Conquest

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   <default>Conquest</default>
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Conquest of Toronto is an antagonist in the series. An Incarnation of the concept of conquest, he has become the Lord of Toronto and held the position for a long time. He is thought to be a weaker incarnation of conquest, as there are others running around, but for all intents and purposes he is akin to a god and cannot be killed.

He is bound inside a mirror by Blake Thorburn and Rose Thorburn Junior, but a fragment of his power dwells inside Rose's mind.

Personality

Conquest is an incarnation of the concept he is named after, meaning that he lives and breathes the concept of taking from and depriving others via conquest. He cannot help it as he is the embodiment of it, thus he will do so despite anyone else's thoughts or the consequences that may ensue.

He prefers warfare and bloodshed, but he can draw power from the steady expansion of civilization into nature, from real estate, from business takeovers, government, law, and other small forms of tyranny.

Appearance

When Conquest first appears he has a bit of a mullet, a white colonial-style jacket with a fleece collar and several belts, a rifle with a bayonet resting against one leg, and a "badass" beard with a waxed mustache. His eyes look like ‘painting eyes’, perfect in every detail but still flat and lifeless. He can manifest with two slaves chained behind him, their eyes like his, extensions of his will.<ref name="4.2.2">Conquest stood across from me, sitting on a stone.  He had a bit of a mullet, a white colonial-style jacket with a fleece collar and several belts, a rifle with a bayonet resting against one leg, and a badass beard with a waxed mustache.  Two aboriginal men were kneeling beside him, shirtless, with heavy collars shackled to their necks, chains leading up to his hand.  His other arm was outstretched, resting against one knee, hand open, with large green beetles crawling around the palm.

His eyes didn’t look human.  When I let my brain draw the connection, my first thought was ‘painting eyes’.  They were the sort of eyes I might expect to see in a really well done painting… every detail in place, but lifeless and flat.

When I looked him over again, I saw the entire thing fit.  I could have seen something similar on a tarot card, the posture, the very careful arrangement of elements.

A composition, a living symbol.  And somehow, this landscape was an extension of him. It was like he was ink, bleeding out onto the paper around him, and this… diorama was the end result.  I couldn’t take my eyes off him. - Excerpt from Collateral 4.2</ref> 

When he drew himself up to his full height, he grew half-again as tall and his flesh pulled back in a pallid, corpse-like rictus.<ref>Conquest rose from his seat.  Which made for one hell of an understatement.

The landscape changed, as if conquest were attached to each and every thing by drawstrings.  The sun descended, in one smooth motion, as he rose, burning hotter, whiter, as it drew down, while the crimson bled out into the sky around it.  The walls around the hill washed away, like waves that had crashed against a cliffside and were now returning to the sea below.

His flesh pulled back, straining into something macabre as he swelled in size, as if simply standing involved an exaggerated change in size.  The sun, burning white now against a blood red sky, seemed more an extension of him, an accessory.

“If,” he said, and there was a tremor to his voice that resonated through all of the metaphysical strings that tied him to this world, “you would gladly take any help that will keep you from that road, you will have to unhappily take a push down that road.  The beings that diabolists traffic with bring defeat and pain wherever they tread.” - Excerpt from Collateral 4.2</ref> His domain also began altering around him with every movement, including the sun turning white and attaching itself to him like a halo as the sky turned blood-red. Conquest's appearance began to gradually shift, with his clothing and flesh merging, melting and changing. He grew metal-and-bone gauntlets surrounding by tiny grasping hands extending from his sleeves. His eyes became pure black orbs and his slaves vanished into his billowing coat.<ref>My eyes moved to him, and I saw him looking down, pensive, but not looking down at us.  He’d changed subtly, and was still changing.  The line between clothing and skin was fading, the individual elements that had made up his outfit and appearance were dissolving, while retaining the bits that still let me think he fit with the idea of ‘Conquest’.

He had overlarge hands, now, plated in iron and what might have been bone, or a very pale metal, effectively gauntlets, but I could also see smaller hands, grasping, scrabbling out as if they sought to claw their way free of his coat sleeves.  Or his rolls of loose skin.  Or chainmail.  Whatever it was that wreathed his arms, now that it was ceasing to be a coat.  I could see it changing, sloughing away from an endless source, taking on a new texture and form as it layered over itself.  Hot wax, melting flesh, layers of dust settling atop one another.  All those things and none of them.

His flesh was stretched taut around his face and neck, pulling his mouth into a hollow, perpetual grin.  Except his smile wasn’t really a smile, whatever label I might stick on it.  Like the eyes had been ‘painted’, the smile was symbolic.  Just looking at it put ideas in my head: the rictus grins of the defeated; the expression of a general who had just won the war, caught between the joy of victory and the dawning horror as he left the battle behind and came to terms with what he had done.  Twisted into a frozen mask that he wore.

His beard and hair were longer than they had been, paler.  He was half again as tall, so broad in the shoulders it was bound to be symbolic in some fashion, and his coat trailed around him like a cape, now, the tips billowing and snaking through the snow as if being moved by a wind that I couldn’t feel. His slaves were hidden by his coat in one moment, gone when the coat flapped open again in the next.

He held the rifle with its bayonet, but the weapon was sagging too, not falling apart, but drooping like the materials were at melting temperatures.  When he shifted position, the sun remained behind him, as if the corners of it were anchored to his shoulders.  A pale halo.

The painted eyes, at least, were gone.  There was only darkness there. - Collateral 4.3</ref> He and his domain continued to transform as his emotions changed, such as his rictus-smile disappearing when he was worried.<ref>His little movements were making the landscape change, and I found myself adjusting my footing, to ensure I could move if I had to.
[...]
The Lord lowered his weapon, letting the butt-end of it hit the ground, interrupting me.

The stones and snow had moved and resettled, in the wake of the impact.  He was molding our surroundings.
[...]
He stared down at me with the black orbs in the midst of his pallid face.  He wasn’t smiling that horrible rictus smile, now.
[...]
“You toy with me,” he said.  He visibly changed, skin stretching tighter.  His face shifted to that rigid grin, teeth bared.  “I should mutilate you right now, so you remember the mistake of such insults.”

The fucking sky was changing in tune with his emotions.  Plunging us into darkness.  Black rage. - Collateral 4.3</ref> Even outside his domain, the exaggerated size of his body and gun made him a formidable physical opponent in this form. He could become three times as tall as a normal human, unable to easily fit indoors.<ref>Void 7.6</ref><ref>Void 7.7</ref> 

While inside Rose's mind, he changes forms to a variety of people who have some influence over Rose, one of them being her grandmother, tied again into the idea of conquest.<ref>

- Excerpt from Possession 15.5</ref>

Part of the regalia and appearance manifested could be called iconography. Take for example the military costuming and the enslaved figures it manifests. Further examples, Conquest has been shown with green beetles on its' hand<ref name="4.2.2"/> and was later seen holding an equally green crab<ref name="4.8.1">Conquest was in a half-human, half-monster form, when we reached the top.

A green crab sat in his hand, its legs perched on his splayed fingertips.  He had three slaves at his feet, now.  None of them were Rose. - Excerpt from Collateral 4.8</ref> and even later was shown manifesting a moat with a big silver fish<ref>I reached the top, where Conquest waited.  But I supposed he didn’t sleep.  He just was.

He was still in his halfway-form, half man, half monster, flesh stretched, beard, the eyes more whites than anything, wearing clothes that were part skin, part coat, part robe.  He held no animal, but I saw that the rooftop was bordered by a moat, where large silver fish swam in perpetual rings.  The only light was a pale reflection from Conquest himself, and from the halo-crown that surrounded the tower. - Excerpt from Collateral 4.12</ref>; all of these are invasive species in North America, generally described as those species that conquer a previously established ecological niche and thus damaging to the native environment.

Abilities

This version of Conquest is quite knowledgeable about things in Practice.

He's described along the lines of a god and has abilities related to the conquest of people places things and ideas. Imbuing an object with his essence is just one mentioned ability.

Lordship

Many of his actions in the story can be in part attributed to his holding of the Lordship of Toranto. Which lets him exercise several abilities over and within the city.

History

Before

At some point in the past someone summoned and merged with the concept of conquest and became this incarnation. It later became Lord of Toronto and watched over the city, taking the Attwell Family under him after Joseph Attwell broke an Oath he was no longer able to fulfill.

Despite this it still lost a lot of power becoming a figure head Lord, however come 9/11 and the response it provoked among America's allies Conquest had a "second wind".

By the time the series started he was secure in his power until Blake Thorburn arrived and his heritage was known.

Toronto Arc

Following his nature of Conquest he sought to reclaim this power for himself, but decides to send them out to deal with Pauz, Hyena, and the Abstract Demon instead. His hope was that Blake would be killed so that Rose would remain connected to him, thus giving him a pet diabolist.

Blake survived the challenges and eventually challenged him to a contest, where each chose champions to represent them. He chose Shepard, The Eye, Diana Thompson, Laird Behaim, and Elder Sister, giving him a large force to work with. He later arrives in person when Blake is near-death and is willing to end the contest with his subjugation into his service rather than death, but Blake instead makes another deal to extends it by three days.

He arrives at the end of the three days to confront Blake in the home of Duncan Behaim. After killing the Hyena, he reunites Blake with the ghosts of his most traumatic moments in an effort to subdue him. Playing on Conquest's nature, Blake gets him to chase Rose Thorburn Junior into the mirror world as the final bit needed to end the contest and be victorious. Blake and his allies manage to bind the Lord in a mirror, effectively putting the contest on hold, hopefully indefinitely.

In the aftermath he remains bound, but because the binding is imperfect his essence leaks out into Rose and influences her actions.

Possession

Inside of her mind, during the Possession arc, he (well, she now) reveals that she holds more ground even after Rose stops drawing power, but claims that Rose knows what she's doing. And while Blake has more power and presence, by now possessing Rose too, Conquest has an intimate understanding of how things works and uses that to attack Blake. Evan's presence gives Blake leverage and thus he surrendered more of his memories to push Conquest out of her mind. While this does not get rid of Conquest, the incarnation does cease his further invasive acts since the moment Rose declares herself Lord of Jacob's Bell alongside Alister he sees it as the grounds for future conquests and beneficial to him, though he does start wearing Blake's face.

Rose uses Conquest's Power again, after Blake had vacated her, to condemn Johannes' Demesne to the Abyss.

Trivia

• A traditional popular interpretation of the book of revelation had one of the four horsemen, specifically the white rider with his crown, as conquest.<ref>“Back when I was a hometown hero, my- we joked about the Undersiders being the four horsemen. Guy in black with the skull, girl with the locusts, girl with the howling hellhounds and spiked collar, and the guy who controlled people.”
  
  “You lost me with that last one,” Byron said. “And I’ve actually read the bible.”
  
  “Depending on interpretations, the guy in white is seen as either Conquest or Famine,” Rain said.
  
  “Oh, like Conquest from the Toronto segment from the Maggie Holt series!” Lookout said, all excitement now that she was back in the conversation. - Excerpt from Gleaming 9.12</ref> Other interpretations include Famine, Pestilence or Pollution.
• While some languages gender some concepts even when anthropomorphizing, and Conquest itself takes several distinct gendered appearances in the story, this wiki will try to use it when discussing conquest.

References

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