I’ve long promised that I’d prepare a chronological outline for the Morlock stories. Time and energy have been in short supply around here lately, though, so I commissioned my cousin, colleague, and frenemy Gabriel McNally (narrator of “A Stranger Comes to Town”) to supply the needful. I plan to include this in Evil Honey and Other Stories, but since publication of that volume has been delayed, I post it here, along with the note that came with it.
__________
Dear JE:
Attached is that thing you asked for: a somewhat chronological summary of Morlock’s career. On Joan’s advice, I cut out most of the stuff which was critical of you personally, and on my therapist’s advice I’d like to apologize for calling you in the middle of the night last week and leaving that long voicemail message—although I stand by the shorter one.
I really am trying to be a better person, but with assholes like you in the world it’s not very easy.
Regards,
Gabriel McNally, PhD
A Probable Outline of the Career of Morlock Ambrosius
Prologue: Pointing Out That This Is Pointless
The average adventurer, telling tales of a wild life at random, seldom follows any preordered plan, but narrates episodes widely separated by space and years as they occur to him.
—Robert E. Howard, letter to P.S. Miller
Creating a historical outline of legendary events is futile. I’ve tried to explain this to Enge over and over again, but he doesn’t seem to get it. It’s like trying to find the zipcode for Never-Never Land, or looking for Odysseus’ handle on Mastodon.
Enge always concedes this point and then (a classic Enge move) undercuts it. “We can’t know Heracles’ birthday, but we know it happened a couple of generations before Homer’s Trojan War. That’s the only way the stories work. Some things are undecidable, but other things can be settled by the internal logic of the legendarium.”
Since that is what Enge wants, and since he is paying me, and offering me a peer-reviewed publication (always assuming that he is in any significant sense my peer), that is what this is: a haphazard, debatable, and inconclusive attempt to chronologize the legends of Morlock Ambrosius, as Enge has fictionalized them so far, with a brief account of the sources on which his fictions are based.
If you think that will be of any use to you, please continue. But don’t feel as if you have to continue on my account. I’m an academic: I’m used to no one reading the things that I write.
I. The sources
The principal ones are the Khroic ekshalu edited and translated by the late H.N. Emrys or myself, supplemented by selections from von Brauch’s so-called Gray Book, and a few of the later recensions of Dwarvish epic. There are also a small number of first-person accounts of varying reliability. How any writer could conflate these scattered and inconsonant sources into a multibook series of fantasy novels, enriching himself off the labor of others, is beyond me.
II. A sort-of life
A. The hero’s conception is unusual, and other nonsense from the Raglan Scale
According to Dwarvish tradition (confirmed by at least one ekshal), Morlock’s parents were Merlin Ambrosius and Nimue Viviana. He was conceived, on Earth, in Britain, during the collapse of Roman power in western Europe some time in the 5th or 6th century A.D. (or C.E., if you prefer).
Merlin’s magical experiments in recrafting the history of Britain for his own purposes were deemed to be a danger to his homeland, the mysterious Wardlands that sprawl or sprawled over the western coast of Laent, a land in a different plenum from ours. Merlin and Nimue were arrested by an agent or member of the Graith of Guardians and brought back to the Wardlands for trial. While they were there, Nimue gave birth to Morlock. After his birth, an attempt was made to kill him; he was rescued, and raised by his foster father in a far country. I suppose that should be in quotation marks, since it is a pretty close paraphrase of certain passages from Baron Raglan’s The Hero (1931)—much like the opening sections of Enge’s A Guile of Dragons.
(circa 500 A.D.)
A Guile of Dragons: (Chapters 1-5)
B. Morlock Guardian
The first stage of Morlock’s career for which we have direct evidence (apart from references in the legendarium of his birth-father, Merlin) is his career in the Graith of Guardians. For reasons that are not clear, and about which Enge speculates wildly in his mythological fiction, Morlock followed in his disgraced father’s footsteps and became a member of that self-selecting order, dedicated to defending the borders of the Wardlands. (See Enge’s A Guile of Dragons and some of the stories listed below for fictionalized versions of these legends.)
Morlock served with distinction in the Graith of Guardians for about a century (in Laentian years). He married well (to another Guardian, Aloê Oaij) and played a crucial role in preventing the destruction of his world at the hand of the Sunkillers, a nonbiological species from a segment of the plenum north of Laent. (See Enge’s Wrath-Bearing Tree and The Wide World’s End for this part of Morlock’s career.)
in roughly chronological order
(beginning around New Moorhope Year 2600, ending before N.M.Y. 2750)
A Guile of Dragons: (Chapter 6 through the Epilogue)
C. Morlock Exile
“History does not repeat, but it rhymes.” Morlock Ambrosius, like Merlin Ambrosius before him, was exiled from the Wardlands. Both men were gifted makers of magical artifacts; they were both famous or infamous warriors and seers. But the younger man clearly showed his weaker character by taking to drink after his exile. Legends of his deeds or misdeeds in this disgraceful period are pretty numerous, and some contradict each other. But for centuries he wandered the “unguarded lands” (the Wardic term for any place not under the guard of their Graith). Enge has retold some of these stories (see below for a list); it’s clear that more remain to be discovered and retold.
Morlock was involved in the war of succession in the Neo-Ontilian Empire that brought Lathmar VII the Builder to the imperial throne. (See Enge’s Blood of Ambrose.) He certainly played some role in the self-destruction of Valona’s Brood in the Blackthorn Mountains, a fact which gives him a somewhat ambiguous status in Khroic religion. (See H.N. Emrys’ edition of New Prophecies of Valona Restored, and Enge’s This Crooked Way.) Archaeological evidence (mostly inscriptions found in the ruins of the werewolf city of Old Wuruyaaria) makes it clear that Morlock intervened decisively in the war between the Strange Gods of the Coranians and the werewolf god-hero, Ghosts-in-the-Eyes. (See Enge’s The Wolf Age.)
Enge and some others believe that this was a transformative experience and that Morlock overcame his dependency on drink at this time. I find that unlikely. But it is certain that we see a more focused and even more deadly Morlock in the period of his late exile.
in roughly chronological order,
(beginning around New Moorhope Year 2750, ending around N.M.Y. 3260)
“The Cage at the End of the World”
This Crooked Way (an episodic novel which includes “Blood from a Stone”, “Payment Deferred”, “Turn Up This Crooked Way”, “An Old Lady and a Lake”, “The Lawless Hours”, “Payment in Full”, “Destroyer”, “Whisper Street”, “Traveller’s Dream”, “Where Nurgnatz Dwells”, “Spears of Winter Rain”)
“Beasts of the Bluestone Hills”
“Sky Pirates of the Savage Clouds”
“The Venomous Sands of Amas Lamaar”
4. Gaps and Chronological Difficulties
Interplenar travel, like faster-than-light travel, can create intractable chronological difficulties. There is the danger of becoming trapped in a causal loop, for instance—a fairly severe danger. (Consult the career of Oedipus for one example of how destructive these loops can be.)
Morlock has travelled widely among the plena; in the idiom of Laent he has “travelled on the Sea of Worlds”, where one moves through time as well as space. This makes some of his stories hard to fit into a chronological series. In the events that Enge fictionalizes in “Pool of Memory”, he encounters an entity which appears to be travelling from another plenum. In “Masks of Silence” the situation is more extreme, and Ambrosii of different timelines come dangerously into contact. The circumstances of “A Stranger Comes to Town” are even more bewildering, as Morlock finds himself drawn into the world where his mother was born (Earth), approximately fifteen-hundred years after he himself was born. This story is part of a larger narrative, which Enge has been misguided in publishing as a standalone story, but it’s to be hoped that he will soon meet his responsibilities and deliver the complete narrative.
There are significant gaps in Enge’s version of the Ambrosian legendarium. We know that, during his later exile, Morlock returned to the Wardlands and confronted Rulgân Silverfoot in the Northhold. We know that he travelled widely in Qajqapca and even passed the southern or fiery boundary of his world there. And there are the events surrounding the Unguarding of the Wardlands and the last period of Morlock’s exile, although it’s possible that this story may be beyond Enge’s narrative powers. Still, he’s a man who can surprise me sometimes. It wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong about him.
Gabriel McNally, Ph.D.
Permanent Visiting Professor of Ambrosian Legend
Department of English, Languages, and Folklore (ELF)
The University of Mackinac
Mackinac, MI