Ish

Ish is a mystery, even for himself. If, at first, he doesn't have any memory, he soon realizes that he has the rarest gift of all : he's immortal and has been around since seven full centuries.

ETYMOLOGY

His name means "the Man" in Hebrew. The Man in his general sense, so to say, the Humanity.

THE CONQUISTADOR

Born as Francisco Pizarro, Ish was one of Cortes men as they came accross the last remnants of the pre-columbian civilization. In fact, he was his cousin. Strangling against the Léto that seemed to never stop growing and turning humans into monsters, the very last pre-columbians asked Cortes for help, he refused. Francisco Pizarro stood against him and joined the tribes in their fight.

Converted to their beliefs but mixing them with his old ones, he started to see himself as a redeemer half-god, as Christ before him. He agreed to sacrifice himself by going into Tulum, where the Leto's heart was. He would have to go there by swimming.

During the underwater trip, Francisco was in contact with a very special starfish, who had the ability to regenerate itself forever, even if its organs were ripped off, by secreting a sort of fuel by its skin.

Francisco made it to the Leto's heart and brought him back. During the trip, his genes mixed up with the starfish's, giving him the very same abilities.

Back before the tribe, Ish accepted to be sacrified above the Leto, his blood destroying it forever. It didn't work that way though, since the blood didn't do anything and Francisco simply died. But when his skin started to secrete the "fuel", some of it fell on the Leto and, with a chemical process, put it in vacuum, making it inoffensive. Before the very eyes of the saved remnants of the Aztecs, Francisco came back to life and the Leto was trapped in an underground temple.

Needless to say that he became the god Xolotl for the Aztecs, he reigned on until the conquistadors defeated them... Then he ruled over the Inca civilization, again, until it was destroyed. It is important to say that Francisco had no memory of his previous life at all, even though, it happened that the Aztec templars found a way to sacrifice him (they did it quite often) without making him amnesiac. The secret is transmitted from father to son since then, and Plague is the actual bearer of this very knowledge.

THE AUTHOR

Ish has been the author of the Voynich Manuscript, written in old Mayan, describing the Leto and the way to destroy it forever.

THE PIRATE

Centuries later, Francisco (or Ish, or Xolotl, or whatever his name had been since then) met William Dampier, the famous pirate, responsible for hundred of marine discoveries, technical and geographical as well. Ish didn't go along very well with Alexander Selkirk, one of the crew members, until he got so fed up he threw him overboard. Silkirk made it to a desert island and later on, inspired the tale of Robinson Crusoe ; he also was the ancestor of Walter Selklerc, the one who's responsible for the no-return.

Ish felt some remorses and swore to himself that he would find Silkirk back, which lead William Dampier to hang around a lot, discovering the coasts of Australia, for example.

Ish had kept some Leto and showed it to Dampier, inspiring his strange botanic encyclopedia.

THE NAZI

Having lost records of the Silkirks since more than ten years, Ish joined the information police of the third reich and used it to locate the descendant, he suspected to be a gypsy. Asked by Himmler about the reason why he would track down gypsies, he wrote a thesis where he said that the gypsies had to be treated like jews. He even managed to convince Hitler to let him track down the gypsies and keep records of the name of the departed himself.

The departure of the Silkirk descendant to the internment camps was the reason why he raised his family in such a sense of "be always careful", which led Walter Selklerc to embrace politics, which led him to have the means to locate the Leto's heart.

After the third reich collapsed, Ish was sentenced to death. The day after his execution, he kept tracking down the last descendant and found him. Trying to make it up to him, he gave him the Voynich Manuscript and told him how to translate it. Only his grand-grand child would finish the translation process, leading him to "a treasure that would make his family richer than the richest of this world."

THE REDEEMER

The precise day when Walter Selklerc came to possess the Leto's heart, the Wendigo tracked down Ish and hurt him. Understanding that this creature compromized his immortality, Ish made the link between its apparition and the Leto's heart. He managed to get in touch with Walter Selklerc, who accidently broke the seal that kept the Leto vacuum.

Ish hoped Selklerc to make the Wendigo stop and Selklerc hoped Ish to seal the Leto again, because the mutations began to appear around his own men, which wasn't very convenient. Ish agreed but accidently let the Wendigo get into the castle Selklerc was in, causing it's destruction. The Leto, unsealed, was exposed to the sun and provoked the no-return. Ish was frozen there, only to be retrieved by Thomas Valentine and his daughter, fifty years later.

Now that the Leto covers the whole Canada and keeps growing, the kings wants Ish to do as he did seven centuries ago : find the Voynich manuscript and learn from it how to destroy the Leto.