Arc Blair

Certus Quartz Arc Blair, more commonly known simply as Arc Blair or by the moniker Kanos Jai, is a Lithan swordsman, Lanciere pilot, and the Arch-Curate of the Kanos Jai Brotherhood. A figure unparalleled throughout history as an artificer of dark intrigues, Blair began life as a noble hero of the Fall of Cluster Empire before betraying the Empire in pursuit of his dark ideology. Throughout the history of the Reborn Universe he led six great Arc Crusades in an attempt to conquer the galaxy - each one pushed back, but at increasingly greater cost each time, ultimately culminating in the death of Sefer Yetzirah in her last attempt to drive him from her plane of reality.

Now trapped in a reality foreign to his own, Blair schemes towards his goal of establishing his idealistic New Order in the ashes of the Unending Universe.

Early Life
No records of Blair's - then known as Certus's - birth exist, and as such the earliest records of him begin with him as a warlord on his homeworld of Bendu, circa 10,000BR. Cut off from the rest of the Fall Empire by a terrific warp storm, Bendu fell into anarchy before order was restored by the strong army and just rule of Certus. Bendu was eventually brought back into the fold of the Empire after many centuries of isolation. Aldeon, the dragon-emperor of the Fall Empire, singled Certus out for his pure and noble nature, and he was given the title "Excellent's One" and appointed as the leader of the Starknights, the highest knightly order within the Fall.

The Meeting with Kanos Jai
Certus became an icon of the people, revered as if a king, and images of him journeying across the galaxy with his knights became engrained in the public consciousness. The truth was less glamorous. Born of common blood, Blair was utterly despised by no less than half of his fellow Starknights, many of whom viewed his appointment as "Excellent's One" a mistake on the behalf of Aldeon. Isolated from the knightly order he was supposed to lead, Blair spent much of his time training his armies on the homeworld of Bendu, where he first came into contact with the wandering pariah known as Kanos Jai.

The two became fast friends, such that Blair would later describe Kanos as the only friend he would ever have. Certus became obsessed with Kanos's ideology - the idea of political systems other than the ones he had known all his life aroused his imagination and sparked a change in his worldview. Whilst Certus rose and rose in the eyes of the Empire, in truth he began to despise it. Eventually, he and Kanos decided that Aldeon needed to be overthrown and that a new system of government should be introduced.

The Coup Unveiled
One night, whilst returning home from giving a sermon, Kanos Jai was attacked and kidnapped by elite soldiers operating on the authority of Luster Amazing Fortune, the Starknight known as "End's Thirteen" and regarded as the wisest of them all - such that he acted as the right hand of Aldeon himself. Kanos was brought to the Fall capital and subjected to the worst tortures imaginable for forty nights and forty days. A member of his congregation had let slip word of Kanos's anarchistic teachings, not to mention of the fact that Kanos had an accomplice.

A deal was offered to the man; if he would reveal the name of his accomplice, he would be spared any further torture, and allowed to live out the rest of his sentence on a penal world. Even as Certus looked on from the crowds in the capital, his eyes welling with tears at the sight of his friend in such pain, Kanos refused to name Certus as the co-conspirator, even to his last breath. Kanos passed away due to the effects of the torture, and Certus's role was never unveiled. However, this moment marked the beginning of the end for the Empire.

The Slaying of Aldeon
For ten years after Kanos's death, Certus continued to serve the Empire faithfully, but in secret drew more followers and supporters to his cause. He fully corrupted six starknights other than himself, brining just over half the total Starknights to his side; they would form the first iteration of the Kanos Jai Brotherhood, a cult that met in absolute secrecy and assumed names other than their own. Certus began using the name 'Arc Blair, taking pride in the usage of the segment of his name which identified him as a "low-born commoner"; he even styled the highest title in the cult after his own name. As such, the original seven Arcs came to be; Arc Blair, Arc Nerada, Arc Vedas, Arc Lokia, Arc Valefar, Arc Navras, and Arc Deimos.

On the tenth anniversary of Kanos Jai's death, Blair and his Arcs marched on the capital and slew Aldeon, the dragon-emperor of the Fall Empire. This event sparked a civil war that would last two decades, killing trillions; the Fall was torn between the Blairite separatists, who idolized their leader and believed him to be beyond any possibility of wrongdoing, and the Lusterian royalists, who revered the rule of Lord Fortune and believed him to the be rightful ruler of the Empire in Aldeon's absence.

The Battle at the Center of the Galaxy
The final confrontation of the war took place after both sides had exhausted nearly all of their forces and populations; the Fall had been reduced from a vast empire spanning the entire galaxy to a few splinter fragments warring over their ancestral homeworlds. Blair came face-to-face with Luster Amazing Fortune for the first time since Kanos's death. Blair, piloting his Lanciere Vengeance, and Luster, piloting his Lanciere Dawnbuster, engaged in a battle lasting over 200 hours. The immensely powerful supernuclear weapons used by both machines were so powerful that they created new stars and even tore reality and numerous places, giving rise to much of the temporal phenomena which would later be observed in the Reborn Universe.

Luster was victorious, and Blair was thrown away from the Galaxy by the finishing shot of Luster's buster lance, a weapon that would never be fired again due to fears of its apocalyptic capabilities. The remaining Arcs either fled to be with their master, or were hunted down. The remaining Blairites then either surrendered, or more commonly, committed mass suicide. The war was over, though the cost could not have been higher.

The Arc Crusades
Though his strength would never again reach the levels demonstrated in the Fall civil war, Blair would try again on numerous occasions to conquer the galaxy, though was each time pushed back. His resolve never weakened, however, and even millenia after his ideology accrued its first followers, many would be still be drawn to his cause, including the demon Malak Al-Maut. The crusades, and their outcomes, were:


 * Second Arc Crusade - Blair's second attempt to conquer the galaxy. He was defeated by one of his former followers, Arc Naraka, who had returned to the light and desired to protect the galaxy from the evil he had helped create. In spite of his defeat, Blair managed to acquire a replacement Lanciere for the one he lost in the Fall Civil War, which he titled Nexus.
 * Third Arc Crusade - Blair's third attempt was pushed back by Veras, a being Blair later came to believe to be related to the Kanos Jai he once knew.
 * Fourth Arc Crusade - Blair's fourth attempt was purportedly pushed back in a conventional war by the Rider Empire, though no actual historical evidence of this exists.
 * Fifth Arc Crusade - It is unknown what stopped this crusade.
 * Sixth Arc Crusade - Blair's most recent attempt came in the wake of the Tanari-Takemikazuchi war, when the galaxy was at the weakest state it had been for many millenia. Assisted for the first time by his apprentice, Malak, Blair made swift gains into most of the galaxy, coming the closest he had to ruling it since the Fall Civil War. He was opposed mainly by Dallas Dalton, Sefer Yetzirah, and Veras. It appeared that once again this crusade would end in failure, though the tides turned when Blair managed to turn Evangelise Yetzirah - the daughter of Sefer Yetzirah and Lilith Heyerdahl - to his side. Taking the name Arc Kadmon, she turned on the Empire she had once protected, driving Sefer and Dallas to a final confrontation which - like Blair's battle with Luster - took place at the center of the galaxy. In truth, Arc Kadmon and Malak were both merely decoys; Blair's true apprentice during this crusade was Arc Naraka, the new identity of the cyborg David Dalton. Knowing that her death was inevitable, Sefer chose to sacrifice herself - allowing her own daughter to impale her with the Lance of Astraea. Channelling her life essence through the spear, Sefer created a tear in the spacetime continuum, through which Blair and Kadmon were drawn through, forever banishing them from the Reborn Universe. Due to the unstable nature of the spacetime around the galactic core, the timeline was retroactively altered after Blair's removal from it, so that it appeared as if the sixth crusade had never happened. Sefer, however, was not returned to life by this effect, nor was anyone else who died in the final battle itself.

The Unending Universe
Blair emerged in the Unending Universe. He was overwhelmed with an insatiable lust for revenge against Sefer - one he knew he could never satisfy. He decided to channel his anger towards his efforts at establishing his ideal civilization in the new universe he now found himself in. He took to the world of Byron to hone his apprentice's skills, preparing himself for the day they would declare war against the galaxy itself, once again leading a crusade of Arcs into battle.