CS:
Name: William Dagonet DeTantervaille
Alias: Ser Dagon Feldspar
Race: Winter-born
Court: Winter
Position/Occupation: Winter Knight and Executioner of Queen Arys, though currently is bound in the dungeons in penance for his previous failure, violating the law of hospitality upon guests of the Winter Court.
(Actual) Age: Roughly 450 years old, give or take several decades. He lived during the Renaissance, originally.
Personality: Cold, aloof, and serene, Ser Dagon is the very embodiment of Winter. Neat and simple, he does not possess many desires anymore, nor does he overly care about others, such is the lack of empathy that has harden within him like the ice of his court. He has no purpose to his life beyond serving his Queen's bidding. Proud in his duty and utterly loyal to his charge even in what would otherwise be an accursed fate, he takes solace in the fact that he has earned the grace of a motherly figure even though others call her cold and heartless, and strives to live up to her expectations out of profound admiration of her, and will willfully bear whatever punishment she may desire should he fail. Though he is well-mannered and respectful to most, he's also as stoic and implacable as his Queen when set to a task.
A drawn depiction of Ser Dagon Feldspar, the Winter Knight, by a Wylde Fae.
Appearance: (Must have well written description, pictures are welcomed.) Ser Dagon is almost always seen clad in his signature armour, a traditional piece borne by all knights of the Winter Court, an ornate suit of black plate metal fringed by a silver cape across his shoulders, with a helm bearing the resemblance of a wolf. Beneath the armour, Dagon looks like a frozen corpse, his skin looks dark blue and blotchy from frostbite, hair is pale white (though neatly cut short if he's allowed to), and his body bears the marks of dozens of wounds from countless duels, battles and engagements both before and after he entered the service of Winter. His eyes are taken on a light blue tinge, hinting at the ancient magic sustaining him and giving him life and vitality far beyond his years but which also binds him totally. He is also well-toned and strong in body build despite his ghastly appearance.
Family: Forgotten (He most certainly knows he had a Father, Mother, some siblings, and a wife and children, but part of his deal with the Queen of Winter was that she removed all memory of the life he had on Earth besides his name and who he was)
Ambition: (Goal) To protect the Winter Queen's interests, vanquish her enemies, and serve her alone in whatever task she wishes.
Background: Born into a lesser noble family in Renaissance England, Ser Dagon Feldspar was raised as a squire in an English family descended of one of the Norman Knights who accompanied William the Conquerer to England and intermarried with the local population. Though a historian will find no trace of any Knight or house bearing the name Feldspar, it is because the last name was given to Dagon by the Fae of the Winter Court, and nobody human had any living record of who he or his family was. Though the Fae of Winter know the tale of his true family, the DeTantervailles, very well.
William, as he was known then, was raised as one of the younger sons of a lesser noble family in England, making him prime material to be trained as a Knight, though with next to no chance actually inheriting his father's titles, he found the idea of becoming a Knight-Errant more appealing, and set out to try and make his fortune. Unfortunately for William, change was coming to Europe, and on its wind was death. The Black Death which had ravaged the south had finally made its way north and across the channel to England when he reached his early twenties, sweeping through the countryside and killing hundreds, if not thousands without discrimination. Entire towns were left deserted, dozens of fields were left untended, and many preachers spoke of the end of days approaching.
Partly terrified of every town his passed through and every traveller he passed by as much as others were of him, William sought work throughout the countryside, and those who weren't paranoid paid gladly for a Knight to protect them, as not only the plague but looters of all kinds were on the prowl looking to prey on the weak and the desperate. By the grace of God, he never contracted the plague during this time. Several years into his work, William met the love of his mortal life, a country woman named Lillibeth in a far off corner of northern England. He had come to her town on a job, but ended up falling head over heels for her, and after a brief courtship he asked her to marry him back in his father's house. She accepted, though it took several weeks for word to get back on his father's response, only for the same messenger to return to William, stating that the family keep had been burned and looted. Apparently his parents had died of the plague in his absence, along with most of his household, with his other siblings scattering to get as far away from the plague as possible, leaving the mostly deserted Keep ripe for looters. William was effectively alone, but took solace in the fact that he was with his Lillibeth, whom he married within her town's far more modest parish.
Five years pass, with the plague disappearing and reappearing at times and the country still remaining mostly lawless, but William was now on the edge of 30, and was running a farmstead and acting as the new magistrate of the town he was in following the sudden death of the last one, and being the most capable soldier and a dubbed Knight to boot. He also had a 4 year old son, and a 1 year old daughter, and he and Lillibeth were happily married and content with their lives. It was during this period that William learned some of the local folklore of the area, as other residents had reported strange lights often appearing from the ancient forests to the north, ages before, they said that pagans had committed sacrifices at standing stones deep within the woods to make pacts with demons. They also told of these demons wandering through those ancient woods at times, and prone to snatching unaware children who stray too far into the dark and ancient forests that even hunters and woodcutters feared to enter. William found the stories fascinating, but paid them little heed at the time as local superstition, he'd heard many such tales on the road.
Though it wasn't long before his life too another tragic turn. Called to perform his duties as magistrate, an pair of suspects had apparently been reported way-laying travellers on the road within a couple kilometres of the town. Fearing no simple bandits, William rode off to investigate and deal with them himself. In his absence, another drifting band of robbers came from the direction of his family's property, seeing easy targets and nobody to stop them in sight.
William returned swiftly after chasing down and executing the two offenders in the name of the law, only to find the robber, deserters from some likely now dead lord ransacking his property and house. He burst in, cutting down each of the men he could find and sending others running to get their fellows, but was too late. The desperate men had run Lillibeth through after she tried to fight them, and they had murdered his two young children as they wailed for their dead mother. The Knight was shattered, though the sound of twanging arrows and burning flames sparked his attention off of his dead family, the dozen men outside had taken arrows and were going to burn him in his house to the ground. Stumbling out the window and running into the woods as the twangs of arrows flew by him and smoke and flame enveloped his home, he dared not look back for several reasons.
It was only after his feet could carry him no further that the Knight-errant fell down and wept in despair. He had lost everything and everyone he'd every loved, and possessed no power to undo what was done, and vengeance would give him nothing even if he could catch those remaining men. He considered throwing himself on his own sword, but feared damnation in Hell for committing suicide and lacked the will to do it. So, finding himself in a stone circle, and possessed of a conviction born of anger at the cruel fate that had been dealt to him by a uncaring God, and knowing even vaguely of the local tales, he called out to any being who might hear his pleas and grant him a wish.
His cries and calls were answered, with a silence more complete than anything, darkness even deeper than the natural dark of the wood that night permeated his vision, before he was struck dumbfounded by a being of ethereal beauty unlike any he had ever seen before appear before him. The air grew cold and frost came from William's breath, and snow formed on the ground around the circle even though it would be months before winter. The being did not smile, and William almost felt like he should be afraid, but in that moment as he peering into her piercing icy eyes, he felt nothing but odd kinship with this being, as if she had felt similar pain and loss in her heart of a similar scale before in another time, but no less forgotten in her everlasting mind. Yet she bore such pain with such a stoic grace that those unfamiliar with such a thing would never notice.
She introduced herself as Arys, the Queen of the Winter Court of the Fae, and merely asked William what his wish was, and what he would offer her should she deem to grant it. William's was simple: To be taken far away from this place, and that he could be made to forget he ever had a family so that he would never have to feel the pain of heartbreak in the face of cruel fate again. In exchange, he offered his sword, body, soul, and servitude to the Queen for all time, in whatever faculty she desired. The Queen, showing no outward signs of interest or disinterest, merely replied by telling William to give her his full and true name if that was truly his desire. Knowing vaguely of the power of names, William cared not of the cost, he had resolved that whoever this being was, he adored her, and knew she had the power to grant what he wished more than anything in the world. He gave her his true name freely and willingly there in the stone circle, and blacked out as he felt tendrils as cold as ice grip his mortal heart.
He would awake in the Fae realm of Winter, both parts of his wish granted, though not exactly as his former self may have guess. He had forgotten his known name and everyone he had ever known or loved before, knowing only that he was a Knight and had been a wanderer during a time of great calamity and change on Earth. The Queen who was there for his reawakening also informed in him that she used an enchant upon him similar to one which had made her, she had given him a heart of ice, that he may never feel heartbreak again, and the process had turned him into someone who looked like they'd died with severe frostbite, with hair as white as snow and eyes of piercing blue. She informed him that his name was Dagon Feldspar, and that he was to trained and made into a Knight in her service, and the service of her Court.
The centuries blended together as time flowed in its strange ways within Fae lands, and Dagon became the infamous Winter Knight, officially dubbed by his beloved Queen, and wielding the ancient Unseelie sword
Sioc, his loyalty to her was absolute, for he relished the oblivion and mercy she had granted him when nobody else would or could. The Queen of Winter had been there for him in his darkest hour, and in the mind of an infinitely short-sighted human by comparison to the machinations of the eternal Fae, that made her worthy of his complete devotion, and he was willing to do the same for her should she called upon him to do so. He would take up any task, or bear any amount of pain for her if only to consider himself truly worthy of the attention which this great and terrible being had bestowed upon him.
Though in some cases his devotion overrides his sense, as was the case that landed him in his current situation within the dungeons of Winter. He had violated the sacred law of hospitality by striking a member of the Summer Court when the Fae emissary had come under a banner of peace to try and smooth over relations between the two courts after the "turbulence" between Feoras and Arys. Alright angry on behalf of his Queen as what he saw as Summers' honeyed words, The Unseelie blade the Winter Knight wielded whispered temptations of even greater power and vengeance for his Queen, if only to allow it to possess Dagon. In this moment of weakness, the ancient being triumphed, and Dagon silently accepted. Bloodshed was only averted in the court through Arys's absolute power over both Dagon and
Sioc through knowing their true names. By the time Dagon regained himself and the blade separated from him, he had realized the depth of his folly.
Dagon had to be punished as sacred law demanded, and so was stripped and bound in chains within one of the lowest dungeons of Winter, where Goblin Torturers each day cut new wounds into the Winter Knight, lashing and bleeding him until his blue skin became scarlet with blood, and sticking him in icy chambers colder and darker than almost any other place in Winter, his veins and blood crystallizing and tearing his skin and nerves ever more painfully. Though his superhuman power and the ancient magic upon the cells left him unable to die, so each day he awoke not entirely healed or free of pain, but cast into a fresh day of torment. Dagon has borne this punishment for 300 years, never once reprimanding his jailers in their task, nor even calling for mercy from his Queen. He knew she did not respect weakness, and if suffering was the only way to show his loyalty to her in his current state, then he would bear it as his duty.
Or at least, that was the official story that the Winter Court's members said to outsiders when the matter of their Winter Knight was brought up, as was the Queen's command. Those that knew the truth knew that the Queen had punished the Knight more out of displeasure for his perceived inaction towards the Summer King's own machinations during his visits from so long ago when Dagon was only newly dubbed, and used the more recent incident with an emissary as an excuse to exact more painful punishment than tradition would have demanded as a personal unspoken reprimand for his cowardice and weakness, he knew the true reason why he had been locked beneath the icy dungeons of Winter for so long, tradition was just a pretense for a lesson in priorities. Though such thoughts were never voiced aloud for fear of their Queen's ire turning upon them.
