#((we'll see how many typos this has in the morning goodnight!))

[lost-kingsmen]

((I started this post way too late at night and couldn't finish articulating everything so I drafted it. Now it's once again way too late at night and we're taking a swing of finishing, GO.

SO! *slams hands on the desk* The idea is that the original "Kadonnut" - the devil-esque figure in the teachings of the Church of the Burning Root/Callahan's isolated hometown and the original owner of the powers that Callahan now possesses - was a being from the Infinite Realms. Yes we're pulling god-of-the-frozen-heart(h) content over to here this blog has more activity and thus more eyes to tell me when I misspell something.))

"Kadonnut" was an ageless being (Ancient?? Not sure still toying with it) with a well-earned reputation for violence who somehow wandered into the living world through a relatively stable natural portal somewhere in northern Lapland before the 19th century. For lack of better words he becomes enamored with a small tribe of Sami peoples the same way an autistic shepherd would be with their sheep, and through his repeated visits to the area he (somewhat accidentally) becomes the guardian figure of this tribe and protects them from other, nastier things that had been coming through the portal to hunt and cause chaos for the living for who knows how long.

Eventually, Kadonnut starts spending so much time in the living world that he gets stranded there when the portal inevitably shrinks too much for him to fit back through, but he can still draw enough ectoplasm through it to sustain himself, so he isn't too worried, and starts getting more involved with the daily lives of the tribe, which has grown under his protection. They set up a sort of gathering place that would later become the founding site of the town of Vargkonung in the area near the portal, and Kadonnut builds a shelter around the portal itself to help corral the creatures that still came through it.

The people start to leave him offerings. Kadonnut things it's a bit strange but likes the attention and doesn't stop them. The spirits that used to torment the land are growing hungry and restless, as they can't feed off of the humans' fear with Kadonnut keeping them at bay. The hungry spirits end up banding together under the command of their strongest, and attack Kadonnut in an effort to overwhelm him at a time when most of the humans were all back at the village so their feed would strengthen them. Kadonnut can't fight them all, and some of the spirits get a little overzealous and start attacking the humans instead of just frightening them.

Kadonnut loses his temper and takes most of them out with one large AoE attack, but this attack wipes out most of the humans as well. The only survivors of the massacre are a handful of spirits who fled the battle and a small group of humans who managed to hide in the shelter around the portal before Kadonnut's final attack. Regretful that his outburst had almost destroyed the people he was trying to protect, Kadonnut became much more protective of the survivors. Their worship of him resumes, but there is fear there now.

Fear the surviving spirits can taste.

One of the surviving spirits who fled from the battle notices that Kadonnut is going dormant more and more as the days pass (the portal is still shrinking, and Kadonnut can't draw as much ectoplasm through it as he used to so he has to ration his energy). They take on the form of a human and infiltrate the now-village, waiting until Kadonnut enters another period of dormancy to start whispering dissent and acting as their own prophet.

I haven't quite figured out the details yet, but the spirit gains enough power by sowing fear of Kadonnut in the people while the big guy is dormant that they can drag him out of the village and into the wilderness. The spirit starts calling themselves "The All-Seeing Shepherd" and forms a loyal cult out of the people by taking up Kadonnut's job of 'protecting' them from the monstrous spirits outside the village's limits (which also work for the All-Seeing).

This village grows and evolves and eventually becomes Vargkonung, Finland, with the All-Seeing Shepherd still running the show but now with a larger following with deep roots and an almost world-wide reach. The portal is somehow still open (for Reasons) but never stopped shrinking and is now a hand-sized tear in reality that the All-Seeing guards viciously.

Kadonnut knows that his usurper would expect him to come charging back to respond with brute force, so he decides to play the long game and wait for an opening the same way the All-Seeing had. He's...not good at finding an opening, and centuries pass before he realizes he's losing too much strength just waiting around and starts to get desperate.

He tries to infiltrate the All-Seeing's sanctuary by inhabiting the body of a villager, but didn't realize how much the portal had shrunk, and couldn't absorb enough ectoplasm from just being in the town to be anything more than a dormant consciousness in his chosen host until they died. The fact that his chosen host - Ivan Callahan - bailed on the town to play hockey in America and died in the heart of a head-scratchingly tangled mess of ley lines and fae magic of multiple European origins thousands of miles away from Vargkonung was not a part of his plan.

Neither was Callahan being such a stubborn, competetive, strong-willed himbo that he almost immediately formed as a ghost on the wrong side of the veil because he wasn't dONE YET DAMNIT-

You know what? "Kadonnut" might not even be his real name. It's the Finnish word for "lost one" (which is how the bible of the cult church refers to him almost exclusively), and is probably what the humans called him at first bc he got stranded in the living world and was 'lost' in that sense.