the snowflake project

Short Character Summary (Step 3 of TSM)

Name: Sky-Kicker

1-Sentence Summary: Sky-Kicker meets Kos in his time of need, and teaches him to look through the surface of things.

Motivation (abstract desire): Sky-Kicker is driven by a sense of great humility. He left his tribe after dishonoring his family – his honor demands that he spend time among outsiders, serving them in any way he can.

Goal (concrete desire): Sky-Kicker hopes to one day feel worthy to be re-united with his tribe.

Conflict (barrier to goal): Sky-Kicker feels that his dishonor is beyond forgiveness, and nothing he does seems good enough for him to restore his place among his people.

Epiphany (lesson/change): In teaching Kos about responsibility, and learning of the threat rising in the west, Sky-Kicker realizes his duty to his people outweighs his shame-induced exile.

1-Paragraph Summary: Sky-Kicker is under a self-imposed exile from his people. He is wandering in the forest when he finds Kos, and rescues him from near starvation. Sky-Kicker quickly sees the potential in Kos for powerful magic, and also the great need in him for a mentor. Sky-Kicker decides he can best serve Kos by teaching him, and he begins to do so. Teaching Kos to see through the surface of things, and to accept responsibility causes Sky-Kicker to question the wisdom of his self-inflicted exile. When they encounter the monstrous threat rising in the west, Sky-Kicker feels forced to leave Kos and return to his tribe to be with his own people when the inevitable conflict comes. Sky-Kicker leads his people to aid Kos and the empire’s army in the climactic battle against the monsters of the west.

Plot POV

Sky-Kicker exiled himself from his tribe, a group of elves living in a swamp, because he felt he needed to fulfil some purpose of The One apart from his kin. So he roamed the forest alone, waiting for his path to come to him. In the hundredth year of his exile, he stumbled upon a young human, Kos, who was feverish, starving, and nearly dead in the forest. Sky-Kicker nursed Kos back to health, learning about his story, and teaching him how to survive in the forest.

It became clear to Sky-Kicker’s tuned sensitivities that Kos was a rare specimen, a human who had the potential to wield untold amounts of magic. Sky-Kicker began to mix lessons of the nature of the Fadd Tsora, the unseen movers, the Silfa and the Dinna. And he taught Kos how to focus – how to see past the light in his eyes to the things beyond the veil of perception. It was that training, more than any other that brought Kos into his potential as a powerful force of magic. Sky-Kicker and Kos bonded as master and pupil – but underlying their relationship was a deep respect that Sky-Kicker developed for Kos. Kos took to his teaching quickly, showing none of the stubborn ignorance or unteachability (or unbridled violence) he would have expected from a member of the human scourge that drove his people from the land.

While Sky-Kicker and Kos were hunting for their supper one day, another hunting party, comprised of humans, ran across them. Seeing Sky-Kicker, the hunters panicked, shot him, and trussed him up and took him back to their village. He was unceremoniously bundled into a gibbet and hung on display in the village green, the hunter’s arrow still protruding from his shoulder. Sky-Kicker was abused and ridiculed by the people of the village, who refused his requests for medical attention. That night, Kos crept into the village to free Sky-Kicker, but Sky-Kicker refused. Instead he asked Kos to treat his arrow wound through the bars of the gibbet, and wait till morning to try to convince the people of the village to free Sky-Kicker of their own volition.

The next morning, a weak, but healing, Sky-Kicker watched as Kos addressed the crowd on the green. Kos’s arguments were sound, but the people weren’t budging – they were too afraid of the unknown. Even when a man named Torik stood up for Kos, vouching for his name, the people would not relent. In the midst of the discussion, Sky-Kicker began to sense the presence of a grave evil – an evil he quickly recognized as the Griind.

Then many things happened all at once. Sky-Kicker began to shout warnings from his small prison – beseeching the villagers to arm themselves and free him to fight the evil that approached. A man rode up, exhausted, wild-eyed, armed and armored, and demanded to speak to Kos. The armed messenger distracted the villagers from the real threat, dozens of grey-skinned, red-eyed monsters rushing into the village.

There was mass panic and confusion. Sky-Kicker’s warnings coincided with the messenger’s appearance and most of the villagers took the messenger as the threat – many had not even seen the Griind until the monsters were upon them, tearing at their flesh with claws and teeth. Sky-Kicker watched as Kos, Torik and the messenger, all trained fighters, realized what was happening moments before any of the villagers did. He watched as an aura of command descended on Kos, and a remarkable change took place. Kos began to shout commands to villagers, giving them the mental kick they needed to begin defending themselves.

At one point during the battle, Kos was surrounded by Griind, but Torik saved him. Kos began to use magic freely, and in the end, it was his magic that beat back the assault on the village. None of the villagers said a word when, in the aftermath, Kos marched to the gibbet and freed Sky-Kicker. Sky-Kicker noticed that the messenger had been wounded, and told Kos about what would happen if he was left alive. Kos killed the man to prevent him from transforming into a monster.

Kos shared with Sky-Kicker his realization that he has a responsibility to humankind to go back to the empire and help them fight the Griind. Sky-Kicker, seeing the change in Kos, felt that his work was done and his purpose fulfilled. It was time for him to return to his people, after a century away from them. This saddened Kos, who saw Sky-Kicker as a great ally to have on the battlefield. Sky-Kicker’s prowess and magical ability would be sorely missed.

Sky-Kicker left the village at the same time as Kos, and the two parted ways. Sky-Kicker’s journey back to his people took him through lands that were overcome by the Griind, and though he slipped through without incident, he began to worry about the safety of his home. He could see that the situation was much worse than he’d anticipated. Sky-Kicker reached the home of his people, and told them of the danger lurking nearby.  The Eldest had little love for humankind, who they blamed for the loss of their rich lands, even though it was their own folly that started the war that robbed them of their old home.

Sky-Kicker worked to convince the Eldest council to send warriors to help the human empire in their war effort. The decision was a difficult one. For thousands of years, the guilt of the Eldest had been repressed and all but denied. To assume responsibility for the Griind in the current conflict would have a devastating effect on the fragile Elf society. Eventually, however, Sky-Kicker convinced enough council members to vote in favor of sending an army to help the humans. Sky-Kicker was sent with them to lead, since he was the most familiar with the outside world as it had come to be.

The army of Eldest marched through the Griind infested lands, noting that the monsters were gathering for war. They skirted the gathering army of Griind and arrived at the pass through to human lands a day ahead of the Griind army. The battle began the next day and lasted for many days. It was an uphill fight despite the fact that the humans and elves were in a superior defensive position – the number of Griind was too great for the humans and Eldest to hold out indefinitely. At the end of the third day the exhausted human and Eldest troops spotted the hulking shapes of Dwarven golems approaching from the rear, followed by a host of armed dwarves marching alongside.

The arrival of the Dwarves caused an enormous stir among the humans and the Eldest. None of the humans except Kos had ever seen a Dwarf, and most thought they were extinct. The Elves saw them as an old enemy, and an unpredictable force. A tense moment followed in which Kos had to convince everyone present that this was an ally approaching, and not a new threat. With the dwarven forces joining the fight, the Griind were quickly beaten back and those mature Griind who weren’t killed retreated to the west.

At the urging of Kos, who had come to understand the history between the Elves and the Dwarves, Sky-Kicker led his people to begin the process of reconciling with the rest of the world.