Gunstar Temujin Declassified

Biography

Temujin grew up in Estasia, with a gang of street rats who'd run away from the cruel orphanages in the city. The gang hated The Man in general, who ran the orphanages they'd fled with an iron hand, and persecuted them. The gang lived a hand to mouth existence off the food and water they could steal from the Populat. This resulted in SDF (Sentinel Defense Force) Chasers being sent after them, some of whom were Exalted, and that only fueled the hate further. Temujin was mellower than most of his fellows and acknowledged that they were just doing their jobs, but even he blanched at the brutality the Sentinels could mete out to any luckless ganger they found.

During a particularly harrowing chase, he volunteered to act as a distraction so his friends could escape an SDF ambush. With speed and cunning, he evaded his pursuers in a rooftop chase until he came to a yawning gap between two towers that no mortal man could pass. Throwing caution to the wind, he jumped the gap anyway... and Exalted in a brilliant surge of golden light that somehow let him reach the other side. But his athletic skills were poor, and he slipped back and back along the rain-slick precipice of darkness until a strong hand caught his. He looked up, and saw the grinning face of his Lunar mate staring down at him.

Her name was Tanya Stalks-the-Truth, a Full Moon Lunar who was the equivalent of an inspector in Estasia's SDF. She was strong, brave, kind and after his former friends disowned him for Exalting (and receiving help from The Man, no less), the only person in the world who would be nice to him. Tanya meant the world to the young Temujin, who immediately turned his efforts into training hard to be like her, or at least, the kind of man she would like. Politics meant that she was marginalized into a dead-end civil protection post on the SDF, but she threw herself into her duty wholeheartedly and Temu was (gladly) swept up along with her. The endless days of checking incoming freight shipments were bearable because he knew she was on the other side of the line with him.

Then, Tanya uncovered a tainted batch of provisions during a routine inspection. Specifically, they had been seeded with the spores that made up the body of Darkness Given Hunger, the Eleventh Soul of Metagaos. The spores had already infected the entire crew of the freighter she was on, and when she discovered the truth of the matter, it turned its will-less thralls into slavering monsters that sought to infect and consume Tanya as well. The freighter was on autopilot and she was too busy fighting the crew off to divert it. She pleaded with Temujin to turn the Gunstar's Arclight defenses on her vessel and destroy all traces of the demonic disease. Temujin balked at first, knowing that Arclight Cannons burned hot enough to vaporize even fire elementals like the gilmyne. But as her pleas got more frantic and the howls of the enslaved crew grew louder, Tanya told Temujin to destroy the ship if he truly cared for her.

Stunned by her words, Temujin reflexively complied, and the freighter was a raging fireball by the time he realised what he'd done. He was arrested and charged with treason against the Gunstar for destroying valuable food supplies and the murder of his Lunar mate. Though he would be exonerated by audio logs and extensive use of Investigation Charms, Temujin was already dead inside. The incident was classified to prevent the spread of panic among the Populat, and Temujin was transferred to Pillar of Untrammeled Brilliance to begin his career anew. Aimless and without purpose, he affected the persona of a helpful ladies' man so people wouldn't notice the depth of his psychopathy.

The reappearance of Tanya's Exaltation in Lim has shattered his own internal stasis and given him a purpose in life again. Whether this is a good or a bad thing remains to be seen.

Personality

Temujin is a walking mass of complexes, with deep-seated guilt, inadequacy issues and abandonment issues taking center stage. Ironically enough, it was precisely because he was a sweet and caring kid as a youth that the loss of his friends hit him so hard; they pretty much chased him away with stones when he tried to make contact with them after his Exaltation, and that broke him until he managed to transfer his love and loyalty to Tanya. And then he killed her with his own hands. He hates the Yozis for driving the Gunstar to this, he hates the establishment for playing their stupid political games and getting them assigned to a dead-end job with no backup, he hates the mortals because they're ungrateful cusses who don't know how good they have it, and he hates himself most of all for not being able to save Tanya.

He sees his ugly inner self in Ghost and hates her for it, even as he envies her bond with Samri. He sees his young idealistic self in Li and wants to stamp out his spark of altruism and show him the cruel, brutal nature of the universe. He secretly wishes he could be an Alchemical like Huntress, a perfect, merciless killing machine unburdened with petty weaknesses such as feelings and emotions. Roar reminds him of all the good things Tanya meant to him, which means that he has to struggle not to scream out loud every time he relives the memories that course through his head whenever he sees her. Nebula and Pion are probably the only two Celestials who don't make him think of his own detestable being... and even then, he sees himself as an internal reflection of the change Nebula went through in fighting the forces of the Yozis.

He's a compulsive womanizer; this is practice, so he'll be able to satisfy Tanya the next time he sees her, so that he can get any woman he wants under his thumb for whatever reason, and so he can mercilessly break their hearts once they've outlived their usefulness. The scary thing is, the last part is the easiest of the lot. The little betrayals come so easily once you've got the big ones under your belt. He takes a cynical view of almost all relationships, with the sole exception of the Lunar Bond, which he considers a link closer than blood. Because of his own unconfessed feelings for Tanya, he's a strong advocate of Li/Caska and Roar/Kaneko being honest about the way they feel about each other. It might be the only good thing he is capable of now.

Temu's deep-seated self-loathing has also left him with a major death wish, though this has been tempered somewhat with the appearance of Lim. He used to want nothing more than to join Tanya in oblivion, but now, he might be able to set right what once he did wrong. Deep down, he knows Lim is not Tanya and it's not fair to treat her as an extension of his idealized woman... but it's so hard to keep from thinking of her that way.