Character: Dr. Silas Merlot

Character Sheet (Dr. Silas Merlot)

Combat Value: 5

You are Dr. Silas Merlot, greatest mind of your age. And one of these days, you will be recognized as such, over those damned Sparks.

All your life, it's been one long fight for recognition. No one pays attention to a mere human researcher, no matter how smart -- they all admire and fear the Madboys (yes, the term's politically incorrect, but in your bitterer moments, it's hard to ascribe them such a positive-sounding name as "Sparks"). You're as smart as any of them, and more disciplined than any, but because you don't lose control and invent insane devices while ranting like they do, no one pays attention.

Still, through dogged effort you've pulled your way up the ladder, eventually working your way up to second-in-command at Transylvania Polygnostic University, and one of the leading professors there. You taught the dullard students to improve themselves (and, you must admit, took some joy in watching the thrashings of the younger minor Sparks, who might be inventive but weren't especially useful). You worked on the University's more important projects. And you got to spend time on your own researches from time to time.

Your particular specialty has long been the work of the Spark Amagog. You've always rather sympathized with him. He lived about 200 years ago, at the same time that Van Rijn was making waves in the courts of Europe building his pretty Clank toys. All the nobility loved Van Rijn, and he was the personal Court Spark for the Storm King. But no one paid attention to Amagog, whose research into the nature of space and time was far less flashy but far more important. Amagog eventially withdrew from public life and devoted himself to his work, in his Castle up in the mountains. From that point, he mostly fades into legend, but you found out more: that he married a young wife and had a son, and that he began to succeed in his researches. Over the years, he unraveled the secrets of reality itself, gaining the ability to travel easily around the world, view other worlds, and even see glimpses of the future.

And of course, he was never appreciated by the mob. The peasants eventually revolted against him, until one day he simply vanished: his Castle disappeared, never to be seen again. You are fairly sure that he wasn't destroyed -- given the nature of his skills, he undoubtedly transported himself and the Castle somewhere. But even when you went to the original site of the Castle during a sabbatical five years ago, studying the grounds carefully, you could find no signs of where he had gone.

That same sense of being unappreciated has long dogged at you, ever moreso while you were working at TPU. Oh, it wasn't that Dr. Beetle, the headmaster of the University, was overtly nasty to you. But you always knew that he was laughing at you quietly behind your back. He was a powerful Spark, and simply couldn't take a non-Spark seriously. Despite your skill at analyzing machinery, despite your researches into Amagog's work, despite your discipline and the fact that you actually understand the science of most devices better than most Sparks, that lack of insane inventiveness relegated you to scutwork. (You've never forgiven him for taking all the credit for the Jaeger Cosmogony, and relegating you to "et al.". You weren't some graduate student, to be treated like that!)

That was finally driven home to you this past year. Seven months ago, Baron Klaus von Wulfenbach -- the oh-so-mighty Spark, ruler of most of Europa, etc, etc -- had come to TPU with an assignment that he said was of the utmost importance. He wanted TPU to construct a device he called the "Dihoxulator". He quickly outlined the principles of the device, and handed the lot of you a pile of plans. Doctor Beetle looked them over for several minutes, then announced that you and Dr. Hugo Glassvitch would be given the task of constructing the machine. Oh, it sounded like such an honor. Finally, they were recognizing that you two, ordinary humans, could build something real and important.

The two of you struggled over it for three months. You managed to build most of the machine, but hit a snag eventually: some of the key linkages simply made no sense. You agonized over it for weeks. Had you misunderstood something? Was there really something magical about these Sparks, that let them understand things beyond mere mortal understanding?

As it turned out, it was nothing of the sort. Wulfenbach returned, weeks ahead of his purported schedule, to check up on the device, with his son Gilgamesh in tow. He made you feel like a child, chiding you for not understanding the basic "theory", and asking whether you had misunderstood him; your face flushed red as you were forced to admit that you didn't know how to make it work. Wulfenbach turned to his son, asking him if he could make it work, and -- well things got rather chaotic at that point. Young Wulfenbach began that familiar Spark insanity, tearing things apart, claiming that your work made no sense. Eventually he claimed that the device's principles were flawed -- and his father admitted that this was true.

Suddenly, you realized what was going on here. You and Glassvitch had simply been used as a child's educational toy. Wulfenbach's mighty machine had never been intended to work: its only purpose was to see whether Gilgamesh could see where the flaw in the design was. And worse, Beetle must have known. He had looked over those plans before assigning them to you; he had realized that the device was broken. But he, the mighty Spark, couldn't waste his time on such busywork -- so he gave it to the mere humans to waste their time on. Three months of your life spent as window dressing in a foolish puppet-play put on for a child's benefit.

You saw red in that moment. So Beetle wanted to waste your time, while he busied himself on his oh-so-important projects? Well, you knew what those projects were, and that Wulfenbach wouldn't be happy to see it. Weeks before, Beetle had somehow obtained a Hive Engine, source of the Slaver Wasps that turned people into Revenants under the control of the Other. Wulfenbach's standing orders were clear: all devices of the Other were to be reported to him immediately. But Beetle, for whatever reasons of his own, had kept it to himself.

As you expected, when you threw the switch and revealed the Hive Engine, things between Wulfenbach and Beetle went from cordial to chilly in a moment. Their Clanks began attacking each other, with Wulfenbach unsurprisingly getting the upper hand. Beetle tried to throw some sort of bomb at them, but it was deflected, killing him instantly. You have to admit some sorrow at that: he had been something of a mentor to you, as you worked for him at TPU. But ultimately, it was his lack of respect for you and everyone else that did him in.

Wulfenbach put you in charge of the University, albeit with the usual Spark tone of menace. He made it quite clear that he was watching you, and would ship you off to a fate worse than death in Castle Heterodyne if you slipped up. Well, that just meant that you had more reason to not slip.

You took charge, starting off by getting rid of that annoying student Agatha Clay. Miss Clay had been Beetle's pet, for reasons that have always been beyond you. Her mind is as disorganized as that of a Spark, and unlike them she can't build a device to save her life. Oh, she kept trying, but nothing ever worked. She was a disgrace -- exactly the kind of fool that lets the Sparks feel like they are better than normal people. Well, with Beetle gone you didn't need to tolerate her incompetence any longer: you kicked her out of the University, and have been blessed by her absence ever since.

Your only regret was losing Glassvitch. He took the loss of Dr. Beetle hard, and disagreed with your decision to expel Miss Clay. About a month later, he declared that he was going on sabbatical, to go do some researching of his own. He wouldn't tell you where he was going, and you couldn't convince him to stay. But he was his own man, and you wished him well when he left. You might have felt otherwise if you'd known he was out to steal your thunder.

Nine days ago, classes were nearing the end of the season when you found yourself -- well, you can't really describe it. A sort of stretching, changing sensation. One moment, you were in your office reviewing the fatality reports from the various classes; the next, you were in a strange laboratory, with Glassvitch standing in front of you. You were furious about being kidnapped like this, and got rather angry at Hugo for doing so. But he stopped you dead in your tracks when he told you where you were: Amagog's own laboratory.

You couldn't believe it. You had spent your entire life trying to track Amagog's work, and Hugo had managed it in three months? But you couldn't deny it: the work you saw around you was unquestionably that of the great Spark himself. You were torn between the wonder and curiosity at all these glorious devices, and suspicion that Glassvitch must have started by stealing your notes. Well, there would be time to get even with him for that. For the moment, you swallowed your ire and began to explore.

The things that first attracted your attention, and which you have been studying in all the time you haven't been working on Amagog's notes, was the Mirror. For so many years, you had hypothesized about it. Your library of Amagog's writings, back at TPU, was the largest in the world (although nothing compared to what you've found here at the Castle). It was all encrypted, forcing you to spend years learning how to decrypt it, and it was fairly mysterious even decrypted, but allusions to "The Mirror of Reality" were laced throughout. You thought it was some sort of metaphor, but no -- here it was, larger than life. The Mirror that allowed one to observe anywhere in the world, maybe even exploring through time and alternate realities, and here it was. To say that you were excited is the greatest of all understatements.

The time since then has been chaotic. You had barely had two days in the Castle before a party of adventurers barged in, stealing the Clockwork Crystal at the heart of the laboratory. Hugo didn't fully appreciate how serious a blow this was: you knew enough about Amagog's work to recognize that the Crystal was the central control for the whole thing, translating musical tones into commands. Without it, the devices were left to more primitive automatic systems. In particular, the great Mirror couldn't be controlled without the magnification the Crystal provides: without that, it would either require a musical device of extreme power and sublime complexity, or something capable of such subtle control that it could actually go inside the main control pedestal and control the tiny linkages manually. Neither seems realistically likely. Your frustration was immense -- to be so close to the greatest device of all time, and yet unable to control it, is horrifying.

And then, to make it worse, two days ago it all went to hell. You still don't know exactly what happened. You were poring over the notebooks when you heard a commotion down by the Lab. You began to move in that direction when Glassvitch came tearing through, telling you to run. And there it was behind him: a hideous creature of a hundred eyes and immense tusks, it could only be the Perfect Construct.

You were amazed for a moment -- this certainly wasn't what you had expected. Oh, you knew the Construct had to be around here somewhere. It was a key part of Amagog's legend, and his notes had indicated that the creature would be immortal. But his notebooks had spoken so fondly of it, referring to it as the "child of his intellect", sounding almost loving. You were sure that it would be humanoid, not a horrible creature like this. And yet, he had also called it "mighty", and that this creature clearly was. Deep down, you knew that it had to be the Construct, and you cursed your own error even as you and Glassvitch ran from the Castle, chased out by the creature.

Since then, you've been afraid to go back. If the creature was this fierce, and wanted you out, you weren't sure whether it would ever be safe to return. But you know that you aren't going to be able to simply walk away from this. You'll simply need to assemble a party with enough cannon-fodder to subdue it. It's a powerful creature, but it isn't as if those are all that rare. Indeed, you're almost disappointed that the Perfect Construct is so ordinary a monster -- it seems beneath Amagog, somehow. You've always fancied yourself as Amagog's intellectual heir, the one person who has studied his work enough to understand it, and it is somehow sad to be the inheritor of something as mundane as a monster.

Meanwhile, the woods around the Castle have turned out to be a predictably busy place. Now that the Castle is no longer hidden, people have been coming from far and near to explore it. (You still aren't sure why the Castle ceased to be hidden. You recognize these woods, and where the Castle is located: it is, indeed, the place you came to five years ago. The Castle clearly returned there; why? You're sure that Glassvitch knows more than he is saying -- he's been conspicuously evasive when you hint around the topic of how he found the Castle, and why it is now visible.)

In the main clearing of the nearby woods, a Circus has set up shop -- presumably partly due to the town a half-day's ride away, but also to try their luck at the Castle. You are suspicious that they might have something to do with the theft of the Clockwork Crystal. You need to get that Crystal back into its proper position, in the pedestal at the center of the laboratory, allowing you to properly control the Mirror. With control of that, who knows what you could accomplish? Certainly you'd be able to see anywhere in the world; if your theories are correct, you might even be able to travel anywhere in all of reality with it. The power contained there is hard to imagine.

Hugo is up to something, but you don't know what. There is an odd gun-like device that he has been carrying on his person for as long as you've been here, and he doesn't seem forthcoming with information about it. It's clearly important, though: it was the one thing he took with him from the Castle. Your curiosity and suspicion are aroused.

Meanwhile, an odd sort of plot is brewing among the people who are here. On the one hand, there is Othar Tryggvassen, a lunatic Spark who you have seen once or twice before when he came to Beetleburg to attack Dr. Beetle. He is a bit of a fool, but a powerful one -- his stated goal in life is to kill all Sparks, and you must admit some sympathy to that idea. And then there is this girl "Helen Narbon". She appears to be Agatha Clay, down to the finest detail, and Glassvitch is treating her as such, thinking her deluded. But you aren't so sure. You know what Amagog's Mirror is capable of, and she apparently appeared inside the Castle. (Indeed, just before the Construct attacked: is this girl as bumbling as the real Agatha Clay?) And, frankly, it is obvious just looking at her that she is a Spark, maybe even a strong one -- she has that subtle tinge of insanity so common to the breed. So you are convinced that she is an alternate-world counterpart to Miss Clay. As such, she is a remarkable proof of your theories about Amagog's inventions. You need to learn more about her, which might teach you more about his work.

But she and Tryggvassen have cooked up a curious plan. She claims to have a particular skill at brain transplants, and they say that they are going to use that to bring down the Wulfenbachs. You aren't clear on the details, but the goal sounds laudable enough, and fine for you: Baron Wulfenbach's threat to have you destroyed at the first mistake still hangs over you, so getting him out of the way would be useful. Besides, the whole mess at TPU was his fault in the first place, using you as a test for his son, so you have no fondness for that family. So you are planning to encourage this plan, and manipulate it to your own benefit. If "Helen" is as foolish as Miss Clay, she should be easy to manipulate. And Tryggvassen is certainly enough of a deluded dimwit that it shouldn't be hard to push him in useful directions.

Other opportunities are also presenting themselves. Hugo has told you about a remarkable Clank that he has observed, which is traveling with the Circus for some reason -- it is apparently capable of self-replication, and moreover creative self-replication. You've never even heard of a Clank able to do such a thing before, so you are quite excited. You're reasonably sure that he just wants to examine it, but you want more than that: if you can truly understand it and produce more of the same, the possibilities are remarkable. Imagine an army of self-replicating Clanks, able to just keep building more of their kind. Even the mightiest Spark wouldn't be able to stand up against such a force. You really want to see how this thing ticks.

Then there are these Jaegermonsters, apparently traveling with the Circus. That is quite odd: you've always understood Jaegers to travel as a tribe, and it's very rare to see them separated like this. And you still don't know what is up with their "Lifebumps" -- do they possess some special secret of immortality? You'd love to get some of that, if you can.

And then there is that little Construct named "Artie". It apparently traveled to this world with Helen, and is a remarkable creature itself: apparently a gerbil, but talking and as smart as most humans. You've long hypothesized that different realities are distinct, that each possesses a sort of distinct "vibration", akin to the different tones of a string. If you can examine a creature from another reality, you might be able to prove this theory, which would help you understand and replicate the work of Amagog yourself. Trying to examine Helen would be -- conspicuous, and you don't want to attract too much attention. But this little creature is practically defenseless: it has been staying with the Circus as a curiosity, but they should be neither able nor inclined to defend it too much. So you should be able to capture it easily, and subject it to more study.

But most of all, you need to get back into the Castle. The laboratory there has the Mirror, as well as the devices you would need in order to study Artie. So you'll need some help, to be able to overcome the hideous Construct that guards it...

Public Info

Personality

You have become a bitter man, you can't deny it. But it's the fault of the damned Sparks. If it wasn't for them and their superior attitude, you could have been happy. Hell, you're currently in your dream job -- headmaster of TPU -- and you'd be having the time of your life if it wasn't for Wulfenbach's threats to terminate you at the first mistake.

So you are prone to anger, and you always hate yourself for it afterwards. You like to be calm, cool and analytic. You like to be in control of the situation, not a tool being used by others.

You are constantly curious, and the truth is that you are happiest when you are lost in a project. Then, the evils others do to you fall away, and you can just lose yourself in the exploration of the world and how it works.

Some People You Know (Dr. Silas Merlot)

Dr. Hugo Glassvitch: Your fellow teacher from Transylvania Polygnostic University. Hugo went on sabbatical some months ago, and somehow came across the Hidden Castle of Amagog. You still don't know how he found it, nor what the device he found there is. It's unlike Hugo to keep secrets, so you do wonder what is going on.

Dr. Tarsus Beetle: You sometime boss at TPU, now deceased. You occasionally regret that -- but not much. A fairly powerful Spark.

Baron Klaus von Wulfenbach: One of the great Sparks of the age, and a sometime student of Beetle's. Now the ruler of much of Europa. A ruthless, brutal man, who has threatened your life. No one does that and gets away with it.

Gilgamesh von Wulfenbach: The Baron's son, apparently a bit of a Spark himself.

Agatha Clay: A foolish girl, sometime teacher's pet of Dr. Beetle. You kicked her out of TPU when you took over, and have never regretted the decision -- your life has been calmer without her incompetence.

Helen Narbon: Apparently a parallel-world cognate to Miss Clay. Surprisingly, seems to be a Spark, which indicates that people can vary quite a bit from world to world. (Is there a world where you are a Spark? Do you really want to know?)

Artie: A sentient gerbil that came to this world with Miss Narbon. You want to examine him, to try and confirm your theories about the vibrational nature of parallel realities.

Dingbot Prime: A Clank that Glassvitch has told you about, apparently capable of creative self-replication. The potential for control using such a device is incalculable.

Othar Tryggvassen: A dimwitted and easily manipulated Spark, who fancies himself a sort of hero. Working with Miss Narbon in a plan to unseat the Wulfenbachs.

Mary Something-or-other: The girl who showed you around the site of Amagog's Castle five years ago. There was nothing there -- indeed, so absolutely nothing that you weren't sure she wasn't putting you on. But you paid her a silver piece, and she had no reason to lie, so you figured she was telling the truth. Seems she was -- the Castle is now sitting right where you explored back then.

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Male Human (from Comic) (Status: In Game)

Plots:
The Brain Transfer (Brain Transfer)
Dingbot Studies (Dingbot Studies)
Plague of Dingbots (Replicators)
Amagog's Legacy (Legacy)
Lab Rats (Lab Rats)

Bluesheets:
The Jaeger Cosmogony (Jaeger Cosmogony)
The Castle - Silas (The Castle - Silas)

Abilities and Disabilities

Resistant to Cuteness (Anti-Cute) -- You aren't the kind of person to care much about cuteness -- fuzzy animals and the like don't do much for you. So you may ignore any attempts others make to play the Cute special ability on you. (You may choose to roleplay otherwise, but it's your choice.)

Mechanic (Mechanic) -- You are a skilled and practiced mechanic, who understands technology quite well. If you are not a Spark, you can't casually invent new devices the way they do, but you are quite talented at understanding existing devices -- you do that as well as most Sparks, and better than many.

You may examine any device for two minutes to puzzle out what it does. (There may be some rare exceptions, of exceptionally complex technology.) If it is broken, but not missing any key components, you may spend one Point and five minutes to repair it.

Translate Amagog's Notes (Amagogs Notes) -- You have spent a large fraction of your professional life studying the works of the Great Spark Amagog, and you know his encryption scheme better than anyone else in the world. When confronted by a body of text by him, you may spend five minutes and one Point to get the translation.

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Historical Background

The following were notes while the character was evolving. They do not necessarily represent the way it came out.

The nastier of Agatha's two professors. Second-in-command to Dr. Beetle. A very, very smart man, but not a Spark, he is deeply resentful of Sparks, and tends to be suspicious of them. He is a sycophant at heart, and not in a good way: he makes threats by invoking what those more powerful than he will do. He is always looking out for number 1, worried entirely about may help or hurt him. He has never liked Agatha -- he thinks that she is incompetent, and beneath him, and he is always cruel to his inferiors.

All that said, what Silas wants more is to be valued. He finally flips out at Beetle because he realizes that he has spent three months on a time-wasting project. If Klaus were to give him real work, that mattered, he would be likely to turn into a valuable sycophant. But he would also always expect to be stabbed in the back, and would probably prepare something dumb for that day.

Klaus liked and respected Beetle, and resents Silas for getting him killed. Worse, he despises traitors. It is clear from [this page] that Klaus is going to make use of Silas for as long as he's useful, but has made a clear threat that Silas' days are numbered. Okay, so Silas isn't with the Baron. But that might give him all the more reason to be going after The Perfect Construct, as a way to get the Baron before Klaus gets him.

Possibly, Silas knows something about Sarah's true nature? He might have obtained Amagog's original [Shape Gun]?, which has given him a hint of what's going on. He has used that to disguise himself as he tries to get to the Construct.

Justin 1/5: Silas isn't a Spark, but he is brilliant, and he is a dogged researcher. (Indeed, we might give him that as a special ability: given a device, he can in some not-unreasonable time figure out how it works.) Where Beetle was the deepest student of the Great Spark Van Rijn, Silas focused more on the more mysterious but intriguing figure out Amagog. He has spent much of his career, from graduate school onward, gathering the slight fragments of information available about him and piecing them together. Indeed, he should probably have more coherent information about Amagog when the game begins than anyone else.

See Beetle's writeup for details on what has been of Silas recently. This is his chance to really shine: he somewhat understands the potential of Amagog's reality-changing technology, and that makes him very dangerous. If he can get full control of the Mirror of Amagog, he could seriously alter the world as we know it. Balancing him is probably the Replicators as a partial safety valve -- Winslow has arbitrary godlike abilities if he gets access to his own world again. Also, Sarah should probably be set up to have some sort of failsafe against Silas running completely amok.

We should probably work some writings of Amagog into the game somewhere, in the standard code-wheel cypher. Silas is the only one who has the code wheel to decipher the writings, and even if someone else gets their hands on it, he's the only one with the instructions on how to use it. This should probably be a special ability, unless he deliberately teaches someone else to help.

Silas should be set up to particularly dislike being lied to and manipulated, so that he really flips out when he finds out that Agatha is a Heterodyne, and that Beetle knew about it all along.

He should specifically think that he is using Othar, not realizing what an incredibly bad idea that is.

History

Silas betrayed Dr. Beetle, revealing his secret slaver-wasp project to Klaus, and resulting in Beetle's death. Since Beetle was apparently Klaus' mentor at some point, Klaus does not like him. Silas kicked Agatha out of TPU?.

Amount of Character Potential: Fair (Needs plot and ties, but a fine nasty character to roleplay.)