning a “great secret of betrayal” and shattering his sword at Issus. Since then the two have been locked in Corrivality as Edge dyad. Where the Colonel is an old Hour of cunning and patience, the Lionsmith is a young Hour of strength and rebellion. The Lionsmith is also implied to be the son of the Colonel, or at least his descendant.

## Real-World References

* The Colonel takes the place of the Chariot in the Tarot of the Hours. The Chariot can represent victory, focus, and ambition, and its presence indicates a time to overcome obstacles through determination and discipline.
* The Colonel and the slaying of the Seven-Coils draws parallels to the Greek Hero Perseus and his slaying of Medusa. In Cultist Simulator, Medusa is a Ligeian tied to the death of the Seven-Coils, and one account says the Colonel was blinded so that “the sight of the great coils would not destroy him,” bringing to mind the petrifying gaze of the gorgons. The descendants of the Colonel are also referred to as Perseids, and the Hour is heavily tied to Greco-Roman culture.
* Another story reflected in the Colonel’s ascension is the story of Marduk, the patron deity of Babylon, who killed Tiamat, a primordial sea-serpent or dragon. Marduk wielded Imhullu, a divine wind weapon, and used Tiamat’s body to form the heavens and the earth. The Imhullune Tectrix is found in Baghdad (former Mesopotamian territory) in the Exile legacy as potentially the weapon used to kill the Seven-Coils, and the origin of this legend in Mesopotamia brings to mind the Mother of Ants, who also took part in the Seven-Coils’s death and is tied to the region.
* The strix in mythology is a bird of ill omen that feasts on human flesh. In Cultist Simulator, their description also brings to mind the Valkyrie of Norse mythology, who guide those who die in battle to Valhalla.
* The Name Quirinus loosely connects the Colonel with Janus, the two-faced Roman god of doors, beginnings, and endings.
* In our own History, the Battle of Issus was a decisive victory for Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic forces, and began the decline of Persian power.
* Various shrines to the Colonel can be found throughout the Exile legacy, which connect the Hour to many other figures in myth and history, though to varying degrees.
	+ In Rhenish Aachen, the Chapel of St Andrew Stratelates refers to a Roman soldier in the 3rd century who battled against a Persian invasion in Syria, but was later killed alongside his men by the Roman army for being Christian. He is also known as Andrew the Tribune.
	+ In Stalingrad, the Fane of the One-Armed speaks about a one-armed Briton who fought with the White Army in the Russian Civil War. This is Ewen Cameron Bruce, a British officer who lost his left arm in WW1, who had a pivotal role in the Battle of Tsaritsyn in 1919 (Tsaritsyn was later renamed to Stalingrad, and is now Volgograd). The White Movement’s opposition to the revolutionary Bolsheviks would have been favored by the Colonel.
	+ In Leningrad, a Buddhist temple with a scarred image of the Buddha has been repurposed into a shrine of the Colonel, though an interpretation of the Buddha as the Colonel himself is *very* dubious.
	+ In Munich, the shrine is called Cellar Wotan. Wotan is an old Germanic name for Odin, the germanic king of the gods, associated with war, death, and knowledge, among many things. Odin was also blind in one eye, and is often depicted as an old man. The Swan King is Ludwig II of Bavaria. The opera is very likely either *Das Rheingold* or *Die Walküre* by Richard Wagner.
	+ In Valletta, the Mortal Shrine references events during World War I, when Malta was used to care for a massive number of wounded and injured Allied soldiers. It may also tie the Colonel to the Knight Hospitaller military order and their successors, the Knights of Malta, who were heavily involved in medical and charitable activities during the war.
	+ Shrines to the Colonel are also found in Candia-Heraklion and Nizhny.

## Other Notes

* The Colonel plays a key role in the Exile legacy, and through Defiance the player may choose to ascend with their Foe as an Edge dyad under them.
* The Colonel’s shrines are primarily located in the Mediterranean and Northern and Eastern Europe, due to his ties to the Greco-Roman world as well as his status as a “cold” Winter Hour. Interacting with them often causes wounds, reflecting the scars that the Colonel uses as weapons.
* Crowkiss Hill implies the warrior-king buried here served the Colonel, and in the Ghoul legacy his corpse is found to contain a memory of the Seven-Coils.

## Theories and Questions

* If the Lionsmith really is the son of the Colonel, this indicates that Hours can have children with mortals without the complication of the Crime of the Sky. Their relationship may be more indirect, with the Lionsmith as simply a descendant, but a true familial connection would tie nicely into other relationships found in the Exile legacy (The player and the Foe, Navil and Lalla Chaima). It also reinforces what might be another tradition of the Corrivality as a conflict between the old generation and the new.
* There is some irony in the Colonel being an Hour which preserves the status quo, considering his role in the rebellion of mankind against the gods-from-Stone. This may be part of the “great secret of betrayal” which Darius shared with Alexander and the Lionsmith.
* The current system of Edge ascension involving becoming a dyad in conflict with another force does not account for the period of time between the Lithomachy and the ascension of the Lionsmith, during which **the Colonel** had no clear enemy to battle against. Perhaps the dyad system did not exist until the Lionsmith, and so his ascension fundamentally changed the nature of Edge in some way.
* "No One Writes to the Colonel" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez probably was main inspiration for this Hour.

## Sources

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 We call upon the Colonel, who is blind
We call upon the Colonel, who is scarred
 We call upon the Colonel, who cannot be denied
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Read 'The Sevenfold Slaying of the Seven-Coiled'
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Read 'The Deeds of the Scarred Captain'
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Read 'Book of True Blood'
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Read 'The Book of Thrones'
6. ↑ Read De Horis, vol 2
7. ↑ The Shahpur's Lesson
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 A Reunion
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 The Worm Museum, (influencewinterg)
10. ↑ The Colonel's Satisfaction
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Edge
12. ↑ All three are also confirmed by Colonel's lore aspects in Exile
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Read 'As The Sun His Course'
14. ↑ The Corrivality
15. ↑ Biedde's Blade and Biedde's Blade (Exile)
16. ↑ Biedde's Lesson
17. ↑ Make a Pilgrimage to an Iron Shrine, for a Revelation
18. ↑ An Operation of the Histid
19. ↑ Histid's Dart
20. ↑ Celebrate my Victory
21. ↑ An Operation of the Strix
22. ↑ Make a Pilgrimage to an Iron Shrine
23. ↑ The Dart in the Dark
24. ↑ The Victory of Crowns and Study the 'Victory of Crowns', by 'Arun'
25. ↑ Read 'The Account of Kanishk at the Spider's Door'
26. ↑ Call on the Cartographer of Scars to raise a corpse to half-life
27. ↑ The Concursum Diaries
28. ↑ Our Enemy's Identity, #diarist\_unknown section
29. ↑ Lalla Chaima, the Huntress
30. ↑ Only the Best
31. ↑ Shrine: Colonel
32. ↑ Kinship
33. ↑ Arrange an Initial Meeting, #contact.retainer sections
34. ↑ Inquisitions for the Demiurge, Discord Follower Count Lore Snippets
35. ↑ The Scarred Mysteries
36. ↑ The Wounds of Wisdom
37. ↑ Read 'Medusa's Lament'
38. ↑ Imhullune Tectrix
39. ↑ Althiban Abyss
40. ↑ 'The Mother of Ants'
41. ↑ Quirinus
42. ↑ Chapel of St Andrew Stratelates
43. ↑ Fane of the One-Armed
44. ↑ Repurposed Datsan
45. ↑ Cellar Wotan
46. ↑ Mortal Shrine
47. ↑ Roadside Shrine to an Iron Saint
48. ↑ Scarred Lodge
49. ↑ Eternal Enmity
50. ↑ Crowkiss Hill, One More Treasure, Scarred Bone-Fragment, Furious Memory, The Colours Seven-Coiled