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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 8313001" data-attributes="member: 21169">WARNING: This post contains unblurred spoilers for the Elric novel StormbringerThis post is about existentialism in four early Elric novelettes – Dead God's Homecoming, Black Sword's Brothers, Sad Giant's Shield, and Doomed Lord's Passing. First published in the British magazine, Science Fantasy, in 1963-1964 they were collected in the Appendix N novel, Stormbringer (1965).Elric maintains the existentialist worldview that he held in While the Gods Laugh. "He [Elric] was suspicious of pattern, disliking shape, for he did not trust it. To him, life was chaotic, chance-dominated, unpredictable. It was a trick, an illusion of the mind, to be able to see a pattern to it." (DGH)Sepiriz, one of ten immortal "servants of Fate" who bear an "awful knowledge", advises Elric throughout the four stories. He provides a possible answer to Elric's existentialist doubts:Elric smiled, his own suspicions confirmed. "Aye, as I expected, there is no justice." "But there is," Sepiriz said, "justice of a kind — justice which must be carved from the chaos of existence. Man was not born to a world of justice. But he can create such a world!" (DGH)But this is ironic given Elric's heavy reliance on Stormbringer, his "hell-forged blade". He is ultimately successful in his aim of defeating the forces of Chaos and bringing into being a new world dominated by Law. But it is only the power of Stormbringer, "forged by Chaos to conquer Chaos", that destroys the earthly incarnations of Chaos gods in each story. In fact in Black Sword's Brothers, Elric is unconscious as it does so. It is only thru Stormbringer that Elric acquires the energy to blow the "Horn of Fate" three times, which rouses the Melnibonéan dragons, summons the gods of Law, and creates the new world, which is our own. "Without Stormbringer's vitality, he [Elric] felt weak and limp… without the blade, he was less than half a man, for his albinism weakened him." (BSB)The promise of a positive existentialism that Sepiriz offers, of mortals forging their own destiny independent of supernatural beings, is therefore undermined.In the final story, Doomed Lord's Passing, even after all of the Chaos gods and their army have been fought and defeated and Elric has learned much about the nature of his reality from Sepiriz, he is still troubled by existentialist questions of meaning. However Sepiriz can’t give him the answers he seeks."But what is the meaning of it all?" Elric said. "That I have never fully understood." "Who can? Who can know why the Cosmic Balance exists, why Fate exists and the Lords of the Higher Worlds? There seems to be an infinity of space and time and possibilities. There may be an infinite number of beings, one above the other, who see the final purpose though, in infinity, there can be no final purpose. Perhaps all is cyclic and this same event will occur again and again until the universe is run down and fades away as the world we knew has faded. Meaning, Elric? Do not seek that, for madness lies in such a course." "No meaning, no pattern. Then why have I suffered all this?" "Perhaps even the gods seek meaning and pattern and this is merely one attempt to find it… Men struggle and credit the gods with knowing why they struggle — but do the gods know?" "You disturb me further when I had hoped to be comforted," he sighed. "I have lost wife and world — and do not know why." (DLP)What was considered sufficient meaning by Gary Gygax in the AD&D 1e DMG – gaining knowledge of a cosmic struggle and fighting in that conflict as a willing soldier – is considered insufficient by Elric.The ending of Doomed Lord's Passing is even more unsettling. After Elric is slain by his own sword,The entity that was Stormbringer, last manifestation of Chaos which would remain with this new world as it grew, looked down on the corpse of Elric of Melnibone and smiled. "Farewell, friend. I was a thousand times more evil than thou!" And then it leapt from the Earth and went spearing upwards, its wild voice laughing mockery at the Cosmic Balance, filling the universe with its unholy joy. (DLP)At the very end, the Cosmic Balance, which is the closest equivalent to an all-powerful benign God in Moorcock's multiverse, has been partially thwarted. A powerful force of Chaos and evil is loose upon our Earth. So it seems that the views that Elric expresses in Dead God's Homecoming – that life is "chaotic, chance-dominated, unpredictable" and that "there is no justice" – have been proved to some extent correct.</blockquote>

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