Glaistig Uaine

<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Glaistig Uaine</default></title>

<image source="Image"></image> <image source="image"></image> <group><header>Basic Information</header> <label>Civilian Name</label> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Gender</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Death</label> <label>Age</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Post-timeskip</label> <label>Ward start</label> <label>Relations</label> <label>Family</label></group> <group><header>Professional Status</header> <label>Occupation</label> <label>Classification</label> <label>Unique Features</label> <label>Alignment</label>

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<label>Location</label> <label>Teams</label> <label>Previous Team(s)</label> <label>Base of Operations</label></group> <group><header>First Appearance</header> <label>Worm Debut</label> <label>Ward Debut</label></group> </infobox>

Ciara, usually known as Glaistig Uaine (pronounced “glastick when-yay”),<ref>Worm Audiobook pronounciation guide (confirmed by Wildbow)</ref> The Faerie Queen and later as Valkyrie, is a former Birdcage cell block leader.

Personality

<tabber>As Glaistig=

Glaistig Uaine believes parahuman abilities to be the product of "faerie" magic.<ref name="I16"/>

Glaistig claimed that parahumans themselves were "dreams" of the faerie,<ref name="I16"/> or "roles" they put on,<ref name="27.4"/> and claimed to be a faerie herself - their Queen. She habitually addressed parahumans as if they were still going to be alive in 300 years.<ref name="I16"/> She viewed Scion as a parent-like figure, father and audience all in one.<ref name="27.4"/><ref name="E.1"/> She was shocked when he showed human emotions.<ref name="E.1"/> She referred to unpowered humans as "props", albeit living ones.<ref name="27.4"/>

When she was angry, her voice would resonate more strongly.<ref name="E.1"/> She reacted with anger toward those who challenged her delusions.<ref name="I16"/> If someone tried to tell her she was human, she would kill them.<ref name="E.1"/>

Although she was well known to be delusional, it didn't meaningfully impair her abilities as a strategist, and her pronouncements were usually accurate. Many of her beliefs were based on the visions her powers granted her.<ref name="I16"/> She claimed that there were a few faerie who would operate before and after the "act", who were "noble" - "The champion, the [Eidolon|high priest]], the observer, the shaper, the demesnes-keeper", the "Queen Administrator", and herself - the Faerie Queen.<ref name="27.4"/> The rest would sleep during a long, long journey.<ref name="E.1"/> She identified the faerie as having two "courts", but one of them had "arrived to the stage bedraggled, maddened". The high priest, she claimed, had arrived too early and without instructions, wearing the wrong costume.<ref name="27.4"/>

She was aware of Cauldron's Clairvoyant, and reluctant to discuss anything about them in detail.<ref name="27.4"/>

She was impressed by the artistry of Marquis' and Panacea's faeries, and recognized that they were "kin"; she stated that she would only deal with Panacea as an equal.<ref name="I16"/>

|-|As Valkyrie= Ciara wanted to become "more human", although she didn't expect to ever become entirely normal - merely "parahuman".

She identified her projections as "warriors", rather than "mere shadows".

She had difficulty suppressing the sensory aspects of her power. If she lost concentration, she the world as a hellscape populated by distorted monsters. This upset her, especially if she didn't feel comfortable shaking her head or pinching the bridge of her nose to make the visions go away.

Ciara missed her old body, and occasionally had difficulty walking. She felt uncomfortable around large groups of people. She was receiving lessons to help her speak normally, but it remained difficult, and she worried that slipping into her old manner of speech might turn heads.

She felt more relaxed in the presence of delusional parahumans like Nilbog.<ref name="E.1"/>

</tabber>

Appearance

<tabber>Glaistig Uaine= She chooses to remain a young child, seemingly in her early teens.<ref name="E.1"/><ref name="I16">Interlude 16</ref> She usually speaks with a chorus of dozens of broken voices,<ref name="I16"/> although she can vary how strong the effect is, from over a hundred voices down to just her own. She speaks in an affected, archaic manner.<ref name="E.1"/>

Her hair is blonde and her eyes green.<ref name="E.1"/>

In the Birdcage, she wore a blackened prison uniform modified into a shroud.<ref name="27.4"/><ref name="I16"/> However, she was able to use two of her shadows to transform it into other clothing once she left, seemingly at will.<ref name="27.4"/>

In battle, she wore a cloak and robe that glittered green and black, "as though it were made up of thousands of scales the size of grains of sand".<ref name="27.4"/>

After Golden Morning, she briefly wore a look that emphasized her young appearance - a lacy skirt and top with braided hair.<ref name="E.1"/>

|-|Valkyrie= She appeared nineteen years old, half again as tall as she had been, with long hair worn in a thick braid.<ref name="E.1"/>

She wore armor and carried a shield and sickle, both created by one of her ghosts. The costume was gold and sky blue, featuring a short skirt edged with gold chains, worn over tight knee-length trousers. It featured a mask that pressed to her cheekbones and forehead.<ref name="E.1"/>

The costume featured wings of some kind.<ref name="E.1"/> </tabber>

Abilities and Powers

She can draw in the essence of recently dead parahumans she has come in contact with and store them within herself. At any one time, she can have two to four of the parahumans she has ‘claimed’ manifest as ghostly specters, complete with the ability to physically affect the world and use their powers.<ref name="cast">Cast Page (In-Depth)</ref><ref name="I27">Interlude 27</ref><ref name="I16">Interlude 16</ref><ref name="27.3">Extinction 27.4</ref><ref name="30.2">Speck 30.2</ref> She had to banish one of her active spirits in order to claim another.<ref name="I27">Interlude 27</ref> They are seemingly limited to her immediate presence.<ref>If nothing else, Bakuda was a manageable inmate, now. She would never leave Glaistig Uaine's immediate presence, let alone the Birdcage.-10.x (Bonus Interlude)</ref>

Capes she manifests are under her complete control, and appear as shadow-like, transparent duplicates of their former selves, with exaggerated, caricatured features.<ref name="27.4"/><ref name="E.1"/> Their powers, however, are undiminished. She was able to escape Khepri's control by forcing her to control one of her spirits instead of herself.<ref name ="30.6">Speck 30.6</ref><ref name="30.7"> Speck 30.7</ref> They slowly regenerated when injured in a fight.<ref name="E.1">Teneral e.1</ref>

When they try to speak, their voices sound faint and incoherent to others, as if were emulating language rather than actually uttering it. She claims they can't speak, but that she is able to communicate with them nonetheless;<ref name="27.4"> Extinction 27.4</ref> they speak in voices only she can understand.<ref name="E.1"/>

She draws power from her dormant shards, and feeds her active projections with that power. Even when they aren't visible, she still has three projections "active".<ref name="I16"/> Although they appear solid,<ref name="27.4"/> projections that are dismissed dissolve into smoke,<ref name="E.1"/> or collapse into a point in her hand "like an explosion in reverse".<ref name="27.4"/>

She believed that she could pass on her power to another person.<ref name="27.5">Extinction 27.5</ref>

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illustration by CNJLC

She possess a secondary power, much like Chevalier's, that allows her to recognize the carriers of other important shards, like the 'Queen Administrator' shard which is attached to Taylor. She could see phantom images surrounding the empowered if she allowed herself too, much like Chevalier's power or her own distorted phantoms.<ref name="E.1">Teneral e.1</ref>

By the end of Worm, she has absorbed the powers of countless capes, including Eidolon. With Eidolon's ghost increasing the maximum number of powers she can wield at once from four to six, she is now indisputably the most powerful parahuman in existence. Even before his death, Eidolon himself speculated that she had grown to surpass him in power.<ref name="I27">Interlude 27</ref>

History

Background

Ms. Yamada believed that Ciara triggered at a very young age. She speculated that she was isolated both before and after her trigger, "surviving purely by your own methods", and at some point experienced a second trigger event that led to her powers eclipsing her personality.<ref name="E.1e1"/>

When Glaistig Uaine's ability to harvest and use the powers of any recently deceased parahuman she had come in contact with became known, it evoked panic among the cape community. Multiple teams went after her, and failed. This resulted in thirty two capes being killed and their powers being claimed by Glaistig Uaine. An even greater force of fifty parahumans were sent after her. The entire force ended up retreating, thirteen of them being killed and their powers added to Glaistig Uaine's growing collection.<ref name="27.3">Extinction 27.3</ref>

Glaistig Uaine's most notable accomplishment at the time was permanently killing Gray Boy, something which was thought to be impossible due to his power resurrecting him whenever he died. Glaistig's ability to steal the powers of the recently deceased stopped Gray Boy from resurrecting. After this she attacked the King's Men and killed Athrwys, before turning herself in to the authorities. She made a "deal" with the PRT, agreeing to stay in the Birdcage for three hundred years in exchange for the powers of any of her fellow inmates that ended up dying during her stay.<ref name="I27">Interlude 27</ref> Her killing of Gray Boy was orchestrated by Contessa to allow Cauldron to eliminate Gray Boy while still keeping his power in play for use against their true enemy.<ref>Comment by Wildbow on Spacebattles</ref>

Post-Slaughterhouse Nine

As the leader of Cell Block C Glaistig Uaine welcomed Amelia to the bird-cage.

Golden Morning

She was later shown having conversations with Eidolon about parahuman shards and Scion. She spoke cryptically and indicated that she intended for Scion to win the coming conflict. She referred to Eidolon as the "High Priest".

Glastaig Uaine began helping in the fight against Scion during the oil-rig battle in order to "force him back to sleep".^{[citation needed]} Liberal use of Gray Boy's power allowed her to effectively stall him, as every time Scion was trapped in a time loop he had to expend effort to break free.<ref name="27.5">Extinction 27.5</ref>

A major contribution to the battle was her showing Eidolon that he could drain the energy of other parahuman's shards to re-charge his own powers, allowing him to use powers whose "dead" shards had long since run out of energy. Most notably, it allowed him to use the Matter Eraser, a power that had been unavailable to him since before the emergence of Behemoth, and was so effective against Scion that he used his Path to Victory to ensure his victory.<ref name="I27"/>

Eidolon's death at Scion's hands allowed her to harvest his High Priest shard,<ref name="29.2">Venom 29.2</ref> making her the most powerful parahuman in history. She was shown to be able to resist being mastered by Khepri, whose brain at the time was in the process of melding with the Queen Administrator shard, making Khepri something more akin to a nascent Entity than a parahuman. She accomplished this by shunting Khepri's control from herself to one of her conjured parahuman ghosts.

After Khepri's victory against Scion, Glaistig Uaine was able to convince her to leave the dimension without incident, giving Contessa the opportunity to separate the connection between Khepri's brain and the Queen Administrator shard and preventing any possibility of it forming a new Entity out of the shards of Scion and Eden.

Epilogue

Following the Golden Morning, Glaistig Uaine spoke with Dr. Jessica Yamada. She assumed that she wasn't doing herself any favors by remaining silent, that Dr. Yamada was to judge her, and that silence was damning. She mentioned how she had heard a man speak to refugees and alluded that it was what the man didn't say that mattered. Dr. Yamada said that it was an interesting subject before saying that she thought Glaistig Uaine was dodging the real subject.

Glaistig Uaine expressed indignation over that and, after hearing Dr. Yamada tell her she was still human, told her that she would have once killed her for saying that. Dr. Yamada told her that she was acting as if she expected her to read something in her silence - telling her that they needed words to punctuate it. Reluctantly, Glaistig Uaine conceded the point. Dr. Yamada told her that what they did was up to her before mentioning how some of her patients enjoyed verbal jousting and how the debate gave them their power back. Glaistig Uaine agreed, saying that parahumans tended towards conflict, before stating that she wasn't prone to conflict.

Glaistig Uaine said that her Shard's duty was towards the end of the Cycle and then explained a little bit about it when Dr. Yamada asked. Then, when Dr. Yamada didn't speak, she thought how it was an invitation for her to speak. She reached for her drink and summoned Põletama to heat it. Dr. Yamada spoke up, saying that Glaistig Uaine had been tempted to say that she instinctively knew who she was. She listened as Dr. Yamada told her that she seemed to know who or what she was and that she had changed her mind. Dr. Yamada asked if she considered herself a person and then asked how she saw herself.

Glaistig Uaine told her that she was one of the strongest people on the planet and a murderer. When Dr. Yamada asked for clarification, asking her is she was one who has murdered, or one who murders, she said that it was the same thing and that people didn't let people leave it behind them. She then told Dr. Yamada that they would not forgive a lunatic murderer and said that she had once been Scion's greatest ally.

When Dr. Yamada asked why she hadn't acted to save Scion, Glaistig Uaine asked her if she knew she could kill anyone if she chose to do so. After hearing Dr. Yamada's response, she told her that she was pretending indifference before Dr. Yamada told her that she wasn't. She then went on to say that she was avoiding a subject that she had raised. Glaistig Uaine stood and said that she was irritated before summoning two new ghosts. Still, Dr. Yamada continued - mentioning how she hadn't answered her when she asked for her name and that something seemed to have changed.

Glaistig Uaine asked Dr. Yamada if she had any preference in how she would like to die and how, if she begged for mercy, she would spare others. Dr. Yamada told her that it was okay for her to say she didn't know the answer and that they could find it together, calling her civilian name. Glaistig Uaine stilled, imagining various ways to kill Dr. Yamada, before saying that no one had called her that for a long time. Dr. Yamada said that it was in her records and that she needed to hear her response before she spoke and how she didn't want her to 'anchor' on anything she said. Glaistig Uaine asked Dr. Yamada is she presumed to know her better than she did before Dr. Yamada told her that they could discuss that later, after she gave her thoughts on what happened.

Dr. Yamada interrupted Glaistig Uaine when she went to speak, asking her to sit down, and how they both knew that she could kill her at any moment. When Dr. Yamada trailed off, Glaistig Uaine admitted that it was vulgar for her current shadows to be present and then replaced them with ones less intimidating. She then told Dr. Yamada how Scion had broke and how she could have stepped in, but she didn't and she didn't know why. Dr. Yamada suggested that she had seen Scion's flaws and that, in that moment, she had decided to rebel against him.

She eventually decided to increase her apparent age, and adopt the moniker "Valkyrie" as an entry-level hero.<ref name="E.1"/>

Fanart Gallery

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  Image by cjnlc on SpaceBattles
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  Image by GroceryStorePhobic on DeviantArt.
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  Image by shittyartiste on Reddit.

References

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