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Kol'Tek was an Immortal and champion in The Game. He was a known medicine man, shaman, and among the best of the Immortals. Sadly, Kol'Tek met a tragic end when he fell under the influence of a Dark Quickening and turned on his longtime friend, Duncan MacLeod.
History[]
Born in Cahokia, the largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico, the city was at its peak from AD 1050-1200. Kol'Tek was blessed with the power of the hyoka - the ability to take the evil and anger of others into himself and render it impotent.
He died and became Immortal in 1190 while performing a ritual which went wrong. He soon met an Immortal who told him what he was and how to survive. Kol'tek performed this function for the protection of his tribe for centuries - until the arrival of the white man. Kol'Tek was forced to watch as his people slowly diminished and expired from famine, disease and persecution.
Undaunted, the former shaman began wandering the whole of North America, exercising his power and taking evil into himself wherever, and in whomever, he found it. He also applied his mystic ability to The Game, seeking out evil Immortals and absorbing the darkness within them, or if that failed, taking their heads and the evil that came with it.
In 1864, Kol'Tek returned to the village he was living in with a hunting party, where he discovered the tribe being slaughtered by Confederate soldiers. The hunting party fought back and Kol'Tek took up the sword of a fallen soldier. The curved blade of the cavalry saber cut a bloody swath through the attackers on that day. Kol'Tek then carried the sword for the remainder of his life.
Meeting the Highlander[]
Kol'Tek, in a U.S. Army jail in 1872
Kol'Tek's mission to absorb evil and suppress it was what led to his first encounter with Duncan MacLeod. Arrested and accused of causing the death of a U.S. cavalryman in 1872, Kol'Tek found himself imprisoned in a military outpost near the Sioux Territory, awaiting execution. Duncan, fresh from the loss of his Sioux wife Little Deer and on a blood hunt for his hated enemy Kern, stormed the outpost in his search and was quickly overpowered.
Kol'Tek helps MacLeod
As the furious Highlander raged from within the prison cell, Kol'Tek gently approached him, explaining who he was and offered to ease Duncan's hate and pain. "A soul can only hold so much hate, so much anger," the hayoka warned. "One more drop and hate will own you." Duncan resisted at first, but Kol'Tek's patient reassurances persuaded the Highlander to accept. The two would become fast friends from that day forth.
Infection Begins[]
Kol'Tek the hayoka
Kol'Tek, having survived his imprisonment, continued his self-appointed practice, expanding out into the rest of the world. However, he began to experience difficulty in his abilities: the evil became harder and harder for him to suppress. Coltec began to suspect that he was reaching a point of no return - that he was amassing a level of darkness beyond his ability to contain.
In 1958, Duncan encountered Kol'Tek again in Greenwich Village. Kol'Tek, now James Coltec, intercepted the Highlander's hunt for Immortal Bryce Korland, taking the latter's head to the annoyance of MacLeod.
The Dark Quickening[]
Coltec in 1996
The inevitable finally occurred in 1996. Coltec, on his way to meet his friend in Seacouver, ran afoul of the evil Immortal Harry Kant as the latter was robbing a local clerk. Coltec challenged Kant and defeated him. This proved to be undoing, as killing Kant triggered a Dark Quickening, that quickly consumed the holy man. Taking the dead Immortal's leather jacket and Desert Eagle, Coltec calmly walked up to the clerk he had just rescued, and shot him in cold blood. He then hurried to his rendezvous with Duncan and Richie Ryan, but when the two walked up to greet him, he attacked without warning or challenge, assaulting MacLeod with a furious rain of blows. The Highlander ultimately sent Coltec over the bridge and into the water below.
Coltec under the influence of a Dark Quickening
Immediately suspecting what had happened, Duncan began searching for his old friend, eventually cornering him in an alley. The Highlander attempted to reverse the effect of the Dark Quickening using the hyoka teachings he learned from his friend, however, his skills were no match for the fallen shaman. Left with the terrible dilemma of what do with his friend, Duncan realized there was no choice. Issuing his challenge, the Highlander fought Coltec and took his head. In so doing, Duncan absorbed the Dark Quickening.
In the Game[]
- Bryce Korland, 1958
- Horvan Kant, 1996
Personality[]
Coltec was revered by his friends and those who knew him. Joe Dawson would note that Coltec was "as close as an Immortal gets to being a saint," Coltec was almost always quiet and reserved, hardly ever showing anger, even when insulted and threatened. He even had a fondness for golf, watching the sport on TV with his "feet up".
Once the Dark Quickening took hold, his persona reversed itself. The dark Coltec was hateful, cynical, filled with contempt - and he reveled in it. Additionally, his mannerisms began to mirror those of the immortals he had killed, most notably Bryce Korland and Harry Kant.
Fighting Style[]
Coltec's choice of weapon was a Confederate Cavalry saber that he acquired the sword from a deceased Southern cavalry officer and he was very skilled with it.
According to Rudy Bryant, steel was unknown to the Native people of Pre-Columbian America. They would have been forced to take heads with blades of sharpened stone (though there are legends of the Native Immortals living in peace before the European incursion). Before long, the Native Immortals found they had to acquire the steel and the skills, or face extinction.
Trivia[]
- Coltec was the first aboriginal Immortal of any culture to be introduced in the franchise.
- Watcher records indicate that Sarah Panzer was investigating the Coltec Chronicle and found a discrepancy in his cultural affiliation. She had reason to believe that he was from a water-based culture, to be more specific, of Mississippian descent. She was later given permission to investigate further and corrected his profile.