martel » the growth of frozen, interrupted hands

[apostatised]

"He didn't say it exactly, Vanion," Sparhawk reported. "You know how he is, but there was that sort of implied smirk in his voice that he knows is so irritating. We both know Martel well enough to what he meant."

Out of Character Information
Name: Liisu!
Username: (if applicable) dubonnetcherry
Are you over the age of eighteen? Y

In Character Information
Basics
Character Name: Martel
Username: amongbells
Fandom: The Elenium (AU; Bete Noire history)
Played By: Julian Sands
Icon: Here

Canon Character Section
Physical Description: Martel is a tall (6’3”, let’s say), leanly muscular man in his late thirties to early forties, built to wear plate-metal armor and wield a broadsword. Due to premature greying in his late teens, his hair (long, straight) is stark white, typically worn loose and occasionally tied or braided back. His eyes are brown, dark to the point of actually looking black at a glance, and he has the expected scarring of a man who’s been carrying a sword since before his voice broke (most recently, a bloody great scar in his chest where a broadsword went through him). I use Julian Sands with some judicious photoshopping as a PB.

Sexuality: Martel's formative years and significant parts of his adolescence and adulthood were spent as a devoutly religious man who went into a religious order; his social circle was pretty open-minded and progressive for the place and era, but societally he was raised with the concept that homosexuality is a sin. He's straight up heterosexual and has very little interest in other people's sexual proclivities beyond "do you mind not getting slut all over my nice boots, it just doesn't go with my vibe" (yes, he's an asshole, yes, he probably said something worse than that to Princess Arissa) or "I know places where they burn you for that, you should maybe not be doing it in public".

His sexuality is much like the rest of him; he wants to be in control of it and he's obsessive about what he perceives as belonging to him. He's not generally fixated on sex inherently; Arissa killed his libido like a heat-seeking missile and I imagine between running around trying to fuck up Sparhawk's life and running around trying to make plans to fuck up Sparhawk's life, all the while being stuck with the aforementioned horrifying princess & her former-churchman ex-lover, he had neither time nor inclination to hook up. He can comfortably spend years celibate, but with a partner, he does tend to crank it up over nine thousand. He's fixated, intense, and very physical, and that goes more or less exactly where you think it's going. As a fun side-note, as aware as he is of his general shortcomings, he has made a conscious effort to be a good time in the sack, figuring that everybody needs a redeeming feature and his might as well be a giving nature. He has a bad habit of leaving bruises and bitemarks and he will cheerfully involve a knife in proceedings if his lady-friend is comfortable with that. And only if she is; it's not fun if she's not into it.

Some people who are control-freaks like to submit in bed; Martel is not one of those people.

Generally he's not the kind of man who is comfortable with casual sex and absolutely if you betray him in any way he will destroy you and everything that you love. And then be angry about it for twenty years, blaming you. During the time where he was tooling around as a lone mercenary making himself The Scariest Ever, he didn't relax this so much as adapt it; he had basically cut off if not totally destroyed all personal connections he had and people need those, he made do with occasionally seducing women he would probably not give his real name and almost definitely never see again after maybe a week, tops.

He probably has bastards in Eosia! Enjoy that.

He doesn't feel threatened by...much of anything, frankly; one of Martel's big characteristics is "ego the size of the moon", he is arrogant and often he is not actually wrong to be so confident, but that's a whole other thing and you know he could stand to be less of a tool about it. Homosexuality doesn't bother him and doesn't concern him; if he were hit on by a man it'd depend on who and how as to how he reacted, and could be anywhere from 'no, thanks, not my thing' to casually knifing someone. The latter has less to do with sexuality and more to do with a tendency to kill things that irritate him.

History: As a Knight of the Church, Martel was a brother-in-arms to Sir Sparhawk, a man who would be closer than blood to him even when they ultimately stood on opposite sides of a line Martel himself drew in the sand.

Martel was born the only son of a wealthy noble family in Elenia, but his blood relatives proved to be largely meaningless to him in the grand scheme of his life; fondly but distantly remembered, his father Lord Romiar, Margrave of Damerel, and his mother an Arcian noblewoman, Lady Veleda (note: details regarding his family beyond ‘rich as shit’ and ‘highly ranked’ are largely headcanon, extrapolated by necessity for a fuller background). He joined the Pandion Order at the traditionally young age, and had he not taken the path he did, he would have come through one of the finest knights they'd seen in their ranks, set to marry well and likely on his way towards the rank of Lord Preceptor. An expert swordsman and handy with a lance, Martel was a brilliant warrior, tactician and sorcerer (as tutored in the secrets of Styricum by the Pandion tutor in the arts, Lady Sephrenia).

It was, she would later say, in part his downfall.

Too clever for anyone's good and too ambitious by half, Martel sought instruction in the forbidden secrets; when Sephrenia refused him, he went looking elsewhere. His family's money, recently inherited, was more than enough to get him what he wanted - at least in the short term. He'd been chosen by the Styric sorcerer Zalasta to act as the opposite number of Anakha, and it was his own ambition that screwed him over. For the forbidden magic and the murder of several Pandion Knights who'd been sent to apprehend him, Martel was forcibly expelled from the Order and stripped of as much of his power as the Younger Gods could take.

Having effectively cut all the ties that meant anything to him, Martel went away from Elenia weeping and swearing revenge - revenge that, as the best and most well-connected mercenary in Eosia, he would spend more than a decade working to get. He aligned himself with Otha of Zemoch in order to get his shot at vengeance on the Pandions in general and Sparhawk in particular, which brought him an uneasy alliance with the corrupt churchman Annias, the incestuous Princess Arissa (sister of the late Elenian King and aunt of his successor, Queen Ehlana), everybody’s favourite alcoholic Krager and an assortment of other charming individuals that he collectively disdained as disgusting human beings. (He wasn’t actually wrong, he was just also a monstrous hypocrite.) Though it took months to become clear, Martel was likely the highest ranked of the conspirators under the dark elder god Azash, acting as tactician, general and cracker of whips. ...or was he, see: The Tamuli for the aforementioned revelations that Martel had been manipulated by Zalasta all along.

(Unfortunately for his repressed conscience, Zalasta never actually forced him into anything; he manipulated the circumstances and counted on Martel’s hubris to do the work for him. It did. Martel, while deeply ashamed, is almost physically incapable of backing down once he’s set himself to something; he considered the bed he’d made for himself and reworked himself into the best of self-made faux-sociopath bastards.)

In short, he sparked a religious and civil war in the Elene countries, intent on subverting the Church of Chyrellos from the inside out, subjugating the continent beneath the heel of the soon-to-be-released-from-his-hideous-captivity god Azash, which would be followed, of course, by setting himself up as Emperor of Basically Everything while Annias ruled the new church and Azash...horrified everyone. His obsession with the loved ones he’d driven away from him (though he preferred to think of it as him having been rejected, which was and was not quite accurate) was constant, but unfortunately meant in several cases that he repeatedly tried to murder them.

He didn't win, of course; plots were twisted, secrets were kept and revealed, Sparhawk prevailed and Martel, his brother's sword through his chest, drowned in his own blood on the floor of a dark temple, his head in his mother's lap. Death ultimately came as a welcome mercy from continuing to live with himself.

...unfortunately for him, it didn't last. After death, Martel found himself transported to a multiversal city called Bete Noire, left with physical and psychological scars from his own death and a general lack of explanations that seemed sufficient. Sick of himself and sick of his own life, he went about a quieter existence (comparatively) in this city, presenting himself as the Margrave of Damerel (a title that was stripped from him long before he died) and portioning out small details of his history with surgical precision as they became relevant, or not. He developed several close friendships (namely with Balthier, who he has far too much in common with, and additionally Anna Milton, who mistook him for an angel and looked up to him in a father's role), although his ability to maintain them wavered periodically as he withdrew from social interaction for one reason or another; at one point during a crisis he joined a party traveling to Hell in order to rescue Noah (long story) with the flippant reasoning that he'd always thought he was bound there in the first place. The experience led to one of those withdrawals, afterwards, but besides having his door banged on a couple of times to make sure he wasn't wasting away in his room, he kept it largely to himself. He partially acclimatized to modern living, learning enough to get by without really properly 'assimilating'.

The notion of redemption or reformation is one that he has a great deal of difficulty reconciling with, but equally the goals that drove Martel to commit himself to a path that he had such disdain for in the first place are now irrelevant, and he spent his time in Bete Noire struggling to find an equilibrium within himself. Mostly, he repressed - like a champ! - and focused on other people around him when given the opportunity, stepping into an almost paternal role for Anna, after a chance conversation and misunderstanding brought them into contact with each other. It will be one of Martel's regrets in Baedal that he had no opportunity to farewell her.

Powers: Martel is an expertly trained and notably powerful sorcerer - I would consider referring to him as a combat sorcerer, due to the nature of his training (sorcery went hand-in-hand with his knighthood, as an edge in conflict of various kinds, including but not limited to battle, torture interrogation, sneaking around fucking things up, etc), but he dove headfirst into the secrets of Styricum with a will and his repertoire is much more broad than that. He is, in theory, capable of devising new uses for it through trial and error and terrible, brilliant ideas.

Sorcery goes hand in hand with religion, also, when one starts out as a church knight. Styricum teaches a type of magic that is essentially a form of prayer - to simplify, ritualized prayer (incantations, specific hand-wavery, namely) is the equivalent of reaching out to hold hands with a god who will then assist in channeling power to achieve their ends. Martel variously worked through the goddess Aphrael and the elder god Azash. Due to the nature of this magic, which involves both the sorcerer's own power/ability and a god's, part of the way it works is through an intrinsic connection to the holy. Feeling the presence of a god in one's spirit is not just a metaphor for this guy!

As a note, this means that when he at one point had the most significant of his abilities taken from him, what must be being discussed there is ripping out parts of his soul, at the very least severely scarring them. (He would already have been fairly tainted by the magic he was using prior, and I refer you again to the effect this should have had on his sanity, e.g. 'destroyed it completely'. Some of the forbidden magic he used is the sort that gods are afraid of.) And then having it hatchet-job patched by Azash, who tends to have more of a chokehold on the throat of anyone in his influence. Martel suffered psychological and spiritual scarring as a result, although far less than he should have.

As the Delphae have proved, the style of magic used in their world does not require a god, and in Bete Noire, Martel - sick to death of religion in almost all of its forms, and profoundly bitter about what he perceived to be spiritual abandonment - devoted himself to a trial-and-error study of how exactly to master sorcery without the guiding hand of a god. He was successful, but now is in the process of mastering this new discipline; handling his own power with no checks but himself is new and he's cautious, if not (perhaps) as cautious as some would prefer him to be.

Talents/Abilities: Martel is a former knight and mercenary; an accomplished warrior, he was essentially without mortal peer in his own world. (Sparhawk, who ultimately killed him, would eventually turn out to have been a god all along, unbeknownst to even himself.) He's an expert tactician, an experienced scholar, a skilled swordsman and was once highly likely to be considered for the next Lord Preceptor of the Pandion Order - a position that requires an ability to teach as well as lead. He thinks like a politician while thinking very little of politicians, and his manners are court-trained when he bothers to acknowledge he has them. Also, out of simple necessity, he can cook a decent meal, passably mend his own clothes, and fall asleep almost anywhere. (He presents himself as being much fussier about food, drink and luxuries than he genuinely is - he's a nobleman and he has preferences, but he's also a soldier and he will eat, drink and wear what's available to him when he has to.)

Personality: The first thing to remember about Martel is that everything he does, he does five times more intense than a sane person would. This has its upsides; his willpower, focus and driving ambition can take him very, very far (admittedly not to places anyone really wants him to go, but let's not get into that just yet), and to the right mindset that same focus applied to his personal life can be incredibly attractive. On the flipside, he feels this deeply and it results in a personality prone to obsession, melodrama and overreactions. What is sometimes sort of charming is more often just kind of frightening, and it's only got worse as he's got older and his experiences and harmful excesses have taken their toll on his mental state - both naturally and due to the fact that abusing forbidden magic is extremely dangerous and the fact he can string a sentence together at this point is a feat of mental strength in and of itself. He's an extroverted introvert, ruthlessly manipulative, and he should never be permitted to get bored lest he go find something to occupy himself with. It will almost invariably be something you don't want him doing.

His obsessive tendencies touch more or less everything in his life; he's a perfectionist with a work ethic to rival the most dedicated workaholic, if he truly sold his soul it would probably be to a woman, and once he starts something he does not stop. The extent to which he can devote himself to the people he loves doesn't really make up for the rest of him - it's really just another way in which he's sort of distressing, considering what kind of relationships it tends to make for. (Protip: not healthy ones. The Elenium can also be referred to as ‘Martel’s hideous mommy issues, a trilogy’.)

He's painfully self-aware, but it rarely has any kind of tempering effect on him and his behaviour; being aware of something doesn't necessarily change it. He's not precisely a jealous man (the idea of feeling threatened strikes him as sort of laughable, which is obnoxiously arrogant and he is wholly unrepentant for that), but he does have some severely territorial tendencies; he likes for what's his to be his and for that to be respected, and he will sometimes go to unreasonable lengths to establish this for other people. Sometimes it just depends on his mood (and/or the alignment of the planets), but either way he is not the type of guy who shares well. Or...at all. He once in canon referred to himself as ‘the lion’, in reference to getting ‘the lion’s share’.

Speaking of 'obnoxiously arrogant' - yes, he is. Adding insult to injury on the subject, this is less based on an inflated idea of himself than it is totally refusing to have any modesty about his capabilities. He is exactly as intelligent, powerful and dangerous as he thinks he is, and he's not shy about it. He's not inclined to abuse those not on his level just for the sake of it (because it strikes him as a waste of his time and if you have to knock around the weaker to prove how strong you are, you probably aren't), but he's also not very patient with them unless he sees a good reason to be and to say that he can be difficult to get along with is to severely understate the case. In more general terms he is a very patient man, but it serves his purposes to keep this to himself and project an air of supreme impatience, mostly because it means he cuts short his dealings with idiots quicker. He suffers fools badly, and the difference between his reaction to ‘you’re not as smart as I am’ and ‘you are an actual idiot’ tends to be ‘cruelty’.

All of this paints a picture of a really unpleasant bastard, and that's not inaccurate; that said, he's also magnetically charismatic, witty, and aware of how to play to his best advantage (when he feels like it). In conversation he tends to be very present, and it's not a matter of waiting for his turn to speak - he listens, he absorbs, he tries to understand and respond accordingly. He has a knack for people that is more often employed in knowing exactly what he shouldn't say and then making it worse, but he's just as capable of doing the opposite if he puts a little more effort in. He's observant, and while he seeks out the weak points, he doesn't necessarily twist the knife every single damn time.

He is and is not good at talking to people; on the one hand, yes, he's eloquent and he gets people (to a degree, not entirely, and coloured by his perceptions and background), on the other hand he has for a very long time used words and conversation as just another tool in his distressing arsenal. What this means is that he's not used to being honest, just for the sake of honesty; he has a problem where if he thinks too hard about what he wants to say, he'll start tailoring it purely out of habit and it might concern him that in intimate conversations he might not be as honest as he wants to be. His solution ... sucks, a lot: he doesn't have these conversations. The best way to get pure unadulterated honesty out of Martel is either to get him drunk or catch him while he's distracted; you can surprise him into saying more than he might have intended to while he's thinking about something else! For the record, when he's drunk he comes in one of two varieties: ebullient or maudlin. The former is more likely.

In idiosyncrasies, while he swears he does it incredibly rarely; it's not that he has some kind of moral or intellectual objection to the words, more that he likes to save them up for really special occasions, possibly so that they'll carry more weight coming from him. He also has a minor tendency to absent-mindedly talk to himself in the midst of conversations, when distracted or very tired or just totally disinterested in whoever he's talking to and whatever they're talking about. (Annias loved this about him. No, I’m lying.)

Object: Martel will be bringing in his warhorse, Kalten (a destrier), with saddle, saddle-bags, and his sword strapped into place.
The saddlebags contain (slightly less than they did when he arrived in Bete Noire, having been partly unpacked): one bag of gold and silver coins, some simple clothing (one shirt bloodstained, no shoes; he has one pair of boots and he's wearing them), one silver Pandion amulet, a letter (written by Martel, never sent), several knives, a cloak-pin, a woman's ring (emerald, set in gold, small size, in a velvet pouch), an Elene prayer book, and one brass key.
The short version is that Martel's emotional baggage made itself very literal when he went to his afterlife.

Reason for playing: I've been an Eddings fan since I was a wee tiny, and two and a half years ago I decided that I wanted to start playing from his canons. It took me some time to settle on Martel, given that I love most of the characters in his series (and have journals for a couple of others), and I will not lie, after a while I went back to him just because I was determined that it had to be possible to find a played-by for this guy. Beyond being delighted with Julian Sands as a PB, what appeals to me about Martel is that he hates himself! He really does! He hates where his choices have got him, but he is too stubborn and too proud to be willing to ever back down. He made his bed, so he's lying in it; he is chained to decisions that he made both in and out of his right mind, and he is so bitter, so angry, so wrecked as a person that he just keeps making it worse. He could be better than this, he knows that and hints at wanting that, but this is the life that he's got and he lives it all the way to the hilt.

Playing Martel post-death is therefore fascinating to me, because he's no longer beholden to those things. He did live that life, but it's over, and what now? The road to redemption is pretty fucked up when you're a man who wouldn't even explicitly admit wanting it until after you've died for the sins you committed both knowingly and unknowingly - the journey that he takes back to some kind of peace is fascinating to me and I think it provides a lot of inherent drive for Martel to be active and involved in the game.

Gods: I would say he's most likely to come to the attention of Gediron and/or Ruun; his education is extensive and a matter of notable personal pride, and he is an ambitious, efficient warrior. The two things very much go hand in hand for Martel, but I will note here that he'll be pursuing work in a library in an effort to find something to do that makes good use of what he's best at without ... involving killing people for money. Libraries are his bag, baby.

Writing Samples

First-Person Network Post: Martel checks in with Balthier.

First-Person Journal Post: How galling that even in death, He doesn't want me. I might take the fires of hell over this blatant indifference, this disregard. I have given my life, in all parts, to the gods and they haven't the basic decency of acknowledging even my sins. A man might begin to feel unappreciated.

No heaven. No hell. No end in sight, no release, and I can still feel my blood choking me, drowning me from the inside, I still hear my voice in that sick gurgle at the end. Is there no end to 'consequence'? Standing out here in the metaphorical cold, no longer even worth rejecting.

This self-pity is becoming tiresome.

Third-Person Arrival Post: Martel knows before he opens his eyes that he isn't in Bete Noire any more; he'd become accustomed to the sense of that city's taint, a fact he realizes only as he registers its lack. He isn't dead, and he notes with some detachment a curious sense of disappointment before his thoughts turn to Anna, to Balthier, and he rises (the sound of his boots on the floor is the only sound in the still room; he finds it momentarily jarring). A cell, he thinks first, only in his experience they rarely come equipped with what looks not unlike the communications device Balthier had taught him to use ... or an explanatory pamphlet.

His eyebrows climb towards his hairline as he reads, his lip curling by the end of the first paragraph. The CiD in one hand, a little trial and error as he reads acquaints him with the differences between this device and the one he's previously been accustomed to - certainly enough to turn the damn thing on and make use of it. The pamphlet he tucks inside his coat (he'll read the rest of it later), and after a moment so does the CiD; he'll make sure of the room before he starts playing with buttons.

Practicalities, first. Everything else-

Practicalities, first.

Third-Person Action Post: (canon missing scene, as described by Sir Perraine on his deathbed.)

"You'll wait," Martel said, brooking no argument, "until such time as I need you." He regarded Adus with frank disdain, and bearing the man's habits in mind added, "Don't so much as piss without my permission."

Adus not being much of a conversationalist at the best of times - if, he reflected, indeed he had 'best' of times - Martel didn't wait around longer than it took to make sure his instruction had got through into that thick, helmeted head, moving through Dabour's streets with the certainty of someone who knew exactly where he was going.

"Perraine!" He greeted his former brother with unwholesome cheer, laughing when the knight went for his weapon. "Now, now, old boy - I just want to speak with you. And if you value Ydra's life whatsoever, you're going to put up your sword and listen to me very, very carefully." He waited only briefly for a decision to make itself apparent- "Ah, good. Sit down. You don't want to waste my time or yours, I promise you that."

"What have you done to her?" he demanded - but he obeyed. Martel smiled faintly, remaining where he was - between the other man and the quickest way out.

"What have I done? What have I done." He seemed to find the question almost amusing, with his knife-gleam smile that never changed. He leaned towards Perraine a little, almost conspiratorial. "She's a beautiful woman, isn't she? She must be the whole of your heart - I find myself touched. A woman like that you'd die for. Wouldn't you?"

Tightly, coldly, "If you've a point, Martel, I suggest you get to it."

"Oh, of course. Now, it stands to reason, does it not, that a woman you'd die for - I expect you'd kill for her, too, wouldn't you? You will if you've any mercy in your soul, because, old friend, that is the only way she'll ever have any in hers."


They met again, by night; Perraine stalked to Martel's side, stiff and more uncomfortable being permitted to come and go than he might have been if he'd been dragged in chains.

The orgiastic rites of worship that Azash delighted in had always struck Martel as a touch gauche, but he had to concede that there was something particularly cruel in the contrast between Ydra's sweet laughter and the now hoarse screams of the maidservant she knelt above. He felt detached, almost, watching the girl's eyes widen as Ydra traded her knife for the torch the Zemoch priest was holding, and he let his gaze move to the man presently searching his beloved for sign of the god-fearing girl who'd grown up alongside him. The mingled scent of sex and scorched flesh rose in the air and Perraine hadn't had the opportunities Martel had to grow almost bored of the shrieking, moaning, whimpering.

"You can assist me," he murmured, conversationally, his voice cutting through the indistinguishable sounds of divinely-granted pleasure and despair, "or you can let her be given wholly to Azash. It's entirely your decision. A little of her soul, piece by piece, tainting her until there's nothing in her but the-" dubious, "-glory of her new god. It won't be your fault, of course, but she'll be a monster all the same."

The bright tears in Perraine's eyes as he raised his sword- the blood running in rivulets across the rough-hewn stone- the cruel curl of Ydra's lip and the sheen of sweat on the expanses of her bared skin- firelight glinting on the blade-

Martel didn't intervene. He didn't have to; he heard the clatter of steel thrown against stone and the wretched, torn out sob that meant anything, I'll do anything.

Misc
Other: Martel's previous game history comes from betenoire_rp.