Mindlord: A Character Study

I’ve got villains.

 I’ve got a mobster, a misogynistic psychopath, a ninja/shadow mage, a necromancer, a couple mercenary-types, a couple thieves, and an ancient Nictus with a mysterious, sinister purpose.

 But there’s only one Mindlord. 

I want to talk about him.

I’d been putting this off for a while, but I realized recently that the clock is ticking.  Now that VKD and Precinct 101 have a fresh trail to follow, it’s only a matter of time before the Praetorian Jack Whitney and his minions reach their day of reckoning.   He’s got a lot to answer for.  I’m still undecided as to whether he’ll pay with his life or not.  If he survives, the fate I have in store for him would be worse than death, in his mind.

Either way, I have to acknowledge that it’d probably be the end of him as a character.  If I kept him around, sure, he could be a villain for VKD or maybe Precinct 101.  However, let’s be honest here.  First, neither group is really developed enough at this point to need a nemesis like him.  In VKD’s case, I’ll accept a large chunk of the responsibility for that.  I haven’t been actively recruiting.  It’s so hard for me to do that with my social anxiety and awkwardness.  And it’s hard for me to imagine that I could consistently put out the quality of RP that VKD really deserves, given my duties in TI.  Especially as much as I’m enjoying Tommy right now.  As for Precinct 101, I only ever see Patrick on, and occasionally Ben.  Weaver’s been AWOL for a WHILE now.

Second, Mind’s Eye and Mindlord are really the last loose threads remaining with Havens.  I think it’s time to move on.   So, where’s that leave Mindlord?  Dead, or irrelevant.  He’s a 50 mind/psi dom, so there’s no way in HELL I’d delete him, which means I’d have to rename/repurpose him.  I don’t see any other options right now.  Therefore, I want to make sure I give him his due attention, and give him an ending worthy of him.  He was originally meant to be a two-dimensional villain.  But, like we’ve all seen over and over, a good character does what they want, in spite of what YOU want.

I’ll start with a bit of history on him.  In Praetoria, Jack Whitney was the CEO of Mind’s Eye Enterprises, a technology R&D company who was a serious rival of Crey’s.  Fed up with both playing second fiddle to the technological advances of Neuron and Anti-Matter, and with bowing his knee to Emperor Cole, Mindlord directed Rusted Mind and his staff to transport their headquarters to Primal Earth.  This is where they ran afoul of Havens and were largely vanquished. Mistress Raina was killed, naturally by the only player she’d EVER allow to prevail over one of her toons.  Mindlord was nearly killed, by Kalius and the explosion caused by Rusted Mind’s failed betrayal.  If not for Mistress Petite, he’d have been killed for certain.

This is where he started to get interesting.  He’d lost everything.  His powerbase, his allies, his Tower.  Hell, the first few nights he’d spent in the Rogue Isles were in a rundown shack with a hole in the roof.  A far cry from what he was used to…but he began to rebuild with MP’s help.  He came to see her as more than just a soldier, or someone to use for his pleasure.  I don’t know if he ever could truly love someone, nor does he.   If he could love, MP would be who he did.

Mistress Raina was important to him, but it was because she was the first person that he didn’t have to dominate in order to have her respect.  He couldn’t tame her.  He simultaneously did and didn’t want to.  He could never entirely trust her, though, especially after her resurrection as a demoness.  Throughout their entire assocation, she simultaneously excited him and made him uneasy.  She challenged him, and his dominance, but not quite enough to 'threaten' him and invoke his anger.  She walked a VERY thin line with him.  Of COURSE, her player was pushing for him to fall completely in love with MR, but I flatly refused to even consider it.  Primal Earth Jack was emasculated by his wife, and Mindlord had nothing but disgust for him for it.  There's no fucking way in HELL I was going to allow MR to do it to him. 

With Mistress Petite, it was different.  She was subservient to him, which made her ‘safe’.  However, over time, she became more and more independent of him, which made her more interesting.  At this point, he trusts her to operate according to his plan.  He will only give her direct orders when he wants to feel dominant, or when he needs to employ her special talents as a mistress of torture and infiltration.  

Mindlord needs to be dominant in those situations he can.  He equates submission with weakness, and given his childhood, he refuses to be ‘weak’ or ‘beneath’ someone.  His ego won’t accept it.  His history runs parallel to Jack’s but differs at certain points, which I find an interesting example at how a simple choice affects those connected to you.  In both worlds, Jack Whitney’s mother was killed in a car accident when he was 12.  However, in Praetoria, things took a different turn and wandered through some dark territory I’m personally familiar with.

Mindlord’s father was devastated by grief at the loss of his wife, and began finding comfort in a bottle.   Seeing Jack as a constant reminder of what he’d lost, his father began to take his hurt and grief out on Jack, beating him frequently.  There were a few incidents where Jack nearly died at his father’s hands, and Jack eventually decided to kill his father.  He began to encourage and enable his father’s drinking, watching coldly as his father slowly destroyed himself.

Mindlord’s never forgotten the helplessness he felt, the feeling of being subject to a whim you can’t predict or control.  How it felt to never know which father would greet you when you came home from school, or what reaction you’d get to something you did or said.  He decided never to submit to another person ever again, with one exception (which I won't name here).   He refuses to show weakness, unless it’s to someone he feels he could easily destroy.  Any setback or resistance to his plans causes him to be enraged.  In these rages, the only thing that can bring him out of it is to exert dominance over someone ‘beneath’ him, to convince himself that he’s still master of his realm.

What’s coming in his future will crack his already damaged sanity, if not destroy it outright.  What happens after that, I don’t know.  I’m kind of sad to lose him, in a way.  Despite all the horrible things he’s done, I still identify with him at some level.   I know what drove him to be what he is.   As I said, before he went away, I wanted two things.   I wanted to give him his due analysis, and I want to give him an epic final battle.  He’s a supervillain in every sense of the word, and in my mind, he deserves nothing less.  We can do a lot with AE, but we can’t really convey all the emotional weight and drama that this deserves.  That frustrates me, but I’ll do the best I can.