Hamish I

Hamish I, the first King of The Highlands, was a man of many stories. A refugee from the Earth-666 iteration of reality, the king claimed to be an immortal being engaged in a killing contest with others of his kind.

He said that he was born in Ancient Egypt, had dined with Cortez and Pizarro while working for the King of Spain, and that he had spent much of his life working as a spy in the British Secret Service. But the most bizarre of Hamish’s many claims was that he had lived until the year 1996—eighty-four years after his universe came to an end—a point in time from which he was sent back to the catastrophic year of 1912.

His mission there? According to Hamish, he was sent to kill the radio operators on board the RMS Titanic.

And yet, as wild as the yarns that Hamish spun were, the even crazier thing is that many of them were true.

Appearance & Personality

Hamish was a tall, handsome, well-built man with a winning smile and a charming Scottish accent. He was fairer-skinned than many men of Egyptian descent, but he remained committed to the story of his birth until the day he disappeared at the end of the Second Age (along with every other non-halfling in Eden).

The king was slow to anger but a brutal opponent when challenged—either in debate or in combat. He maintained an aura of confidence at all times, even in seemingly no-win situations, and mesmerized nearly any person he made eye contact with.

He aged far more slowly than most human beings, but he did age. Dark hair gave way to gray and flawless, supple skin gave way to wrinkles and age spots, so that by the time he arrived in Eden he appeared be in his late sixties. And yet, this silver fox was still considered one of the sexiest men in the land until his disappearance from public life in 129.

Biography

Warning: Here there be spoilers.

Early Days

Hamish was born in the year 784 BCE of the Earth-666 iteration of reality (2996 BCE Edenian). For the first 50 years of his life, he lived the uneventful life of a commoner in Ancient Egypt. The problems only began when the once-harmless jokes about how he didn’t age turned into suspicions of foul magic, of a contract made with one evil deity or another.

From 734 BCE to 1518 CE, he traveled the world, learned of the contest amongst others of his kind to be the last one living, and somehow came into possession of his famous sword. Then he settled down in Spain for a while before heading north to the Scottish Highlands. And it was there that he would adopt the name he’d carry with him for the rest of his life.

Well, one of the names.

A Life of Many Lives

It was in Scotland that Hamish met the person who would be his companion for the next several centuries, an ageless woman called Constance. Together, after defeating an ageless Russian who had long been hunting them both, Constance and Hamish would aid each other in establishing new identities over the centuries.

Among many other lives, Hamish spent time as a big game hunter in South Africa, as a professor of medieval literature in America, and as a Lithuanian submarine commander. The identity he enjoyed the most, however, was that of a British Secret Service agent with a license to kill.

Or well, he did enjoy it until the Americans caught him spying on them and sent him to the notorious island prison of Alcatraz—where Hamish feared he would be held until the end of the world.

Alcatraz closed eventually, however, and Hamish was imprisoned elsewhere. For thirty years, he rotted in one American prison after another. And then, in 1996, after aiding the U.S. government with a bit of trouble back on the ruins of Alcatraz, he was released and recruited by a shady organization who taught him how to travel through time.

Following a series of missions back to the 1960s and 70s where he pretended to be a version of his younger self who had escaped from the Americans, Hamish was sent back to 1912 for his biggest mission yet.

The Titanic, which in Hamish’s version of reality had never sunk, needed to sink. It was the way things were supposed to happen, his handlers told him. And so, they sent him back in time to correct that mistake. But when he succeeded, all he got as a reward was the end of the world.

Life in Eden

In Eden, Hamish fell in with the so-called “False Kings” and played a pivotal role in convincing the halflings to turn over dominion of the Edenian South to him and his compatriots. Because of his Scottish accent, Hamish was dubbed King of The Highlands. Soon thereafter, he was married to Johanna Vinternsdotter. And soon after that, the couple had themselves two sons.

They might have been a happy family, but Hamish came down with an incurable case of wanderlust and disappeared in 129. Presumed dead, his crown was given to his then five-year-old son. And from then on, Hamish was free to roam Eden like no explorer since Lüe the Mapmaker herself.