Empatheias App

[dadofmarmora]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Callie
Contact: Plurk
Age: 31
Current Characters: Kevin Regnard


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Kolivan
Age: Old and Fartlike (We don't know, and we don't even know the natural life span of a Galra for me to guess at a number, but the design of his face implies Solidly Middle-Aged -- he has lines around eyes and mouth.)
Canon: Voltron
Canon Point: Season 4, just after Keith leaves Team Voltron to permanently join the Blade of Marmora on their longterm quintessence-stalking mission

Background:

The most basic plot of Voltron sets five color-coded young adults who pilot robot lions -- which combine to form a larger robot -- against a race of aggressive aliens called Galra. Their leader, Zarkon, is a tyrant who has spent millennia conquering the entire universe and bending it to his will. To that end the Galra have become known as an unstoppable force, and as it stands, only the paladins of Voltron have a chance of defeating him.

Partway into season two, however, we meet Ulaz, a Galra who turns out to be a member of a rebel group of called the Blade of Marmora. The Blades are Galra themselves, he says, and they are bent on destroying Zarkon's empire from the inside out. In fact, it was Ulaz who took a risk and freed Shiro from Galra captivity, sending him back home to Earth and enabling him to assemble all of the paladins together and recover Voltron itself, setting the main plot into motion. When they meet Ulaz that second time, he gives them the location of the Marmora base, and proceeds to blow himself up on an enemy robeast in order to save their lives and protect their mission.

Bummer. Shiro still had so many questions.

Thus, it is decided that they will go to investigate these Marmora people. This is especially important to Keith, who for as long as he can remember has carried a knife given to him by his missing parents -- he noted that Ulaz carried one that matched it, though he kept his own a secret when he asked him about it. Although it is true that the Blades will make valuable allies in the fight against Zarkon and Shiro agrees to make the trip with that in mind, for Keith, it's also a chance to learn more about his unknown history, and get some answers about who he is.

Kolivan is the leader of the Blade of Marmora, and he is not happy to see them.

"I know who you are," he says blandly after the paladins introduce themselves, and he throws shade at Ulaz for blowing the location of the base while he's at it. He is not at all inclined to form this alliance -- he points out that the paladins were ordered to come unarmed, and when they argue that the Red Lion that they arrived in is a valuable asset, he agrees, but notes that he was really referring to the knife Keith smuggled in. Keith has already failed the very first test that was set to the paladins by disobeying Kolivan's command. As Kolivan notes, the Blades are "an organization based on secrecy and trust". Why should they ally with the paladins if they can't even abide by something so basic as "no weapons"?

Then, too, the knife Keith carries is a Marmora blade, which he's accused of stealing after he's tackled to the floor and has it taken away from him. He protests, saying that he's always had it, and when Kolivan asks Shiro if he can back Keith up in this, Shiro doesn't know. Kolivan suggests they leave before things escalate further, but Keith continues to shout questions, and so Kolivan offers to allow him to take the Trials of Marmora, making it explicitly clear that the trials will lead to one of two things: Knowledge or Death™. Desperate for answers about his past and his heritage, Keith goes for it without waiting for any further explanation.

The first part of the trial is the combat portion, and Kolivan watches dispassionately at Shiro's side while Keith gets the ever-loving shit beaten out of him. However, there's more to it than simple battling. The first Blade he fights defeats Keith easily, but informs him that the pain will stop if he'll give up his knife. Keith refuses, and the Blade backs away, telling him, "You are not meant to go through that door." Repeat this several times, with an increasing number of Blades joining the fight each time. Shiro protests, but Kolivan points out that "sometimes the greatest challenge is knowing when to stop," and states that Keith has the power to end what is happening to him at any time. When Shiro, distressed, states that Keith will never quit, Kolivan's only answer is, "Knowledge or death, Shiro." As it turns out, the point of this part of the trial is for Keith to realize that there are solutions other than throwing himself into the fighting over and over again, and Kolivan watches him closely as he finally locates another way out and moves on to the next part of the trial.

The second half of the trial is all mental. Kolivan explains to Shiro that the suit that Keith is wearing for the trial is capable of creating a virtual mindscape reflecting the wearer's "greatest hopes and fears". While the suit is forcing Keith to choose between the knife and the answers it will bring him or his greater duties to the Voltron team, Shiro grows increasingly distressed by Keith's suffering, and Kolivan remains stoic and unmoved. When Keith at last chooses Voltron and leaves his father and the knife behind in his mind, the Red Lion awakens and commences attacking the base to pull her paladin out. Keith stops the fighting by offering up his knife to the Blades on his own, having decided that Voltron’s mission for the future is more important than his own past. The knife reacts, morphing into a proper sword. Kolivan notes that Keith has "awakened the blade", something only possible if there is Galra in his heritage. He's passed the trials, and the knife is rightfully his.

(Every Blade must pass this trial to earn the right to wield his sword. Kolivan would have taken the same trial somewhere within his own history, and confronted these same lessons.)

After that's all settled the Blades turn themselves around very quickly, with Kolivan accompanying Keith and Shiro back to the Castle of Lions to form the alliance they originally came for. Kolivan kneels before the Princess Allura in a gesture of submission -- he is something like seven-and-a-half feet tall, so this is a very deliberate act of respect -- and notes that the Blades have a plan to disable the entire Galra fleet by uploading a virus into the central computer hub of Zarkon's command ship. However, the cover of the operative in charge of doing so has been compromised, and thus the plan needs to start now.

Working together, the Blades and the Paladins arrange things such that the virus will be uploaded, the fleet dismantled, and Emperor Zarkon's ship will be pushed through a teladuv wormhole into a far-off location in space. Isolated from the rest of his fleet, Zarkon will be forced to fight Voltron directly, hopefully to be taken out once and for all. Thace, the operative who was supposed to upload the virus to start them off, goes silent during the planning process, and Kolivan announces that they need to abort the mission. When Allura protests, Antok, Kolivan's second in command, declares that the Blade of Marmora does not take chances, and that's how it's survived for so long. Allura argues that their caution is instead holding them back, and Kolivan points out that "it's better to wait than to jeopardize everything" -- and that at that point it's too late to get someone else inside the ship to take over for Thace anyway. Keith offers to go in Thace's place. Kolivan protests that it's a suicide mission and he's not about to "command someone so inexperienced to take on a mission so dangerous", but Keith announces that nobody's ordering him to do anything, and he's going to make it happen. Kolivan backs down, the mission continues, and although Zarkon is not completely obliterated, he is disabled. Progress has been made.

But there is still a great deal of work to be done. Systems and systems of planets are still under Galra control, and as the series progresses, Kolivan and the Blades work openly with Voltron. This is a new position for the Blades. In the past, they've always worked in utmost secrecy. Now, they're out in the light and fighting at the Paladins' side -- and, being Galra themselves, they are not always totally welcomed by those they're working to free, something that causes Kolivan noticeable disappointment. He is present for the diplomatic dinner where Allura and the paladins attempt to bring various leaders of planets that have been liberated together, readily shares his information there, and assures everyone that the Blade of Marmora will be in the thick of it. But one of the leaders replies that “my people have been enslaved for centuries by people who look just like you,” and another adds that it’s Voltron the people really want to see, and Voltron the people will trust. Because of this sentiment, which Kolivan never argues against when it comes up, the Blades wind up walking something of a thin line, active and engaged and visible within the rebellion but still working more as spies and intelligence gatherers than active combatants.

Over the course of the next two seasons of the show, Kolivan has the dubious honor of being the one Blade with a name who doesn't get the red-shirt treatment, and as his operatives are stretched thin he begins having Keith along on missions. In season four, after Shiro regains his bond with the Black Lion -- and Keith, who had been forced to step into his position as leader, chooses to back away from Team Voltron entirely -- Kolivan accepts him fully into the Blade. Offscreen, the Blade works with Keith and trains him, despite Keith’s penchant for blowing their cover and getting into firefights when he’s only supposed to be gathering intel. Kolivan never seems to get upset with him over those incidents, and when he does grow angry enough to lecture him, it isn’t because the mission was compromised. It’s because Keith broke Blade protocol, and put himself in danger. Kolivan shows that he is willing to listen when Keith speaks up all the same, and by the end of season four, he is definitely treating Keith the same way he treats his other agents.

As far as Kolivan's life outside of the Blade of Marmora -- we're given nothing. Given how often the Blades seem to die, and the fact that Kolivan is always out for these infiltration missions right alongside his operatives, the implication is that Kolivan has been a member and ultimately the leader of the Blade for a very long time and that his position is well earned. Most of what we see of the Galra is extremely militaristic in nature, so it's safe to assume that Kolivan either came from a military background to start with or was raised within the Blade, and has devoted the bulk of his life to the organization and what it stands for. That said, he rarely calls any of his Blades to heel outside of crisis situations, and they often act as a unit without any prompting from him at all, implying that his leadership position is less about bossing people around and more about organizing a bunch of very talented operatives who are spread out very thin and often undercover. Overall, Kolivan's position within the show as well as within the Blade is that of a supportive guide, emerging from the background to help make things happen whenever it is time for them to happen, even when other characters are the ones taking the true spotlight.

Personality:

I described Keith's trial in such detail because, although the episode obviously used it as a way to focus on Keith and his development -- Keith is one of the main characters of the show, after all, and Kolivan only a minor one -- Kolivan's entire personality is designed to make him a vessel for the lessons Keith needs in order to grow. He is the face of the entire Blade and personifies its most noted qualities: caution, cunning adaptability, and devotion to the larger mission over one's own selfish interests.

Obviously, though, Kolivan does not exactly make a good first impression.

Initially, as we've seen, he comes across as stern and dismissive of Shiro and Keith. He seems to be disrespectful of Ulaz’s sacrifice and openly calls him a fool; he has no reason to trust Shiro or Keith, given that they failed to come unarmed as ordered and have thus essentially betrayed the Blade right from the start, and tells them to leave rather than trying to come to an agreement. His demeanor while watching Keith suffer during his trials is cold and clinical. To all appearances, he does not seem to care what Voltron -- dubbed the last hope of the universe -- is up to exactly, and is unmoved by the fact that his operatives are repeatedly beating the snot out of someone they openly recognize to be young.

For all that he seems so frigid, however -- especially next to Shiro’s open distress about what Keith is going through -- his stony exterior is a direct result of just how much he cares about his agents, and that’s something that becomes more and more obvious as the series progresses. Kolivan is cautious to the point that Allura attempts to tell him off for it, and he is completely unruffled by her declaration that it’s holding the Blades back. He refuses to put his operatives in more danger than he has to, and when Keith offers to take Thace’s place in the mission at the end of season two, Kolivan is aghast, calling it a suicide mission -- “I would never command someone so inexperienced to go on a mission so dangerous.” When Lance drops a group of Blades off for a ground strike, Kolivan ensures that all of his operatives have jumped out before he does, following them rather than barreling into the lead. Repeatedly in the missions we see, the very instant the operation is compromised, Kolivan orders them to abort the mission. There is a moment in another mission where he suspects that something is wrong, and that’s enough to get him to want to leave.

Above all else, Kolivan’s priority is getting his agents out alive, and if that means playing it extra extra extra extra extra safe, so be it. As noted in Kolivan’s page of the Paladin Guidebook, losing any of his operatives is something that touches him very deeply. He has made it a personal point to honor those who have fallen for the cause by doing his utmost to protect the ones who are still alive.

This is not to say that Kolivan will drop everything to rescue his people. Quite the opposite, in fact. Running into the fray to save just one person is fluffy Voltron nonsense and he says as much, and on more than one occasion, he shows a total willingness to leave his operatives behind to die. Blade protocol, he explains to Keith, is that the mission is more important than the individual -- and one dead Blade is better than two dead Blades. This is a philosophy based on a cold and painful realism. Sometimes, on a mission, people die. It’s a war, and some casualties are unavoidable. To that end, once the Blades are out on a mission, it’s every agent for themselves. It’s part of the trust between members of the Blade. You have to trust your teammates to get out on their own, and you have to trust that if you fall, none of them are going to destroy themselves in an attempt to save you. Everyone is devoted to the mission above all else, and Kolivan is insistent on holding to this even if it means taking one of the casualties he wants so badly to avoid.

But he’s not at all emotionless in this regard. Despite his cold insistence on this protocol, when Keith is rushing to fetch Regris and make it back to the ship in time to get away from a flubbed mission, Kolivan watches the door. When he believes that they won’t make it back in time, however, rather than watch it shut completely, he turns away. Keith barges in at the very last second.

Generally, whenever we see Kolivan expressing some sort of feeling, it’s something very small and subtle like that, some quiet moment betrayed only by a shift in body language or a brief change in the tone of his voice. He is extremely stoic, and not much openly affects him. Being accused of being uncaring or too cautious doesn’t ruffle him in the slightest, and he also never seems upset when a mission is somehow compromised and needs to be aborted, no doubt an acceptable side effect that comes with ordering everyone to safety at the slightest provocation. He is dismayed when Antok is killed in front of him, and when his team is openly rejected by the people they’ve just helped to free from the Galra. He is angered when speaking about Ulaz taking foolish risks, and when he lectures Keith about carelessly putting himself in danger. Whenever he is speaking urgently, it’s usually because he’s telling his Blades to get out of wherever they are. The bulk of his most negative emotions seem to center around losing operatives.

Another first impression of Kolivan that doesn’t hold up the more we see of him is that he is utterly unbending. On the contrary, he’s extremely adaptable and willing to go with the flow. For all that he resists Shiro and Keith initially, once they've proven that they're more than just talk and Keith is somehow linked to the Blade after all, he is immediately ready to form that alliance. When Keith announces that he's going to go and take Thace's place on Zarkon's ship and Shiro, Keith's actual commander, decides to allow it, Kolivan backs down without further protest. There is a moment in season four when he declares that they should leave the ship they’ve just infiltrated, as something seems off about it, but he listens when Keith -- a known impulsive troublemaker, like Ulaz -- tells him they ought to at least plant the tracker as planned. Even if he himself is unwilling to do something, if Kolivan is shown something that changes his mind or he finds himself outvoted, he'll go with it. He can be persuaded. His priority at the end of the day is not "right or wrong". It's "dead or alive”, and part of his duty as the leader of the Blade is to think on the fly and adjust everyone’s actions according to whatever the current situation is. He is overly cautious, not stubborn.

Keith is another important part of Kolivan to look at, because when placed in context with Keith, Kolivan also serves as a foil for the Voltron team as a whole. As mentioned, at one point Kolivan lectures him for going back to rescue Regris and placing himself in danger by doing so, and states that “this is not Voltron”. Keith replies that he knows, and while Voltron would have gone back for Regris, what he really went back for was the intel Regris was carrying, the entire point of the mission. What Kolivan does not know is that earlier in the series, Allura was captured by Zarkon, and Keith was the only one to suggest that they ought to leave her behind, because taking the last hope of the universe straight into the worst of enemy territory for the sake of one person was perhaps a bad idea. Keith was scorned by the rest of the team for this, told “that’s cold, even for you”. In Voltron, whenever Keith runs off to do something on his own, it’s seen as a flaw and he’s scolded for being so independent. With the Blade, Kolivan expects him to be able to act entirely on his own if necessary, and he allows his agents the freedom to make their own decisions. Kolivan does not protest at all when Keith declares that he needs to get to Voltron and just steals a ship and goes at the end of season four. Keith struggles with his place on the Voltron team because he views himself as “the loner” and so, apparently, does everyone else, as Pidge calls him that outright. With the Blade, devotion to the mission is a common bond, but everyone within the group is permitted to be very much an individual. In this way, the Blades -- and thus Kolivan -- make issues that Keith has always struggled with something normal and acceptable, and give him room to grow that Voltron does not. Through Kolivan, we are given a perspective on how to handle this war that we are not given through Team Voltron.

The final thing to keep in mind about Kolivan is that the mission he and the Blades are so devoted to is a mission that will free millions of oppressed people from the long, long reign of a tyrannical empire. Arguably, the Galra themselves -- bound in fanatical loyalty to Zarkon -- are included in this. Kolivan would not have devoted his life to this kind of mission if he didn’t believe so strongly in what they were doing. So, for all that he is always frowning, for all that he comes off as cold and untouchable and for all that he’ll leave people to die on the battlefield, in the end his motives are really the same as Team Voltron’s, and it’s protecting and improving the lives of other people that really drive Kolivan forward. Both the lives of the Blades who follow him, and the lives of everyone who has been hurt by the Galra empire.

Abilities: Kolivan is a Galra, which is basically a big purplish space alien. He has no magical ability. He is just very strong, an adept swordsman, and is also very tall. Our Shiro player has headcanoned Shiro at about 6'1", and if I go from that, Kolivan would stand at about 7'5".

He will be bringing in his Marmora sword. He uses it both as an ordinary sword, and as something of a boomerang. While there is certainly a possibility that Kolivan is just so good that he can toss a freaking sword boomerang around in space and get away with it, it seems that Marmora agents do have some level of mental control over their swords -- when he needs to, Thace is able to transform his own blade from knife to sword without even touching it. Obviously, this has limits, or there would never be a need for a Blade to run directly into a fight; they could just use the Force or whatever on their swords and have done with it. However, given that each Blade has to awaken their sword in the first place, there's at least a little something there for sure. This sword can also cut through solid metal and be used to pry open doors. He'll also be wearing his Marmora suit, which mostly allows him to manifest a spiffy mask with glowy eyes on it, and to be protected from basic elements like space.

Alignment: Piphron. One of the first things we hear out of Kolivan is that the Blades of Marmora are "an organization built on trust and secrecy", and over and over as the Blades engage in their missions, Kolivan always, always errs on the side of caution. If he gets even the slightest hint that he's going to lose his operatives, he gives the order to back away. However, he also shows plenty of indications that he will trust, allying the Blade with Team Voltron as soon as he's given enough reason to and largely allowing his operatives to handle their own shit without his interference.

Other:



⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉

General Sample: Test drive!

Emotion Sample:

[To say that Kolivan is not thrilled to be in Empatheias would be an understatement, but you don't get to be the leader of a secret band of space ninjas trying to dismantle an evil empire by being unable to think on the fly. Kolivan's preferred course of action when things get hairy is to abort the hell out of the mission and regroup, on account of his favorite thing in life is keeping as many of his operatives alive as possible. When this is not an option, however, there's nothing for it but to dive in and work with what you've got.

This being the case, Kolivan's mission of the moment is Gathering Intel™.

He got the basics from the paladins, naturally, and so far the most pressing issue by far is the emotional effects. Kolivan cannot remember a time when he was less surprised than he was when he was told that Keith has a penchant for setting fires. And, while he doubts that he will be setting any himself, it is obvious that these effects can be terribly dangerous and dunamis training must begin immediately. To that end, he has spent the day wandering about the city, observing emotional effects wherever he finds them -- angry people causing minor earthquakes, happy people leaving pastel footprints behind them in the snow -- and, periodically, trying to feel things himself, mostly with no results. So far his own emotional effects are so minor they're barely noticeable. That's pleasing, to be sure, but it's unlikely that he can trust that.

It doesn't really click until he passes by one of the city parks, and pauses to watch a bunch of children playing together in the snow.

There are plenty of planets out there that have snow, and ice. Snow is not an unfamiliar concept. Generally, though, when Kolivan is forced to interact with it, it's during one of the Blade's many missions, and it's an inconvenience at best and quite possibly a very real danger. Here, it's something bright and shiny and exciting, something to have fun with, an opportunity to play. These little kids don't have a single care beyond pelting one another with snowballs. And why would they? They are free. There is no empire hanging over their heads, damning them to futures of warfare and treachery and, quite possibly, very short lives.

The hope hits him hard, then. It's not as though Kolivan ever truly forgets just what he's fighting for, when it comes to taking Zarkon down. However, as a Galra -- viewed with suspicion even when he and his team are doing everything they can to lend aid, and, perhaps, rightfully so -- it's not as though he ever gets to see what life could be like when the empire is over. But this is it, isn't it? No more races enslaved and put to work. No more worlds living in fear. Perhaps his own people could have this someday, too, Galra kits running and playing and laughing on a welcoming world, rather than confined to bleak, lifeless spaceships or outposts while their own home planet lies in ruins.

It's not that Kolivan starts to glow. It isn't that a beam of light shines down upon him from the heavens, or anything like that. Even so, the area just around the Galra grows brighter despite the overcast sky, and the air grows warmer. Warm enough that the snow he's standing in begins to melt, even. It's almost as though this feeling has summoned up a bout of sunshine -- a life-giving end to a dark, cold time.]


Questions: I have no questions but I am very sorry about my wordcount