Rekindle Application
OOC Information
Player Name: Neko Sandy
Player Age: 33
Player Contact:
Player/Character HMD: Character HMD.
Other characters in game: N/A
IC Information
Character Name: Diarmuid Ua Duibhne (Lancer)
Character Canon: OU Fate/Zero (With help from Irish Myth to fill in the details of his childhood/life not shown directly in the anime.)
Character Age/Gender: Approximately 6 years old/Male (Character will become older through canon updates.)
Character Canon History: Irish Myth specific information for Diarmuid's childhood, Diarmuid's Wiki page for a summary of the full legend information, Diarmuid's Fate/Zero Wiki page for anime information. Please note that in any place there is a contradiction between the myth and the anime, anime canon will be followed.
Diarmuid was born to Crochnuit, a blood relative of Fionn mac Cumhaill--the lord he would one day serve--and Donn, one of said lord's knights. While this may sound like the start of a fairy tale, it is unfortunately anything but that for Donn was a knight in name only and at the time Diarmuid was born, had actually be banished from the Fianna for acts unbecoming a knight. As a result of this, Crochnuit took Diarmuid to the house of Aengus Og, one of the Tuatha De Danann and god of love, youth, and poetry. It did not take long for Aengus to grow to love the boy as if he were his own son, and he was devoted to not only protecting the boy (indeed it is said that Aengus watched Diarmuid every day of his life except for the day that he died), but also to seeing him trained to become the knight his father had not been.
Not so long after they settled into their new home, Diarmuid's mother gave birth to another child, a boy who was the son of Roc, one of Aengus' stewards. Since Aengus was fostering Donn's child, Donn was asked to foster Roc's son in exchange. Donn refused to raise the son of a 'common' man, so the boy and Diarmuid were raised and trained together though they never knew they were actually brothers.
Diarmuid's canon point places him roughly around age six. He has just been told that he will one day serve Fionn mac Cumhaill as a knight and begun his training. So far, Diarmuid's life has been pretty idyllic as one might expect since he has been raised in the house of a respected god and has been loved and watched over by said god. Shortly that will change when his birth father visits unexpectedly, but for now Diarmuid is a very happy, naive child who looks for the best in everyone and everything around him. In fact, because of how pure and innocent he is, the people who meet him often feel the urge to pick him up and cuddle him. He quite enjoys this because he loves other people so much and often makes a game out of seeing how long he can get people to carry him around for.
I would like to put in an extra note about Diarmuid's parentage here because I will mention that he is basically a normal human child later in his abilities section. Please note that while both Diarmuid's Type-moon wiki article and his regular wiki article link the Donn who is Diarmuid's father to the Donn that is a lord of the dead in Irish Myth, this is an incorrect linkage because of a shared name. Since the human Donn was really only known for being a failed knight and Diarmuid's father, he is often completely erased from Diarmuid's lineage. Only rarely will Diarmuid ever be referred to as the son of Donn. Instead, he is almost always referred to as 'Ua Duibhne,' the grandson of Duibhne, as Duibhne was also an important figure in Irish Myth and much more respected than his son. That erasure means that when people go looking for him, it is much easier to find the Donn who was a lord of the dead from an earlier time in history than it is to find the Donn who is Diarmuid's actual father.
Character Personality: Diarmuid was raised from the age of nine months in the home of the god Aengus Og who ruled over love, youth, and poetry. This means that as a child, Diarmuid would not have been exposed to many of the hardships other children of that era had to face. He would not have had to worry about having food or shelter and would have had the chance to learn more about the world from scholars and the gods who oversaw it. In addition to this, unlike a lot of gods who had children and ignored them, even though Diarmuid was not his child by blood Aengus did everything in his power to protect and to see that Diarmuid grew up to be the great man his birth father was not. Consequently, it's a combination both of the environment that Diarmuid grew up in and Aengus' devotion that will shape the boy's personality as a child and later as an adult.
As a young boy, Diarmuid's most important character traits are his innocence/naivety, his ability to hope/never give up, his curiosity/wonder, and his wish to be a good knight. While these traits will grow and alter somewhat as he grows, they are still easily noticeable in him as a servant.
Innocence/Naivety:
As strange as it may seem to say that a man known as a hero is innocent or naive, as an adult Diarmuid does have these qualities. Because of how strongly he believes in honor and loyalty, he often has trouble seeing the world the way that it really is as is shown by how he is blindsided by Kayneth's betrayal though there were signs all along that his master did not trust him. Even with the updated knowledge the grail gives him, Diarmuid seems to--unconsciously or consciously--reject some facts in order to force reality to remain in some form that is familiar to him. This selective acknowledgment of facts is because of how he was raised as a child. Due to Aengus' over-protectiveness for Diarmuid, the harshness of the real world was kept from him for as long as it could be. This sheltering could not last forever--a fact Aengus would have been well aware of because the boy was promised into Fionn mac Cumhaill's service at an early age--but something that would have been allowed because of the very things that Aengus was said to ruled over as a god, love and youth. He loved Diarmuid as his own son and would have wanted him to have as happy a youth as possible even if that meant hiding reality from him for a while. This would have been easy to do because Aengus' home was away from the 'real world,' and even though most Irish gods were known get into fights despite what they ruled over, as the foster son of a god who ruled over things such as love and poetry, it would have been less likely for things like death and war to be presented to young Diarmuid and even then only introduced through the lens of a knight's duties, something that would have a positive slant to it. All of these things come together to result in a boy who while curious, as mentioned below, is also very sheltered and used to having a certain sense of safety. He is intelligent, but at the same time used to understanding things in one way even though that one way may not be the way things actually are.
Hope/Never Giving Up:
While it might seem like sheltering Diarmuid from the harshness of the world did him few favors, there is one thing that it did allow the boy to do that many others were unable to. It allowed him to keep hope that things will work out with enough effort and enough tries. This trait is shown in Diarmuid as a servant when he finds a way to keep believing things will work out with his master and the war even though he is starting to see his first life repeat itself. Also, despite knowing that the war will be extra hard now that his master has been hurt so badly, Diarmuid refuses to give up and looks toward a way to make things work. This quest to find hope and success would have been something that he would have seen all the time. As a god of things like love and poetry, Aengus often told Diarmuid stories, poems, and songs about the heroes of old. In fact, hearing those tales was one of Diarmuid's favorite pastimes especially when it came to stories about his hero, Cu Chulainn. While a great many Irish stories of old have their share of tragedy, they also were filled with hope and proof that those who never give up trying despite great odds will be rewarded in the end.
The very world in which Diarmuid would have been living at the time would have also encouraged hope in him because it was a time when spirits and gods still roamed the land and mixed with its people. As the foster son of a god, Diarmuid would have gotten to see the magic and the spirits that made Ancient Ireland such a wondrous place almost on a daily basis. For example, Aengus' wife, Caer--who helped raise Diarmuid and who he loved as much as his birth mother--was fated to turn into a swan and spend a whole year like that every other year. Still, at the end of that time period, she always returned to her human form and to her family. While something like this would be frightening to a child the first time it happened, once Diarmuid saw that things would eventually return to normal, it would become a very powerful repeating example how things always turn out for the best in the end. How Aengus won Caer's hand in the first place would be another good example because the god searched Ireland for her for a year before finally finding her and that was not the only trial he had to overcome. He also had to pick her out from a lake while she was in her swan form. The lake, though, was filled with many other swans that looked just like she did. Aengus did not let this stop him and because he would not give up, he was able to win the hand of the woman he loved.
Curiosity/Wonder:
In addition to inspiring hope in Diarmuid, the environment he grew up in would have also inspired wonder and curiosity. While Diarmuid doesn't have a lot of chance to show his curiosity as a servant, he does have moments where it is visible. One example comes in how he wants to learn more about the servants he is fighting not just as opponents, but also as people. This is especially apparent when he faces Saber because he admires her a great deal both for her legend but also for how she lives up to it in the war. In fact, Diarmuid's interest in Saber and how it distracts him from focusing on the war itself is one of the things that Kayneth holds against his servant claiming that his curiosity about her and his focus on their duel threatens the very thing they are fighting for.
As a child, this curiosity was much stronger since children are naturally curious, but also because he had been so sheltered. He knew there were many great and wondrous things out there through the stories he had been told, but just hearing about them in stories was not enough. He also wanted to learn through experience. Learning would have been a serious task to Diarmuid because he knew that he couldn't be a good knight if he didn't understand how the world worked. However, since he was so young, he often found himself over-focusing on small things or getting distracted by something new before he finished learning about the thing he was studying before.
Wish to be a good knight:
As a servant, Diarmuid's whole focus is on being a knight. Not only being a knight, but being a good knight. His wish, after all, is not some great thing that he really needs the Grail for. He merely wishes to have the chance to faithfully serve a lord to the end, since he was not able to do that during his life. Obviously, to shape Diarmuid's life as much as it has, being a knight is something that must have been introduced to him early on. Since he was promised into Fionn mac Cumhaill's service at a very young age, his training would have started while he was still young so he could be brought up with the ideals and role of a knight as a prominent part of his life. Since knights were so important not only to daily life but also in the stories that Diarmuid loved so much, he would have taken learning how to become a good knight very seriously knowing it was an honor to have been chosen to be one. In addition to that, being a knight would be the first step toward becoming like the hero he so looked up to. Finally, another thing that would have made Diarmuid so interested in being a good knight was that it would give him the chance to protect and help others just like Aengus had done for him.
Fears:
Because he was so sheltered growing up, Diarmuid doesn't have many fears that he will consciously recognize as such. However, that doesn't mean he doesn't have them. For example, he worries about how the moods of the people in the household change whenever his birth father visits and why his friend (and half brother) has to leave. However, he doesn't understand the reason why he worries is because he is afraid of what might happen if people start fighting. Since he is so used to the house being filled with hope and other happy emotions, the negative feelings that come with his birth father's rare visits are something he doesn't know how to deal with and isn't sure he wants to learn to deal with.
In addition to that, since Aengus has always been there for him and really is the only father he has ever known, Diarmuid secretly fears what would happen if the god suddenly vanished, though, Aengus disappearing is not something the boy consciously acknowledges because the god has always been there to keep him safe.
AU Information: N/A Character is an OU version. (Please note that I plan on canon updating Diarmuid several times over the course of the game through his life as a hero and eventually to his life as a servant in Fate/Zero. Once he becomes an adult, the journal used for his posts will become![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oathshackledbird . This information along with the changes to his personalty, physical form, and abilities will be fully detailed at each canon update. Since I will eventually be playing Diarmuid in the game as an adult/servant, here is a link to the application I submitted for him when I joined the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
towerofanimus so you can have some idea of how I will play him. Some things will change do to setting and canon point, of course, but his base personality traits will not.)
Character Abilities: As a child, Diarmuid has no special powers or abilities, since most of his special abilities are gained later in life through training or magical weapons he has not been gifted yet. (For example, while he has the mole beneath his eye that will later be enchanted to carry his love curse, for now it is merely a mole.) At his canon point, he is basically a normal human child who has just started training with a sword and is looking forward to learning how to use a spear. While he is showing the first hints of how skilled he will become with weapons, he really can't defend himself. In fact, he is actually currently smaller and more fragile seeming than most children his age. And while he might also be slightly faster or more agile than children his age, he has had no special training with those skills as of yet.
Mentally, Diarmuid is like most children his age except that he sometimes will have moments where his words and thoughts will seem like they come from a much older person. These times are brief and often he won't quite understand what he has said if asked to explain further because a lot of the time he is just parroting things he has heard Aengus or someone else in the household say. Despite this fact, though, what he says is relevant to whatever is being discussed almost as if he has some kind of understanding of what things mean after all. (This is a very early and undeveloped version of the instinct and judgment skills that will serve him so well as a knight and will eventually evolve into his Eye of the Mind (True) trait as a servant.)
Character Inventory: When Diarmuid arrives he will be wearing an outfit like the one he is wearing here--a simple white tunic, green belt, green pants, brown shoes and green and white arm wraps. He will also have a simple hooded green cloak.
In addition to his clothes, he will have a small blue and green magical butterfly that Aengus created for him as a pet and guardian. The butterfly does not need to be fed and because it is a magical creature, it will heal or recreate itself if it is damaged or killed. However, it has no real special abilities outside of that and the fact that it will listen to simple commands from Diarmuid. (For example, he can ask it to go fly around someone's head to get their attention, but it can't relay any information to them.) Most of the time, the butterfly is content to circle around Diarmuid's head or sit on his shoulder.
Diarmuid will also have a blanket made for him by his foster mother, Caer, that has swans embroidered along the top. Finally, he will have his practice sword with him. The sword has no sharp edges and is for training only.
Samples:
Third Person Sample
Thread Interaction Sample 1
Thread interaction Sample 2
Edit: Diarmuid canon updated for the first time on 9-6-2013. His updated information can be found here.
Player Name: Neko Sandy
Player Age: 33
Player Contact:
- AIM: oathshackledbird
- DW Journal PM: smallspot oroathshackledbird
- Plurk:
NekoSandy
Player/Character HMD: Character HMD.
Other characters in game: N/A
IC Information
Character Name: Diarmuid Ua Duibhne (Lancer)
Character Canon: OU Fate/Zero (With help from Irish Myth to fill in the details of his childhood/life not shown directly in the anime.)
Character Age/Gender: Approximately 6 years old/Male (Character will become older through canon updates.)
Character Canon History: Irish Myth specific information for Diarmuid's childhood, Diarmuid's Wiki page for a summary of the full legend information, Diarmuid's Fate/Zero Wiki page for anime information. Please note that in any place there is a contradiction between the myth and the anime, anime canon will be followed.
Diarmuid was born to Crochnuit, a blood relative of Fionn mac Cumhaill--the lord he would one day serve--and Donn, one of said lord's knights. While this may sound like the start of a fairy tale, it is unfortunately anything but that for Donn was a knight in name only and at the time Diarmuid was born, had actually be banished from the Fianna for acts unbecoming a knight. As a result of this, Crochnuit took Diarmuid to the house of Aengus Og, one of the Tuatha De Danann and god of love, youth, and poetry. It did not take long for Aengus to grow to love the boy as if he were his own son, and he was devoted to not only protecting the boy (indeed it is said that Aengus watched Diarmuid every day of his life except for the day that he died), but also to seeing him trained to become the knight his father had not been.
Not so long after they settled into their new home, Diarmuid's mother gave birth to another child, a boy who was the son of Roc, one of Aengus' stewards. Since Aengus was fostering Donn's child, Donn was asked to foster Roc's son in exchange. Donn refused to raise the son of a 'common' man, so the boy and Diarmuid were raised and trained together though they never knew they were actually brothers.
Diarmuid's canon point places him roughly around age six. He has just been told that he will one day serve Fionn mac Cumhaill as a knight and begun his training. So far, Diarmuid's life has been pretty idyllic as one might expect since he has been raised in the house of a respected god and has been loved and watched over by said god. Shortly that will change when his birth father visits unexpectedly, but for now Diarmuid is a very happy, naive child who looks for the best in everyone and everything around him. In fact, because of how pure and innocent he is, the people who meet him often feel the urge to pick him up and cuddle him. He quite enjoys this because he loves other people so much and often makes a game out of seeing how long he can get people to carry him around for.
I would like to put in an extra note about Diarmuid's parentage here because I will mention that he is basically a normal human child later in his abilities section. Please note that while both Diarmuid's Type-moon wiki article and his regular wiki article link the Donn who is Diarmuid's father to the Donn that is a lord of the dead in Irish Myth, this is an incorrect linkage because of a shared name. Since the human Donn was really only known for being a failed knight and Diarmuid's father, he is often completely erased from Diarmuid's lineage. Only rarely will Diarmuid ever be referred to as the son of Donn. Instead, he is almost always referred to as 'Ua Duibhne,' the grandson of Duibhne, as Duibhne was also an important figure in Irish Myth and much more respected than his son. That erasure means that when people go looking for him, it is much easier to find the Donn who was a lord of the dead from an earlier time in history than it is to find the Donn who is Diarmuid's actual father.
Character Personality: Diarmuid was raised from the age of nine months in the home of the god Aengus Og who ruled over love, youth, and poetry. This means that as a child, Diarmuid would not have been exposed to many of the hardships other children of that era had to face. He would not have had to worry about having food or shelter and would have had the chance to learn more about the world from scholars and the gods who oversaw it. In addition to this, unlike a lot of gods who had children and ignored them, even though Diarmuid was not his child by blood Aengus did everything in his power to protect and to see that Diarmuid grew up to be the great man his birth father was not. Consequently, it's a combination both of the environment that Diarmuid grew up in and Aengus' devotion that will shape the boy's personality as a child and later as an adult.
As a young boy, Diarmuid's most important character traits are his innocence/naivety, his ability to hope/never give up, his curiosity/wonder, and his wish to be a good knight. While these traits will grow and alter somewhat as he grows, they are still easily noticeable in him as a servant.
Innocence/Naivety:
As strange as it may seem to say that a man known as a hero is innocent or naive, as an adult Diarmuid does have these qualities. Because of how strongly he believes in honor and loyalty, he often has trouble seeing the world the way that it really is as is shown by how he is blindsided by Kayneth's betrayal though there were signs all along that his master did not trust him. Even with the updated knowledge the grail gives him, Diarmuid seems to--unconsciously or consciously--reject some facts in order to force reality to remain in some form that is familiar to him. This selective acknowledgment of facts is because of how he was raised as a child. Due to Aengus' over-protectiveness for Diarmuid, the harshness of the real world was kept from him for as long as it could be. This sheltering could not last forever--a fact Aengus would have been well aware of because the boy was promised into Fionn mac Cumhaill's service at an early age--but something that would have been allowed because of the very things that Aengus was said to ruled over as a god, love and youth. He loved Diarmuid as his own son and would have wanted him to have as happy a youth as possible even if that meant hiding reality from him for a while. This would have been easy to do because Aengus' home was away from the 'real world,' and even though most Irish gods were known get into fights despite what they ruled over, as the foster son of a god who ruled over things such as love and poetry, it would have been less likely for things like death and war to be presented to young Diarmuid and even then only introduced through the lens of a knight's duties, something that would have a positive slant to it. All of these things come together to result in a boy who while curious, as mentioned below, is also very sheltered and used to having a certain sense of safety. He is intelligent, but at the same time used to understanding things in one way even though that one way may not be the way things actually are.
Hope/Never Giving Up:
While it might seem like sheltering Diarmuid from the harshness of the world did him few favors, there is one thing that it did allow the boy to do that many others were unable to. It allowed him to keep hope that things will work out with enough effort and enough tries. This trait is shown in Diarmuid as a servant when he finds a way to keep believing things will work out with his master and the war even though he is starting to see his first life repeat itself. Also, despite knowing that the war will be extra hard now that his master has been hurt so badly, Diarmuid refuses to give up and looks toward a way to make things work. This quest to find hope and success would have been something that he would have seen all the time. As a god of things like love and poetry, Aengus often told Diarmuid stories, poems, and songs about the heroes of old. In fact, hearing those tales was one of Diarmuid's favorite pastimes especially when it came to stories about his hero, Cu Chulainn. While a great many Irish stories of old have their share of tragedy, they also were filled with hope and proof that those who never give up trying despite great odds will be rewarded in the end.
The very world in which Diarmuid would have been living at the time would have also encouraged hope in him because it was a time when spirits and gods still roamed the land and mixed with its people. As the foster son of a god, Diarmuid would have gotten to see the magic and the spirits that made Ancient Ireland such a wondrous place almost on a daily basis. For example, Aengus' wife, Caer--who helped raise Diarmuid and who he loved as much as his birth mother--was fated to turn into a swan and spend a whole year like that every other year. Still, at the end of that time period, she always returned to her human form and to her family. While something like this would be frightening to a child the first time it happened, once Diarmuid saw that things would eventually return to normal, it would become a very powerful repeating example how things always turn out for the best in the end. How Aengus won Caer's hand in the first place would be another good example because the god searched Ireland for her for a year before finally finding her and that was not the only trial he had to overcome. He also had to pick her out from a lake while she was in her swan form. The lake, though, was filled with many other swans that looked just like she did. Aengus did not let this stop him and because he would not give up, he was able to win the hand of the woman he loved.
Curiosity/Wonder:
In addition to inspiring hope in Diarmuid, the environment he grew up in would have also inspired wonder and curiosity. While Diarmuid doesn't have a lot of chance to show his curiosity as a servant, he does have moments where it is visible. One example comes in how he wants to learn more about the servants he is fighting not just as opponents, but also as people. This is especially apparent when he faces Saber because he admires her a great deal both for her legend but also for how she lives up to it in the war. In fact, Diarmuid's interest in Saber and how it distracts him from focusing on the war itself is one of the things that Kayneth holds against his servant claiming that his curiosity about her and his focus on their duel threatens the very thing they are fighting for.
As a child, this curiosity was much stronger since children are naturally curious, but also because he had been so sheltered. He knew there were many great and wondrous things out there through the stories he had been told, but just hearing about them in stories was not enough. He also wanted to learn through experience. Learning would have been a serious task to Diarmuid because he knew that he couldn't be a good knight if he didn't understand how the world worked. However, since he was so young, he often found himself over-focusing on small things or getting distracted by something new before he finished learning about the thing he was studying before.
Wish to be a good knight:
As a servant, Diarmuid's whole focus is on being a knight. Not only being a knight, but being a good knight. His wish, after all, is not some great thing that he really needs the Grail for. He merely wishes to have the chance to faithfully serve a lord to the end, since he was not able to do that during his life. Obviously, to shape Diarmuid's life as much as it has, being a knight is something that must have been introduced to him early on. Since he was promised into Fionn mac Cumhaill's service at a very young age, his training would have started while he was still young so he could be brought up with the ideals and role of a knight as a prominent part of his life. Since knights were so important not only to daily life but also in the stories that Diarmuid loved so much, he would have taken learning how to become a good knight very seriously knowing it was an honor to have been chosen to be one. In addition to that, being a knight would be the first step toward becoming like the hero he so looked up to. Finally, another thing that would have made Diarmuid so interested in being a good knight was that it would give him the chance to protect and help others just like Aengus had done for him.
Fears:
Because he was so sheltered growing up, Diarmuid doesn't have many fears that he will consciously recognize as such. However, that doesn't mean he doesn't have them. For example, he worries about how the moods of the people in the household change whenever his birth father visits and why his friend (and half brother) has to leave. However, he doesn't understand the reason why he worries is because he is afraid of what might happen if people start fighting. Since he is so used to the house being filled with hope and other happy emotions, the negative feelings that come with his birth father's rare visits are something he doesn't know how to deal with and isn't sure he wants to learn to deal with.
In addition to that, since Aengus has always been there for him and really is the only father he has ever known, Diarmuid secretly fears what would happen if the god suddenly vanished, though, Aengus disappearing is not something the boy consciously acknowledges because the god has always been there to keep him safe.
AU Information: N/A Character is an OU version. (Please note that I plan on canon updating Diarmuid several times over the course of the game through his life as a hero and eventually to his life as a servant in Fate/Zero. Once he becomes an adult, the journal used for his posts will become
oathshackledbird . This information along with the changes to his personalty, physical form, and abilities will be fully detailed at each canon update. Since I will eventually be playing Diarmuid in the game as an adult/servant, here is a link to the application I submitted for him when I joined the towerofanimus so you can have some idea of how I will play him. Some things will change do to setting and canon point, of course, but his base personality traits will not.)Character Abilities: As a child, Diarmuid has no special powers or abilities, since most of his special abilities are gained later in life through training or magical weapons he has not been gifted yet. (For example, while he has the mole beneath his eye that will later be enchanted to carry his love curse, for now it is merely a mole.) At his canon point, he is basically a normal human child who has just started training with a sword and is looking forward to learning how to use a spear. While he is showing the first hints of how skilled he will become with weapons, he really can't defend himself. In fact, he is actually currently smaller and more fragile seeming than most children his age. And while he might also be slightly faster or more agile than children his age, he has had no special training with those skills as of yet.
Mentally, Diarmuid is like most children his age except that he sometimes will have moments where his words and thoughts will seem like they come from a much older person. These times are brief and often he won't quite understand what he has said if asked to explain further because a lot of the time he is just parroting things he has heard Aengus or someone else in the household say. Despite this fact, though, what he says is relevant to whatever is being discussed almost as if he has some kind of understanding of what things mean after all. (This is a very early and undeveloped version of the instinct and judgment skills that will serve him so well as a knight and will eventually evolve into his Eye of the Mind (True) trait as a servant.)
Character Inventory: When Diarmuid arrives he will be wearing an outfit like the one he is wearing here--a simple white tunic, green belt, green pants, brown shoes and green and white arm wraps. He will also have a simple hooded green cloak.
In addition to his clothes, he will have a small blue and green magical butterfly that Aengus created for him as a pet and guardian. The butterfly does not need to be fed and because it is a magical creature, it will heal or recreate itself if it is damaged or killed. However, it has no real special abilities outside of that and the fact that it will listen to simple commands from Diarmuid. (For example, he can ask it to go fly around someone's head to get their attention, but it can't relay any information to them.) Most of the time, the butterfly is content to circle around Diarmuid's head or sit on his shoulder.
Diarmuid will also have a blanket made for him by his foster mother, Caer, that has swans embroidered along the top. Finally, he will have his practice sword with him. The sword has no sharp edges and is for training only.
Samples:
Third Person Sample
Thread Interaction Sample 1
Thread interaction Sample 2
Edit: Diarmuid canon updated for the first time on 9-6-2013. His updated information can be found here.