8 MORE Character Facts! Tagged!

:iconexarrdian: tagged me and requested that I do 8 more facts about my character, Jelani. I won't be tagging anyone this round because...I'm spamming the heckola out of my poor watchers and that's not very nice, precious. >8 But do it if you'd like!

Jelani - (Pictured in the far upper right)

1: Jelani was made to essentially represent the darker side of "Bad things happen to good people".
Reality bites, but sometimes it's not so much what happens to us as much as what we choose to deal with it that defines us as people. With Jelani, he actually didn't deserve to fail his rite of passage. In all respects, he was a good guy that was noble in his intentions. He loved his people, his family, and his little brother. He was perfectly content to live his life in his native homeland hunting bison and earning the respect of his tribe. However, when misfortune hit him, he decided that the great spirit was unjust and cruel. He turned his back on the beliefs of his people and instead put himself at the center of his universe as the ultimate authority. He justified everything he did to even himself until he was convinced of his own lies. While he's changed a lot since then, it's still very hard for him to pull the scales off his eyes. On the other side of things, Zaid represents the other side of "Bad things happen to good people". It's easy to have faith in something greater in the good times, and it's very easy to hate in the rough times. Zaid's instead found strength in his faith and it's helped him over-come the hardships in his life. He doesn't always like what happens to him, but he believes strongly that there's a bigger picture. For an air pocket, he's got a good outlook on life.

2. Jelani's summon is a boar, dragon, wolf beast.

In his culture, summons represent the three positive and negative aspects of the summoner's character. Hadin, his summon, drew off of the bad and emerged as what his people called a "tainted". The boar is self-reliant, fearless, headstrong, but wrathful. The dragon is passionate, protective, and temperamental, and the wolf is intuitive, loyal, but also a harbinger or danger. Hadin also carried the element of fire, which is a giver and taker of life. When Jelani had Hadin attack him in his rite, he was nearly torn in two. Rather than submit to death, Jelani forced his summon to bond with his mind, body, and soul. The result was a two-minded beast beyond life and death with outrageous power. When Jelani and Hadin shared a body, Hadin would manipulate what remained of Jelani's better nature to suite his own desires. This is why Jelani's "Pre-reformation" art often has him with twisted limbs and odd fur on one side of his body.

3. Jelani dominated his enemy nation then used them during his attempt to dominate Para.
Rather than go through the trouble of defeating his enemy, he infiltrate them. Jelani gained their pity first, their trust second, their respect third. He climbed through the ranks from a simple foot soldier to general of the army. After leading several successful campaigns he decided it was a good time to...well there was an unfortunate mishap with his king and with no heir- someone had to take charge. At this point, he had thrown grown men around like bean-bags so no one said anything.

4. Jelani actually attempted to help the protags during his "villain" stage a few times.
While he was slowly losing his mind, and he held a lot of contempt and hatred due to his past, Jelani had lapses into his old self. He spared the lives of the Ti-Hin children, he spared his brother and Cae several times, opting to capture rather than kill them in hopes that they would convert as he had, he had tried helping his old friend, Catik, and at one point he even begged for Troy to end his life. Over time, however, this became more and more uncommon as Hadin began to dominate Jelani's will and Jelani's spirit finally relented.

5. Jelani was defeated by Cae and Alastair.

Old, old art. Hadin actually left Jelani to fend for himself after being driven off.
While Cae reasonably wanted to kill Jelani, Alastair insisted that he face justice at the feet of the realm's high king, Thalion. Much to the surprise of the protags, Thalion's punishment to Jelani was to live. Jelani longed for death, and without an arm, a leg, and a good deal of the skin from half of his body, he was a pitiful mangled mess. He was defeated, humiliated, and abandoned even by his tormentor. Rather than let him slip into the release of death, Thalion ordered that he live on the mercy of those he had denied it from. This decision infuriated many, but it's not exactly in Thalion's nature to deliver death anyway.

6. Jelani is now the Knight of Courage. Almost.

Ironically, where may of the knights embody their virtues, Jelani lacks his. In order to find redemption for himself, he needs to find the courage to face his past, those he oppressed, and to try to make things right. He's going to spend the rest of his life seeking forgiveness. It takes a lot more courage to turn around and face the things you've done wrong than to ignore them, end your life, and leave the mess to someone else. None of the other knights...are very happy about this. At all.

7. No one knows how many kids he has...

Lir (far left) and Maeth (center) are the only children he considers to be legitimate. Lir, however, is a disappointment so Maeth gets all his respect.

...Jelani was kind of a jerkbutt. He did bad things with a lot of people and...yeah. Maeth and Lir are two of his offspring. There's another child by the name of Michael, who...actually betrayed Maeth and may lose his head over it. Another child, a girl named Piper, was named a chaos knight. Long story short- there's a whole lot of little Jelanis out there.

8. Jelani is currently going by "Durzu".
Hoping to mend things over, he allowed Cae to give him any name she chose. His reasoning works in context. Cae, however, decided that "Durzu" (meaning "Traitor") would be his new name. Well. Good job, Jelani. Er. Durzu. Roll with that one.