Arc Blair

Certus Quartz Arc Blair, more commonly known simply as Arc Blair, 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 five great Arc Crusades in an attempt to conquer the galaxy - each one pushed back, but at increasingly greater cost each time.

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, bringing 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 millennia 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 Yuzar, 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.
 * Theoretical Sixth Arc Crusade - Many beings in the Milky Way galaxy believe Arc Blair is currently plotting a sixth invasion of the galaxy, including Sefer Yetzirah, who has constructed exogalactic defences to this extent.

Trivia

 * Despite being a decently important character to the plot of the Reborn Universe RPGs, in particular BZPB: Resurgence where the Lithan Civil War is shown to have marked the end of the peaceful 'golden age' ahead of the current era of seemingly endless conflict, Arc Blair has yet to appear in any of these RPGs himself. His story (and that of the civil war itself) have been told in-universe by multiple characters, though, as well as being documented on this wiki.
 * The title of 'Arc', used by both the Kanos Jai and the New Order, is derived from Arc Blair's name; in the latter case, Sefer adopted the title after discovering it in historical texts stored on Bendu.
 * Arc Blair's name comes from a player character Claymore encountered whilst playing Dragon Ball Xenoverse; the 'Certus Quartz' component was later added after being inspired by an ore included in a Minecraft Modpack. The fact that this is not the oddest name origin in BZPB is saying something.