If we’re on the miniboss grind, then I might as well continue the pattern.
I am currently replaying Dream of Five, and in fact, I am doing that largely to write a major effortpost about one of its main villains. Perhaps the main villain. Saying who that is would be a spoiler, but you can stay tuned.
In the process of replaying the game, however, a particular miniboss has endeared herself to me. She doesn’t have quite as little screentime as MORT FROM SHACKLED POWER(S), but she is a minor character all in all. Her introduction and death are not many chapters apart.
Yet, I think she makes use of that screentime well.
Kearney from Dream of Five.
Spoilers ahead.
The effortpost
Kearney is first introduced in Chapter 19 as one of the Knights of the Ivory Quill, an order of pegasus knights intended to protect Aukema. The order is meant to be serving the crown, but because at that point of the story there is no proper King and the Consort is incapable of rule, the Knights serve the Lord Protector, Farrell. The protagonist, Rena, is currently campaigning against Farrell while claiming to be the lost Princess Ethelrena, come to reclaim her rightful throne.
Kearney is introduced quite memorably – because it is done through a flashback from Sheila, the leader of the Ivory Quill, who comes to Rena grievously injured and tells her story. The flashback features a perfectly healthy Sheila talking to Kearney and other members of her Order. Sheila wants to defect to Rena, because according to the Consort, Rena might be the rightful Queen after all. Kearney doesn’t believe it, however, and in fact, starts considering Sheila a traitor for wanting to do this.
Sheila: Had an errand to attend to at the Kirk. The situation’s changed. I told the Consort of Ethelrena’s coming. She listened. Seems its not a faerie-tale at all; she never saw the child’s corpse.
Kearney: That swayed you, sir? A grieving mother will think she saw anything if it brings a glimmer of hope. If anything, it was cruel to tell her. It’ll come to nothing, in the end.
Sheila: The Order of the Ivory Quill exist to serve the Aukeman crown. We swore oaths, and I meant mine. Even a glimmer of hope should be preserved, Kearney. It’s our duty.
Soldier: But at what cost? The realm’s breaking apart under this war. The crown… the crown’s long gone, sir. We need to be realistic.
Sheila: Ah, you’re going to tell me what we ‘need’, Mhacha? Were you promoted in my absence? …No, I thought not. Now get in formation. We’re riding out, should be able to reach the Steel Roses in a couple of days.
Kearney: And then what? You’re going to just ask her nicely if she’s the pretender?
Sheila: At the very least, I should speak with her.
Kearney: So we’re to be the catspaws of a half-mad Consort…
Sheila: Show some respect. She is still the closest thing to a Queen we have.
Kearney: No… no, this farce has run on more than long enough. I didn’t want to believe the Lord Protector—
Sheila: You’ve been consorting with that bastard behind my back?!
Kearney: —but if you mean to follow that traitor, then I’ve no choice. I will not follow you. We shall not follow you. But out of respect, I’ll give you this chance to slip away.
Sheila: This… this is your idea of respect? You haven’t earned the right to threaten me, Kearney. That’ll come if you show you can spill blood.
Kearney: …So be it, then.
And Kearney does spill blood. She hits Sheila twice in the battle cutscene, actually winning their one-on-one fight, then orders her fellow pegasus knights to chase Sheila down when she tries to flee.
Sheila: Dastards! Too afraid to trust in your champion, eh? …I have to get out of here. The mission is more important than my pride…
(Sheila leaves)
Kearney: Damn it. After her! She cannot be allowed to reach the traitor’s lines!
Soldier: …
Kearney: Too late for second thoughts. Commit! Or I’ll run you through myself!
Ultimately, Kearney fails, because Sheila does make it to Rena alive. She is able to tell this story, in the end. But we already have a good first impression of Kearney. She has a very different idea of what the Ivory Quill should be doing, doesn’t believe the Consort in the slightest (thinking her mad), and thinks Sheila is a traitor.
And the funny thing is: Kearney is completely right. Rena is indeed a pretender. She is not the real Princess Ethelrena, and never has been.
There is a good argument that Sheila is indeed betraying the Order here. She wants to rally the Order against the current Aukeman authority for a false claimant’s cause.
But Sheila does make it to Rena, and eventually, Rena’s forces collide with Kearney in the very next chapter – Chapter 20.
In that chapter, we see Kearney once again, this time discussing strategy. There is a plan in motion – Kearney’s knights are meant to bait in the forces of Earl Wyclif, one of Rena’s followers, and because Wyclif is extremely easy to tempt into a losing battle, he buys the ruse hook, line, and sinker.
Kearney: That’s right, you bastard! Run for me! Let’s see if you’re fleet of foot enough to take back your lands!
(Wyclif’s squad appears in pursuit)
Wyclif: You can’t ride forever! We’ll have you against the mountains soon enough, and then, you’ll be nothing more than target practice for our archers!
Kearney: Oh, wow, you sure do have me cornered, Earl Wyclif. Whatever shall I do.
Wyclif: Now? Now, witch, you die!
Soldier: My lord! Look to the north!
Wyclif: The hell are you on about? Forward, damn you, forward! The harpy’s all but in our sights!
Kearney: No, little lord, your man has better sense than you do. Ivory Quill, wheel around! They’re in the killing fields now!
(Wyclif’s forces are surrounded and start falling)
Soldier: Urgg—!
(The soldier dies)
Wyclif: The… the killing fields?! No, this can’t be happening! No, no!
Kearney: Yes.
Wyclif: Damn it… damn it! Fall back to the town, men!
(Wyclif leaves)
Kearney: After that coward! Bring him and his cronies down!
She basically makes fun of Wyclif, and once again puts him in a losing position. During the battle, Rena has to rescue him once more, and because this isn’t the first time, she snaps at him, resulting in one of my favorite scenes in the entire game.
Wyclif: Your Eminence! I had hoped to catch the Ivory Quill traitors, but I fear they—
Rena: Lured you into an obvious trap? Because they know you’re an impetuous liability?
Wyclif: …You forget yourself, Exalted One. I would not speak so boldly. Would you have your subjects—
Rena: Ungrateful, puffed-up bastard! Shut your damn mouth and listen, for once in your life! You owe your life and any hope of reclaiming your land to me. You strut around calling yourself an earl, and I tolerate it, up until it costs good men their lives. Far better men than you, you wretch! Get your worthless hide back to camp. I’ll clean up your damn mess. Pray that all goes well. I might be in a good mood by my return to camp. I may even settle for whipping you, rather than having you flayed. But do not dare test me, Wyclif. I’ve indulged you enough.
Wyclif: I… I understand. My men are yours, but I shall withdraw… Forgive me, Your Eminence.
(Wyclif leaves)
Rena: We shall see.
I have to credit Kearney with allowing this to happen. And so far, she has proven herself to be quite awesome in general. She is competent, she is reasonably strong (matching Sheila one on one, if not outright winning), she is confident and decisive. And she makes fun of Wyclif. Anyone who recognizes him as an oaf is automatically based.
Unfortunately, she is one of the four bosses of Chapter 20, and the objective requires you to kill all enemy leaders, so she has to die here. But before she does, she yields an array of informative battle quotes.
Her default battle quote:
Kearney: Sorry, friend. I’m moving up in the world, and you… well, you’re just in my way.
She channels pure, raw Caellach energy, and honestly? Go off, queen. In one line of dialogue, her ambition is on full display, and one could say that her overconfidence is also apparent. But it’s hard to fault her when she has only seen success as of late.
Her battle quote with Rena:
Kearney: The prize catch shows her face? You’re bolder than I thought you’d be. A fool, but bold all the same.
Rena: I don’t have the luxury of hiding away in Cweneth, sipping wine as my lackeys die in droves, in my name. A worthy leader is willing to do what she asks of her men.
Kearney: Hah, you’re no more a queen than I! I wasn’t about to back a losing horse, nor drag down my sisters with me. Come on! Let’s have the measure of you!
Kearney respects Rena’s audacity, because she herself is also audacious. It doesn’t show in just dialogue, but she smiles at Rena’s remark that Rena must put herself in the fray. She also makes it clear that her decision to side with Farrell was, at least partly, opportunistic – she didn’t want to drag her order into the losing side of the war. As such, Kearney also likely believed that following Sheila would doom the Order in a pragmatic sense. She reinforces the fact she accepted the new world order with Farrell at the helm as it was, and wasn’t going to follow a likely-false pretender.
But her other quotes explore different facets of her character.
Quote with Eilene:
Kearney: Eilene? You mean a soft thing like you still lives? Yscatra really must be watching over you…
Eilene: Sir Kearney… I can’t believe you’d turn your back on Sir Sheila. Why could you not trust in her, follow her lead? Why do you make me do this…?
Kearney: What, you think to strike me down? Maybe you had potential, but you never had the guts to realize it. Even with Sheila indulging you at every turn, you still washed out of the Ivory Quill. You aren’t fit to match steel with me, Eilene, but I’ll do you the honor, and run you through all the same!
I love this exchange because of the gameplay-story integration. Eilene is one of the ‘softest’ characters in the game when it comes to personality, and in gameplay, her Strength and Defense are her weak points. Kearney calling her weak and cowardly makes sense; in many ways, Eilene is the antithesis of Kearney. Kearney is ambitious, decisive, quite strong, and unafraid to act, while Eilene is… well, she doesn’t even have half the boldness. In a funny way, players who dislike Eilene’s weaknesses can feel vindicated by this battle quote. Bonus points if Eilene actually dies in the exchange.
There’s also some extra lore here – Sheila allegedly favored Eilene quite a bit, which perhaps sparked some envy in Kearney and pushed her to prove herself. You might think I’m reaching, but the next quote is with Sheila, who joins on this map.
Kearney: Sir Sheila… I regret that it came to this.
Sheila: You’re about to die, so regret is only natural. But you chose this path. Face the end, with eyes open and head held high. That’s how I taught you to conduct yourself, if you still remember.
Kearney: You think I fear you? After I sent you fleeing for your life to the queen’s side?
Sheila: You had a full force of your duped sisters, then. Where are they now, Kearney? You led them to their deaths, and now you’re going to follow them into the hells.
Kearney: They… they were weak. I am different… You’ll see that! I’ll make you see!
Kearney does have respect for Sheila, and sees her as a broken pedestal now. But Sheila rightfully points out to her that if they are meeting here, that means Kearney’s squad has been decimated and she is losing. Her decision not to defect – arguably the correct decision from an oath standpoint – is dooming her.
Kearney then shows something she doesn’t show in any of her other interactions. Fear and vulnerability.
She copes with the deaths of her squadron because they were ‘weak’ and she’s ‘stronger.’ If anything, this reads like her trying to convince herself. But the next part is telling.
‘You’ll see that! I’ll make you see!’
In the end, despite them standing on opposite sides, Kearney still wants Sheila to respect her, perhaps to approve of her. An amusing contradiction, that. On the one hand, Kearney is trying to kill her former commander, but on the other hand, she still wants to prove herself to that commander.
This is why I said earlier that perhaps she felt jealous of Eilene as well. Because Eilene was favored by Sheila, and Kearney was not. Eilene, the ‘soft thing,’ who even left the Order, is with Sheila now, while Kearney stands against them both – fighting for what she thinks is the true cause (and there is merit to that idea, which just makes everything worse). Kearney thinks she is the true knight here, that she is not the traitor – yet in the end, for all her ambition and confidence, perhaps it was always about proving something, in the end. Not just in general, but also to Sheila in particular. Who can kill her here if you make that happen.
Regardless of who kills her, Kearney has this death quote.
Kearney: Don’t… name me traitor. I was true to our spirit… true to the very end…!
She’s right. If you have been paying attention to the story, you know she’s correct. Rena is indeed a false claimant, as I said before. Now, Rena is certainly the better choice for Aukema than the current Lord Protector, but based on the Ivory Quill’s principles, they really shouldn’t be siding with pretenders. Based on their principles.
I love Sheila to bits. She is one of my favorite Dream of Five characters. Her entire character and the context of her joining Rena always make me feel a bit melancholic, because they’re inherently bittersweet. Her ending card has the same bittersweet undertone, considering the circumstances.
Kearney? Kearney, who almost killed Sheila and who is just a tiny miniboss?
I love her too, because the situation is set up so well. There is something so inherently interesting about someone who follows the ‘letter of the law’ in this case having parallels with Caellach of all people, and Kearney makes the odd combination work, because ‘the letter’ and pure pragmatic ambition happen to align here. She doesn’t trust the ‘half-mad Consort’ and thinks Rena being the princess is wishful thinking, which is the narrative that’s already being pushed by Farrell and which promises some reward if it’s followed. Yet, at the same time, it is also the correct narrative, because Rena is not the princess – in a sense, Kearney is indeed following ‘the letter’ of the Order through her actions. Besides, she’s ambitious enough to see Sheila’s ‘betrayal’ as an opportunity to move up in the world, but she does genuinely care about not being perceived as a traitor, and she gives Sheila the chance to fly away unimpeded at first, showing that, unlike Caellach, she does have some principles, even if they can be described as mere courtesies. And there’s an argument to be made that everything she has done was for some kind of approval, given her battle quotes with Eilene and especially Sheila. That’s a significant amount of characterization for… just a few scenes, really, and for a boss who’s just a footnote in the grand scheme of things.
You can write Kearney off as one of the many opportunists who swear allegiance to Farrell for convenience, since even her description mentions her ‘thinking she knew which way the wind blew,’ in the words of Rena. She and her wing-sisters readily accept the idea that Ceolwulf’s line is extinct, Farrell is the new authority, and the Consort is just mad to think Ethelrena is truly alive – which is the easy choice (although it’s technically correct), and one that she ultimately gets punished for making. She even admits to Rena in their battle quote that she didn’t want to drag her squadron into the ‘losing side of the war.’ But the circumstances of Sheila’s departure from Kearney’s squadron, and some of Kearney’s other battle quotes imply it can’t be just opportunism that motivates her. Kearney does offer Sheila a chance to leave instead of killing her right away to curry favor with Farrell, for one, and her death quote just has her asking not to be called a traitor because she was true to the Order’s spirit. If you subscribe to the idea that people have nothing to hide on their deathbed… well, it’s not her lost ambition or strength that Kearney mourns, but the fact she’s being struck down for following the ‘right path.’
Besides, Kearney is cocky and confident, outright making fun of Wyclif, so she could be perceived as a firebrand who’s too obsessed with seeming powerful for her own good… but if you read her battle quote with Sheila in particular, and also check the one with Eilene, you might see that pursuit of power as something motivated by insecurity – and envy. And not necessarily in the kind of way that’s easy to make fun of. Especially since she really is competent, unlike somebody like Narcian.
Kearney wants to be strong and she has ambition, and she does make opportunistic choices. Yet, in spite of all that, she does still want to be seen as someone representing the true spirit of the Ivory Quill. She just had a different interpretation of what the Ivory Quill’s spirit was supposed to be – and crucially, she allowed ‘pragmatism’ to overshadow doing the right thing. And in that way, Kearney’s entire character slides neatly into the themes of Dream of Five as a whole. A fake can surpass the real thing, as Rena consistently proves throughout the story, and doing what is right is more important than doing what oaths and previous allegiances dictate. Sheila does what is right – she joins the more capable leader, one who eventually becomes Aukema’s greatest queen, and is rewarded for it. Kearney is rewarded for her ‘pragmatism’ and overeager acceptance of Farrell’s order by dying alongside the rest of the… Order. And despite her final plea, she is remembered as a traitor, as Sheila’s ending card suggests.
Really, what more could you desire from a one-chapter miniboss?