Marlowe
From Changeling Venue
| Seeming | Fairest Muse |
|---|---|
| Court | Autumn Court •• |
| Freehold | The Freehold of Seattle |
| Player | mailto:jascarl@gmail.com |
Contents |
Overview
Alias(es): Bitterblade
Real Name: Alan Morland
Age:Appears to be in his late 30s or early 40s
Location: Seattle
Virtue: Hope
Vice: Pride
Concept: Embittered playwright struggling to remember and recreate the magical glories of Faerie as a defense against the Gentry. .
Entitlement:
Physical description:
Mask: A tall man in his late thirties or early forties, he cuts a distinguished figure in well-tailored tweed jackets and fashionable accoutrements, almost always in shades of gray, brown or black. Seldom seen without a pen and book at hand, most presume him to be a successful academic. He often wears a sprig of autumn leaves as a boutoniniere, a mark of his court affiliation.
Mien: Marlowe's Mien looks much like his Mask: perhaps a little taller, a little more refined and confident, but very similar. The biggest difference is a dramatic scar that bleeds metallic silver, rust and black, curling upward from his right eye to his hairline—a souvenir of the disaster that was Adamant's Folly in 1999-makes for a striking reminder that this sardonic changeling is capable of more than just wordplay.
Mantle: Autumn leaves appear randomly in his clothing and hair, while tendrils of light, chill mist trail his footfalls, curling silently around his feet as he walks.
Relevant Mechanics:
Character Livejournal:
Character Information
Known History
Basic Timeline: Born 1956; Taken 1989; Escaped 2002
Current Activities: “The purpose of the theatre, like magic, like religion, is to inspire cleansing awe. And fear.” –David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife
Marlowe, as he calls himself now—fully mindful of that writer’s untimely and tragic end—still writes plays. But he's no longer a misunderstood hack: his experiences in Faerie, though poorly remembered, granted him the spark of talent he'd been lacking. At his theatre, The Quill, Marlow pens and directs strange, outré and even macabre plays: one Changeling has called it "a beautiful and terrible fey Grand Guignol." Some of his works might even be called cautionary theatrical nightmares, intended to warn mortals about the dangers of the True Fae and Arcadia, or plays with themes that are based on what he and other Lost believe they remember from their time in Arcadia. And once a year, on or about the date of Adamant's Folly, he stages a new work that is always a disguised representation of that terrible event, as a warning and reminder for the city's Lost.
Marlowe is also convinced that if he can remember exactly how to lace his words with the Fae's magic as he did in Arcadia, he will be able to turn his plays into magical rituals that may offer new and subtle ways to defend the freehold and the Lost against their former masters. In this cause he labors on behalf of the Autumn Court. So far, his labors have yielded little in the way of practical results.
His theatre has its devotees, however few and eccentric they may be, and from these he takes the Glamour he needs. From among them occasionally he finds a genuine talent to inspire, though their best work is always done as his apprentice. Most of the audiences at his plays are mortals, but from time to time other changelings come to see his works, especially the plays about Seattle's ill-fated march on Arcadia. An occasional few even participate, on or behind the stage.
Merit Details:
Background:
“The playwright is a madman lost in adventure.” –Paul Verlaine
Once upon a time there was an overpaid drama instructor at a small and overpriced community college in New England, the kind with tuition fees far in excess of its actual academic merit. He also fancied himself a dramatist and wrote a number of plays, but couldn't recognize the fact that he was actually rather talentless. To his confusion and irritation, audiences failed continuously to understand his work while the critics savaged his efforts. Naturally he took his frustrations out on his students, abusing his authority to belittle those he found dull, mock those he found awkward, and seduce those he found desirable. For those who possessed any genuine talent he reserved his most withering attacks. It was a self-serving existence of which he was smugly fond.
He doesn't remember being abducted, but he remembers his Keeper, the bizarre and terrifying Master of Revels, a temperamental despot who delighted in staged spectacles, the more opulently decadent the better. The Master compelled him to write plays, and taught him the secret of infusing the written word with Fae magic to create dramas, tragedies and comedies that resonated on an emotional level never seen in the waking world. Best of all, the actors in his plays—other changeling slaves laboring for the Master's amusement—experienced genuinely whatever he wrote for their characters. Sometimes they died on stage, perishing as did their characters did, because that is what he wrote.
In his pride he dismissed his increasingly monstrous acts as inconveniences. What were the injuries or even the lives of other, lesser, changeling slaves if they had to suffer to serve his art? For it was art, true art, the art denied to him as a mortal. He remembers that his best works were lavish and terrifying beyond measure, combining beauty and horror to his Keeper's taste: they made the greatest productions of Broadway and the West End seem like crude puppet shows in comparison. Alan’s pride grew like a poisonous pearl as he basked in the applause of his Keeper and his guests, more Fae whom invited specifically to be entertained. He was, he believed, kissed by the divine.
Then it all went bad, as of course it must, when the words and the plays got away from him and began to take on lives of their own. The things he put on stage began to stalk him; the changelings who died in his dramas started to haunt his dreams. In desperation his mind conjured up hazy memories of the comfortable life he'd known before—perhaps he'd been a petty tyrant, but at least he'd written plays only to please himself and not for the alien amusement of the Others or to cause deliberate injury. Surely that was better? He heard the call of his old life from across the Hedge, and had the good sense to seek it before it was too late.
During his escape from Faerie he became entangled completely in the thorns of the Hedge. Near death, he was found and rescued by another escapee who risked her life to free him, remaining with him for hours (maybe days, neither of them is certain) and separating the thorns from his clothes and flesh with her bare hands. They journeyed together after that, finding their way back to the real world barely in possession of their lives and faculties.
Eventually he abandoned his old life to his fetch, who had become a newspaper drama critic renowned for his bland taste. Denied his former life he went west, assuming a new identity and coming eventually to Seattle, a city with a thirst for the kind of theatre he could now offer. During the ill-fated march on Arcadia that sent so many Seattle changelings to their deaths in the late 1990s, he was as caught up in the moment as everyone else, convinced that the meager powers he'd learned could help make a difference in the battle. Like the others who participated he was horribly wrong, and still struggles to come to terms with his own complicit guilt in that incident.
Motley
Allies
Padma, who saved him from the thorns
Jamilah Rose, who worked at The Quill for about a year before disappearing
Coal, who sometimes works security at The Quill
Mira Blade, who crafts props for the theatre's productions
Enemies
Character Inspirations
Christopher Marlowe, David Mamet, Tom Stoppard, Alan Aykbourn – dramatists
Athos, the poet-swordsman of The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas (and particularly the Oliver Reed performance in Richard Lester’s magnificent 1973 film version of the novel; if you haven't watched it yet, what on earth are you waiting for?)
Soundtrack
Written in Blood - She Wants Revenge
Quotes
We mine the soul for the truth of fear.
The theatre is an empty box, and it is our job to fill it with ecstasy and fury! We can wield power here. We can kindle hope, inspire love, fuel anger...and provoke fear.
