blackbladebitch | Application: The Last Voyages

User Name/Nick: Karin
User LJ: on record
AIM/IM: ricksonjacket
E-mail: on record
Other Characters: Una Persson, Mal Cobb

Character Name: Elric of Melniboné
Series: The Elric Saga, Michael Moorcock
Age: Late thirties.
From When?: Midway through the novel Stormbringer, when he's been captured by the evil wizard Jagreen Lern and has been strapped to the mast of Lern's flagship. Which basically makes this part of Elric's second Dream of a Thousand Years (see Abilities/Powers and History). (This is gonna get gnarly, I'll warn you right now.)

Inmate/Warden: Warden. Elric could have been an inmate at earlier points in his career—after the sack of Imrryr, for example. At this point, however, he's accepted his destiny and his role as the bringer of his world's end and he's rejected Arioch and the lords of Chaos. He's not particularly happy about this by any means, but nonetheless he is bound and determined to do what he must. He's a textbook anti-hero; however, much like Una Persson, Elric is fights for the Balance between Law and Chaos and the liberation of humanity. He is relatively humane by the standards of his people; he never wanted to be a tyrant and he doesn't have much patience for those who would be; he doesn't like it when people are treated with wanton cruelty; and in general he's the least dreadful of the incredibly horrible people who populate his world. See Personality for more.
Item: The Actorios stone in his ring, an heirloom of Melnibonéan emperors. The gem is like a large fire opal, with shifting colours in its heart.

Abilities/Powers: Elric is sorcerer, trained in the ancient arts of Melnibonéan magic. Mostly this means he can call on elemental creatures and also demons, especially his patron demon, Arioch. (Arioch is a capricious son of a bitch, however, and does not always come when called, quite often answering the summons with the Chaos Lord equivalent of "I'M K-K-KINDA BUSY". And at this point in Elric's canon, he'd be extremely angry with Elric for having recently discorporated him.) He can also brew potions (about which more in a bit) and cast rune-based magic; however, Melnibonéan magic does not extend to fireballs and magic missiles and the like; it's oriented more towards summonings and ritual. He's a skilled swordsman with any weapon, but is truly extraordinary when he has Stormbringer in hand.

Stormbringer is its own giant ball of wax. This demon sword is semi-sentient, and is hungry for blood and souls. When Elric kills someone with it, the sword eats the unfortunate bastard's life force and passes some of it on to Elric. Unfortunately for just about everybody else, the thing doesn't care whether it kills enemies or friends, and when the bloodlust is on Elric, it's hard for him to control Stormbringer, and that has left our hero with a number of late friends and lovers in his wake. The sword itself seems to take a fair amount of delight in killing off Elric's friends. It also has a tendency to hum and make noises when it's hungry and to make an awful shrieking noise in battle. On the Barge, Elric is going to keep Stormbringer safely locked away (and will usually carry an heirloom sword of Melnibonéan nobility, the sword of Earl Aubec), but there is always the possibility that he'll need to take it up. Yes, it's a plot device inna box.

On a more peaceful note: as stated earlier, Elric is also a sorcerous chemist, and can compound the life-sustaining potions that keep him going when he's trying to not live off of Stormbringer's ill-gotten gains. Said potions and ingredients may be assumed to be part of Elric's monthly renewable supplies, although of course their unavailability or loss can serve as a plot. He's also very learned in history and lore (albeit his own world's only, along with a smattering of understanding of the Multiverse, or the Million Spheres as it's sometimes known, so limited use there). In his own world he can summon all kinds of elemental spirits and the like, but obviously none of these beings will be summonable here unless a plot demands it and mod permission is given.

Now, there's a weird additional twist to the Elric canon. As part of his sorcerous training as a young man, and later after he's been captured by the wizard Jagreen Lern, Elric experiences two epic dream-quests known as the Dreams of a Thousand Years. During those dream-quests, he lives other lives both in his own world's past and in the world we know (the world that succeeded Elric's own). One is as Duke Elric, an English crusader. Another is as a dapper dandy known as Zenith, a gentleman thief who is the antagonist and occasional unwitting ally of the metatemporal detective Sir Seaton Begg. In both these incarnations, he carries a black runesword; Zenith's is a sword-stick, or sometimes a sword carried in a musical instrument case (like a guitar case).

SO. What does that have to do with the game?

I'd like to be able to play Elric as Zenith occasionally, because Zenith is fun, but I think it'd be kind of unfair for him to have all those memories and all of that experience at once. So, I'm proposing that while most of the time, Elric will be Elric, this sort of pseudo-mediaeval sorcerer/swordsman, with no memories of his Zenith experiences. But occasionally—during floods, or when plots require it, or just for the hell of it—he will be transformed into Zenith, retaining his Elric memories, but operating in a more modern idiom. Then he'll switch back to being Elric, and won't remember anything of being Zenith. If, when in Elric mode, someone talks to him about Zenith, he'll shrug it off as one of those dream-quest things.

Personality: Elric's eternal epithet is "the moody albino", and he's earned it.

Elric was the only son of an emperor who blamed him for his mother's death in childbirth, and as a "silverskin", seen variously as an omen of ill fortune or as the chosen one who would lead the decadent, corrupt empire of Melniboné to a glorious new era. All of this informed Elric's worldview from the beginning. He saw clearly Melniboné's decline and the Melnibonéans' decadence and cruelty, and while he would go through the motions of being proper royalty, his heart was never really in it. He was intellectually curious, driven to learn more about the rising human kingdoms outside his own realm (known as the Young Kingdoms), and discontented. After the fall of Melniboné and the death of his beloved Cymoril, Elric only became more cynical, but his underlying idealism never quite went away.

Indeed, Elric is one of those people who is cynical because the world steadfastly refuses to live up to his ideals, and because he doesn't really expect it to. He would like a world where people treated each other fairly, free exchanges of ideas were possible, and tyrants were no more ... but he also knows that, in general, People Suck, and that most of the time they're going to behave miserably and in their own self-interest without any thought to the consequences. Nonetheless, a man can dream.

Not that he's innocent himself. Though he takes little joy in cruelty, he can be callous to the suffering of others (especially if he feels like they deserve it), and when the bloodlust of the sword is upon him, he kills indiscriminately. He feels immense guilt over the fact that he has personally killed or at least been responsible for the death of many friends and lovers over the course of his life. At the same time, he can be a bit Biblical in his approach to offences. When he has been insulted or offended, he will not hesitate to take bloody revenge. In The Fortress of the Pearl, he kills the greedy merchant who wanted the Pearl by stuffing the gem down the man's throat until he chokes, and then he goes on to slay the corrupt governing council of the merchant's home town. And in Stormbringer, he takes an hour to kill his archnemesis, and then only because Moonglum begs him to finish the job quickly.

Peace bores Elric to no end. Even when he finds refuge and peace in the fabled city of Tanelorn, he can't settle down and instead rides out on yet another adventure that nearly proves fatal. He claims to welcome death, but his eternal striving in the face of it suggests otherwise. He is perhaps not quite as nihilistic as he makes himself out to be—more accurately, he will simply never turn down an opportunity to give Fate a big middle finger.

He is terrible with money in the way only someone who has never wanted for anything can be; he once paid for ship passage with a gem that would have bought the entire ship and its crew several times over, and another time freed the slaves of a captured ship and let them divide the money from the sale of the ship amongst themselves, with no care for his own gain.

Elric is both superbly arrogant and gracefully self-deprecating. He has an ironic sense of humour, as is probably necessary to get through his doom-ridden life. He's occasionally given to grandiose, self-pitying pronouncements of Fate and Doom and all the rest, although arguably he's earned the right to do so. He also likes pretty women, and although he's married at this point in his history, he tends to treat the dream-realms as something else altogether from his real life, and doesn't count liaisons there (though betrothed to Cymoril, that didn't stop him from having a dream-realm liaison with Oone the Dreamthief in The Fortress of the Pearl, which resulted in children). Marriage to Zarozinia aside, he has strong love-'em-and-leave-'em tendencies, although he does respect intelligent and capable women.

As Zenith, he is urbane, witty, and dashing as only a master criminal can be. He's also a very good violin player and, of course, a good hand with a sword. He's a gentleman thief, with all the concomitant skills. Although nominally a criminal, he has his own very strict personal code of honour; he will not kill innocent people, and he is committed to opposing forces of tyranny and intolerance. He just doesn't care about working within the rule of law to accomplish those goals.

Elric will accept his presence on the Barge with sangfroid; his bargain with the Admiral is to be given the strength and the will in his home world to complete the dirty work of bringing that world to an end. This is just another dream-quest like so many others he's embarked upon, and there are plot coupons to be collected, things to be done, and in the end he will return home to blow the horn of Fate and so on. As a warden, Elric will be a pretty tough bastard with no patience for foolishness. He'll probably earn the opprobrium of any number of other wardens for his willingness to, say, throw his inmate in zero at the drop of a hat or exercise other harsh punitive measures, and there may be at least one incident or more of Elric smacking the inmate upside the head. He'll be very hard on a male inmate; less so initially on a female inmate, but eventually his sense of duty will trump chivalry. He will chafe at any attempts by other wardens to try and influence him, although he will listen to those he respects.

History: Elric VIII was the 428th emperor of Melnibone, son of Sadric LXXXVI. His mother died in childbirth, for which Sadric blamed Elric until his death. Elric was sickly and weak and believed by many to be of deficient blood, and he survived only by certain drugs and potions to give him something resembling normal vitality.

He grew to manhood as a discontented prince, one who generally preferred his studies and the quiet company of his beloved cousin Cymoril (to whom he was eventually betrothed), and who was dismayed by the casual cruelty of his people. He survived the dream-quests that were part of his training as a young sorceror, and eventually inherited the throne of Melniboné on his father's death. The events of Elric of Melniboné led to him finding the demon sword Stormbringer, with which his destiny would be entwined, and also led to him leaving his cousin Yyrkoon (Cymoril's brother) as Regent of Melniboné while he went out into the human lands of the Young Kingdoms to explore and learn. While he was away, Yyrkoon usurped the Ruby Throne and drugged Cymoril into a stupor.

After many adventures (including a sojourn in the Dream Realms with a dreamthief named Oone, who is very likely Una Persson in another guise), Elric returned to Melniboné, but this time at the head of a conquering army of human invaders determined to sack the ancient city. Which they did, and during the sack of the Melnibonéan capital city of Imrryr, Elric killed the villainous Yyrkoon ... but he also killed Cymoril, earning him the epithet Womanslayer; and the deaths of his Melnibonéan kinsmen in the battle brought him the name Kinslayer.

Elric became a sword-for-hire and soon developed a fearsome reputation as a great fighter and implacable enemy. Lots and lots of adventures in the Young Kingdoms followed—more than can be conveniently summarised here. Over the course of this time, Elric acquired a friend and sidekick, the human Moonglum of Elwher; he embarked on many quests that more often than not ended in failure and death, especially for the men who hired him; he repeatedly fought against Theleb Ka'arna, a villainous sorceror from the island nation of Pan Tang; on a couple of occasions he joined forces with other incarnations of the Eternal Champion to save the Multiverse; and he eventually fell in love with and married a young woman named Zarozinia, the daughter of a nobleman of the city of Karlaak. For her, he attempted to give up Stormbringer, but in the end he had to take up the blade twice more: once to save Karlaak from invasion, and again to rescue her after she was kidnapped by demons.

At the same time as he was attempting to rescue Zarozinia, Jagreen Lern of Pan Tang began his attempt to conquer the Young Kingdoms, having made terrible agreements with the Lords of Chaos. Elric took it upon himself to battle the wizard himself and fought the Lords of Chaos in the capital of Pan Tang, but the battle cost him dearly, and when he woke from the horror of the battle, he found himself Jagreen Lern's prisoner, lashed upon the mast of his battleship. While he was bound there, he entered into his second Dream of a Thousand Years, where he lived as Duke Elric and as Zenith the Albino, among many others ... and where he made his deal with the Admiral and came to the Barge. And this is where our story picks up.

History bonus: Everything you'd want to know about the Elric Saga's publishing history and wish you hadn't asked. Actually, this is a very, very, very condensed overview. The reader's guide in Swords and Roses is like, 20 pages long.

Sample Journal Entry:
There seems little point in wasting time on empty niceties and idle chatter. To the point then—I am Elric of Melniboné, known as the White Wolf, Kinslayer, Stealer of Souls, and other similarly colourful epithets. If you have not heard of me, I take no offence; if you have, I should be interested to know what you have heard. I have joined this ship on the Seas of Fate as a warden, and you may expect me to carry out my duties to the best of my ability. I have ventured across many worlds of the Million Spheres in my time, but never have I seen such a congeries of travellers as is gathered here. Introduce yourselves, if you please; and if one among you may be counted as a leader, I shall be glad to know of it.

Sample RP:
The sword murmured in its cabinet and Elric tried to ignore it. True, matters were growing graver by the minute and conventional weapons had proven useless against the invaders, but Elric wished fervently to believe that he had not yet grown so desperate as to turn to the hell-blade.

But he could hear them scratching outside his door now, and as the scratching increased in intensity, so too did the moaning of Stormbringer within its prison. Elric looked down at the sword of Earl Aubec and shook his head, a faint ironic smile playing on his lips. The scratching gave way to a thumping, and his door soon began to bend under the attackers' force.

"Very well then," he said aloud. "It seems I have been left with little choice."

He cast Earl Aubec's sword aside and turned to the cabinet in which Stormbringer whined. Swiftly he unlocked it and as he took hold of the sword, it seemed to cry out in glee at the prospect of battle. He belted the scabbard to his waist and drew Stormbringer forth, and the runes on its blade glowed, filling his cabin with an unearthly radiance.

The door splintered then and Elric laughed, the sword matching the inhuman sound of battle-joy with one of its own. "Come then! Elric of Melniboné waits with your doom!"

Special notes: The Elric saga does indeed intersect with the rest of the Moorcock Multiverse, and Una is explicitly a friend and ally of Zenith. Whether she actually is Oone the Dreamthief is a matter of debate, but I think there's conclusive evidence to the positive in more than one place. That said, I don't plan on self threading if it can be at all avoided. Elric in his usual state will not be able to associate Oone with Una, and as Zenith, he'll simply be discreet about their association. I don't plan to have them pulling each other's fat out of the fire or anything like that.