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There is one rule, above all others, for being a man. Whatever comes, face it on your feet.

Lan is a harsh man: weathered and scarred, tall and grim and lightning-fast in battle. He is a weapon, shaped from earliest childhood by teachers and his own will, and he wields the sword he always bears as if it is a part of him. His long hair, dark and greying, is held back by the braided leather band of the hadori, mark of a traditional Malkieri man; his bearing is proud and deceptively lazy-looking by turns; his eyes are a startling blue in a face of hard planes and angles. He knows bitter choices, and pain, and survival, and what battles are worth more than surviving.

To stand against the Shadow while iron is hard and stone abides. To defend the Malkieri while one drop of blood remains. To avenge what cannot be defended.

Lan is the last Lord of the Seven Towers: king of Malkier, a land that was destroyed when he was an infant. The Golden Crane will fly no more; no nation remains to defend or rule, but only to be avenged as one man's life may. Lan refuses to claim the titles of his birthright. Malkier is dead, and Lan has devoted his life to a continual war against the Shadow in its name.

There is a darkness in us. Darkness, pain, death. They radiate from us. If ever you love a woman, Rand, leave her and let her find another. It will be the best gift you can give her.

Lan was Warder to Moiraine Sedai: bodyguard and advisor and companion, sworn to her service. Their battles, as Moiraine has said, are the same: he, like she, opposes the Shadow in whatever it may do, to his last breath and last drop of blood. They were bonded for nearly twenty years.

The fact that the price must be paid is proof that it is worth paying.

When Moiraine sacrificed herself to kill the Forsaken Lanfear -- falling into death, or at least so far as Lan or any other could tell -- that bond was shattered. For a Warder whose Aes Sedai has died, life is short and consumed by a suicidal quest for vengeance; Lan's despair was mitigated, mostly against his will, by the fact that Moiraine had previously arranged for the Warder-bond to transfer at her death to another Aes Sedai. That Aes Sedai, Myrelle, helped bring him back to an interest in life and the world around him; a far stronger influence, however, was Nynaeve al'Meara, his beloved and now his wife.

In war, you say a prayer for your dead and ride on, because there is always another fight over the next horizon. Say a prayer for the dead, Moiraine Sedai, and ride on.

Lan is not mine; he, like everything and everyone else in the Wheel of Time series, is the intellectual property of Robert Jordan. So are the italicized sections above, all of which are quotes from the series. This journal is intended solely for the purpose of role-playing at milliways_bar, and no profit is made nor copyright infringement intended thereby.

Lan's main PB is Clive Owen, and many of his icons were made with screencaps from clive-owen.org or the McHeathers fansite. Me, I'm genarti.