Giath the Truthshield

Losan K’Leth’s inner circle is small and scrupulously guarded: only a handful are trusted to stand in his presence. Among those privileged few is Giath the Truthshield, K’Leth’s personal bodyguard, an unbreakable, implacable wall of muscle and dark steel standing between him and his many enemies. Giath was only a teen when she first attended Cult of K’Leth gatherings, a silent, shivering wretch in meager rags. In a dingy Narbuk orphanage she had been scolded, beaten, made to feel worthless and, when she was adopted, her foster family was no less cruel. The suffering stole her heart and her tongue. To this day Giath rarely speaks, though if words are absolutely necessary, she will – Cultists say hearing her voice is akin to feeling daggers of ice drawn across one’s tenderest flesh. Elsewise she is content to stand motionless for hours in sepulchral silence, ready to spring to K’Leth’s defense in an instant. Even powerful, arrogant immortals such as Rector Drath and wight-lords Narses and Ankora are made uneasy by her presence. In her initiation ritual, Giath was presented with a suspected traitor, and murdered him without emotion. His blood was placed in a censer and she was spattered with it in a twisted mockery of Lumayan practices. She smiled for the first time anyone could remember. When Giath grew to adulthood she proved incredibly strong and resilient, her musculature astonishing and her torture-scarred flesh seemingly numb to pain. She, along with many others, trained in secret in the catacombs beneath Narbuk, for Losan K’Leth knew that his growing cult would soon face violent threats. Giath came to believe the abuse she suffered as a child was a test, something that strengthened her so that she may serve the Cult better. To this day her training regimens are masochistically brutal. True to K’Leth’s fears, a massive crusader force of Kaerok, Frostheim, and the Sacred Order descended upon Narbuk with murderous intent after a rogue element within the Cult prematurely murdered the High Cleric of Lumaya. Narbuk was annihilated, and K’Leth fled the city via its labyrinthine sewers and crypts with a coterie of his closest advisors and strongest soldiers, Giath among them. Hearing pursuers during their flight, Giath and several others halted in a large arched vault supported by a handful of aged, cracked stone pillars. They bid K’Leth continue on while they fought a delaying action. The Cult's enemies swarmed Giath and the other diehards, but Giath fought on and on even as her comrades died around her. When she was the last remaining, she struck a crumbling pillar with all her might and shattered it. This was the final, fatal weakness needed to bring the roof crashing down, and hundreds of tons of overlying stone and ruined structures collapsed upon the combatants. Losan K’Leth heard the echoes of the massive crash, and was pleased at the ingenuity and self-sacrifice of his servants. He was even more pleased, and amazed, when Giath herself miraculously came sprinting down the corridors after him and caught up. Her crushed and dented armor, soaked in both her own and others’ blood, was covered with dust and chips of masonry adhering to the sticky surface. Her shield-arm dangled broken and useless, but she made no whimper of pain or word of complaint. K’Leth smiled – he would make her a Knight Revenant, and have her remain by his side. Since that day K’Leth’s trust in Giath has been vindicated many times over. Subtle infiltrators, righteous inquisitors, monstrosities uncovered in dark and forgotten places or conjured by spellcraft gone wrong, all have crashed against her mighty shield and she has laid them all low with her eerie spear. In turn Giath has earned new bodies to inhabit each time she has finally broken down from age or injury. She has lived for centuries this way and, with each rebirth, K’Leth has imbued her with greater necromantic energy. That dark power now crackles within the ominous oculi in her shield and helmet, and manifests foul cloying smoke from the censer that rests within her wicked spear. Giath cuts an impressive figure, and sometimes appears before supplicants to show them the glory of K’Leth. The spiked holes that crown her shield and form an unholy halo behind her head are explained to would-be Cultists as representing the passage to a better life and greater power the Cult provides. They more accurately symbolize the ever-hungering maw of the Knights Revenant, which endlessly consumes the hopes and dreams of the desperate for the benefit of elites like Giath. Similarly, her title of Truthshield is a bitter irony – to devotees it means she is the shield that guards the Cult’s truths K’Leth has and will reveal unto them, but in fact she shields the truth of K’Leth’s evil and exploitation from scrutiny.