User Profile

I am Niall; the only son between Donal of the Cheysuli and Aislinn of Homana.

My father was the first Cheysuli Mujhar in several centuries, and as such mine was an unenviable position as I was under the scrutiny of both the Cheysuli and the Homanans alike, each race wondering how much of the other I'd resemble and take after. Unfortunately that led itself to distrust from both the Cheysuli and Homanans. As I resembled my mother's father and my grandsire Carillon, the Cheysuli began to see me as little more than a Homanan trying to lay claim to a heritage he was inelligible for. The fact that I had not received my lir before my 18th birthday only solidified this - especially in the minds of a few whose dedication to the prophecy the Cheysuli served led them to demand that I be replaced by a more suitable candidate.

As to the Homanans, all they saw was what they believed was little more than Cheysuli trickery. While the Cheysuli denied me because I had no magic of my own to claim, the Homanans believed my lirlessness was a ruse to convince the peoples of my homeland that I was as harmless and as devoid of magic as the Homanans themselves were. And even though I looked uncannily like my late grandsire Carillon, it failed to sway the Homanans to my side. Like the Cheysuli they too wished to see that I was replaced by the bastard son of my grandsire, wishing to extend the dynasty they inherited from the Cheysuli when the Cheysuli abdicated the throne in favour of national peace.

Instead of being the one to become an ideal blending between the Homanans and the Cheysuli, I ended up being the object of suspicion and distrust instead.

And to make matters worse, I had become the object of Ihlini scrutiny and sorcery.

When I made my way back to Homana-Mujhar one night I came across Strahan - the most powerful of the Ihlini since Tynstar - who warned me not to wed my cousin, who was betrothed to me since I was but an infant. To do so would risk any children that came from that union - especially any sons I might get. That is, if I lived long enough to do so. If my enemies had their way there wouldn't be any sons of mine to inherit the Lion Throne. I would either be dead or displaced.

And Lillith, when she came to Homana-Mujhar to serve as a proxy bride as per Atvian custom, made matters worse, especially after we had set sail for Atvia to meet and bring back my Cheysuli-Atvian cousin Gisella. A storm had been called up through sorcery, causing both I and Ian - my half-brother and liege man - to become seperated in the Idrian Isles: I in Erinn; Ian in Atvia. Only later on would I know what had become of my sibling, and what Lillith had done to him while he was there, making him believe himself to be lirless while she seduced and got a child off of him.

While in Erinn I was made to feel welcome. But that welcome came at a price: as I was my father's only legitimate son and heir I was therefore the perfect hostage to be used in a battle between Shea of Erinn and Alaric of Atvia. He knew Alaric wished both me and Gisella to marry as soon as possible, but with me in Erinn there could be no wedding. And for many months I remained in Erinn, while Alaric stubbornly refused to give into Shea's demands and I came to know one of Kilore's royal family better.

Deirdre. Shea's daughter and a princess in Erinn's royal House of Eagles. And like the bird her kin claimed as their emblem she was proud and haughty and spirited. Though a woman and a princess and a good one at that, she still held a strength of spirit and will that could captivate any man. And it did. Though neither of us knew it we were falling in love with each other (though I suspect we both sensed it), I knew nothing could come of it - I was promised to another and thus there would be no Erinnish Cheysula for me. From dinners with her and her family to helping her deliver a colt which proved to be stillborn and waiting out a long night on the Tor to see if the Cileann - Erinn's Oldfolk - would claim him and make him one of their own (they did) to simple companionship when I needed it during my captivity in her land. Companionship she would seek one night, knowing that it would cost her more than just her virtue but seeking it anyways. And when her father came to learn of it, it was only through a lucky stroke and a promise of betrothal between the House of Lions and the House of Eagles that I managed to escape alive and sent to Atvia to claim Gisella and reunite with Ian.

And before we left for home, I would learn the truth of Gisella's birthing. Her mother, my father's sister Bronwyn, had been forced to wed Alaric as a means of securing one more link in the prophecy of the Firstborn. But she wished for none of it, and had been a most unpleasant wife indeed. It was when she was pregnant that she made her bid for escape: she would take lir-shape and leave Atvia for good. And had her selection of lir-shape been better made, she would have succeeded in the attempt. But she had chosen to take raven form, and as ravens are traditionally killed in Atvia as they are believed to be omens of death, she was shot down by Alaric himself, who believed that the bird he had struck with an arrow to be just one more raven like all the others. But Bronwyn wasn't an ordinary bird and she reverted back to human form as she fell and gave birth to Gisella before she died. Gisella came out the worst for it: she was rendered insane and always would be.

The next day, after having attended a strange gathering the night before where I was asked to light a beacon on the Dragon's Skull and given a wolf's tooth charm Ian and I along with Gisella set forth to Homana. During that voyage it was revealed to us that Tasha, Ian's lir was very much alive, and that Gisella had conceived during our brief stay in Atvia. Ian would live and I would have an heir to the throne, once she and I were formally wed.

And it was on our wedding night that our lives changed, whether for the good or for the bad I couldn't tell. Isolde, my half sister and Ian's full sister had come with her husband Ceinn, who it turned out was one of the a'saii - a band of Cheysuli zealots who desired a purity of lineage and considered anyone less than pure as less than desireable; especially for the Lion Throne. That night, during an argument between Ceinn and I regarding my claim to the Lion Throne, Isolde learned the truth of the matter and her husband, and when Ceinn confessed to wishing that his son be placed upon the Lion Throne if Ian refused to accept it, she ended their marriage and left for Clankeep. Something that I would later come to regret when I became lir-sick that night and left Homana-Mujhar in a distressed state.

When Ceinn found me he and his followers took advantage of the situation to use the Cheysuli gift of magical coercion on me to make me believe that I had had a lir, and that my lir had died. And since the death of a lir inevitably leads to the death of the warrior, I knew they intended to have me remove myself from the line of succession so that Ian would have no choice but to accept the Throne if Carillon's bastard son did not claim it himself.

Thankfully Ceinn's plans were thwarted when Serri, a young silver male wolf came to me and told me he was my lir. He broke the enchantments Ceinn had placed, as well as those placed upon me by Gisella herself. But it was when Serri told me that the tooth Lillith had given me was an Ihlini charm that I remembered all of what had happened. The beacon atop the Dragon's Skull was Alaric's designated signal to his allies in Kilore to assassinate all of the House of Eagles. Deirdre was dead, as was her family. And I was the one who set these events into motion. Not even lir-shape or i-toshaa'ni or even a Ceremony of Honours where I received my lir-gold and made Ceinn, my declared enemy my shu'maii - my sponsor - could relieve me of that sorrow.

But as time went on I settled into my new role as warrior of the clans and father to not one but two sons, as well as prince and husband to a woman whom I feared no man could ever truly want, as her madness was so complete as to make it difficult for him to see her as a woman and an attractive one in her own right. I didn't complain of my new roles though; it gave me something to think about when I wasn't thinking of the plague that swept through Homana or the war that brewed in Solinde - a war that I would eventually fight in and help win with Ian's aide. And when I returned I returned to much sorrow. Rowan had taken sick from the plague and had succumbed to it. And Gisella refused my presence when around my children, for my lir-shape was that of a white wolf and the plague was believed to be carried by white wolves. But when I learned that Isolde had died from the plague after she'd given birth to the son Ceinn had got upon her and wanted for the Lion Throne that Ian and I took it upon ourselves to deal with the source of the scourge: Strahan himself.

It was during that journey that Ian too took sick, and even after I had found him a place to stay and a person to watch over him and keep him safe I continued to worry over his well-being. I did not want to loose two siblings, but I intended to confront Strahan and so I had to leave Ian and his lir behind. Once in Valgaard I learned the full extent of his plans: he wished to remove the Cheysuli from Homana so as to elliminate the most powerful means of stopping him and his schemes from succeeding. As well as what he meant when he told me that he wished my marriage to Gisella not be performed: he wanted my sons, so that he could use them as minions and rule not just Homana but whatever land I gave them future ruling of. And Gisella was central to it.

I had two choices: stop the plague or stop Gisella. My race or my children.

I eventually succeeded in both, managing to kill the last of Strahan's plague-wolves and prevented Gisella from stealing our children away from me, but not before Strahan's demon-sent hawk took my right eye. As to Gisella, I had her sent away to Atvia. I could've had her executed for her actions but I thought it best to simply send her into exile. Alaric was the reason all of this took place; it was he who'd killed Gisella's sanity when he killed her mother. Had he not done that Gisella would not have been the willing pawn of Ihlini games that she became. Had Bronwyn lived things might have ended up differently for us all.

But all of that came too late for my father. When I returned I returned to find that my father's lir - the wolf Lorn and the falcon Taj - had died from the plague. Though my mother tried to prevent it she and I both knew that the death-ritual was the price one paid when one gained a lir; that if the lir died before the warrior did the warrior was consigned to death as well. There was nothing I could do but turn away as he requested while he performed the final rites of a Cheysuli warrior.

In the end though, after losing both sister and father to plague and Gisella to banishment in Atvia I would find a new hope and a new happiness. Word had been sent in from Erinn not long afterwards. A letter had been sent from Erinn bearing a seal I remembered well: a wolfhound in green wax. And when I read the letter I found that Deirdre was alive after all. She had somehow managed to survive the attack. The assassins had struck but only Shea had been killed, and he took the assassins with him, killing them and preventing them from carrying out their appointed tasks as assigned by Alaric himself. And not only that, I was told that our union that one night in Erinn had resulted in the birth of a child - my daughter Maeve. And both she and Maeve were well on their way to Homana to be by my side, as I had wished for from the start.

I might have lost an eye and a wife - and nearly my four children I got from Gisella, but I had saved a race and had won the love of a princess and that love had given me a child of my own. Bastard-born, aye, but a child, and first-born as well, and she was the daughter of the woman I loved most - Deirdre.

And even though later on my sons - Brennan, Hart and Corin - and daughter Keely - that Gisella had borne would make life hectic from time to time, as they reaped and sowed the seeds of disobedience and paid the price for it, but eventually coming out the better and the stronger for it, my life was by all accounts a good and relatively uneventful one.

Forty-five years of decent rule with long-standing peace between Homana and Solinde: all in all a good life indeed.

---

Notes

Appearance: Niall is all-Homanan in appearance. He has tawny hair and blue eyes, as well as a beard that he tries to keep in check, as it tends to remind him of his ties to his late grandfather Carillon. In lir-shape he is a wolf, as one can guess by looking at his lir Serri, who is also a wolf (with Cheysuli one only has to look at their lir to know what animal they can become). But unlike Serri, who is silver-grey with a charcoal-grey face and ears and has green-gold eyes, Niall is a pure white wolf, with blue eyes much like his own in human form.

Speech: Italics generally indicate that Niall is speaking either in the Old Tongue of the Cheysuli, or he is communing with his lir. Only Niall or a woman with the Old Blood (ie: Keely) or another lir can hear Serri; to everyone else he is a silent but quite intelligent and somewhat tame wolf.

---

[This is a journal kept for RPG purposes only, and is used for play in the milliways_bar RPG (as well as in otherways). No claims are being made as to ownership of the character known as Niall nor are any profits being made from the usage of said character.

I'm simply borrowing him and taking him out now and then to have a little fun with, and will return him in a gently-used state when I'm finished.

No infringements intended or implied.

Niall and the Chronicles of the Cheysuli are © Jennifer Roberson. I'm just a humble fan who worships her perhaps just a little more than one should. :P]

Friends (57):

Friend of (49):