Kailane the Culler

Context

This profile is inspired by a Path of Exile Player CharacterRPG characters played by a player, rather than the gamemaster or the computer..

For context you can see our Tu Pai Kohini profile. It presents the basics about the game, the lore and the powers – information that gets used in Kailane’s profile.

There’s also a sample SRS witch profile, with some more context. And maybe more entries if I keep playing PoE like a fool instead of working.

More context

For Path of Exile players, this build was based on the Oni-Goroshi sword, for which I also made a farming guide, and on a build by Engineering Eternity .

The build was done in January of 2018, though. So by the time you read this it stopped being current ages ago.

Most illustrations are official Path of Exile art, procured from the Artstation page of artist Jaan van Eeden  .

Background

Soundtrack

Let’s go with the aTension remix of the Legion musical theme from Path of Exile.

It’s… not particularly subtle. But it’s good exercise music. Or for lumberjacking, or action video games, or full-contact sparring, or the like. So that’s a good fit for the character.

History

Kailane was abandoned at age one in a dark, dark forest.

She was the first-born of a rich, powerful family in Oriath. But inheritance laws meant that a first born girl would hopelessly split the da Silva fortune between cousins. Thus, Kailane never officially existed and was discreetly disposed of.

Her parents had been unable to kill the infant outright. To try to lighten their guilt, they also had an underground surgeon replace one eye of the baby with a thaumaturgical gem. It was meant to give her a small chance of surviving.

This was based on the common (and obviously false) belief that babies already have full-sized eyes. The gem was thus supposed to stay there as long as she’d live.

Babe in the woods

What the gem was supposed to do wasn’t clear. The guilt-ridden parents just wanted to make a gesture. And the surgeon had bought it from drunk pirates.

But the toddler was highly compatible with gems. The mineral organism grew to continue filling the socket. It provided minor but crucial powers of endurance and regeneration.

Having been implanted extraordinarily early, the gem also granted great receptivity to the influence of thaumaturgical entities. Such as stupefied gods or the Beast.

A fallen queen

The infant further lucked out. A strange hermit came in, and took care of her for about eight years.

This nameless, obviously deranged woman had six arms. She wore dirty strips of fabric wrapped around her head, leaving only piercing yellow eyes visible. She had sensed the gem from afar, and was amused by the notion of a baby gemling.

The lunatic didn’t speak much, nor made much sense. Not that little Kailane thought it strange, having no frame of reference.

When the hermit spoke it was usually about her dreams of flying and being a queen.

She also mentioned a few times that she remembered having a daughter. She couldn’t remember anything else. The hermit had adopted the exposed baby in part to replace these missing memories of her daughter.

And then one day the strange woman was gone.

The hearthless huntress

By that point the kid was fluent in Eternal, and knew about local communities. For instance, her ward had traded with wary villagers to get Kailane her first knife.

Little Kailane tentatively developed a minimal relationship with the locals. She would trade good game and raw skins for manufactured supplies.

But she preferred to be on her own in the forest. With her gem her vital needs were limited, and it was her home.

Altered beasts

During her teens, she started running into altered beasts. These were meaner, tougher and killed for no reason. With her eye gem, she could tell that thaumaturgy was involved.

Kailane went out of her way to stalk and kill these monsters. She felt that some entity was messing with *her* animals in *her* forest.

The widow of a logger slain by monsters was touched by this. Though she was dirt-poor, Mrs. Goncalvez provided services in return for small game. Such as fixing clothes and boots, cooking venison, trading furs for beer in Kailane’s stead, etc..

While Kailane was still living alone and homeless in the woods, this made her less feral  .

Law enforcement

Though Kailane felt she owned “her” forest, it was actually the property of the Laurentius noble family.

A Laurentius daughter heard loggers and woodsmen talking about the wild woman of the woods, huntress of monsters. The Laurentiuses saw this as glorified poaching. And they wanted to see the feral freak.

Gendarmes were sent in. After some legwork they forced the widow Goncalvez to lead Kailane into an ambush.

The fight was particularly ugly. It left five men dead. The three survivors only bagged the enraged woods runner after she threw her knife into Goncalvez’ throat, erroneously thinking she had sold her out.

Using the forest girl as a freak show/conversation piece was now out of consideration. As per Oriathan law, she was exiled to the mainland for poaching.

Shipwreck

However, the corrections boat was boarded by heavily mutated crabs as it neared Wraeclast.

Kailane had already had fought such creatures, when a small group had worked their way up “her” river massacring all wildlife. She thus knew that the galleon was doomed.

After tricking a monster into shearing her chains, da Silva leapt overboard. With her eye gem she could endure the cold and fatigue, and the crabs were too busy with the assault.

Ashore

It took more than a day for her to make it to the shore, but she did survive. However, she ended up on a dismal strand, full of drowned zombies and monster crab larvae.

Kailane could see a village in the distance. But after her arrest, she no longer trusted settled people.

She survived hand-to-mouth on the strand and nearby copses for two weeks. But slaying zombies with rocks and branches was difficult, and there was no way to sleep safely.

Lioneye’s Watch

One evening, an enormous zombie led a small horde in battering down the village’s walls.

Kailane noticed a gleaming sword stuck halfway through the giant zombie, and went for it. Without a proper weapon, she’d die sooner or later anyway.

She rushed the undead, kicking some aside, and pounced onto the colossus’ back. Bracing with her heels, she tore the sword out.

The gorgeous blade burst in flames and yelled something unintelligible, but Kailane held on. The sword was burning her hands and arms, but it was her only chance.

With some higher-level equipment.

And it burns, burns, burns

As the flames burned her, she mauled the lesser zombies and held her own against the giant. The villagers manning the walls seized the occasion, hurling everything they had onto the smaller zombies.

When Kailane overcame the huge monster, the locals made a sortieAn attack made by troops coming out from a position of defense.. They hacked the closest zombies and dragged the severely burned huntress to safety within.

Kailane didn’t want to go in, but she was too weakened. Furthermore, the villagers were gleefully cheering for her. And their physician did blow a significant amount of her meagre supplies to treat the stranger’s burns.

Sword goddess of fire and blood

Thanks to Nessa’s  ministrations and her gem, Kailane healed quickly.

The young physician established a rapport, telling her how grateful the locals were. With the giant zombie slain, it was now possible to carefully and quickly forage on this side of the beach. This significantly lowered the risk of starvation.

Nessa also explained to Kailane how her eye gem worked, and how gems were implanted in adult gemlings. None of the villagers could become a gemling, especially given their terrible living conditions. But Kailane clearly could tolerate gem implantation.

The sword also talked to Kailane. It made wild claims about being a goddess of wrath and flames. The deluded weapon also explained that its previous owners had all died to her fires, but that surely Kailane would be able to wield her and survive.

Nessa thought that it was indeed feasible, using gems of protection against flame.

This hard land

Wraeclast was ridden with corruption. It seemed likely that the teratogenicWarping creatures into monsters. effects Kailane had encountered in the forests of Oriath were spreading from there.

As the huntress found this corrupting influence personally offensive, she decided to go after its source.

Nessa could implant her with thaumaturgical gems more powerful than her old, dingy one. As Kailane upgraded, her eye gem was removed, and gems with regenerative powers let her grow her missing eye back.

無敵の剣王女外伝

Another important asset was the beautiful sword.

Howbeit, its personality was grating. It incessantly ranted about divinity, blood and blazes. It spouted would-be witty remarks, and rambled about the higher-ups in the Oriath religious hierarchy.

Seeing itself as a glorious goddess, it also expressed disappointment that Kailane was a woman. The sword wanted to be wielded by a handsome, muscular he-man with a big sheath.

But Kailane was the only person it had found in a while that could withstand its “touch of burning passion” (or other random words to that effect). So the sword grumpily collaborated.

Unlike most, Kailane was unimpressed. To her a sword was just a tool. And she thought the persona within was just some sort of crazy priestess. But though they didn’t like each other, they certainly made for a fearsome fighting duo.

(An exile called Clarissa  , who knew many priestesses and ladies of standing in Theopolis, suspects that the sword’s persona is actually a prostitute from this city. It does match several details, and particularly the sword’s resentment of Piety  .)

Powers & Abilities

Kailane is a highly practised survivalist and woodsrunner. She can function deep, deep into most kinds of wilderness without much trouble.

In the wilds, she moves in a fast, assured, silent manner. She’s not formally an acrobat, but she’s a great and particularly fluid free runner in the wilds.

Her senses are highly developed, as are her stamina and pain tolerance. She can endure miserable conditions without batting an eye. And she has enough reserves of physical aggression to power a mid-sized locomotive.

She also excels at learning languages, mentally taking apart what she hears to deduce grammar and vocabulary. Had she grown up with her birth family, she’d likely have become a noted linguist.

Another gift is for weapons handling. She can pick practically anything — spear, sword, bow, etc. — and learn to use it at an alarming pace. Maybe her brain processes weapons like it does languages.

Savage woods swordswoman fire gaiden

The Exile’s fencing style is a combination of Kailane’s moves and the sword’s moves.

The merger is peculiar, but it works real well. And it is difficult to read and predict.

Upon cleaving with the sword and focusing in a certain way, the air is set ablaze in a long arc. It is a bit as if the sword had a built-in flamethrower within the tip, with unlimited fuel.

When outnumbered, Kailane can make sweeping strikes to set everything and everyone on fire, then sort it out.

The sword also sets her wielder on fire. But with her implanted gems, Kailane can almost ignore that.

Gemling

Over her career in Wræclast, Kailane was implanted with thaumaturgical gems, allowing her to :

Description

A tanned, highly athletic White woman in her 20s. She has short, messy, light blonde hair.

Kailane is always dressed in rugged, practical hunting clothes. High-end leather boots, tough leather-reinforced trousers with lots of pockets, a was-white-a-long-time-ago tank top. In a modern context, most people would assume that she’s with the Army or the Marines.

She is often dirty from lengthy fighting forays deep in the wilderness.

Personality

Kailane is asocial. She much prefers to be on her own and away from settled areas.

It is possible to befriend her, especially if one looks physically harmless. But that requires a lot of effort. She’s a particularly wary and elusive person.

She does realise that she needs friends in settled areas, though. For instance, to know where to sell, and how much her loot is worth. While she doesn’t have such a contact, she’ll bury her stuff in the wilds and get it back later.

The Culler (part 1)

Kailane is personally offended by the corruption that came from Wraeclast. It did significant damage to her childhood domain, which was apparently the first part of Oriath to be contaminated.

She also suspects it has something to do with the departure of her foster parent.

Due to her peculiar history with thaumaturgical gems, Kailane also has stronger perceptions of the corruption and the Beast. She can smell it. She doesn’t like it. She wants it dead.

The Culler (part 2)

As she stalks and slay corrupted monsters, Kailane is known to most as “the culler” rather than by her name.

Many folks are convinced that she then eats the heart of monsters to take on their strength. But Kailane doesn’t *usually* do that, in good part because she knows how awful and sick the physiology of corrupt monsters gets.

(Writeups.org strongly advises its readers not to eat the hearts of mutated corrupt monsters, for medical reasons — ed.).

Yillo birb

Kailane keeps a canary as a pet – which does come across as incongruous. She loves her little yellow bird, but it hasn’t occurred to her to name it. Since canaries do not talk, see ?

The canary doesn’t usually follow her in the field. But they have such a good rapport that it’ll often be perched on her shoulder or head when she’s back at camp.

It also eats in her hand, pecking at small bits of apple or cabbage in her palm whilst perched on her outstretched little finger.

Quotes

“I’ve done for you what I’d do for any wounded animal, Brutus  .”

“Do some good for once in your sorry life, bandit. Feed the worms.”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Inspired by a Path of Exile build.

Helper(s): Darci.

Writeup completed on the 08^th of August, 2019.