Kingslayer Bowen Stark

Kingslayer Bowen Stark

Overview

Born	1st of Kohlefest, 113 GME (age 29)
Nationality	Vuurstahlan (Cur)
Affiliation	The Vuurstahl Empire
Known for	Ending Tivluk's revolution by supposedly killing Wheelbreaker Eirin Gyldenlove
Held titles	Kingslayer

From birth, Kingslayer Bowen Stark was expected to accomplish little but whatever his imperial masters wished of him. As he was born a Cur, a population genetically engineered and psychologically conditioned to serve as bodyguards for the Vuurstahlan elite and disposable soldiers in the army, he had no future as an individual until, all too abruptly, the Tempestian Union ended the projects that created and trained new Curs. With this decision, unconditioned Curs like Bowen, who had been just barely too young to start the process, had to be dispersed throughout society into new positions and roles as equals to any other Imperial citizen.

On the cusp of adulthood, Bowen was thrown headlong into the army where it was assumed he would be a mindless, brutal combatant as was surely in his blood, different from his "preordained" destiny in name alone. He achieved some degree of fame in Tivluk for ending the rebellion when he supposedly killed its leader, Wheelbreaker Eirin Gyldenlove, after breaking through her mech frame with nothing but his bare hands. Almost overnight, he became known as "Kingslayer," the boy who accomplished on his own what legions of soldiers could not — and a confirmation that he belonged nowhere else but the battlefield within the 113th Imperial Company.

For ten years since, Bowen has continued to serve the military with his head held low in quiet discontent for how others see him as a prodigy of warfare. When the military's activities were largely relegated to patrols throughout the ruins of Vruikt Barr to stymie the roving Engels, he could accept his place even though he understood he was not truly "free" as Union had probably intended. It was only when confronted with a more complete understanding of two opposites — what genuine happiness might be like and how far it was from his grasp within the current systems that dictated Vuurstahlan life — that he started to even consider the possibility of wishing for a better world.

Appearance

Bowen stands at nearly eight feet tall and has a proportionally thickset frame to match, years of genetic modification in his ancestry resulting in modern-day descendants far, far larger than the average person. His namesake starkly white hair clashes with his light brown skin. His features naturally give him an appearance of looking stern and unapproachable with a squared-off, heavy jawline and shaggy bangs that partly cover his eyes and can make reading his expressions trying, especially with how he tends to literally look down on others to speak to them. Just barely visible past his white locks is a straight scar on the side of his right eye sustained from his last days in Tivluk.

Following exposure to body-altering magics during a mission in Paracelsus, the latent canid DNA spliced within all Curs expressed itself in Bowen's body and changed his appearance. His eyes shifted from a dark blue to a bright animalistic yellow, and he's found it impossible to restrain his hair growth, particularly on his face and down his back, even with regular shaving, as though his body is attempting to cover itself in fur. His teeth have grown to sharp points, but most difficult of all to conceal is the canine shape his ears have taken on and the white lupine tail that's grown from the base of his spine. White like his hair, these ears protrude from the sides of his head rather than atop as they would on an actual canine, though they're disproportionately large compared to those of a person. Much of the time, Bowen is forced to wear a hat that covers his ears out in public, and he fears what might become of him if his condition is recognized by his superiors in the military. In addition to the condition being the result of magic, heavily stigmatized within Vuurstahl, it lends credence to the comparisons to animals — particularly dogs — that Bowen has endured all his life. All this has combined to give him an increasing discomfort in his own skin, a sensation he is woefully familiar with after living nearly half his life in obvious juxtaposition to everyone around him.

When not in military uniform, Bowen commonly dresses in overwhelmingly casual clothes, as it tends to be what is made for people of his size — large and baggy sweaters with front pockets to nervously fidget his hands in, plain shirts with no design or any rhyme or reason in how well they fit him, and jeans or sweatpants with fraying threads dominate his wardrobe. His favorite coat is dark green with a fur-lined hood and appears to be the highest-quality article of clothing he owns, and he is always reluctant to put it away when the weather turns from winter to spring. Most of the time, Bowen is seen with glasses, or, more rarely, a military-issued corrective visor while out in the field. Since the changes to his body from Paracelsus, he's found that he doesn't need the glasses except when reading for long periods of time, but he continues to wear them to keep one part of his appearance in his control and the same as before.

Early life

As with almost every Cur, Bowen's exact date of birth was not recorded; Curs were assigned a birthdate of the start of the year they were born to keep them in age groups and moving through the conditioning process in organized rates. Medical records from Bowen's early childhood, should they still exist, could conceivably shed light on when in 113 GME he was born, at least to narrow it down to the start or end of the year, though Bowen himself has never seen them. As a child, Bowen was not given an education so much as trained in physical activities and taught social deference to his "betters". He learned early on to call people by their titles, to never look them in the eye, and to be silent unless spoken to, the last of which would prepare him for when conditioning would diminish his capacity for speech to "make room" for "important things". Such lessons were instilled in him by a handler he initially knew only as "Mama," though they were imparted with such warmth and kindness that it would not be until Bowen overheard "Mama" disparaging her work and resentment for the young Curs she had to "babysit" that he realized these instructions were not truly in his best interest.

Even for a Cur, Bowen grew especially tall and quickly, towering over many adults before he was even twelve years old. This was generally ascribed to his "pedigree," the Stark line of Curs, known for their namesake brilliantly white hair in the manner that breeds of dogs can be distinguished by their coat colors and patterns. As Bowen understood it, Starks were valued by Vuurstahlan elites that enjoyed their unique and striking appearance in conjunction with their "typically calm but obedient nature" and raw strength — the perfect traits for private bodyguards that would die without second thought for their masters, but who would also engender praise and compliments for their masters' "good taste" in Cur pedigree and training. "Defective" Starks that failed to live up to their lineage's reputation in temperament or aesthetic appearance would generally go to the military as frontlines soldiers where their survival rates, as with any Cur, were so low that the process of integrating a Cur into the army was euphemistically called "sending the dog overseas" in polite company and "euthanasia" outside it.

As Bowen's fifteenth year approached, his various handlers and trainers extolled to him the brutality of the then-ongoing War of Fire and that he could be one of the "lucky" ones not sent to war if he worked hard to appeal to Vuurstahl's wealthy. After all, although the army had a strong need for soldiers, the elites of Vuurstahl were similarly demanding of private means of defense to protect themselves should the war break into Vuurstahl's borders or should its citizens be forced to flee for safer regions. Desperate to avoid certain death on a battlefield, Bowen adopted a meek, quiet, and subservient demeanor that was eager to please, and he honed these aspects of himself so that they would be instinctive once conditioning "made room" in his "underdeveloped mind" for future lessons.

Though Bowen had no means of keeping time to be fully aware of it, the date of his conditioning was delayed further and further until representatives of the Tempestian Union arrived and, in grand ceremony televised across Union-affiliated networks, liberated the Curs still within the compounds. What followed were bewildering weeks of bureaucracy as Vuurstahl, struggling as it was in the war's aftermath and Union's resulting sanctions against it, attempted to find new places for the uneducated and untrained Curs. Those like Bowen who were regarded as of "working age" were filtered into careers and roles deemed compatible with their existing background, much as a typical Imperial citizen would have gone through career-focused training for an assigned job. In Bowen's case, his obedient nature mixed with his physical strength resulted in a placement within the army he had wished so fervently to avoid, and he was soon on the battlegrounds of Tivluk, a colony trying to throw off the yoke of the Vuurstahl Empire.

On one fateful day that would prove to be the last day of Tivluk's rebellion, Bowen was assigned to a military company nominally as a shock trooper to provide support to the mech frame pilots. Surrounded by fire, death, and bloodshed, Bowen wished more than ever that he had undergone conditioning so that he wouldn't be aware of the position he was in. He saw a mech frame get shot down nearby and broke off from his unit. In his mind, perhaps they wouldn't shoot at an already-downed frame and he could conceal himself inside the wreckage, or perhaps he could save someone's life by getting them out of the damaged machine before it melted down or worse. The confusing mix of self-preservation and despair brought him to tearing apart the damaged cockpit piece by piece until he came face-to-face with none other than a wounded Wheelbreaker Eirin Gyldenlove, the figurehead and leader of Tivluk's uprising.

Faced with the standing command to kill any Tivlukian rebels they encountered against his understanding of what obeying would truly mean, Bowen let the Wheelbreaker go, and he concealed her survival by damaging the wreckage further until it suffered a meltdown. Unbeknownst to Bowen, his "savage" destruction of the Wheelbreaker's mech frame had been recorded by sanctioned press tasked with promoting support of the war effort. Upon broadcast, Bowen's act was heralded as the end of the rebellion with the demise of the Wheelbreaker, and Bowen found himself briefly catapulted into the limelight as a hero throughout the Empire. This fame and continued service would eventually lead him to getting promoted to the rank of lieutenant, but within the maligned 113th Imperial Company — somewhere he would not be far from his superiors' notice and where a Cur would not ever dream of aspiring to greater heights, but of enough surface-level prestige that Vuurstahl could point to Bowen as proof of successful Cur integration and social equality throughout the country.

Before The Storm

While in the army, Bowen lived an isolated life even by the standards of a soldier. His reputation as a hero through violence and his physically imposing appearance led to many giving him a wide berth, and his naturally taciturn and withdrawn behavior only further kept others at a distance. Because of his surface-level success, even contact with representatives from Union dwindled to nothing as they focused their efforts on those in greater need. For a time, his primary outlets for self-fulfillment revolved around reading and learning electronic systems-based warfare, activities he struggled with but was determined to see through, if only to prove to himself that he was capable of something requiring intellect and thinking and that was not inherently as violent as weaponry. He predominately piloted a Sagarmatha that could use long-range drones to support his allies and shield them from further harm, his own personal wish to be that all the soldiers under his command would always return home from their regular patrols throughout the wastes of Vruikt Barr. Along with perhaps someday being skilled enough to pilot a machine that was once considered "beyond" the capabilities of a Cur, this was all Bowen expected he would ever accomplish.