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Klimmel is a Trooper in the Pal army who appears briefly in ''House of Open Wounds'', left stranded after a catastrophic battlefield rout and then fatally entangled in the terms of Maric Jack's conditional healing. He is one of three Pal soldiers recovered by Banders's party from the churned killing-ground; during a night skirmish with Loruthi soldiers he stabs an enemy to death and is himself gutted by baton-shot. Jack coerces God into healing Klimmel and his fellow Trooper Lidlet, binding both with an oath never to raise a hand against another person. Klimmel resents the mercy, and later dies in camp when he raises a hand during a brawl with a fellow Trooper and the healing reverses, killing him instantly with no baton fired.

His significance to the novel lies almost entirely in the consequences of his death. Klimmel becomes the subject of a military tribunal in which his superior Goughry charges Jack with "cursing" him, and the Sage-Monitor Runkel's ruling-that the army cannot tolerate soldiers fearing to fight-sets the institutional terms under which Jack's supernatural gift is tolerated but kept quiet. In subsequent chapters, Lidlet invokes Klimmel's name as evidence that soldiers need codified rules rather than a personal, mystical relationship with God, naming him as someone who "just died somewhere you weren't." Klimmel thus functions as the novel's sharpest illustration of the lethal stakes embedded in Jack's conditional healing and of the army's refusal to accept divine intervention on its own terms.

== Character ==
=== Personality ===
Klimmel is a soldier who fights fiercely and submits poorly to mercy. In the night skirmish he stabs a Loruthi to death with a knife before being gutted himself - ch 15. When Jack heals him, he resents the rescue; Masty has to hand him a rolled flatbread to defuse the tension, and Lidlet must silence him and order the group to keep moving - ch 15. He does not linger in gratitude or reflection; he is back to camp and raising a hand in a brawl within a chapter, indicating a temperament more at home in physical conflict than in the passivity his survival requires - ch 18.

=== Beliefs & Motivations ===
Beyond his identity as a Trooper who fights, the text records only that Klimmel resents being healed by supernatural means and that the conditional oath sat uneasily with him - ch 15. His eventual raising of a hand in a camp brawl suggests that the prohibition felt to him as a constraint incompatible with his soldier's reflexes - ch 18. No further motive, loyalty, or inner life is attributed to him.

== History ==
=== House of Open Wounds ===
==== Between the Lines (ch 14-15) ====
Klimmel is a regular Trooper in the Pal army who is left behind in the rout following the monster's assault on the battlefield. After the fighting, [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Banders|Banders]] scouts the churned ground and returns with three Pal troopers stranded alongside her group: [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Lidlet|Lidlet]], [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Paucelry|Paucelry]], and Klimmel. She appoints herself de facto leader of the combined party, and the six plan to wait for dark and walk back to the Palleseen lines - ch 15.

During the night crawl across the devastated ground, the group stumbles into four Loruthi soldiers. Both sides draw batons simultaneously, and in the confused firefight Paucelry is killed, [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Masty|Masty]] is shot, and Klimmel stabs a Loruthi to death with a knife before being gutted by baton-shot. [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Lidlet|Lidlet]] is also shot through the breast - ch 15.

[[The Tyrant Philosophers/Yasnic|Maric Jack]] begs [[The Tyrant Philosophers/God|God]] to heal the dying Klimmel and Lidlet. God refuses, declaring "These are lives!" and then "Pal lives!" - ch 15. Jack threatens to convert to the nature deity's faith and deny God entirely; God capitulates. Jack forces Klimmel and Lidlet to swear never to harm anyone again; both swear, and their wounds close - ch 15. Klimmel resents the mercy. [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Masty|Masty]] gives him a rolled flatbread - an ammie, a standard army ration - to defuse the tension, and Lidlet silences his resentment and orders the group to keep moving - ch 15. Lidlet hisses the terms of their survival: "God-stuff," Lidlet hissed, "means this never happened if you don't want to end up on a Decanter's table and your heart in a jar." - ch 15. [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Masty|Masty]] returns with three horses taken from the dead, and the group rides two-to-a-horse toward the Pal lines - ch 15.

The question of what happens when Klimmel and Lidlet inevitably break the no-harm oath is raised but not resolved in this scene; Jack states plainly that they will die and he will mourn them - ch 15.

==== The Gallete Island (ch 16-19) ====
Klimmel is dead by the time the army camps on the flying Gallete island. During a brawl with a fellow Trooper, [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Havery|Havery]], Klimmel raised a hand, and the conditional healing reversed: he dropped dead of a gutshot wound with no baton fired - ch 18. His death occurs in the camp, and God felt him go - ch 19.

His death is the subject of a tribunal convened at the donated house serving as administrative headquarters. [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Goughry|Goughry]], Klimmel's superior, is complainant and charges that Jack "cursed" Klimmel - ch 18. [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Lidlet|Lidlet]] testifies in a flat, rehearsed manner: left behind by the retreat, ambushed by Loruthi cavalry, wounded, then healed by Jack who warned them not to raise a hand against anyone - ch 18. [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Prassel|Prassel]], serving as advocate, argues there is no murder case: Klimmel was "judge, accused and executioner in one" - ch 18. [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Runkel|Sage-Monitor Runkel]], present as an unofficial observer, pronounces that the army cannot have soldiers fearing to fight and that the hospital department must not cause that fear; Jack receives twelve lashes and the matter is to be kept quiet - ch 18.

==== Leave in Magnelei (ch 22-26) ====
Klimmel is referenced only in passing. During camp leave outside [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Magnelei|Magnelei]], [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Lidlet|Lidlet]] confronts [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Yasnic|Maric Jack]] about the lethal constraints of her conditional healing and references getting drunk and fighting with Klimmel previously - ch 22.

==== The Draining of the Gods (ch 40-42) ====
Klimmel surfaces again as a name in [[The Tyrant Philosophers/Lidlet|Lidlet]]'s argument against Jack's personal, mystical relationship with God. During the prisoner exchange at Magnelei, Lidlet shows Jack [[The Tyrant Philosophers/the Loopholes|the Ninety-Seven Loopholes of God]] and the conversion Pledge, arguing that soldiers need codified rules to stave off death; she names Klimmel as someone who just died somewhere you weren't - ch 40.

== Relationships ==
* '''[[The Tyrant Philosophers/Lidlet|Lidlet]]''' - Fellow Pal Trooper, stranded alongside Klimmel after the rout. They are wounded together in the Loruthi ambush and healed together by Jack's coerced miracle. Lidlet, taking command of the combined party, silences Klimmel's resentment and enforces silence about the divine intervention; she later invokes his death as a concrete argument against Jack's personal mystical relationship with God - ch 15, ch 40.
* '''[[The Tyrant Philosophers/Yasnic|Maric Jack]]''' - Jack begged God to heal Klimmel, threatened to convert to another faith, and forced the healing on terms Klimmel swore to. The healing is conditional and lethal: when Klimmel raises a hand in a brawl, Jack's gift reverses and kills him. Jack himself states beforehand that if they break the oath they will die and he will mourn them - ch 15, ch 18.
* '''[[The Tyrant Philosophers/Goughry|Goughry]]''' - Klimmel's superior officer, who brings the tribunal charge that Jack "cursed" Klimmel after his death, demanding Jack be made an example - ch 18.

== Tags ==
#soldier · #trooper · #palleseen

[[Category:The Tyrant Philosophers/Characters]]

The Tyrant Philosophers/Klimmel - Revision history

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