Lear

Short Bio
Lear is the Tearless' most feared assassin and ordered to capture Finn and Grainne. He can be ruthless and sadistic, but has a soft spot for Anya, a human girl he saved during one of his missions. He spends his free time experimenting or reading books, avoiding social contacts. Goll, his half-brother, is his sworn rival in the service of Elphana (Finn's and Grainne's mother).

Personality
Lear is highly intelligent and values brains over physical strength. During fights, he tends to use poisoned needles in order to avoid unnecessary combat. He is highly intelligent and cunning, with a somewhat worrisome interest in other people's emotions. Due to this interest, he hardly ever kills his victims, but uses all kinds of physical and mental torture on them in order to test their limits.

Most of Lear's sadistic personality is a defense mechanism against his fate as a Tearless and his traumatic past. However, he still shows his more tender side towards Anya, whom he treasures more than anything in the world.

History
Lear was born with a relatively poor health, thus spent most of his youth in the Tearless' castle reading novels and learning chemistry. In his childhood, he used to be a sensitive boy, not unlike Finn, dreaming of exploring the world and bringing peace to his clan.

On his 18th birthday, he leaves the clan's fortress for the first time, ignoring the warnings about the outside world (since humans treat Tearless as monsters due to their unnaturally long life and their lack of emotions). When he makes it to a village not too far away from his home, the citizens are instantly suspicious of his dark clothing, which he wears to protect himself from sunlight. When they learn about his identity, they attack him and bind him to a tree, leaving him to die. However, after spending seven days tied up, he frees himself from his bounds and burns down the village in wrath.

From this day on, he discards his gentle character, growing harsh and sadistic in order to protect himself from being hurt again. He enters Elphana's service shortly after this incident and becomes one of her most trusted retainers (very much to Goll's dislike).

Unlike most of Elphana's henchmen, who mostly work in groups, Lear works on his own and hardly has any social contacts. However, one day during a mission, he kills the abusive parents of Anya, a mute human child. For some reason, he can't bring himself to kill her and takes her in, becoming a weird kind of foster father (and caring deeply for the girl).

Anya
(Single dad LOL) Lear loves and cherishes Anya more than anything in the world, but at the same time curses himself for his own weakness towards her. Her feelings for him are dubious to her muteness, especially since he's the one who killed her parents, abusive or not. Nevertheless, she follows him around wherever he goes (except on missions).

Giles
Giles, who wants to become a great magician, is assigned to Lear as his assistant (Lear does not approve of this). His naive, cheerful personality really clashes with Lear's sadistic and pessimistic character; however, Lear still feels responsible for the boy, trying to provide him with a slightly more realistic worldview.

Goll
Lear and Goll are half-brothers and rivals for Elphana's trust; however, while Goll actually serves her out of loyalty, Lear never really trusts her, only using her for his own sadistic means. Unlike his half-brother, Goll relies on brute force, and often bullied him when they were children. This is why he is even more outraged when Lear enters Elphana's service and quickly surpasses him due to his skills as a tactician. They constantly get into each others' way, trying to surpass each other.

Elphana
Although Lear is one of Elphana's closest retainers, he doesn't really trust her, but rather uses his position to his advantage.

Finn's Group
Lear is responsible for the chase of Finn and Grainne, although he doesn't really intend to deliver them to Elphana. Instead, he wants to use them for his own wicked goals, fascinated by their semi-immortality. He gets incredibly irritated when getting to know Finn's character, since he reminds him of his past "weak" self. (He also has a wicked affection for Dermot's innocent character and wants him as a toy for his social experiments).

Trivia/Writer's Corner
HE'S A MESS. I LOVE HIM.

The name "Lear" stems from the mythological Lia, the treasure keeper of the clan Morna, who killed Finn MacCool's father. He was later killed by Finn, but his son (Conan Mac Lia) joined Finn's forces later on. I've had a bunch of names for him, including Lia, Conan, and Goll (another enemy of Finn, before I decided to make them a pair of brain&brawn brothers). But Lear kind of stuck with me, also partly because of Shakespeare's King Lear. It has a nice ring to it.