Template:Featured Articles/43-2007
| Kylun: Colin Mackay was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1974. His physical mutation was less exaggerated at birth--abnormally large, catlike eyes were the only outward sign--and while they caused him some trouble with other children, his parents loved him dearly, and his early childhood was happy. When he was four years old, the family took a long-anticipated ski holiday to Switzerland, where Colin was snatched out of their hotel room by a Necrom cultist, who planned to use him as a sacrifice in a ritual designed to awaken and free the ancient evil. The ritual demanded that the strength and will of the sacrifice be broken, and so the cultist convinced Colin--using the mutilated bodies of earlier, unsuccessful sacrifices as evidence--that his parents had also been taken and killed.
The Zz'rian monks interrupted the ritual before it could be completed. The cultist was killed in the fighting, but then they were left with a young boy, terrified and traumatized, with no apparent living relatives--the monks in their isolation had no way to determine whether the other corpses were, as Colin believed, really those of his parents, and enough experience with the evil cult to believe that the story was certainly plausible. They brought him back to the monastery, for lack of any other acceptable solution, and Colin grew up among the monks, who gave him the name "Kylun," which means "chosen" in the Zz'rian ritual language. But the cult of Necrom was still out there. And one day, Kylun and his warriors arrived at the scene of a sacrifice to find the cultists gathered in overwhelming numbers. One by one they fell, until Kylun, the only survivor, reached the ritual circle . . . just a moment too late. Necrom was freed. Kylun rushed back to the monastery to find all the monks dead, cut down in an instant by the release of Necrom's power. Zz'ria alone waited for him, holding on to life with all his fading strength. Zz'ria blessed Kylun's swords with his dying breath, saying that no evil would withstand them, and no pure heart need fear them, and instructed him to go down to the crypts and destroy Necrom once and for all. Kylun battled his way to the crypts, fighting his own brethren, animated as zombies by Necrom's will, and there he found his wife, Sa'tneen, alone, holding Necrom back by the sheer force of her own will. Kylun plunged his swords into the monster's heart, and Zz'ria's power cleansed Necrom from the earth--but it was too late for Sa'tneen, who had put too much of her own spirit into the binding, and she died in his arms. Alone once again, his family dead, and without a purpose in life, Kylun set himself the task of burying the bodies and putting the physical shell of the monastery to rights. As he did so, he found a letter from Zz'ria--whose visionary skills had let him make preparations in the event of his death--instructing him to seek out Professor Charles Xavier, a mutant like Kylun, who had studied briefly at the Zz'rian monastery while learning the mental discipline needed to control his telepathic powers. Kylun made his way down the mountain to a small resort town nearby, where he paid a young boy to mail a letter to America, and then he returned to the monastery to await a response. Kylun's purpose in life was to guard the monks who guarded Necrom. With the monks dead and Necrom --as far as he knows--destroyed, he arrived at the mansion fairly adrift in a world far larger than he ever expected to see, with all the definitions of his identity stripped away. Upon his arrival, Kylun was in for a bit of culture shock. Painfully naive regarding modern life and social interaction, Kylun arrived with no experience whatsoever with anti-mutant prejudice; he had never used a telephone, a computer, a gas stove or an electric light. He lived nearly his entire life in a very close, tightly-knit society based on self-discipline and altruism, so his expectation was to find the same in the Xavier community. It was not to be - the mansion was a strange and chaotic place, confusing to the sheltered warrior-monk. What he did find, however, was the X-Men. Within their structure he found a purpose in life again, and became an integral part of the team. His personal connections were few - he adn Alison compared training and meditative techniques, and he struck up a tenative friendship with Terry based on music after he performed, using his mutation, at the funeral of Nathan's friends who died on Youra. He also struck up a rapport with Paige, having accompanied Alison into the Morlock tunnels to retrieve her during her breakdown. There were always questions, however, about the truth of his family's fate, and in January 2005, information came to light that forced him to face those questions. After some deliberation and the confirmation of a blood test, in April 2006 Kylun agreed to meet with the Mackays, who were very much alive and living in Scotland. The reunion went well despite his very obvious mutation, and he found a measure of peace in his life that had been missing since the deaths of the monks. After meeting with his parents, in July 2006, Kylun decided to leave the mansion in order to explore that relationship and restore his family ties. He is now living with them in Scotland. |
