Owen

"*I don't believe anyone is beyond redemption. Don't make me prove myself wrong.*"
— Owen

 **Personality**

**Owen Sunwalker** *(Iogan Solstrid)* was an Aragonic witch-hunter, devotee of the Church of the Heavenly Mother, and member of the Sin-eaters. Born in pre-war Aragon of the Bobyrujsk warlord state, his once-proud village fell into ruin in the events preceding the arrival of the Ancient Fear, its only remaining inhabitants spared by the intervention of the Outlanders whom they came to revere as heroes sent from the sky. The town fell on hard times as warlords and heretics staked their claims upon what remained of the devastated southeastern Kilran, leaving the Aragonic caught in the middle of the renewed eternal war twixt the followers of the Old Ways and the defenders of Rhea. In the end, the Templar banner was raised over the Aragon Light, bringing it under the protection of the crusader Master Pius, seneschal of the small but devoted Bobyrujsk Chapter.

Sunwalker was raised as a squire of the Templars, trained to be a faithful student of the Light as a scholar of war and religion both. Though too sickly as a lad to receive training as a full Knight Chevalier, his courage and zeal gained him entry into the sacred Watchers, the elite order of archers in service to the Chapter. His role filled him with pride, ever eager to please his veteran father by serving the Mother, to whom he assigned a maternal role in absence of his mum in spite of the goddess' incorporeality. Though a proficient hunter and steady hand with the shortsword, he saw little action apart from hunting dangerous beasts and petty criminals until the Battle of the Intermarium; as the organized and emboldened Acolytes of the Beyond, in league with a network of anarchists and mercenaries, rose up throughout southeastern Kilran, the Watchers were quickly called to aid along with every able-bodied man and woman willing to fight and die for the Faith and the preservation of the fragile confederation of Bobyrujsk.

The young archer, barely a man at the age of 15, charged headlong into the irregular conflict, dispatched alongside his brothers and sisters of the Watch in small squads to rove the countryside and villages in search of heretics. The crusaders found the realm to be practically brimming with totems, altars, and effigies erected in veneration of the Acolytes' dark and vengeful god Hades, the most powerful deity within the ancient pantheon of the Old Ways, worship of whom had markedly increased in the decades succeeding the Aether War (though certain blood cults in the Western Wastes and Outer Zetia remained faithful to their interpretations of Moros). Owen rightly deduced that the universality of these effigies in make and style implied that those Bobyrujskers who built them in secret had received assistance from outside forces who instructed them in the practices of the Old Ways. The Watchers, with the blessing of the seneschal, embarked on a journey to track down the masterminds behind the insurrection, starting by locating the missing Oracle of Light to beseech the intercession of the Mother; meanwhile, Pius and the regulars re-appropriated the ruins of Temple Krak, ancient birthplace of the first Kilranian Templar sect, to serve as their stronghold in the east that they may consolidate their scattered but resolute forces.

The sojourn of the noble rangers brought them to the harsh northern reaches of Mendea, the coldest and most sparsely isolated region of Kilran populated mostly by pastoral nomads who followed the white mammoth and great mylodon herds rather than settle permanently in agricultural communities (though the northern port of Vicis was a commonly trafficked stop along the Khotani trade routes for its geographical convenience). Owen and his comrades ventured to what remained of the former imperial capitol Thel Olihim, seat of the forgotten Xolumir Khaganate. While throughout his 1,000 year reign the Mad King asserted himself and his two sons as the only true gods of man, shunning the heretical spirits of the Old Ways, he also enforced reverence of his grandmother Rhea, betrayer of Moros and Mother to all the gods and mortals of Emanation. Thus did her gentle radiance pervade Kilran and many other shores, the only constant amid a constantly changing pantheon, her remembrance preserved by the Templars and other crusader factions devoted to the Light. Though old Thel had long been abandoned by the 4800s, it remained the foremost holy site of the Church of the Heavenly Mother, and in centuries past veterans and initiates both made regular pilgrimage to its shattered temples to pay their respects and cleanse their souls of Shadow.

The Watchers found Thel in even greater disrepair than they had imagined, no doubt ransacked by scavengers and weathered with natural erosion over the long years since it was abandoned by the weakened Templars. Owen was horrified and anguished by the sight, unable to reconcile his love for the Order with the devastation bourne by the neglect of what was ostensibly their holiest site. Resolving to have words with the seneschal upon his return to Krak, he pressed on with his equally disillusioned brothers, traveling to the Temple Sidon at the absolute center of the dead city in search of the Oracle. Since time immemorial, the astrologers of Sidon had dwelled within the Temple constantly attempting to make communion with the Mother, spending their lives in absolute seclusion to immerse themselves in the deepest prayer. As Rhea had been silent for generations, however, the seers also studied the obscure art of astromancy, looking to distant stars and quintessence clusters to divine not the future, but to see the past with clarity, making them some of Aquila's foremost historical scholars; many incredibly significant world historical events such as the colonization of Aphelion by the Nightmare Legion could have been lost forever had it not been for the clairvoyance of the oracles. Through worship of the Mother, they could also sense the "heartbeat" of the realm, giving them a measure of insight into the state of global politics, climate, and conflict. Long had the oracles of the Temple made covenant with their brothers and sisters in the Templars, though as the latter grew more martially-minded by the century, their relationship was strained to the point of estrangement, despite the knights still regarding Sidon as their holiest site. Had the Templars still been sworn to protect the Temple, the oracles may have avoided being nearly annihilated by forces loyal to Heiroban in the Kilran War of Succession after the fall of the Empire, a wholesale slaughter which left only three priestesses surviving. Two left Mendea for greener pastures while one remained to ever vigilantly watch over the Temple and wait for the day that the Light would be restored and the seers would be reborn. Needless to say, in that time of insurrection and chaos, the Oracle seemed a natural ally to the frenzied Templars trying desperately to maintain order in Bobyrujsk.

What greeted the weary wanderers at the steps of the Temple, however, was not the wise old woman they had anticipated; it was a girl of perhaps 20 summers with golden shoulder length hair, clad in royal-like red and white robes, and bearing a simple and fair countenance adorned with two bewildered and curious gems of seafoam which gleamed warmly at their arrival. Her name was Lucille, student of the previous caretaker of Sidon who perished at the hands of a powerful heretic, leaving the lass as the sole remaining known seer of Aquila proper: the new Oracle of Light. The Oracle, or simply Lucy or "her radiance" for those unnerved or otherwise amused by her bubbly and conceited nature, was overjoyed at the chance to join Owen and the others on their journey, having sought an excuse to leave the depressing ruins of the city and perhaps seek revenge on the killer of her master. Indeed, long had she sensed the movements of the singularly dangerous heretic responsible for the previous oracle's death, growing stronger by the day as the balance twixt Light and Shadow tipped ever closer to absolute darkness. She had a number of suspects, but through her clairvoyance, Lucy deduced that her master was murdered by a mage wielding a cursed staff called Nathema - the golden scythe wielded by the infamous Benthamic, mass murderer and one of the greatest black mages of his generation.

In search of the grim archmage, the crusaders traveled to the Erdish city of Zalibar, one of the greatest settlements in the Alamutian state of Abu Nar with a reputation as a haven for Aquila's occult elements due to the decentralized government's unwillingness to crack down on the ethnonationalist clans which autonomously controlled the united kingdom of Alamut. Namely, in the city's most dangerous district of Malico stood the Ziggurat, a temple to Hades once used as the hidden stronghold of the Kokushi clan where Benthamic received his training in the Old Ways. Disguising themselves as conspicuously dressed degenerates, Owen and Lucy entered the city and investigated the Ziggurat, finding it occupied not by bloodthirsty mages but a commune of refugees sharing shelter and food. Despite the two zealots' inherent suspicions of western peoples, the vagrants were more than accommodating, offering them bedrolls, coffee, and warm pancake cookies, a popular refreshment in the Ertori south. In exchange for help in mixing and distributing nourishment elixirs to destitutes in and around Malico, the elders of the commune shared with them that Benthamic had indeed come to the Ziggurat as a lad and emerged a paragon of the dark arts, but he had not returned for many decades. Seemingly out of leads, Owen with his proclivity for puzzles and investigation chanced to uncover a massive sigil hidden within one of the hidden inner sanctums, which he discerned to be an encrypted map of Kilran showing the locations of the Ziggurat and several other major shrines employed by the heretics as secret outposts. Lucy quickly recognized the sigil as taking the shape of the Ophiuchus constellation, an important heavenly body to the occultists due to its association with primordial Shadow. Its misplaced stars, when corrected, pinpointed the exact locations of each shrine. All but one of the shrines had been darkened, save for one in Bobyrujsk within the Intermarium which glowed brilliantly.

Thanking the refugees for their kindness, the crusaders retreated from Ertdor and traveled by rail back to Temple Krak to rendezvous with Master Pius and the Heavenly Host. The seneschal immediately resolved to march upon the Sepulchre of Lorelei, jumping at the chance to be the one to defeat the villainous Benthamic - a feat which would surely allow him to usurp Lord Garland and become the Grand Master of the Templars. Against the advisement of his officers as well as a warning of ill omens by the Oracle of Light, Pius gathered his most loyal Chevaliers and rode upon feathered horses to the Great Intermarium in the heart of Kilran, intent on stopping the uprising of the Old Ways by cutting the head off the snake.

The ensuing battle was an unequitable rout; the Chevaliers, led by the seneschal and aided by Owen, Lucy, and the Watchers, were received by an army of heretics lying in wait, their ranks bombarded by hidden artillery and beset from all sides by highly trained and stalwart warriors of darkness. Pius perished, as did the vast majority of the disorganized and ill-prepared Heavenly Host, leaving Owen, Lucy, and a handful of other Templars as the sole survivors. The crusaders returned to Krak to find it populated with a new contingent of Templars, clad in ornate armor which clearly indicated they had come from a much more prosperous chapter. As it happened, word reached Garland from his stronghold in Olexia indicating Pius' intentions to assault the Sepulchre of Lorelei, a plan the wizened Grand Master suspected would fail from the start given the fervor with which the heretics defended the name of Hades' mistress. Garland commended the survivors for their bravery, however, and bid them return with the Sivistys Cohort for their safety - particularly that of the Oracle, whom he believed would be the key to striking back at the growing occultist threat spreading across Aquila.

Owen and Lucy spent several months in the Templar monastery deep within the snow-capped crags of Olexia, spending their days rekindling their devotion to the Mother through meditation and combat training. Despite his rather serious and soft-spoken demeanor and her almost bafflingly cheery insistence on always being the leader, they found fast friends and confidants in one another, bonding over their shared loss of family, insatiable sense of wanderlust, and deep desire to save Aquila by serving the Mother and driving the encroaching forces of darkness back into the void. Though they enjoyed their time of sanctuary in the castle in light of their harrowing quest in Kilran, as the weeks passed their desire for redemption grew. They were determined to seize their chance to kill Benthamic while the heretics were still gathering their power, fearing that if the Templars waited too long to retaliate, Kilran could be lost to the Shadows forever. Garland, however, saw the risk as too great, fearing that the order was on the brink of collapse with the fall of the Bobyrujsk chapter. Though Owen had long revered Garland as a man of honor and piety, the Grand Master's reticence shook him to the core, reminding him of the devastation wrought by the defilers of Temple Sidon. Lucy concurred, and on a quiet winter night they prepared to strike out to hunt down the heretics who orchestrated the Bobyrujsk uprising; not, however, before Garland himself appeared to send them on their way with his best wishes, imparting with them a vital piece of knowledge: the black mage whose death they so coveted was not Benthamic, but a pretender called Hastur Oathbreaker. Indeed, the wizard who was once called Ben Holliday was once a friend and comrade of Garland's who fought alongside him to beat back the Ancient Fear's hordes some decades prior.

With this newfound knowledge, the two young crusaders departed Olexia and sailed for Kilran once more, their path guided by the faintest flicker of light which seemed to call out to Lucy from the darkness drowning the center of the continent...