hamelinic | House of Cards application }

Player name: Qi
Characters played: Eileen (A♣), Cadogan (10♦), Evan (4♣), Chives (5♠)

Character Name: Cynric; sometimes, Cynric the Unflinching; formerly, Cynric Invorian
Age: 30-something
Suit/Rank: Joker; formerly, Two of Spades

History: If you ask the man himself where he came from, he’ll give you a very clean and simple answer. With a strum of his lute he’ll explain he was born in the mists as child of the sun, wandered out from the woods and was found by a song. The earth gave him life and the water gave him eyes and the air gave him breath and the fire gave him voice, and that’s all there is to it.

As Cynric is a Joker, most people simply accept this as the best anybody’s getting and move on with their lives. Some of the older Spades and Hearts, however, know different, although they barely remember now.

Cynric and Simeon were born identical twins some thirty years ago. They were the only children of Osrik and Adeliza Invorian (4 and 2 of Spades, respectively), and came into the world during the reign of King Sean and Queen Medea. This, of course, was hardly the best time to be raising children in Spades, so the pair packed their children onto their backs and set Out. Having only ever known a fairly careless life in the comforts of the Deck, they survived on the Outside for only a few days before wandering their way right back in, setting up in a fairly nomadic pattern around the Outposts instead.

It was not an easy life. The set wandered without genuine occupation and certainly no wealth to fall back on, making a passable living as traveling performers and workers of odd jobs. In the slightly starker realm of the Outposts, removed from the direct influence of both courtly and settled life, Cynric and Simeon—alike in everything else, even their blossoming tenor—began to see the world in vastly disparate fashions. In the challenges of daily survival, Simeon saw the goodness of the human heart, the kindness of those who took them in, the beauty of the natural world and majesty of a moral life. Cynric, on the other hand, saw the severity of structured human norms, the ruthlessness of the lawless wilds of nature, the dirtiness of material wealth and the wreck of the human heart for a bite of dinner at the will of the world. Arguing became the norm. Arguing elevated into proper fighting. And at the age of fifteen (as best as they could calculate), a line was drawn in the sand: Simeon left to become a Two of Hearts.

Cynric tried to be devastated, but it fit in far too well with his cynical view of the world to be worth bothering. Of course a family would be torn apart by idealism. Osrik fell to illness shortly after Simeon’s departure, and Adeliza followed not long behind. There were Invorians in the Spades who could have taken Cynric in—and there was in brother in the Hearts to be reunited with. Despite this, Cynric simply turned tail and vanished into seemingly nothingness.

It was hard on Simeon to have his family completely evaporate. Having risen only to Three over the year it took for his family to dissolve, he became completely withdrawn. After challenging to Four out of compulsion, he all but retired, not even twenty, to live as a Heart in the outlying Spade district, in an old family home left to him as the clan dwindled out. For years, the world saw very little of Simeon Invorian apart from brief appearances to purchase (or more often beg and barter) necessities, and nothing at all of Cynric, whom most figured had left or gone completely mad in the wilds, never to return.

Until the Joker appeared.

There are only ever four Jokers, of course, but they cycle oddly, pop in and out of the world like jacks from boxes. For the greater part of the last decade, Cynric has been part of that cycling in and out of the collective conscious. One day, he’s nowhere; the next, he’s set up camp for a few months; then, gone for the greater part of a year. Now, at last, when most of the Deck has forgotten his brother’s face, he’s come to be more settled—as much as he ever manages to settle anywhere. His roaming paths seem circled more tightly through the Deck itself, his appearances in castles more frequent and his music floating over the Green more permanent. For now, at least, the fourth Joker is settled into the person of a dissenting young man with a lute constantly across his back and a palm out for his pains.

Personality: Cynric lives his life on a twisted sort of idealism he’s patched together from his brother and himself. He sees the world and humankind as inherently flawed but decidedly capable of good, and finds that most of the time all it takes to find a tolerable conclusion is the faintest push of key players in the right direction. Of course, sometimes this means offering a helping hand and sometimes this means a sharp slap across the face, so most people are inclined to avoid his ‘assistance’ rather than seek it out.

Most of his life has been spent in solitary wandering, but he’s quite fond of the company of other people. Large groups, particularly cheerful or celebratory ones, tend to diffuse his cynicism in the face of a mass actively working together to accomplish something joyful or productive. He’s quite chipper at parties, entirely inclined to giving into the fun and not letting the cynicism bleed through.

On the average day, he tends to flit here and there, fulfilling the role of Joker as people expect it—with a bit of rhyming and a clever turn of phrase and a bit of flighty rambling. When something genuinely catches him, however, he breaks from character back into man again, speaks plainly and with sharp judgment on the facts presented to him. The freedom of being a Joker, after all, is that person can say whatever the hell he or she wants. Cynric can’t help taking full advantage of that, now, can he.

Appearance: Unlike his brother, Cynric has always kept his hair cropped completely short, close to the skull. Also unlike his brother, he’s always preferred a less modern brand of clothing—which has only gotten more pronounced since reappearing as a Joker. He tends to wear overly complex lacing and overwrought leather in a style most would call fairly medieval, and in the cold weather is almost always wrapped up in a long brown robe that a person might call monastic at best.

More than any of this, however, his identifying mark has always been the lute he keeps constantly strapped to his back when it isn’t swung around to his front to be fiddled with. There are few people who have ever seen him without it, and those who have tend not to really remember the young boy who vanished off to the Outposts anyway.

Character PB: Paul Bettany

Writing sample: Voice test thread with Briony

Why this Suit? Although he was born into Spades, none of the Suits particularly called to Cynric. In fact, the very idea of being defined by a Suit rankles him just a bit. Thank goodness for the mysterious mystery of Jokerdom.

How did you hear about us? Once there were dinosaurs.