Menu Close

Mordecai

Here’s a little mood music, folks:

Mordecai Abraham Eidel b. March 30, 1319. Mordecai lives in Hyacinth’s boarding house in Room 102, with Erik. He is a red-skinned innate magic user, or colored person, and Erik’s unofficial adoptive uncle. For money, he plays music on street-corners, although he ceased to do this for a few months due to Erik’s injury. He is quick-witted, sharp-tongued, perceptive and experienced, and he knows it. This has resulted in a certain amount of arrogance, but also a great feeling of responsibility. He is generally the one in the household screaming at people to stop or slow down or do it a better way. His tendency to worry and stress about things occasionally overwhelms him, at which times he does little more than hide and cry. He has a vitriolic relationship with Hyacinth, whom he has known longer than anyone in the house save Barnaby, and he unashamedly loves Erik. Everyone other than Erik is parsed as an annoyance or someone who needs helping and protecting — and sometimes both at once. Calliope in particular refuses to stay put in one box or the other, and their relationship is half friendship, half volunteer parenting. Due to a lie he told on Calliope’s behalf, Ann has kicked their former tentative friendship to the curb, but Milo still likes him, weirdly enough.

Mordecai will swear up and down he does not want to be in charge of things, and his skillset does lend itself to being the clever guy back at HQ, but more often than not he ends up on the front lines. Nobody else is going to do it, after all. Nobody competent. If he is not acting as an emergency brake, he makes a fine encyclopedia, with a specialization in gods, food and emotions. He is capable of expositing the necessary information while engaged in a variety of desperate activities, or just acting on the knowledge himself while doing his best to keep everyone else calm. The kitchen belongs to him and Hyacinth, although they use it very differently. He may also be found hiding in bed, or playing violin on the street.

Despite being an innate magic-user, Mordecai has a very low capacity and little ability. He is incapable of calling or holding a god. Mainly he does substitutions, which he would tell you are very weak magic and only good for cooking. He has gotten rather good at using them for cooking, engaging in what might be considered magic-assisted molecular gastronomy. He is often pressganged into making meals for the household because no one else wants to or can. The only other magic he manages regularly is to do with music. He is able to add voices, other instruments and other sounds to his playing, which is entertaining for street-corners but not too terribly impressive or unusual otherwise.

He has gold metalwork shoring up his lungs, which were damaged by gas during the Siege of San Rosille. Gold is not an ideal material for lungs and his do not work very well, especially in cold or damp weather. There is an uneven gold scar on his chest from where Hyacinth forced the metal through under difficult circumstances.

Description

Mordecai is a smallish person, 5’ 8” and slightly built. He favors three-piece suits in gray herringbone fabric, with dark ties in solid colors or subtle patterns. In even slightly chilly weather he will add an old, soldier’s greatcoat on top of this. The fabric is faded and the brass buttons have been replaced with mismatched non-metal ones. He wears wingtip shoes and argyle socks. He buys all of his things second hand, so it’s all a bit worn, but he tries to be sure everything matches. He will strip down to vest and tie and shirtsleeves for practical reasons, but if you see him in less than that, then something has gone terribly wrong. He has dark red skin of a rusty shade and brown eyes. He wears his white hair just long enough to comb it back properly, and it is not receding in any way. He keeps his nails filed short, which serves the dual purpose of keeping them clean for cooking and baking and making it possible to work the strings.

In the original concept of the household as two sets of people with each of the four classic temperaments, Mordecai is a melancholic. He’s sensitive, he worries a lot, he prefers to recharge away from people and sometimes he collapses into a puddle of guilt and stress. He does not manufacture fears like Milo, everything he’s worried about is grounded in reality, he just knows a lot more — or thinks he does — about the worrying stuff due to his life experiences. Everything about the way he relates to people comes down to wanting to avoid being hurt, whether he’s snapping at them or smiling and helping, he is trying to box them up and push them away. Erik is the only one he lets his guard down around entirely, and thus Erik is capable of hurting him a great deal.

Mordecai’s fondest wish is for everything to be fair. He knows this is not achievable, and sometimes that makes him very upset, but the important thing is to keep striving for it.

Mordecai has a dual nature, like that quarter he sometimes carries. If you need help, he is the sweetest, most helpful person in the world. Anything you need. Step on him, use him emotionally, crumple him up and throw him away, it’s all fine. He’ll smile and come back for more. If you do not need help, if you should happen to annoy him in any way, he will unload both barrels of vicious sarcasm at you, kick you in the shins… and then smile and come back for more. Erik tends to see the former side of him the most, Hyacinth the latter.

Sometimes Mordecai ceases to function entirely, even at the level that is normal for him. This is his own intellect attempting to kill him. Hyacinth has come to characterize it as an alligator. Mordecai’s depression has been a lifetime in the making, with several physical and social factors contributing, along with all the practice. It doesn’t just go away after a little cheering up or a grand gesture or a concrete solution. It gets worse and better and sometimes it doesn’t make any sense and in any case it needs to be dealt with on a daily basis.

Because of the depression and the cautious nature, Mordecai tends to be a bit of a buzzkill. He has a complicated relationship with the various substances that help him switch of his brain and have a good time, mainly drugs and alcohol. On the one hand, he needs to be in charge of everything and responsible and reliable and the one that fixes the problems — on the other hand, he really likes/desperately needs to be incapable of doing so sometimes. He used to drink absinthe when he was younger and he got drunk almost every night during the siege. Currently, he confines his drinking to when people request truly hideous songs of him, but he considers that necessary to play them. Calliope’s presence in the household has introduced hash brownies back into his life, which he is capable of consuming without damaging his lungs. He hid this from Erik, whom he believes requires responsibility and careful handling at all times, but was pleasantly surprised to discover Erik didn’t mind him being wasted occasionally and understands the utility of it. He still prefers to send Erik to the movies and hide in Calliope’s room if he’s going to partake.

Mordecai’s musical tastes run a narrow spectrum of classic rock. The Beatles, certainly, but not Wings or the Plastic Ono Band. The Who, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin are also acceptable. Anything much beyond that is either cloying, stupid or sedation. ABBA is right out.

History

It’s a Hard Knock Life

Mordecai grew up in a series of substandard housing situations in Rainbow Row, the remnants of San Rosille’s colored ghetto. He shared everything from furnished rooms to tenement apartments with his mother and father, a younger sister who did not survive past childhood, and two older brothers. His mother played piano and his father the ‘cello. Mordecai learned to play the ‘cello, and got a job doing voice from music for silent films. His mother wanted him to be a doctor, but he displayed no interest in wresting a medical degree out of a post-secondary educational system that excluded colored people by design. All of his formal education was done at the colored school, which faded away with the voluntary segregation of the neighborhood.

The loss of his sister to diphtheria provided an early lesson in grief and just how easy it was to be hurt. It also drove a wedge between him and his family, whom he blamed for not sending her to stay with relatives so she wouldn’t get sick. This may have contributed to his decision to get married at nineteen, along with the belief of the time that sex before marriage was just not done. His family did not approve of the marriage or the girl, and he cut them out of his life and never looked back.

Marriage

The marriage lasted about six months. The girl’s name was Cathy and she was pale purple. They were compatible physically and not in any other way. They screamed at each other and threw things and she even hit him a few times. He never hit her, but his ability to use his emotional awareness for evil has its roots in his time with Cathy, as well as his skill at cooking on a shoestring. Cathy eventually expressed her intention to get married to someone else, which was just fine with Mordecai because he wanted to be in a band and not married to a shrill, goddamned harpy. They had the marriage annulled, as they lacked the money for a divorce. The most expedient way to do this was to convince the nice man at the courthouse that Mordecai was extremely gay — which he just barely managed to pull off after an actual gay person explained to him that gay people are not prancing idiots.

The Cut-Flag Revolt

Mordecai’s band went longer than his marriage, but it got out of hand. The group of them got involved in a sympathetic political movement that wanted to eliminate poverty and eat the rich. There was a lot of absinthe consumed in shady bars and public houses. At some point, someone suggested uniforms and a flag. Operating on a budget, the flag was assembled by slicing a Marselline flag in half, flipping the bottom part backwards, and merging it back together, creating a raggedy, chequered appearance. Riots, street-fighting and barricades resulted soon thereafter, aided by a piece of subversive literature called Recipes for Better Living — which had excellent instructions for substitutions and improvised explosive devices but not quite enough on tactics. They accomplished none of their goals or any change in government policy, but a lot of people died. Mordecai was twenty-four at the time, older than many of the other revolutionaries and thus shunted into a leadership position. He is ashamed of his participation and does not like to talk about it.

The drinking age for bars, nightclubs and public houses was raised to twenty-one as a result of the Cut-Flag Revolt.

Chocolate Cake

Having spent the interim years playing ‘cello in movie theaters and avoiding marriage like a plague, Mordecai was abruptly removed from this sedate existence by a group of young, desperate soldiers in the early part of the Siege of San Rosille. They came running into the theater where he was playing one night, during shelling, and requested someone who could make a chocolate cake. The chocolate cake was a required offering for a god, Solange, who was capable of finding safe places to hole up in the city where no one would die for an evening. Solange was currently occupying the body of eighteen-year-old Alba Weitz. Mordecai volunteered his services as a baker, and was able to complete an acceptable cake with very few resources, lacking an oven, a cake pan or any eggs or butter. Solange found them a place to stay, and the entire movie theater went along as well. They took the projector and Mordecai took his ‘cello and they had movies on a white-painted brick wall.

Alba spent most of the evening sick, as Solange had used her to consume an entire chocolate cake. Mordecai felt responsible, having made the cake, and also because of Alba’s young age, and because he feels responsible for everything. He tried to be kind and take care of her. In the morning, she asked him to come back with her and keep making chocolate cake. He did.

In this way, Mordecai fell into being a handler during the Siege of San Rosille. Mainly, he took care of Alba and did supply runs with her (He called the young soldiers he went out with his ‘kids.’), but because he was clever and responsible and willing to take responsibility for a lot of things, he became a de facto leader, even though he had no military rank or experience. He did a lot of cooking and he learned a lot about gods and what they like and what they do to people and how to cope with it. He also learned how to hypnotize people, to help them cope with the mental trauma of being ridden by gods. He uses a quarter.

During his time as a volunteer, he defended the south end of the wall. It was a frantic, busy existence, with a lot of dying and screaming. He took a few bad doses of chlorine gas, one almost lethal, which damaged his lungs and resulted in a chronic, bloody cough. He abandoned his ‘cello and taught himself to play violin, as that was smaller and easier to take with him. After a particularly amusing supply run when they came across a load of abandoned cameras, Alba gifted him with a locket that had a couple embarrassing photos of them in it.

He also made the acquaintance of Diane Desdoux, Marsellia’s first colored Prime Minister, who had decided not to evacuate ahead of the invasion with the rest of the government. They had… as much of a relationship as it was possible to have, under the circumstances. It was complicated not only by the war, but the fact that she was much more powerful than him — not just politically — and the presence of her nephew, Seth, an unassuming schoolteacher who was nevertheless very good at calling gods and thus subject to a lot of abuse.

Alba’s Pregnancy

Alba was shot in the shoulder while defending the wall and called Beauty to deal with it quickly. Mordecai believes her pregnancy resulted from one of two intimate encounters Beauty had that night, as gods do not care about contraceptives.

She was determined to keep the child and it is not wise to argue with a lady who can call a god that is capable of vaporizing you. It was also over a year into the siege and they were all a bit crazy by then. A new life seemed like a hopeful thing with so many people dying. Mordecai and his kids swore they’d take care of the child, as did many of the handlers and the others who called gods. Cousin Violet told them it was going to be a boy.

Alba took Mordecai aside and had a serious conversation, knowing she was in a dangerous line of work and she might not live through the siege, and made him promise in particular to take care of the child in the event of any disaster — even if that meant abandoning her.

She told him on multiple occasions she wanted to name the boy after that handsome guy in the movie posters, Erik Rudolph.

The Yellow Brick Road

The Gray Wall came down on November 16, 1368. Starcatching ceased and supplies began to run out soon after. With no chocolate, Alba could not call Solange, and they had to rely upon Cousin Violet to find them safe places to hide during supply runs. Violet directed them to an abandoned hotel with a flooded basement that was safe from bombs and gas but lousy with a deadly-contagious respiratory disease, anathema. The hotel was called the Yellow Brick Road. Alba and two other soldiers fell ill. Mordecai was also coughing up blood, although he tended to do that anyway, and he wanted to stay with Alba. It did not take much convincing to get the others to leave him there. The two soldiers died quickly but Alba hung on, for an incredible amount of time. Mordecai took care of her in the hotel for nearly a month, growing steadily weaker and less sane, until she was able to birth her child. She died shortly thereafter, and Mordecai left the hotel, intending only to find someone to take care of Erik before he succumbed to (what he believed was) anathema himself.

Hyacinth found them in a snowbank, correctly diagnosed Mordecai’s problem as a combination of damage from chlorine gas, cold and exhaustion, and did a quick repair on Mordecai’s lungs with the cheap gold locket he had hanging around his neck. She dragged them both home and saved their lives.

After the Siege

Mordecai remained at Hyacinth’s house, with Erik, and made no attempt to go back to the wall. He felt he had been abandoned, not only by his friends, but by the gods as well. He had promised to take care of Erik, and that meant keeping him away from the worst of the fighting, too. The siege ended in February 1369, with San Rosille becoming occupied territory. Two and a half years later, he found out Diane had been assassinated with the rest of her family — save Seth, who had remained in San Rosille — when he read it in the newspaper. Marsellia surrendered entirely shortly thereafter.

Mordecai rode out several cycles of weird boarders, including a man named Gary who kept a goat in Room 103. He replaced the violin he had left with Alba at the hotel with a ‘cello, and began playing on street-corners — Cinephone having made voice from music obsolete in movie theaters.

Seth Zusman, who has gone back to his family’s original last name out of a desire not to be shot, is the only acquaintance from the siege that Mordecai has any kind of relationship with, and that is because Seth ran into him and made a concerted effort to apologize. Even so, it is a tenuous association and they each have their own reasons for not wanting to really be friends with each other.

Key Installments