Cu Chulainn

Cú Chulainn
Cú Chulainn in the heat of battle.

The legendary hero of Ireland, and complete bad ass, Cú Chulainn. This hulk-like warrior premiered in episode 18, Cu Chulainn a.k.a. God Girth.

Description

Cú Chulainn is an Irish mythological hero, believed to be the reincarnation of his own father, and god of many things such as skill, crafts, arts, oaths, oats, truth, law, rightful kingship, and Pâté, Lugh. A prophesy was told of Cú Chulainn that his great deeds would give him everlasting fame, but his life would be short. This prophecy ends up being true, but he sure gets a lot of things done in that short amount of time.

Cú Chulainn's mother, Deichtine, went around with some of the kingdom of Ulster's finist knights. They ended up staying at a house one night where some lady and a horse were both giving birth at the same time. She helped in the births which resulted in a baby boy and two baby colts (the latter coming from the horse of course). The next morning, Deichtine and her knights awoke to find their hosts having disappeared, leaving behind the baby boy and the colts. The soldiers take the colts home with them, and Deichtine watches over the babe as if it was her own. Not very well though, because the boy grows ill and dies. Soon after this, god of Pâté, Lugh, appears to her saying that he was their host from the other night and that since his son, who was named Sétanta, died, he would impregnate Deichtine who was to name the new child Sétanta. After doing the deed, Lugh leaves and impregnated Deichtine behind and goes about doing Pâté things most likely. Deichtine begins panicking since she was betrothed to another, the pregnancy was sure to be a scandal. In her panic, she quickly Alt+F4s the baby right out of her. Being baby free, she returns to her betrothed, eventually gets married, and becomes pregnant with his son. Living up to his promise to Lugh, she names the child Sétanta, because that name obvious does well to babies.

Who is Sétanta? Well just like most celebrities, Cú Chulainn is just a stage name, and his birth name was actually Sétanta. That's right, this Sétanta kid is the irish hero, Cú Chulainn. He chose to change his name due to his dickhead friends always calling him Santa. This, of course, is not the worst of what they did. In fact, these friends had formed a child gang in the city Sétanta's family moved to, and before Sétanta knew them, they would terrorize the park. It was an unwritten rule that in order to play in the park, you would have to ask the child gang for protection or else they saw it as a challenge. Not knowing this, Sétanta went out to play in the park, and the gang took this as a chance for some well deserved initiation to the new kid. They go out there to beat him up, but then Sétanta just hulks out. Literally. He has an rare condition called riastrad, or "warp spasm," in which he can turn into a giant raging freak that can't tell friend from foe. He becomes the hulk. As hulk, he beats the living hell out of these kids, then makes them ask him for protection.

Now that the child gang and Sétanta are friends, they played a lot of sports together and founded the sports channel, Sétanta Sports. While playing a game of hurling, a man name Conchobar notices how insanely good this small child is at sports and decides the best course of action is to invite the minor over to his friend's house for a feast. Sétanta accepts the invitation, but says he's going to finish kicking ass at hurling first. Conchobar gives him the address of the local smithy's house, Culann, and leaves. When Sétanta wins his game, he heads on over to the Culann's house. Conchobar, seeming dealing with terrible short term memory loss, completely forgets that he invited this child over, and never tells Culann. So when Culann spots an odd child approaching, he releases his guard hound to attack and kill the boy. It is said at this point that Culann kills the hound by driving a sliotar, a hurling ball, down its throat with his hurley, a big hockey-like stick used for hurling. Feeling bad, Sétanta promises to get a replacement for him, and in the meantime defend the place himself. Thus getting the moniker Cú Chulainn, "Culann's Hound."

As Cú Chulainn grows older, the Ulstermen grow worried by his beauty, becoming afraid that he will steal their wives and ruin their daughters. Apparently he was that attractive at the young age of eight or so. They decide it's best to try to marry him off quickly to Emer, daughter of the Fogal Monarch, believing that if he has a wife, he would stop looking to other's wives and daughters. Boy were they wrong. Either way, Mr. Fogal dislikes the idea of giving his daughter over to Cú Chulainn and claims that Cú Chulainn is not a strong enough warrior. He must go off and learn the art of war from the warrior woman Scáthach, secretly hoping the notoriously brutal training will kill him.

This training does not, in fact, kill Cú Chulainn, but rather it makes him way stronger, even gifting him with quite possibly one of the most bad ass weapons of all time, the Gáe Bulg (pronounced Gay Bulge). This weapon is a barbed spear that is thrown with the foot, as in punted at the enemy. Texts describe it as such:

"The Gáe Bulg had to be made ready for use on a stream and cast from the fork of the toes. It entered the man's body with a single wound, like a javelin, then opened into thirty barbs. Only by cutting away the flesh could it be taken from the man's body."

During his time training, Cú Chulainn meets a rival and friend in Ferdiad, even going so far as to have allegedly formed a different type of gay bulge for each other. And while Cú Chulainn and Ferdiad trained under Scáthach, becoming great warriors, they were attacked by Scáthach's twin sister, Aife. The battle was mostly between Scáthach and Aife, since the warrior woman wished to keep her pupils out of the battle, but when the battle turned against Scáthach, Cú Chulainn entered the battle against his teacher's will. He was evenly matched against Aife, but gained the upper hand by using a dirty trick, claiming her horse and chariot were going over a hill to make her look away. At sword point, Cú Chulainn demanded from Aife that she leave her sister forever more if she wished to keep her life. Oh yeah, and also that she was going to have Cú Chulainn's son. He's still like eight years old...

Feeling like he found out a bit more about himself, and that he's learned all he could from Scáthach, Cú Chulainn returns to Ulster and tries to marry Emer. Mr. Forgall still doesn't approve and declines his request. Cú Chulainn decides he doesn't give a fuck what Mr. Fogall thinks, and instead barges into the Forgall castle, killing 24 men, stealing the man's daughter and treasure for himself, then leaving.

Also, by unfortunate chance, Cú Chulainn's son by way of Aife tries to visit eight years later, searching for his father. Believing the boy to be an invader or spy, Cú Chulainn just kills him. He of course learns that it's his son dying in his arms and he becomes distraught.

He gets over it by adopting a boy named Lugaid. He's probably like 16ish right now and has killed one son, and adopted another. When a princess named Derbforgaill (a.k.a. Derby) is flying around as a swan, she gets shot down with a stone thrown by Cú Chulainn. Transforming back, Cú Chulainn realizes he shouldn't have done that and saves her life by sucking the rock out. Derby, by some sick and twisted reason, falls in love with Cú Chulainn, but he declines her love because he tasted her blood, so they could not marry (also he's married, but apparently that's not important). He offers up his foster son, Lugaid, and Derby apparently finds this good enough. Several Ulsterwomen decide that Derby is far too beautiful, and in their envy, they attack her, scratching up her face in an attempt to make her ugly. Derby dies from the attack, and Lugaid dies from his grief of losing this princess that really just wanted his father. In his anger, Cú Chulainn demolishes the house these women lived in, killing 150 of them.

At the ripe age of 17, Cú Chulainn single-handedly defends his province of Ulster from the invading armies of Queen Medb of Connacht. This was known as Táin Bó Cúailnge, a.k.a. "The Cattle Raid of Cooley." This is elaborated in the tale.

At some point after the war, Cú Chulainn meets a fairy named Fand, and they fall in love. Emer, Cú Chulainn's wife, is understandably jealous and tries to kill Fand, but in the process sees that Fand loves Cú Chulainn a lot, so decides to just give up instead. So, of course, Fand and Cú Chulainn get married.

Medb, the queen that attempted to invade Ulster and failed, decides it's time for some revenge. She creates three magic spears that are prophesied to kill three kings. She is able to launch these from the safety of her cancel, and they will hunt down their pray wherever they may be. With the firs, she strikes down Cú Chulainn's charioteer, Laeg, King of Chariot Drivers. With the second, Cú Chulainn's horse, Liath Macha, King of Horses. And with the third, Cú Chulainn himself. Cú Chulainn lives through the attack, but is mortally wounded, so as his life is slipping away, he ties himself to a rock, vowing to meet his enemies standing. When Queen Medb and her forces invade once more, they see Cú Chulainn standing, a spear jutting from his chest, sword held high. The army stops, held back with worry, and they watch Cú Chulainn with fear. When a raven lands on Cú Chulainn's head and pecks at it, the army relaxes, noticing that Cú Chulainn is in fact dead.

Queen Medb orders Lugaid, this is a different one not Cú Chulainn's foster son who died, to remove Cú Chulainn's head and bring it to her. He does just that, chopping the head off, however, as he does so, a type of hero glow appears around Cú Chulainn's still raised hand and sword, which drop down fast hand hard, severing Lugaid's hand in the process. One final act of defiance for the headless Cú Chulainn, bad ass of all of Ireland and Sctoland areas.

Abilities

Cú Chulainn is an expert warrior and has the "gift" of the Riastrad, or Warp Spasm. When he enters a warp spasm, Cú Chulainn becomes a hulking beast of total destruction. He also has the Gáe Bulg, which is a devastating weapon.

Tale

The Táin Bó Cúailnge.

The armies of Connacht, led by the Queen Medb, mounts an invasion to steal the stud bull Don Cúailnge. Yes, they're trying to steal a normal cow. A curse is set upon all the fighting men of Ulster, causing them to suffer from labor pains. Cú Chulainn was busy with a lady, making sweet love to her presumably. This is also probably not his wife, Emer. Thus, he accidentally lets this army cross into the Ulster borders he was to be defending. Somehow, Cú Chulainn is unaffected by the labor pains, and soon learns he's the only one out there to be able to do anything about this army. Reluctantly, Cú Chulainn leaves his latest gal behind and chases down the army, meeting up with them at a ford. He challenges the army to one-on-one combat, and one at a time he kills everyone who approaches him. This goes on for months, as he single-handedly holds off the entire army. His wounds end up stacking up on him and he ends up collapsing from them, unable to continue. His father, and the god of Pâté, appears before him. Lugh heals his wounds and tells Cú Chulainn to rub some dirt in them and get back out there.

Cú Chulainn rises from the ground and sees that while he was dying, his old gang friends had attacked the army to hold it off. Being only gang members, and not trained warriors, and also being vastly outnumbered, the gang members were wiped out quickly. From extreme rage, Cú Chulainn experiences his most spectacular ristrad yet:

The first warp-spasm seized Cú Chulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front... On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child...he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn't probe it onto his cheek out from the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and his liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a ram's fleece reached his mouth from his throat... The hair of his head twisted like the tangle of a red thornbush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage.

At this point, killing was mere child's play. He slaughtered hundreds and hundreds of people. He picked up a guy and threw him into another guy. It was like a destructive child rampaging around a bunch of ragdolls. Cú Chulainn built walls from their corpses, building a maze that a Minotaur could get lost in.

When he calms down from the warp-spasm, he finds his friend and once upon a time gay lover, Ferdiad. The two face each other down in a grueling three day duel that results in Ferdiad's death by way of the fearsome Gáe Bulg. Around this time, the Ulster army finally decides to do battle, and comes out to chase off the army, finally giving Cú Chulainn some rest.

Statistics

Basic human in solid physical and mental form represents about a 3 in the numbered stats.

Cú Chulainn Statistics

Strength (1-10)	7
Speed (1-10)	7
Intelligence (1-10)	3
Durability (1-10)	6
Vulnerabilities	Sex, Typical Human Weaknesses
Special	Warp Spasm, Gáe Bulg

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Fight Club Results

Battle	Result	Episode
vs. Medusa and Harpy	Win	18
vs. Oni	Loss	22