THE LAST ENEMY

Description

About 5'8"; 145 lbs; red-blond hair worn long and tied back; dark blue-green eyes. Sharp featured; high cheekbones; appears to be about 25. Extremely good-looking in an androgynous sort of fashion (imagine how Leonardo DiCaprio might look once he's old enough to shave). Dresses in blue and black, which are his personal colours. Preferred style of dress is that of an 18th Century gentleman - frock coat, lots of frills and ruffles, riding boots - but whatever his attire, it is always at the height of fashion. Personal symbol is a white silhouette of Classical statue sans arms and head, on a midnight blue background. He carries a duelling sabre which he calls "Dashwood", and a single duelling pistol called "Wilkes" (it was once one of a pair - the other one, called "Liberty", was lost some time ago).

He possesses formidable personal combat skills, and is a Feared Duellist, although he generally prefers a defeated opponent to a dead one. He is a dilettante sorcerer who although not unskilled, tends to treat magick as an occasionally useful tool and/or plaything. He is also absurdly lucky.

Personality

In many ways a typical 18th Rake; duellist; gambler; womaniser; a frequent imbiber of strong drink (the traditional tipples of brandy, port, claret & laudanum); but also a highly educated dilettante Classicist, a poet and a scholar, an amateur archaeologist and architect, a tourist and explorer and collector of objets d'art.

He tends to acquire enthusiasms which he will throw himself into in a very focused manner, but not uncommonly leaves projects unfinished as he discovers something even more interesting to do. He possesses an air of boundless self-confidence (many say he takes after Bleys a lot in this respect), and has a generous and altruistic streak which tends to manifest itself at largely at random. He does not suffer fools gladly, but tends to be just as unforgiving of his own follies. He is not the sort of person to forget a hurt or insult to himself or to his friends - that way lies "grass before breakfast", the dawn encounter on the duelling green. He considers himself to owe loyalty only to the people he likes, rather than to institutions or abstract principles. Politics disinterests him, although in his home Shadow of Medmenham he sat on the Whig benches in the House of Lords. He has sworn loyalty to Random, though. Random he can relate to. He probably gets on best with people similar to himself - i.e., hell-raising sophisticates, gamblers, art-lovers and hedonists.

He adheres to a cheerfully relaxed version of the archetypal English Gentleman's Code of Honour. His main quirk (from an Amberite's point of view) is that he is a man of his word. Once he has given his Word as a Gentleman, he will keep it, no matter what the cost. Living in Amber, he has learned to avoid giving his word too readily, but in the flights of enthusiasm he is still occasionally prone to extravagant promises. Oh, and he never refuses a wager. Except obviously stupid ones. Usually.

The Early Years

Born in 1742 (local time) in Shadow Medmenham, an 18th Century Shadow Earth where magick works, a world dominated by the struggles and intrigues of occult secret societies, where Saint-Germain and Cagliostro vie for control of the French Court, where a young Adam Weishaupt has already subverted the Masonic lodges of Bavaria, and where the government of England - the country of Damien's birth - is firmly under the domination of the so-called "Friars of St Francis", better known as the Hell Fire Club. Damien was the son of Lord John and Lady Elizabeth Mortlake, although it was always widely rumoured that Lord Mortlake was not his true father - suspicion directed itself instead towards Sir Francis Dashwood, Chancellor of the Exchequer and notorious founder of the Hell Fire Club.

Brought up like any other young English noble - a first class Classical education, and precious few restraining influences. He lost his virginity at 14, fought his first duel at 16, and at 17, as a student at Oxford, took part in his first Black Mass. It was there that he met the MP, noted society wit and necrophile Sir George Selwyn, who introduced him to the ranks of the Hell Fire Club, that body of hedonistic diabolists who included many of the most powerful politicians and greatest artists and writers of the day. When his father died and Damien inherited the title, becoming the 7th Earl of Mortlake, it looked as if his skills and connections were going to make him one of the most influential individuals in England...

Coming to Amber

Summer, 1763 (Medmenham time), 57 PPF (Amber time). It was his Grand Tour, and he was travelling through northern Italy on his way south to Naples. His guides managed to get lost somehow, and no matter which way they turned the coach, the landscape got more and more bizarre and unfamiliar - indeed, it almost seemed to change around them as they moved. Eventually they found themselves trundling though a great forest, where they were accosted by a number of uniformed men bearing weaponry straight from a medieval romance. Taking them to be bandits - a common tourist hazard in the Italian countryside - Damien gave fight. His pistols both mysteriously misfired, but he'd still managed to kill or disable most of them when a man in white scale armour rode up on the largest horse he'd ever seen. Disarmed in short order, Damien (with the natural arrogance of an Englishman abroad) informed his captor that he could hold him for ransom if he wished, but the Carbinieri would certainly hunt him down and he would meet the fate of common highwaymen everywhere.

Julian, presumably detecting a family resemblance in either his facial features or his manner, took him to Amber. Other Family members concurred, but no-one was actually prepared to admit to him being theirs. Julian's suggestion that they throw him onto the Pattern and see what happened was only acceded to when Damien himself insisted on it - Amber, from what he could see of it, was far more interesting than Naples could have been, and if this was the only way of convincing these people to let him see more of it, then so be it. It would also be a tale with which to regale the Dilettante Club when he got back to London...

He survived the Pattern, which meant he was one of the Family. The full import of what this actually meant took a while to sink in, but Damien had always considered himself a man of the world, so it only took a slight readjustment to see himself as a man of an infinity of worlds. He acquainted himself with Amber and his new-found relatives, and took his first unsteady steps through Shadow. He did not, however, swear allegiance to Random at first. There were after all a couple of unresolved matters that still cast a cloud over his arrival - a) how he actually got to Arden from out of Shadow (or rather, what hidden agency had brought him there, and for what reason), and b) his true parentage. Damien could do little to solve the first mystery - much as it intrigued him - but he could at least try and resolve the second:

The Name of the Father

Returning to Medmenham, he confronted his mother. Lady Elizabeth avoided the question - he should ask Sir Francis, she said, it had all taken place at a meeting of his wretched Hell Fire Club when she was young, and she'd really rather forget it. Really rather forget about it. Damien went to confront Dashwood, but found the Hell Fire Club riven by an escalating feud between the Earl of Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the radical politician John Wilkes. Sandwich's command of Black Magic and Wilkes' control of the riotous London Mob were rapidly reducing the capital city to chaos. Dashwood agreed to tell Damien everything he knew, if Damien would help him stop the secret government from tearing itself apart. Damien's solution was to visit each of the warring parties in turn, and deposit each of them in a neighbouring Shadow - Sandwich in a magick-less Shadow, Wilkes in one where the London Mob was beyond the control of even his oratorical gifts. In Medmenham, the summoned spirits melted away, and the leaderless Mob got bored and drifted back into the rookeries.

Dashwood thanked him, but for a mere Shadow sorcerer seemed to have a disturbingly good idea of the means Damien had used. But then Dashwood himself had studied under a master of the occult who had exhibited powers to mould reality itself - Damien's father. Damien listened. The long and the short of it was that he'd been conceived during the celebration of a Black Mass, and that his father had gone under the name of Bleys. The first part struck him as being rather amusing; the second part rather less so. The recent history of Amber, as related to him by various Family members, had contained numerous instances of villainy, but none had been so fresh in the collective memory as the treachery of their brother Bleys just five years before. He brooded on this awhile, before deciding that he wasn't going to let it bother him. Damien had never known him, the man was long gone into the vastness of Shadow, and as far as Damien was concerned, he could stay there. The chances were that he would never know him. And if his patrimony was going to present a problem to anyone else - well, there was always swords or pistols at dawn.

He set out again for Amber, but first switched the somewhat disoriented Sandwich and Wilkes back to Medmenham (or at least they were probably the original Sandwich and Wilkes - he was still something of a novice at this Shadow manipulation business). The place would have been too boring without them, he decided, and Dashwood would just have to cope.

Damien made no secret of his discovered parentage when he returned to Amber, although with an appropriate sense of the dramatic he did wait until his swearing of allegiance to Random, when all of Amber and half the Golden Circle were present ("I, Damien Mortlake, son of Prince Bleys of Amber, do solemnly swear ..."). Reactions from other Family members were much as might be expected, but at least he didn't have to call anybody out.

As for the nature of the agency that brought him to Amber, this remains a mystery, although this has not stopped people from speculating along the obvious lines.

Since Then ...

Since then, Damien has spent much of his time exploring Shadow and amassing large and eclectic collections of artworks and artefacts from his travels. To house these treasures, he has opened a public museum in Amber City, and has effectively taken over stewardship of the museum in the Castle, renovating and expanding it. He is also a major patron of the Arts and Sciences, sponsoring artists, sculptors, poets, architects, scholars etc. in Amber and all over the Golden Circle. He has founded an 18th Century-style club called the Medmenham Society, for the twin purposes of art-appreciation and debauchery, which has gained some following amongst Amber's nobility.

The expansion of the city of Amber has whetted his architectural enthusiasms, and a number of new buildings in the newer parts of the city have either been designed by him or by architects acting under his patronage. He has also employed landscape designers to revamp one of the more run-down parks on the edge of the plateau to create a Georgian-style pleasure garden, a complex and picturesque layout of paths and grottoes, complete with suggestive statuary. His most notable achievement, however, lies outside the city - Damien's Priory is a vast Gothic folly overlooking Garnath, a baroque construction modelled on Medmenham Abbey and surmounted by a huge spire nearly 400' high, giving an unparalleled view of Arden. It took almost three years to build, and by the time it was finished Damien had long since moved on to other projects. However, he uses it for parties and as an occasional retreat. He is also happy to lend it to others for similar purposes. Recently an observatory has been added to a chamber at the top of the spire.

He returns to Shadow Medmenham every so often, and will be happy enough to take others with him on his visits, should they be interested. Likewise, he will have extended invitations to accompany him on his collecting expeditions - these tend to be the sort of excursions that would try the nerve and stamina of an Indiana Jones, but if you ever fancy a day out looting the frescos from the not entirely deserted corpse-city of R'lyeh, then Damien's your man. In Amber, when not tending his collections or pet artists and scholars, he can most often be found either in a gambling den, in some young lady's bedchamber, or pacing the duelling green waiting for an opponent to turn up.

The Trip to Chaos

This is one sightseeing/collecting trip on which he will have invited everyone (all the PCs and any NPCs who might have been interested). The public areas and the sealed Shadow that Fiona managed to open have apparently been looted already of anything useful by the Elders and the occupying army, but then Damien never collects things simply for their utility ... Both museums in Amber now have rooms devoted to the sculpture and architecture of Chaos, including paintings of numerous views of the deserted Citadel.

The Amber Museum of Arts and Antiquities

The public museum that Damien has opened in Amber City. It is housed in the former city residence of a now extinct noble family. The building, substantially redesigned and expanded by Damien himself, is a mixture of the neo-Classical and Ottoman styles, with numerous spires and domes and a marbled frontage supported by vast carved pillars. It is about the size of the British Museum. The entranceway consists of the gates of the lost city of Shamballah, carted back to Amber on an early collecting trip.

Inside there are dozens of galleries, packed with exhibits (think of the older galleries in the V&A, as well as the British Museum). Many exhibits have been incorporated into the fabric of the building (like the gates). Popular attractions include the Mummy Room, including one particularly ancient and magnificently jewelled specimen with a bullet wound in the middle of the forehead ("I had to shoot him to get him to let go of my foreman"), and which some curatorial staff whisper is sometimes found half out of its case when left unattended overnight. The Arms and Armour gallery contains a bewildering variety of weapons (a lot of them in pairs, since Damien sometimes borrows them for duels). There are also a number of exhibits on loan from the Castle, and Damien has encouraged other members of the Family and members of Amber's nobility to donate artefacts and artworks.

The art galleries feature painting and sculpture from all over Shadow. The Queen's Gallery, inaugurated by Vialle, contains works by local and Golden Circle artists, and holds regular exhibitions. A recent addition has been the Tamarind Room.

Not all of the museum's artefacts are on display - there are some on loan to museums in various Golden Circle kingdoms, but there are many more in the museum's storerooms, most of them still un-catalogued.

Relations with Relations

On the whole, Damien tends either to get on well with people, or rather badly. In practice, this seems to depend mainly on how people regard his parentage. Random doesn't seem to hold it against him, and there are rumours that Damien has occasionally been seen painting the town red in the company of a gentleman who looked suspiciously like an off-duty King of Amber. Relations with the perennially suspicious Caine are cool, while those with Julian are positively glacial. Damien maintains an annoyingly cheerful demeanour towards both of them, but seems to take a particularly perverse delight in trying to annoy Julian. Gerard and Caleb he gets on with fairly well, and he is not adverse to hitching rides with their respective parts of the fleet on his collecting expeditions.

Margot seems to regard him with much the same distrust as her father, although Damien is always infuriatingly polite to her. He does not however go out of his way to irritate her, as he does with Julian. He has conducted a lengthy and highly public affair with Esmée, a relationship which both parties took especial care to flaunt in front of Julian. The affair is now over, but the two of them remain close friends. It is rumoured that he has also made advances to Flora, and that she turned him down, although otherwise they seem to get on perfectly well. He has visited Rebma a few times, but if he has tried anything similar with Llewella, he has been even less successful. Interestingly, after his fourth visit he stopped paying courtesy calls on the Palace. There are at least no indications that he has ever been tempted to do a Tristan - he and Vialle just share an interest in art, that's all.

He has met Benedict (during the Dragon War in 71-72 PPF).

Bleys

That's how Damien refers to his father, on those few occasions when he refers to him at all. He evinces no interest in the man, or in ever meeting him. This disinterest appears to be unaffected, although anyone who has tried to discuss the matter with him in any detail will probably have come away with the impression that it masks a contempt and a dislike bordering on loathing.

Sebek

One of the velociraptors of his desire which Tristan summoned from shadow (along with ninjas, plague rats and Martian War Machines of his desire) to hunt down the escapees from his prison shadows, and which Damien has since acquired and made his own. Sebek has his own page.