(2017) Elvar Murchaidh

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Elvar Murchaidh is the 127th Hermadiúir. Born in Víthurkenning, he became the Hermadiúir-in-Waiting aged fourteen and became part of the Márchomráth, being recognised as a notably skilled preceptive mage and a proficient warrior-mage, in training with the rest of the group, and becoming romantically involved with the apprentice Guardian of the North, Lirael Eldingar. Aged seventeen, he left Víthurkenning to begin duties as the Hermadiúir, along with the rest of the Five Great Mages. As well as his skills in preceptive magic, Elvar is also a relatively skilled unbounded mage, and a skilled non-magical fighter, although he is more defensive than attacking.

Biography[edit | edit source]

Elvar was born into the Áitmastath, a tribe in Víthurkenning. He learned preceptive magic from his father, being a moderately proficient mage by the time he was fourteen. A week after his fourteenth birthday, he was seen by the Sjándé - a woman with the power to see important events in the magical field, to a limited extent into the future as well as the present - as the Hermadiúir, and moved to live with the Márchomráth and train to become the Hermadiúir, as well as a powerful warrior-mage.

Elvar spent three years living with the Márchomráth, which included private training once a week from the incumbent Hermadiúir, Aodhán Kennari. Elvar became a powerful preceptive mage, and fulfilled ordinary fighting and guard duties along with the rest of the group, becoming a proficient warrior-mage and non-magical warrior. A few months into living with the Márchomráth, he developed a romantic interest in the daughter of the Sjándé, Eithne, and they were romantically together for seven months, before breaking up. After breaking up with Eithne, he became closer friends with the other warriors and mages his age, and after several months, fell in love with the apprentice Guardian of the North, Lirael Eldingar, and the two became romantically involved with each other.

When Elvar was seventeen, the Sjándé became unexpectedly ill. This was considered a major event, as usually the Sjándé foresaw their own illnesses or deaths and were able to put together plans for the immediate future, including warning the tribe of their illness or death several weeks ahead of time. A few days afterwards, Eithne informed Elvar that her mother wished to speak with him in his capacity as the Hermadiúir-in-Waiting. He was informed by the Sjándé that all six of the Great Mages had died in the same event in attempting to contain a threat, which they had succeeded in repulsing but not completely mitigating. She told him that he should urgently meet with the other Great Mages in Waiting to inform of both the news and the danger. However, she was unable to give him any more information than this.

Immediately taking action, Elvar sent a messenger from Víthurkenning to Ardalbrück to alert the Bynmidelle-in-Waiting, ROBERT'SNAME, and travelled in person to Lonaoiisil and alerted the Ramaloce Heru-in-Waiting, Gawyn Harowcal, and they met with the Helundtu-in-Waiting, Lyra Felise, the BEN'STITLE, BEN'SNAME, and the Bynmidelle-in-Waiting, the five of them performing the official ceremony to become the Five Great Mages.

Physical appearance[edit | edit source]

Elvar is tall, pale-skinned, thin, fairly physically weak and ginger-haired. He has a fairly angular face, with a defined jawline and high cheekbones, although he has a skin colour that varies from pallid and greenish to noticeably pale cream. His hair is a ginger-brown colour, and like most people's from Víthurkenning is short-ish and fairly messy/spiky-looking. On occasion, he wears a deep blue tricorne with a scattered stars pattern the same as the distinctive clothes of the Thoilúhlitha.

Elvar only has a limited number of outfits, deliberately choosing to have a distinctive style so he is recognisable as the Hermadiúir. ordinarily, he wears the same style of clothes as the rest of the Márchomráth: a white or deep blue shirt; a black or dark brown overcoat with two deep front pockets; walking boots and military-esque trousers. He wears a longer overcoat than many of his fellows, one that falls to behind his knees, and has a bandolier of guns strapped across his front. Also underneath his overcoat, he carries a sword that he can pull out from the front with relative ease.

Aside from his ordinary clothing, which he calls Hermadiúir Uniform, Elvar also owns an outfit of the Royal Court, which he inherited from Aodhán Kennari, which he has only ever worn twice; when trying it on, and begrudgingly at his first meeting of the Márchomráth's council (from that point onwards he wore his Hermadiúir Uniform anyway). He also owns an outfit with a white or deep blue collared shirt, black trousers, a cutaway lounge suit-style jacket and sometimes a deep blue tricorne with a scattered stars pattern (the same pattern as that on the clothes of the Thoilúhlitha), which he nicked out of the Royal Court uniform. He only wears the latter outfit alone with Lirael Eldingar.

Personality and traits[edit | edit source]

Elvar is a natural leader, full of passion and charisma, and projects authority in a way that draws crowds together behind a common goal. One of his main talents is an ability to inspire others to achieve and to do good in the world; he values authenticity, concern and altruism, unafraid to stand up and speak when he feels something needs to be said. Characterised by an often ruthless level of rationality, Elvar uses drive, determination, psychological understanding and occasionally manipulation, and high intelligence and quick thinking to achieve goals. These goals, which are rationally ordered and determined in a given situation, almost always relate to his role as Hermadiúir, a job he takes very seriously. His ability to complete these goals, which stems from excellent magical and fighting abilities, as well as intelligence, is something he has earned through hard work, and Elvar has strong opinions on the importance of work ethic and teams.

Elvar's main weaknesses are intolerance of other ideas that distract from his aims, whether or not these aims are stated, even more so of ideas based on emotional considerations; impatience with people less quick-thinking and misinterpreting contemplation as stupidity or disinterest; poor handling of strong emotions, more his own than other peoples; ruthlessness in pursuing a goal, dismissing circumstances, sensitivities, and preferences as irrational and irrelevant to defeating an evil or winning a battle; overly idealistic, feeling more pity for opposition to his principles than anger, earn a reputation of naïveté or arrogance with people who misunderstand him; a desperation to help everyone to the point of being spread too thin, and unable to help anyone; and fluctuating self-esteem, as he, unfortunately, defines his self-esteem by whether he is able to live up to his extremely demanding ideals, and asks for criticism more out of insecurity than out of confidence, always wondering what he could do better.

Although he is sometimes perceived as dominant, relentless, and unforgiving - especially by those who end up on the wrong end of his arguing abilities - he isn't actually cold-hearted or vicious, it’s more that he genuinely enjoys the challenge of argument that comes from this environment, and if the other side can’t keep up, that’s no reason for him to fold on his own core tenet of ultimate victory - although if he can see he is hurting someone's feelings, he will nearly always restrain himself. When unrestrained, he will intellectually fall upon people with crushing force, and with weaker people at least it can only take a few minutes for them to give up on their original aim. When fighting a serious evil or threat, Elvar doesn’t care who or what gets in his way. When he’s on a mission, he’ll stoop to the lowest possible means to get what he wants. It doesn’t even matter if this aspect of the mission is especially vital; whatever Elvar wants, he damn sure intends to get and is tough, cynical, and aggressive in argument when he rarely agrees to un-restrain himself. However, when not just trying to win, but rather to control, Elvar can easily see people’s motivations and seemingly disconnected events and is able to bring these ideas together and communicate them as a common goal with an eloquence that is nothing short of mesmerising.

The interest he has in others is genuine, almost to a fault – when he believes in someone, Elvar can become too involved in the other person’s problems and place too much trust in them. Luckily, this trust tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as his altruism and authenticity inspire those he cares about to become better themselves. But on occasion, he can overextend said optimism, sometimes pushing others further than they’re ready or willing to go. He is vulnerable to another emotional issue as well: he has a tremendous capacity for reflecting on and analyzing his own feelings and behavior with a chilling level of logic and detachment, but when he gets too caught up in another people's issues, he can develop a sort of emotional hypochondria, seeing other people’s problems in himself, trying to fix something in that isn’t wrong.

Generally, however, Elvar is powerful alone and a force of nature within an appropriate team. Despite an occasional tendency to control other people a little too much, his eloquence and mesmerising speaking capacity, his manipulative and undefeatable argument and psychological abilities and his quick problem-solving skills, balanced out by an understanding of other people's emotions, if not his own, make him, in the correct circumstances, unstoppable. However, without more meaningful relationships alongside the controlling ones he believes he values, Elvar will over-analyse himself, have dangerously fluctuating self-confidence, and be lonely or unhappy but see it is either immoral or weak and irrational to express this meaningfully.

Abilities and skills[edit | edit source]

As the Hermadiúir, Elvar is a powerful preceptive mage, a skilful warrior-mage and a moderately skilled unbounded mage. He also has excellent defensive fighting abilities, able to dodge most attacks and react quickly, and is also fairly skilled in attack, being a good swordsman and having precise aim with guns and spears. Hand-to-hand, he knows some martial art-esque combat skills but is more likely to attempt to tire out his opponent using defence. He is also intelligent and good at problem-solving, and has a tendency to see complicated problems, especially ones with little information to work with, and psychological ones as purely rational in nature, and is difficult to manipulate or trick. However, in the rare cases where he is wrong, the resulting consequences and flawless-sounding logical justifications can be very dangerous or destructive.

Despite his proficient magical and non-magical fighting abilities, Elvar prefers to use his superior intelligence during combat, exploiting his environment to turn the tables on his adversaries whilst using his quick reactions and powerful magic to maintain a strong defence. He will often use strategies of non-violent, manipulative negotiation and turning his enemies against each other, and likes to invoke parleys to tempt enemies away from their murderous intentions, encouraging them to see the bigger picture. Sometimes he will use meaningless wordplay to confuse enemies (e.g. "a million needles are more powerful than one sword"), although normally his arguments rely on a mixture of subconscious emotional appeals and a series of logical statements presented as inexorable foundations for an emotional argument. Elvar is nearly impossible to defeat in an argument, having learned these skills from a young age.

However, when negotiating, manipulation or rational strategies fail, Elvar is also a strong fighter. When fighting non-magically, he uses his quick reactions; precise aim with guns and spears; skilled swordsmanship; and quick-minded intelligence to defeat without killing his enemies. When magically, he will generally use forceful light magic to overwhelm his enemies, although he is a follower of Equalism and does not have any moral opposition to using dark magic. In both fighting types, he will focus on dodging or magically defending against attacks, in the hope of tiring out his enemies to make them easier to defeat or able to be tempted into listening to a negotiating strategy.

Outside of fighting, Elvar's magic is powerful enough to allow him to do many things usefully. The extent of his unbounded magic is limited, although he can consistently perform communication spells on two objects that allow them to be used as telephones (when combined with the Bynmidelle's ability to entangle two objects, this can also be used to send images, and even spells; and he can perform some simpler unbounded magic spells, such as animal necromancy, or powerful but uncontrolled bursts of either light or dark magic. His preceptive magic is far stronger, and Elvar can perform a variety of simpler, useful spells, including transfiguration spells to create money, nourishment spells to replace food, and weakening or strengthening charms on substances such as alcohol, amongst a wide variety of other spells; and also a fairly large array of complicated preceptive magic, including advanced weather manipulation, detecting for people in large areas, imprisoning without killing unbounded magic entities (this one relies upon creating a small pocket of preceptive-field free magical space, surrounded by powerful binding magic) and powerful fighting spells, attacking and defensive.

Possessions[edit | edit source]

Elvar carries few possessions with him outside of Víthurkenning and goes to lengths to avoid packing heavy; for example, he usually uses tiring and complicated sustenance magic rather than carrying food. This is partially due to his agile nature, particularly in fighting, and his need to be able to react and move quickly, however, it is also partially because he still regards Víthurkenning as his home and does not like the idea of becoming nomadic or carrying personal possessions with him.

Normally, Elvar carries with him six 8-inch flintlock pistols, in holsters fastened to bandolier across his chest; a light-metal sabre infused with preceptive magic; and a bundle of small spears tipped with a streamline glass compartment that contains a restrained unbounded magical spirit that, when the glass is shattered, will instantly die, releasing a powerful burst of raw magic. He also wears a small steel pendant amulet, around 1cm by 2cm, engraved with a decorative pattern and infused with an unbounded magic communicative charm that uses his energy - the pendant was made and given to him by Lirael Eldingar, and the charm was the first piece of unbounded magic he ever successfully performed.

Elvar also has a five-inch, sharp knife, which he carries in the pocket of his overcoat and uses as a general implement.

Relationships[edit | edit source]

Eithne (daughter of the Sjándé)[edit | edit source]

Eithne, daughter of the Sjándé, was Elvar's first romantic partner. The two first met each other in Elvar's first evening after joining the Márchomráth, with Eithne initially ignoring Elvar. However, by the middle of the next day, by being placed in the same vinnópuibre, the two had begun to develop what Elvar assumed would become a relatively close friendship. Eithne quickly developed a romantic interest in Elvar, although she decided not to express it.

Being a skilled thought-mage, Eithne initially intended to magically spell Elvar into reciprocating her feelings. However, she discovered that his logical thought processes mostly stopped her magic from working; this only deepened her feelings for him, and in turn, her understanding of his thought processes led to him trusting her with his emotional side, which compounded her existing attraction to him. Over the next month, Elvar slowly developed the beginnings of a reciprocal interest in Eithne, before discovering that she too liked him (although he may have underestimated the scale of the difference between her infatuation and his mild interest) and agreeing to start dating one another.

In the beginning, at least, the relationship was fairly well-matched. Elvar had what appeared to be an intuitive understanding of Eithne, although she significantly underestimated the extent to which this was built on logic and instead determined it to be love, whilst Elavr valued the alluring and mysterious aspects of her entierly-emotionally-driven personality. Both of them also valued the other's role within the relationship framework, with Eithne trusting Elvar's reason and stability to counteract her own whimsical nature and fulfil her desire for emotional security, and Elvar being able to anchor his self-esteem in his ability to maintain a romantic relationship, rather than on his day-to-day ability to achieve his ambitious goals.

Eithne, socially valued authenticity and trust, and to that end acted in a reserved, cautious manner because she had become instinctively wary of quickly placing her trust in someone, and despite her skills in thought-magic she was particularly scared of having her trust broken and had developed a lack of confidence in people as a whole because of it: for most people, this would have been a flaw, but Elvar found her loyalty and her commitment to living a principled life incredibly inspiring and admirable, which encouraged him to trust and respect her and thereby restore her faith in other people, meaning she attributed at least an aspect of her ingratiating nature to Elvar himself.

Additionally, Eithne wanted incredible depth in all relationships, friendly or otherwise, and surprisingly was actually quite willing to be open-minded romantically and sexually provided doing so didn't compromise her admittedly quite complicated values - in simpler terms, her capacity (and desire) for fiery, intensely romantic relationships was definitely visible beneath the surface, no matter how hard she tried to hide it, but it was much easier for Elvar to see using logical character analysis, and despite hiding it, Eithne was incredibly happy to be placed in a situation in which her desires could be realised without compromising her reputation as moral, reclusive and introverted.

Lastly, living in Víthurkenning, Eithne often craved a modicum of security and stability in life (both emotionally, as is relevant to the relationship, and materially, covered in her main article), because with her desire to emotionally provide for others she also want to be provided for and genuinely accepted for who she was. Interestingly, because she also highly valued her individuality and ability to control herself, it created internal conflict for her when viewing others - she didn't want to seem clingy and desperate, but at the same time wanted to cling desperately and love like there's nothing else in the world that matters. Luckily, this fitted in well with Elvar's own insecurities as been seen as 'leading' the relationship (despite this ironically being part of what Eithne valued in it) and his desire to base his self-confidence on something less transient than his own achievements.

From Elvar's perspective, he valued a lot of the same things in his personal relationships - authenticity, loyalty, intensity, open-mindedness and intelligence - as Eithne, whilst providing enough difference to be interesting. However, his outward appearance seemed to speak to the contrary - he had large circles of "friends" (who were in most cases merely minions he planned on directing in some way to assist him in accomplishing his objectives), he tended to be oblivious to a lot of emotional cues in social interactions - sometimes deliberately, and he seemed coldly intellectual to the outside world. In actuality, however, he had a very small number of very close friends, including Eithne before the relationship, whom he would actually confide in - most of his "friends" knew only what he thought he needed them to know for them to stay on his side. His trust was incredibly difficult to earn, but he rewarded those who earned it with steadfast loyalty, which was exactly what Eithne both valued and had come to believe did not exist.

Socially speaking, though he nearly always attended big events with many people and appeared to have a good time, he was actually very distant from the social scene - it only had utility to him in its maintenance of his strategic relationships. He went to "be seen" or "make the rounds." In fact, despite being extroverted, Elvar would usually prefer to be on his own and doing something productive, such as practising magic. This made Eithne see him as intelligent, and it also made their deep, trusting relationship more important for Elvar to satisfy his extroversion without the boredom and stress associated with managing one of his traditional social circles.

Finally, as for his cold, intellectual nature, he was actually a generally emotional person but had developed the capacity to ignore it temporarily, usually to his own detriment. Ergo, a relationship with Eithne, who provided him with an open trust relationship in which to anchor self-esteem, pour in emotions and trust and receive uncorrupted love back, seemed like a good idea to his logical mind, and to Eithne provided her with a self-esteem boost from feeling special, as "she alone was permitted" to see inside Elvar's mind and be a part of his emotional world.

Despite being reasonably well-matched towards the beginning, the relationship quickly began to deteriorate. Elvar, through his extensive self-review and analysis, decided that some of his more manipulative tendencies were negative (although this was a correct judgement to an extent, the methodology was in fact flawed; the 'emotional hypochondria' of projecting other people's traits on to himself combined with anchoring his self-esteem and trust in a single relationship with a more emotional - and ironically somewhat manipulative herself - person, had backfired in spectacular fashion, and he now was judging himself against Eithne's moral criteria, which surprisingly enough devalued him considerably) and decided to do something about it by dissolving his circle of not-particularly-close friends and focussing entirely on Eithne. Meanwhile, Elvar's emotional upheaval upset the stability Eithne had found in him, and she started wishing he would always stay the same, which was directly contrary to Elvar's personality, which involved constant change and development. This balance of dependency, from Eithne loving Elvar more to vice versa, would be the beginning of the end for them.

As Eithne grew away from Elvar, he noticed the decreasing amount of romantic contact in the relationship and made the judgement that it was irreversibly likely to end and that the best decision to make was to end it himself in a way that would make her remember the ending as much as the start and reflect well on him. This was a strange decision, but makes sense when you consider the mixed set of criteria for making it: Elvar was generally extremely rational and was able to determine easily that the relationship was going to end and compute a rough timeframe for how to spin it to his own advantage, which was a fairly natural instinct for him; he was still unaware of it but was using moral criteria inherited from Eithne herself, and determined that being remembered as positive, a view which perhaps unfortunately complimented his natural tendency towards spin, was a priority; lastly, he still had lingering and uncharacteristically intense feelings for her, and although he was able to plan and analyse with a chilling level of detachment, when it came to executing the plan he was impacted by an extreme sadness at the termination of the relationship, despite it being him who - in technical terms at least - triggered it.

Their breakup, took the form of Elvar tricking Eithne into telling her friends she was leaving Elvar because she realised she was below him, and that her lingering feelings were enough to justify that. Elvar went to one of the younger members of the tribe - Einar Euphorbia (who somewhat disliked Eithne) and told him what he intended Eithne to say, except for the aspects regarding her managing the break-up and about her lingering feelings for him, and when he asked why he was being told, Elvar pretended to be honest and claimed that he and Eithne had been discussing the issue and had come to the conclusion that they should break up for that reason. When Einar pressed further, Elvar admitted that they wanted to break up quietly in the short term, but that they knew the reason would be found out anyway, so they were telling him - who Elvar said "was, no offence, probably only listened to by three twelve-year-olds and a teddy bear" - so that if anyone asked why they hadn't been told, Eithne could claim full transparency and say "look, we even told him". Elvar's plan worked as he had planned: Einar was a little offended about being called unimportant and wanted to "prove Elvar wrong", and he was also aware he was sitting on fairly big news, so he decided to do what he believed was an intelligent double-cross and told everyone.

Elvar asked his friends to just bring up the conversation topic once or twice, but it was needless - by the next morning, everyone was talking about how Eithne had walked away from Elvar because she thought he was too good for her, and to any groups of people who might have turned aginst Elvar had they known he had leaked it to damage Eithne, he simply claimed that Einar had double-crossed him (which was an unconvincing lie, but a difficult one to disprove). Eithne, in an attempt at a defence, decided to try to claim Elvar - who she still had feelings for - had stitched her up with an intricate plot to humiliate her. Elvar simply claimed that of course she would say that and play for sympathy now that "their plan" had backfired, and that she likely wanted to use her remaining feelings for him as a long-term defence.

After their breakup, Elvar and Eithne mostly stopped talking. Although about six months after the incident Eithne would have been happy to become friends with Elvar again, by this point he was already being significantly influenced by Lirael Eldingar, who probably uncoincidentally disliked Eithne and discouraged Elvar from speaking to her.

Lirael Eldingar[edit | edit source]