Evil Elvar
The Evil Elvar, Ronan or Lord Roke archetype was a stock style of character that Kerry liked to use as anti-heroes or villains. In Glastieven mythology, Evil Elvar was associated with Clockpunk BHH, part of the Starlight Cycle. The most developed instances of the archetype were Kerry's characters in two Amino roleplays created by Cat that were related to the mythology but not part of its canon — Ronan O'Malley in the Butterfly Circus and Lord Loclan Jarlath Tadhg Ó Roke (Lord Roke) in the Kingdom of Posea.
"Evil Elvar" references Elvar Murchaidh, Kerry's key character in Maisraln. As Elvar was one of the first roleplaying characters Kerry created, for the Order of the Tachi rather than Maisraln, in the early stage of creating his later characters he would often define them in relation to Elvar, e.g. Cathal Sior began as "Drunk Elvar". The archetype is not actually very related to the Maisraln character, and for that reason it is arguably more accurate to call it the "Ronan archetype", though this references a character from outside the mythology's canon.
The character Aodhán in Kingfisher is an instance of the Evil Elvar archetype, albeit with some Mark Haloran mixed in.
Ronan's backstory[edit | edit source]
He was born on a barge in a place where wealthy aristocratic women were basically sent to quietly be pregnant and have officially non-existent children while their husbands/fathers told everyone they were on holiday
His mother stayed with him for long enough after he was born that she told him stories about where he had come from, though mostly he remembered them being re-told to him by those around him rather than actually remembering his mother, who then died/left/he doesn't know when he was 5
He grew up as a kid believing that his mother had been a wealthy aristocrat, almost a princess (not true - she had been aristocrat, but from a minor family in financial decline mostly clinging to their prestige) and that his father had been one of the last Irish/Gaelic travelling lords, leading a band of Robin Hood type men who were what remained of a lost social order
As a teenager he became more cynical and started to mentally translate the stories about his mother into "failing minor aristocrat" and his father into "powerful Irish bandit captain who gave himself affected Gaelic airs"
Defined by this cynicism, he ended up being manipulated by a random highwayman who claimed to be his father
This guy trained him to be a thief, stole from him while he slept, and when Ronan fell in love with a moderately wealthy landlord's daughter and started to improve his situation, his so-called "father" tried to cut him for the coat on his back, and a watch he had been given by his mother In the end he ran away and found that he had enough travellers' cant and charm to blag his way into a travelling circus
As he imagined his own father might once have done, he started dressing himself up with airs, calling himself Lord Roke and developing a combined knife-throwing and acrobatics act
He ended up in love with another performer, and all was fairly well until he accidentally killed her on stage being too reckless In the end, he changed his appearance, went back to the peasant name "Ronan", and ended up travelling in a neighboring land with a much smaller circus, drinking heavily, always performing a crap act that everyone knew was below his skill, and trying not to think about his past
(Within the RP, as designed by someone else, the small circus he ended up at was run by a sadistic ringmistress who liked to play mind games with people and put them in the lion cage as a punishment)