Mikele Hendrake

Trouble in the Wings

With the possible exception of Katarina, Mikele [1] is probably subjectively one of the youngest of the lot. She has voiced a distinct dislike for political intrigues and all those who pursue them enthusiastically and has been named "the most stubborn person I know" by several different people. If Amber is just a giant game of Adel Verpflichtet (and it's not a bad model), Mikele plays by Cael's rules because she thinks the more accepted goals are foolish. [2] In spite of this, she may wind up winning the Chaos game anyway, and she hasn't been able to decide if that's good or bad.

As an amusing aside, the Society of Kabalarians says this about the name Mikele: "Your name of Mikele has given you a tenacity of purpose and makes you extremely independent. Whatever you undertake you approach from your own point of view, and others either have to conform to your ideas or go their own way and leave you to work things out for yourself. In assuming a responsibility there is a strong inclination to overlook the little personal considerations and attentions that create a bond of understanding and companionship, and it is difficult for you to merge your efforts harmoniously with others."

Description

In her human form-- which she is nearly always in-- Mikele is a little over 5'7'' and fairly thin. Her hair is very black and her eyes are a reddish purple (which has alternately been called ``violet'' or ``plum'' by other players). She's fairly young, but not as young as she appears, which is about eighteen. She is also left-handed.

Her demon form is taller and winged-- it is capable of flight-- and covered with iridescent scales.

Background

Born during the Patternfall War, Mikele is the niece of Dara and became her ward after the death of Mikele's mother, Corrina Hendrake, during that same war. She was raised with Dara's three sons, Merlin, Despil, and Jurt, but left Chaos for shadow before she was seventeen. (Right, so the plan is: stay out of politics. Got it.)

She met her first Amberite (besides Merlin) when he brought her with him on a diplomatic mission to Amber on behalf of Chaos. It wasn't a quiet trip, between various attacks and vedettas and Merlin's disappearance. But by then she had met Keverian and Felicia and Katarina and Torquil... and Martin. Throw in a few obscure allusions to potential inaccuracies in her family tree and, well, things just sort of snowballed. Now she's married to the son of the King of Amber and mother of two very young children who between them have strong claims on at least four thrones... so much for staying out of politics.

Points and Such

When the character was originally built, Mikele was generally known to be a shapeshifter with Logrus mastery. She is generally accompanied by an often invisible little chaos creature, named Illidor [3] with a keen ability to sense trouble and an even keener ability to see the impending doom in everything (and then to share those observations with Mikele).

Her points, as bid for in the original auction were:

Psyche		nb	
Strength	nb
Endurance	21	(2nd rank)
Warfare		 4	(4th rank)

Adventures, Exploits, and Other Noteworthy Information

"Ssh. We're pretending to be diplomats, remember?" "Oh. Right." Before they arrived in Amber, Merlin advised her of a number of things to avoid doing in Amber, including call up the Logrus in the presence of the Pattern, fling Logrus tendrils about Amber, wander around in demon form, etc. Guess how long that lasted?

Pincushion of Amber Mikele had an unfortunate tendency to get stuck full of sharp things (swords, arrows, dragon teeth) early in the history of the run, but she's finally starting to get over this. She and Keverian had a long standing tradition of going off together on what they term ``noodle-headed schemes'' since they tended to culminate in either injury or incarceration. (They went on a good seven or eight of these, before events forced them to be less reckless.)

``You can stay here as guests, prisoners, or rotting corpses, your choice.'' In one of the more noteworthy of these adventures, both of them wound up captured by ur-Corwin in Avalon, but managed to escape just before they were rescued. Here's the whole story.

How to Split a Party of Four People Four Ways This would have been a noodle-headed scheme, but Keverian was unavailable, and there were a bunch of other people involved, with Finndo guest starring as chief bad guy. Read all about it here. (It's long.)

``I'm authorized to perform executions on the spot if you don't comply.'' So says the guard come to escort Mikele to be Finndo's "guest." (Do no elder Amberites understand the difference between "prisoner" and "guest" ?) Mikele had a lot of run-ins like this with Finndo. Neither side got very much out of them, though (to no one's surprise) Mikele took a lot more damage as a result. In this case, no one got locked up and no one got executed, but then you can't have everything.

The Social Event of the Season (Gilva Hendrake and Evan Jasby's wedding.) Much to her surprise (and relief), this wasn't much of an adventure. Aside from one small confrontation between the heir to Chaos and our friend Dalamar and one minor skirmish between two factions of security, the evening was actually quite nice.

The Gossip of the Decade Shortly after Gilva's wedding, Mikele and Martin became engaged, and then married. Since all their various friends and relatives don't get along as well as they might hope, there were two ceremonies: one in Amber, followed by one in Chaos, with the wedding reception thrown by Merlin in New York. Merlin-- as best man-- also threw the bachelor party, during which Keverian and Torquil managed to get themselves involved in a motorcycle chase, but that's another story.

``Do you really think that's wise?'' Not long after the wedding, the news came out that Mikele was pregnant: with twins, a boy and a girl. They're currently about two months old and named Mira and Alexander. Aside from their genders they're identical. (No, with shapeshifters, almost nothing is impossible.)

Some Mikele Quotations

``Um, what were you two talking about?'' (Illidor)
``I'm not entirely sure, but I think it went well.'' (Mikele)

More Information

If you aren't playing in this campaign, you can look at this. If you are playing, this is not for you. Please don't look.

Footnotes