frosted bloodlust and what it means

Underneath the calm, he has a thirst for battle and bloodshed that can be rather frightening to others, even his comrades. His guilty pleasure is the thrill of dancing with death - nothing makes him feel both more alive and more appreciative of the world around him, and it makes him more protective of life as a whole. At one point (during Stomblood), this becomes dangerously close to a kind of self-harm, to the point that Aymeric had to stage an intervention at the behest of the Scions. At the same time, this bloodthirst is what draws Zenos towards him, and as a result he further enables that side of him.

– from personality

In my commonplace book that I specifically dedicated to Rune, I wrote that “somehow, something broke along the way and he has a thirst for battle and bloodshed – more so than which is healthy, and is honestly bordering on addiction and is more than enough to cause for concern.” The main question here is how exactly Rune came out to be this way, since at this point it feels more like a personality trait tacked on without any further elaboration. This is also in very much direct contrast to Rune’s generally gentle and reserved nature, so how can I make this trait of his actually work?

Key points regarding Rune as a whole:

• He was taught to be a warrior early on in life and the ways of Wood-Warders by his master Thurin.
  • Wood-Warders are forest warriors charged with protecting the Viera villages, and have a very, very strict “shoot first ask later” policy towards outsiders.
    • They generally live out their days in solitude. In Rune’s case, this is somewhat true before he decided to leave the forest behind.
• A turning point in his life was Thurin’s death. This, in a way, frees him from his responsibility as a Wood-Warder, but he decides to stick with it for a while regardless of his want for exploration.
  • Only when does he know the forest like the back of his hand that he begins to intensely yearn for the outside world again, but his duty as a Warder holds him back.
  • This turning point does indeed free him from his responsibility of becoming a Wood-Warder at the cost of getting kidnapped for experimentation.

With these points in mind, how can such a brutal way of life affect the mind of an impressionable young Viera predisposed to reticence and soft-spoken words?

The “shoot first ask later” policy is, again, brutal. That would then lend to Rune’s cultivated ruthlessness. Being gentle ≠ an inability to kill when needed, and as a Warder, it is always needed. That ruthlessness is born out of the necessity to protect, and what he was protecting was his village – his family. Because he was essentially raised on that idea, that’s all he knows. It also doesn’t help that Viera are so strictly hellbent on solitude that it would make sense that it really truly is the only thing he knows – because who else is around to tell him otherwise?

“Shoot first ask later” also implies a more stealthy approach to getting rid of outsiders from the forests that the Warders protect. It means that, in order to get a leg up on your opponents, you don’t face them in direct combat. There’s a thrill in killing an enemy in the shadows and there’s a thrill in facing them in one on one combat. With stealth being so ingrained in how he operates as a Warder, of course fighting out in the open will bring Rune a kind of thrill he isn’t used to. That thrill becomes something he eventually wants to keep feeling, because it’s so different from what he knows and what he’s taught. Fighting out in the open, to him, feels like a rebellious act against the ways of the Warders. I think this is how he becomes, for a lack of better wording, an adrenaline junkie of sorts. When you kill someone from the shadows, it’s impersonal. One shot and bam, you’re dead. You then move on. But with a one on one fight or out in the open… it’s different. It’s personal. You’re now locked in a struggle to fight for your life. It’s different and Rune ends up being very into it. It’s a dance with death that breaks up the monotony of stealth.

After several years, Thurin dies. ~~I’d argue that there’s a kind of lull period as a Warder in between the times they warn off outsiders. Knowing the reputation of the Viera, how often would an outsider wander into the forest, anyway? But, because Thurin dies, that monotony also dies too, but only after a while. Rune initially sticks to his master’s teachings, but the want – the need – to leave quickly eats at him. He doesn’t feel alive being stuck in this situation. He knows it’s for the greater good, with the greater good being protecting the home of his people, and that’s why he stays for a while. It’s only when he’s presented with the opportunity to leave in the form of a lost child does he finally go all in and embrace his self-imposed exile after abandoning his duty as a Warder. ~~

With Thurin’s death, he can finally be different. And that includes his preference for open combat.

It’s a selfish choice, for sure, and almost done in a way that prioritizes his own pleasure over the collective. But now, taking with him what he was taught and what he found out about himself – ruthlessness and finding the thrill of dancing with death – he goes out into the world and seals his fate.

(The points above still make sense in a general standpoint, but for Rune’s specific situation, it doesn’t really hold up, as there is no freedom in, you know, getting kidnapped and all. He still no longer has to stick to stealth unless he wants to though.)

His predisposition to reticence would make his bloodlust rather frosted, as in he keeps his feelings inside as he fights (and he keeps his feelings inside in general), but his actions scream out to others that he can and he will kill you because that’s the only way he knows of protecting himself and eventually the people he considers as his family. It also doesn’t help that he derives a kind of pleasure from fighting, so that ups his enthusiasm more so. It’s not done in a kind of “edgy” degree, though. It was a pleasure that was initially born out of necessity to protect and eventually, revenge. This is why this habit of his gives him better appreciation of life as a whole, and it further bolsters his protective feeling towards that life.

Zenos once called Rune his “mirror,” and in more ways than one was he actually right. Aside from their thrill-seeking traits, their stories are very similar to each other. (It’s important to note that I wrote much of Rune’s backstory before reading Zenos’s short story, and it’s so funny to me because of it.)

• Birth into a place where duty trumps over pleasure and the individual’s wants, and then eventually acting selfishly and choosing themselves over their duty.
• Finding a love for the thrill in combat and overcoming adversity.
  • Both seek to break their limits and find happiness when they do so.
• Deaths of their own individual masters act as a turning point.

However, they’re both different in that Rune still mainly kills for necessity despite the fact that the combat before the killing brings him his thrill that he craves. Zenos purely does so out of his own interest. Zenos’s obsession with adversity and that he derives pleasure from it also makes him rather masochistic. Rune doesn’t crave adversity, simply put, and doesn’t actively seek it out. It’s when adversity finds him that he absolutely does not mind delivering beatdowns. I think in this way, that makes him sadistic.

Quick excerpt from in from the cold for funsies:

…It elevated Rune’s desire from simply stopping the Telophoroi and their plans all the way to “I’m going to kill him, and I’m going to make it hurt” territory. This of course plays into Zenos’s hands about getting a reaction out of him for his own personal benefit, but Rune’s fury coalesces less into a fiery explosion and more of a quiet rage, murderous and cold.

Even if he’s the Warrior of Light, Rune is not above dealing someone a painful death if they had caused him a significant amount of pain towards him.

tl;dr §

• Rune being raised to kill out of necessity and finding pleasure in open combat breaking up the monotony of stealth Warders tend to take both combine to give him this trait of bloodlust.
• The reason why his bloodlust is best described as “frost” is his tendency to keep his feelings hidden and his predisposition for reticence. His actions definitely speak louder than words, and his actions scream kill.
  • He does not derive pleasure from killing. He derives pleasure from the thrill of combat itself and dancing with death.
  • He, again, kills out of necessity – that is, to protect his loved ones, and it’s all he knows because he was raised on this idea.

Related §

• rune monna