(no subject)
Character Name: Richard Cypher/Richard Rahl
Series: Legend of the Seeker
Age: 23 or 24? Somewhere in there.
From When?: 2x01, "Marked," after they find the tear in the veil between this world and the Underworld. He'll agree to work for the Admiral if the Admiral seals the Underworld.
Inmate/Warden: Warden. He's one of those heroic types, and generally he's a good guy.
Item: THE SWORD OF TRUTH.
Personality: Richard is a sweet, open guy, the very epitome of the Average Farm Boy. He's decently clever but not well-educated or vastly intelligent, able to come up with schemes to fight D'Haran soldiers and to think on his feet pretty quickly when he's undercover. But he does need Zedd's guidance and advice, and tends to function better with it. Often times, he'll go rushing off into danger without thinking.
He's caring but pragmatic, which comes from his upbringing. He's not the head-in-the-clouds type, especially after the kinds of horrible things he's witnessed traveling with Kahlan and Zedd. But his pragmatism never extends to other people - he can see the good in everyone, and he's one of those people who would never ever leave a man behind. When he hears about the Mord-Sith, he feels sympathy for them because of their "training," but he can still understand that they're the enemy and he'll probably have to kill lots of them. Though when he learns that male Confessors all have to be killed at birth because of their tendency to grow up evil, he can't understand that and rescues Kahlan's nephew so he'll have a chance to grow up and be good. He cares very deeply about his friends and will always go out of his way to help them whenever he can and worries about them when he's not helping them. He's maybe a little bit more trusting than he should be, and can sometimes make foolhardy decisions because he's so overeager to help everyone.
He's also very honest and straight-forward, though not in a tactless way. He's been known to put his foot in his mouth on one or two occasions, but usually he's pretty good at talking to people. Richard's not a deceitful or even closed-off guy; he's an open book. Hiding his emotions isn't something that comes easily to him. The only thing he keeps away from his friends is his anger, and he's got plenty of an outlet for that when he's fighting D'Haran soldiers.
Richard is generally pretty light-hearted and easy to get along with. He feels uncomfortable with having too much control or power, because he remembers what happened when he had the power of Orden. He'll use any power he has when he absolutely must to accomplish an immediate goal, but when he's offered something like Lordship of the Midlands, he turns it down.
History: Richard was a simple woodsman living in Hartland. He was raised by George Cypher and his wife, and never questioned that they were his real parents. They always treated him as though her were their own son and never favored his adopted brother Michael over him.
But Richard's peaceful life couldn't last forever. An impenetrable magic wall, known as the Boundary, had been erected between Hartland and the Midlands. Because of this, Hartland was unaware of the terrible things going on in the Midlands at the hands of Lord Darken Rahl, heir to the old Lord Rahl. But a woman named Kahlan found a way to break through the Boundary and came to Hartland seeking the wizard Zeddicus. To Richard, Zeddicus was simply Zedd, a guy who lived in the woods with a bunch of chickens. But when he helped Kahlan fight off a group of Darken Rahl's soldiers, Richard was brought to Zedd and learned the truth about himself.
He was the Seeker, a hero destined to rise in times of great evil, and he was prophesied to kill Darken Rahl. What he wasn't told was that he was Rahl's half-brother. The old Lord Rahl, Darken Rahl's father, heard of a prophecy, that his younger son would kill his older son. Seeing what a monster Darken was becoming, he conceived a child with Zeddicus' daughter. Richard was that child. But when Darken Rahl heard the prophecy and learned that the boy who would defeat him would be born in the town of Brennidon, he had all the male children in Brennidon murdered. Zedd escaped with Richard and brought him to Hartland to live far away from his brother's influence.
Richard, Kahlan, and Zedd set out for the Midlands. They knew they had to find the Boxes of Orden, which was the only magic that could defeat Darken Rahl. It took a long time and a lot of hardship, but with the help of Richard's half-sister and a Mord-Sith called Denna, they found the boxes. Richard put them together to complete the magic, giving him ultimate control over every living thing. But with all the power, he began to go mad. Kahlan realized the only way to temper the power of Orden was to confess Richard a the moment he put the boxes together. But when he put them together a second time - this time to defeat Darken Rahl - and when Kahlan placed her hand on him to confess him, he was also struck by the agiel of a Mord-Sith.
This combination of magics opened a rift in time that transported Richard and the Mord-Sith, Cara, fifty-eight years into the future. They learned that Kahlan was dead, having married Rahl and borne him a son, now the self-styled Master of the Midlands. The Mord-Sith had been disbanded, and Richard used that to convince Cara to fight with him. Because the Master was a Confessor, they were able to combine his magic with the magic of Orden and Cara's agiel to return them to their own time. When Darkan Rahl came and tried to strike the Boxes of Orden with Richard's Sword of Truth, the combination of magic caused both Rahl and the Boxes to be consumed in flames.
With Lord Rahl dead, the trio decided to celebrate. But the party was crashed by a screeling, a creature from the Underworld. Richard tried to kill it, but it fled, and when they followed it they found that the magic of Orden had caused a tear in the veil between this world and the Underworld. The Keeper of the Underworld was stretching out his hand to kill everything that lived, and Richard made a deal with the Admiral to seal the Underworld and stop the Keeper, in return for which he'd come work on the barge.