The Colonel

"The first part of the poem describes the ambush of the Seven-Coils by a warrior 'scarred all over by the traitor gods, scarred even unto his eyes, so that the sight of the great coils would not destroy him'."

- Medusa's Lament

The Colonel, also called The Cartographer of Scars, The Tribune of Scars, The Scarred Captain, The Thousandman, and The Chiliarch, is one of the Hours, associated with hour VII, or 7:00am. His Aspects are, , and. He is notorious for being scarred all over his body, such that he is blind and deaf. This does not impair his lethality in the slightest; he is so potent that the other Hours appointed him to defend and maintain The Worm Museum, and his scars make him impossible to wound. He is associated with the scents of gunpowder and snow.

The Colonel is one of the Gods-from-Flesh, and was once a mortal. According to some sources he aided in the founding of Mycenae by killing the God-from-Stone called The Seven-Coils. According to The Sevenfold Slaying of the Seven-Coiled, The Colonel gained his first scars (including those that made him blind) to protect him from the sight of The Seven-Coils. It was apparently by killing The Seven-Coils that he ascended to become an Hour.

Later, he would tutor and be betrayed by The Lionsmith, setting off a cosmic rivalry known as the Corrivalry. In this rivalry, the Colonel prefers patience and cunning, and he favors those who promote the political status quo and betray revolutions. The Colonel is the protector of The Foe, and his Names may include Biedde and Quirinus. Lalla Chaima, the Huntress is among the Colonel's devotees. In the Exile legacy, it is possible to dedicate oneself to the Colonel and ascend into his service, forever playing out the Corrivalry with the Foe.

The Colonel is mentioned in the book The Victory of Crowns as being the master of various cults of assassins who have hunted, killed, and consumed immortal beings throughout history. One of these was called the Tragulari, or more commonly the Dartsmen, and they were wiped out by the Troissant Company after the First Worm War in at least one History.

The Colonel is worshipped by militaristic cults across Europe and the Near East. These cults disguise themselves with the appearance of conventional religion. Shrines to him are found in Candia-Heraklion, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Munich, Rhenish Aachen, and Valletta. Crowkiss Hill contains the corpse of a heavily scarred warrior-king who was probably one of the Colonel's devotees.

Books

 * Book of True Blood
 * The Sevenfold Slaying of the Seven-Coiled
 * The Victory of Crowns

Le Colonel