underworldwars Application
~Player Information~
Name: Kristi
Personal Journal: likeabulldozer
Time zone: Central
Contact: [Email and AIM] writer@allengames.com rageiscute
Current Characters: [In the game] N/A
~Character Information~
Fandom: Morganville Vampires
Name: Myrnin
Age: [Apparent Age:] Mid to late 20's [Actual Age] Almost 1000
Canon Point: The end of the book “Ghost Town”
Is this character dead? He's a vampire so he's been dead nearly 1000 years but no he's not dead dead
History:
“I'll protect her with my last breath. Of course that doesn't mean much since I took my last breath before the Magna Carta was signed”
Myrnin is old. Really, really old. He was made a vampire by Amelie (or on her orders-canon is unclear about this) sometime before the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. Amelie has stated that Myrnin was entirely too brilliant to die. During his human life (and likely for many years after he was turned) he was Lord Myrnin of Conroy. While he was still human he was being driven mad by an unnamed disease that would have eventually killed him. Amelie preserved both his life-such as it is-and his brilliance by turning him. Myrnin is a genius scientist, alchemist and physicist.
During his long life, Myrnin has partied with Oscar Wilde, been familiar with the “original Goth Gang”--Lord Byron and the Shelleys-had a secret affair with Queen Elizabeth, the first one and he's been a key factor in Amelie's pet project, Morganville. Morganville is a small town in West Texas where in theory vampires and humans live peacefully together. Of course the vampires are in charge of the town. The theory doesn't work out terribly well most of the time. Myrnin's part in it is a machine he's been developing for 300 years named Ada. Ada is responsible for erecting invisible barriers around Morganville that keep people from leaving either through psychological means (confusing people, making them doubt themselves or just making them want to turn around) or through things like car accidents and engine failure. Ada is also responsible for an intradimensional portal system all over Morganville. Ada is a fascinating machine for many reasons. One of them being that the processor is a vampire brain-Ada, Myrnin's former assistant and lover. The machine is alive, sentient and through out canon increasingly bitter about her lot in life.
Ada is a complicated bit of Myrnin's history. She was his lab assistant and by his own admission one of the finest minds he has ever worked with. She loved him deeply and asked him to turn her. He did so, partially because he loved her but her intelligence and the desire to possess her played into his decision as well. A hundred years later when he was very ill he killed her. Even then he was unwilling to let her go which is how her brain came to be the processor for his machine.
The vampires in Morganville are sick (or they were), afflicted by an illness that's a bit like Alzheimer in humans. They can no longer create new vampires and they're slowly losing their minds, degenerating from civilized beings to animals. Myrnin's job in Morganville is to cure the vampires. The problem is, he's very sick himself. In two years he's killed five assistants but Amelie has given him a new assistant named Claire Danvers. Claire is brilliant and fearless and kind almost to a fault. She's also very patient with Myrnin. With her help he's able to cure the vampires before he completely loses it. They proceed to cure the rest of the vampires. Unfortunately during this time Amelie's father, Bishop, takes over and his reign is not pleasant. The humans suffer, the vampires suffer and Myrnin ends up working with Bishop at Amelie's behest. Bishop thinks Myrnin is loyal to him and Amelie knows otherwise. Bishop is playing the short game but Amelie and Myrnin excel at playing the long game. In the end Bishop is over thrown, the vampires are cured and life goes on as usual in Morganville.
Until Ada goes batshit insane, learns how to make herself solid, kidnaps Myrnin and tries to kill Claire. Claire is clever. She manages to save Myrnin, save herself and 'kill' Ada. Of course this means that Morganville is without it's primary defense and Amelie charges Myrnin with making certain that Claire helps build a new 'Ada' sans vampire brain. This is where things with Myrnin and Claire become complicated. Throughout Claire's tenure as his assistant Myrnin has begun developing feelings for her. He's denied these as she's human and some part of him is very much still in love with Ada. When enclosed with Claire for a long period of time, charged as her 'jailer', he begins to have problems denying his feelings for her and he supports her during her work/imprisonment, flirting with that line between Amelie's wishes and Claire's safety. In the end they successfully build a computer that is linked mystically to Myrnin's brain while it's still obviously in his skull.
This sounds like a fantastic solution but Myrnin isn't the most stable vampire in Morganville even after he's been cured. He never has been entirely stable. Things go awry. The entire town starts losing their memories and Myrnin becomes a ruthless, insane killer. Claire is among the few that aren't affected by memory loss so it's up to her to save the day and avoid getting killed by Myrnin once she's firmly on his radar. By the end of the ninth book she has saved the day along with some help. Myrnin is deeply penitent for what he's done and neither of them have resolved any of their feelings.
Also? Myrnin has a new computer with a new vampire brain and a secret only he and Claire share.
[Optional] Character Development and Relationship Transfer from previous RP:N/A
Personality:
Myrnin is a conflict of many things. First and foremost he's a genius that loves learning. He told Claire once “I never wanted to be a monster. I just wanted to learn forever”. This is the most succinct description of Myrnin I can give. He loves learning about anything but is biased toward the sciences. There are moments that he hates what he is. Myrnin doesn't hunt humans but he does drink blood from the blood bank. This doesn't mean that his hunting instinct is gone. He has to fight against it on a constant basis. Sometimes it's background noise and sometimes, when he's less than sane, it's at the forefront of his mind. Either way it makes him very aware that he's a monster and reminds him of all the horrible things he's done and the innocent people he's killed. Most of the time the guilt is manageable. He can function and even enjoy his unlife. However there are times it nearly crushes him. These times usually occur when he's hurt someone he cares about or that he's deemed innocent.
The next very important thing to understand about Myrnin is that he is mentally unstable. He has wild mood swings that aren't provoked by anything. Some days he's almost completely sane, if a bit eccentric. Other days he's completely unhinged; on these days he's dangerous and cruel. When he's sane he can be kind, very charming and funny. Regardless of what kind of day he's having, Myrnin is eccentric. He dresses oddly (cargo shorts, vest with no shirt, vampire bunny slippers and a 19th century frock coat, for example). He flits around from shiny thing to shiny thing like a racoon-the poster child for ADD even when he is working in his lab. He's horribly disorganized to the point that he can't even read his own notes much less find what he's looking for. He booby traps some of the boxes of memorabilia, experiments and notes with things like UV bombs. In some sense he hides things and booby traps them because he doesn't want others to find them for various reasons (dangerous, personal etc) but part of it is protecting those things from himself or vice versa. He comes up with theories that would be dangerous were he in an insane mood or he has memories that he'd rather keep packed up where he doesn't have to look at them every day.
Myrnin looks down on humans a bit as an inferior race. He doesn't dislike them but considers them to be very clever pets. He holds himself back from caring about them a bit because the last human he cared about was Ada whom he turned at her request so he could keep her forever. He loved her and a hundred years later he killed her (while she was a vampire). He lives with that guilt and by distancing himself from humans he tries to ensure it won't happen again. He's beginning to fall in love with Claire and that confuses him, disturbs him and throws him into a denial. Another reason he distances himself from humans is because of the things he has to do to survive. Myrnin is brilliant with strategy. He tells Claire often throughout the problems they have with Bishop that he is playing the long game (a chess reference) but in order to properly play the long game to win, pawns have to fall. Those pawns are usually humans and he has to be willing to give them up without hesitation. That's difficult when you care about the pawns in play.
Myrnin can be very petulant when he doesn't get his way. It's not a common occurrence because generally he's scary enough (powerful and insane is a bad combination) or charming enough to get his way but there are things he's not allowed; for example, he's not allowed out of Morganville. He's too unstable and too valuable to the town. On the rare occasion that Claire is allowed out of Morganville he's pouty, petulant and withdrawn about it.
Myrnin is powerful enough, old enough and scary enough (even without the insanity) to be the baddest vampire around. His personality often makes people think he's a fool and a fop. He's often very underestimated because of this. Myrnin is bad ass but he's confident enough in his bad ass-ery (it's a word I swear) that he doesn't feel the need to crow it from the roof tops. Or maybe he just gets distracted before he can crow. He does however expect to be obeyed when he speaks. Most of the time he employees charm to get people to obey him. Intimidation is usually his last resort unless he's having a bad day and then it's often something he uses even when he doesn't need to.
Skills/Abilities: He's a brilliant alchemist, steam punk engineer and has experience with neurological disorders. He's incredibly strong, wicked fast and he can mess with people's memories as well as compel them to feel or do things (although for some reason he doesn't often do either of the last two). He knows how to handle a sword and fares well in hand to hand combat
Weakness: Silver will weaken him. Enough of it will kill him. Stakes will paralyze him but not kill him (when they're removed he's old enough that mostly he's just pissed off) He is what Claire likes to call flame retardant but exposed to enough sunlight for long enough and he will burst into flame. He's unstable which means he might be an ideal General one day and a worthless mess or even a liability the next day. He has a very short attention span and rarely listens to anyone until they've earned his respect, something not entirely easy to do.
First Person Sample:
[Myrnin sits cross legged on the floor of the library. He's wearing a pair of cargo shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and a black velvet frock coat with lace along the lapels. His feet are bare and tucked beneath him. He flips through books, tossing them to the side in a gesture fraught with frustration]
Claire! Have you seen--
[That's when he peers at the device broadcasting video.]
Alright then...I suppose I do need a bit of assistance. [He leans over, rifles through the pile of books and holds up one: The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri] This is the popularly published one. There was another one; a banned copy. [He says this as if it is delightfully scandalous, voice silky and deep, eyebrows waggling a bit]
A bit of history for those victims of the public education system that may be in residence;Before Gutenberg's brilliant invention books were scribed by hand. Scribes attempted to be accurate but...they were human. [There's a bit of 'good puppy' tone to the word 'human'] In any case, I am looking for one of the early scribed copies. I would imagine of all places, this one might have what I'm looking for.
Third Person Sample:
Myrnin paces the outline of the trapdoor in the floor of his lab, his hand behind his back, an expression of befuddlement on his face. The last couple of weeks have given him a great deal to be befuddled about. If he's honest, and really Myrnin rarely is with himself, it started even before that.
Ada has been problematic for at least the last 30 years. It started as something he could deny, pushed back behind logical reasoning and necessity. He kept it cloaked in denial, insisting that Ada was just a machine, a very brilliant, very special machine but nothing more.
He was in denial.
The machine had been built to support Amelie's pet project. At least that is what is written in the books. The machine was really built to preserve what was left of Ada; the part of her he loved the best, her brain. The machine allowed Myrnin to keep Ada with him forever as he'd intended to when he turned her and it assuaged part of his guilt in killing her. The machine allowed Myrnin to live with the things he'd done. It was his penitence and he had hoped at one time it would be his redemption. The machine had also bought him a feeling of security and comfort. It hummed, glowing in the cavern beneath his lab and it had felt like Ada was close; as if she might step into the room at any moment.
Now, Ada is gone: really, truly gone and in her place is another machine that is just a machine. He has no attachment to the vampire brain that runs it: Frank Collins. It's almost a relief. He can ignore the conflicting feelings for Ada. He can lay his guilt to rest and just be an engineer, a scientist, an alchemist with a very brilliant machine. He doesn't feel the need to slip down the trap door and talk to Frank Collins. He doesn't feel the need to feed him his blood and there's nothing to make up to the man who chose this existence.
Of course the machine is just one source of his befuddlement.
He cares.
He cares about a human.
A very particular human; Claire.
He shouldn't. Make no mistake about that. The last human he cared for ended up a vampire then dead and later an integral part of the machine that once ran Morganville. All of this adds up to a very bad outlook for Claire and one that's not much better for him. He hasn't yet decided if she shares the same burgeoning, troubling feelings that he's struggling with. After all, she's got a human boyfriend and regardless of what she might feel for Myrnin, the human boyfriend-whom he can't stand-would be better for her because he's a vampire. More importantly he hasn't been human for several centuries. Regardless of how one clings to one's humanity, it's bound to slip away in bits and pieces. Any vampire who tells you differently is lying. A good deal of his affection for Ada was tied up with possession and how she could be of use to him. She was a brilliant mind; the most brilliant he'd ever seen outside of himself and losing her would have been inconvenient. It would have put his research, his project and Amelie's project back decades. Turning her was the obvious solution and if he dressed it in promises of forever and love well then...what was the harm in making both of them feel better. He did love her; he still does but it was and always would be tainted by the pragmatism that comes with immortality.
Unfortunately that is the road he is afraid he is going down with Claire but he's also...intrigued because Claire is stronger than Ada. She's more stubborn, more independent and within her he just might find redemption.