Connor MacLeod

From Ars Arcanum Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

The Mun

The Character

  • Name: Connor MacLeod
  • Age/Birthdate: 489; June 21, 1518
  • Canon: Highlander
  • Canon Entry Point: End of the first movie, just after defeating The Kurgan.
  • Journal: http://thereis_onlyone.livejournal.com/

Defining Abilities and Attributes

Connor can't die unless someone decapitates him. That's probably the biggest thing about him. Beyond that, he's a brilliant swordsman, skilled with Scottish Claymores, broadswords, and, his personal favorite, the Japanese katana. Given that he's been around for almost five hundred years, he's pretty knowledgeable about history, which, you know, could totally be useful. Physically, he's about 6'0 tall and skinny in a way that makes him very fast on his feet. His hair is dirty blonde and his eyes are blue and he tends to unnerve people, given that he has a very intense stare. There's usually a small amount of stubble on his face and he gives the impression of youth, although it's impossible to tell exactly how old he is (he could easily be anywhere between 20 and 36) just by looking (in truth, the moment he stopped aging was shortly after his eighteenth birthday, but, well, people looked older in those days). He has a very distinctive accent that sounds like a bastardization of several different dialects (none of which sound very Scottish) and has a really unsettling laugh.

Personality

Depending on his mood at a given time, Connor is either very much an immature eighteen-year-old or very much a brooding five-hundred-year-old. He's snarky in a way that allows him to always have a smartass answer to everything and often tactless to a fault and sometimes his sense of humor can be perceived a bit off-kilter, unsettling, or sometimes malicious. He's the kind of person who might save someone from a dark alley and then verbally berate them for being dumb enough to walk through the dangerous streets alone. At his core, he's jaded, cold, and distant and doesn't get close to people easily, but once he does, he can be very playful and an absolute sweetheart. However, that doesn't stop him from getting snippy with them if he believes he's right and they're wrong about something. He's stubborn and set in his ways and he can be a miserable old man when he wants to be, just as he can be a snarky, playful teenager when he wants to be.

Background

Connor was born in Glennfinnan, Scotland near the shores of Loch Shiel or so everyone told him- in reality, he was a foundling, but Caolin, his mother, would tell anyone that he was her son by birth and wouldn't hear anything else about it. Connor spent most of his youth with the other young boys of the Clan MacLeod, figuring he'd grow up to be a warrior like his other cousins, although his best friend Jacob Kell, seemed set for a life of piety due to his priest father. This wasn't really much of an issue when Connor and Jacob were playful, mischievous children, but as the two of them became teenagers and assumed more responsibility with the clan, they drifted apart.

Shortly after Connor turned eighteen, he was sent into his first battle with a rival clan, unaware of the fact that he was being staked out by a man known as The Kurgan, a vicious, bloodthirsty Immortal who had heard rumors of the boy named MacLeod who would defeat him. He intended to take Connor's head in the battle, knowing him to be pre-Immortal to prevent him from ever becoming a threat, but when Connor fought the Kurgan during the battle, he was prevented from achieving his goals by Connor's cousin, who rescued him from a beheading. Connor, however, was still fatally wounded and died that night. However, a few hours later... He stopped being dead.

The rest of the Clan MacLeod promptly cast him out as a demon, intending to burn him, but the cousin who had saved his life previously called the Clan off of him and sent him into exile instead. For years, Connor wandered, eventually finding himself a new home in a forge and falling in love with a village girl named Heather MacDonald. He didn't think much about his Immortality or the Clan or anything of that nature for a long time, figuring it all in the past, but that all changed when a man calling himself Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez (formerly Tak-Ne of the Egyptian courts) tracked him down and claimed the two of them were "brothers." Connor went along with the crazy man, because no one can really ignore Ramirez and expect him to go away, and Ramirez, rather brutally, began to teach Connor what it meant to be an Immortal, explaining that he was meant to train him to be an active member of The Game- the war between all Immortals where only one can be the winner. Ramirez explained that the Kurgan was a serious contender for the Prize (what the last Immortal gets if they win The Game) and that Connor was meant to defeat him, which was why he was training him.

And then the unthinkable happened- The Kurgan found Connor... Or rather, he found Connor's forge while Connor was away and Ramirez was keeping Heather company. Ramirez and the Kurgan fought, but Ramirez was killed and Kurgan raped Heather (a fact Connor never knew of until much later), before taking his leave, expecting to run into Connor again one day. Heartbroken at losing his mentor, but determined to survive to take his revenge on the Kurgan, Connor continued to train on his own, all while still looking after Heather even as Ramirez had warned him before he died that loving mortals only led to heartbreak.

This proved true long before Heather passed when Connor's clan eventually tracked him down and threatened him- it turned out that their crops were failing and they needed an adequate scapegoat and Connor was the perfect target, but as they feared him and knew they couldn't kill him, they warned him that his mother would burn for his sins and, desperate, Connor departed for Glennfinnan again in the hopes that he might rescue her.

However, he was too late- no sooner had he tried to take his ailing mother, he was descended upon by Father Rainey and his son Jacob Kell (none other than Connor's childhood friend) and his mother was taken from him, while he was locked away. He escaped, but the damage had already been done and his mother was burned at the stake. When Father Rainey attempted to drag him away from his mother's corpse, Connor killed him and Jacob was killed shortly after. The difference between him and his father was that Jacob woke up and (TRAUMA-RAMA) decided to go evil- something that Connor would learn of much later in life.

Connor returned home brokenhearted, but lived out the rest of Heather's days in the forge with her, up until she finally died and he buried her near a cliff close to their home. After that, he became a wanderer, killing other Immortals when they engaged him and mostly just trying to survive. He returned to Scotland in 1625 to discover that he had become a legend amongst his old clan and while wandering the countryside, met Cassandra (the Witch of Donan Woods and an old friend of Ramirez- she was the one who told the older Immortal to seek Connor out) who told him of another Immortal MacLeod who would die in battle and would need someone to look after him as Ramirez had looked after him. Connor found Duncan MacLeod in the middle of a massacred army, dead, and waited for him to revive and when he did, he introduced himself to him. For centuries, he and Duncan traveled together, occasionally parting ways, but always coming back together.

It was also during that time, that he was relentlessly pursued by Jacob Kell (who was bound and determined to end everything Connor held dear), but Kell was less of Connor's problem than the Kurgan, who had yet to make another appearance.

By the late 1970's, Connor had settled in New York permanently, starting up a successful antique business with his confidante and adopted daughter Rachel (who he had rescued during WWII from Nazi-occupied Poland), under the name of Russell Nash. He mostly avoided the Game when he could, but by 1985, the times were changing and his brief retirement was interrupted by a fellow Immortal at Madison Square Garden. The attack was so sloppy that Connor became the chief suspect in the NYPD's pursuit of a serial beheader, but no one could pin anything on him (even with him being guilty of the crimes). Not deterred by Connor's innocence, a forensics expert named Brenda Wyatt became obsessed with learning more about him, much to Connor's chagrin. However, Connor figured out she was trying to manipulate and stalk him and manipulated and stalked her right back. This somehow led to them falling in love and Connor revealing his Immortality and all that jazz.

While all this was going on, the Kurgan had arrived in New York, hunting for Connor's head. After a series of taunting matches, the Kurgan finally kidnapped Brenda to lure Connor to the top of a building for their ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny, which Connor won and no sooner had he absorbed the Kurgan's Quickening, life got considerably weirder for him.

(Note: The original movie will tell you that Connor won The Prize when he defeated the Kurgan. This is, in fact, a lie.)

Retrieved from "http://arsarcanum.morethanmortal.com/wiki/index.php?title=Connor_MacLeod"