Plot-bunny: Highlander/Valdemar (and disturbing)
I’ve been re-reading Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a sparkly mystical horse come up to you and let you know that you are a good person, and a powerful person, and you will do great deeds and help people and be loved and respected all of your days and never make mistakes because your mystical horse will help you know what the right path is?
I am at a point in my life where I could really use that kind of reassurance. On the other hand, possibly because I am at a point where I need that reassurance, I am most decidedly not at a point at which I would trust it coming from a mystical horse.
It’s something of a Catch-22.
However, despite my cynicism and skepticism, I still really enjoy the books. And I’ve been thinking back on an old idea that there really needs to be a Methos-in-Valdemar story. I am quite desperate to read one, and it’s possible that I’ll finally have to give in and write it myself. Thinking along those lines, I’ve been thinking through potential plot ideas and character arcs and finding a lot more of the later than the former, alas, since the character arc is largely Methos being adamant that he will never again ride an all-white horse or wear all-white himself, especially not when the token bit of color is blue, like the woad with which he once painted his face.
And then I got an idea that was so very awesome and yet so very horrible that I have to release it out into my plot-bunny pasture immediately because it would be amazingly soul destroying to try to write it.
I had previously been thinking of Methos as becoming a Herald of Valdemar at some unstated point after his Horsemen days.
What if it was immediately prior to his Horsemen days, or even overlapping the early portion of them?
Set the whole story at the end of days for Valdemar.
There’s a major war, a major disaster, or whatever, and something just happens and Valdemar loses. Maybe all the Companions are killed, or maybe there just haven’t been that many being born for the past few centuries. But Methos is the last one.
He did his best. He helped the survivors find new places. He watched over them being fully absorbed into their new countries and cultures and he alone was left with his Companion.
He has a close mind-bond with his Companion. They have been together for centuries. And now they are alone.
So very, very alone.
And then, after a thousand years, the Companion starts to age.
From what I can tell from canon, Companions don’t age in a general sense. They are born and age to adulthood and some of them are older than others, but they don’t die of old age prior to their Heralds dying, and when one of them (the Herald or the Companion) dies, the other generally follows soon after. It’s all part of the mystical bond.
But Methos’ Companion starts to age because he’s just eventually reached the end of his days. Or maybe the original prayer from the original King Valdemar has finally run it’s course since the kingdom of Valdemar is gone and forgotten.
His Companion can’t bear to leave Methos, though, and knows that Methos will go mad when their bond is broken.
So the Companion finds a white mare and sires a colt off of her. Which, despite them being the same shape and being inter-fertile, is pretty much bestiality and a sickening and taboo act if any one of their culture was left to know of it. But it creates a half-Companion half-horse mount for Methos to ride after the Companion finally dies.
And then the Companion dies and Methos goes mad with grief and loss. He rides the half-Companion mount, a poor replacement who can never be what his father was. But it’s enough, to keep him alive in his madness. And Methos rides that mount and a hundred generations of that bloodline, as it gets weaker and weaker, constantly diluted by regular horse blood and constantly interbred in order to attempt to strengthen the Companion traits, but getting the results of inbreeding more often than not.
Various translations of Revelations say that Death rode a pale or a sickly horse. And his horses were always pale and progressively more sickly, but he wouldn’t give them up for anything.
And somewhere in his madness he collected compatriots whom he called brothers to ride with him, as if they were Heralds, too, for all that they are no more Heralds than his sickly horses are Companions.
Until finally, the horse he rides is nothing more than a horse. He feels a stronger mind connection to his most recent bed slave Cassandra than to his pale horse, the great-to-the-Nth-degree descendent of his beloved Companion.
It is finally over. His long grief has worn itself out. His mind has weaned itself away from the bond he’d once had. His past was dead and gone and there was nothing for him but to move forward.
He looks at the campsite of the Horsemen and feels only disgust. It was like a sweat-soaked vomit-smelling sickroom after the patient recovers. He had made it the way it was, but he wants nothing more to do with it.
The last thing he does before walking away from the horsemen, walking away on his own two feet, is to slit the throats of every white horse in the camp, to ensure that his Companion’s bloodline is removed forever and entirely from the bloodline of horses.
The End.
I am at a point in my life where I could really use that kind of reassurance. On the other hand, possibly because I am at a point where I need that reassurance, I am most decidedly not at a point at which I would trust it coming from a mystical horse.
It’s something of a Catch-22.
However, despite my cynicism and skepticism, I still really enjoy the books. And I’ve been thinking back on an old idea that there really needs to be a Methos-in-Valdemar story. I am quite desperate to read one, and it’s possible that I’ll finally have to give in and write it myself. Thinking along those lines, I’ve been thinking through potential plot ideas and character arcs and finding a lot more of the later than the former, alas, since the character arc is largely Methos being adamant that he will never again ride an all-white horse or wear all-white himself, especially not when the token bit of color is blue, like the woad with which he once painted his face.
And then I got an idea that was so very awesome and yet so very horrible that I have to release it out into my plot-bunny pasture immediately because it would be amazingly soul destroying to try to write it.
I had previously been thinking of Methos as becoming a Herald of Valdemar at some unstated point after his Horsemen days.
What if it was immediately prior to his Horsemen days, or even overlapping the early portion of them?
Set the whole story at the end of days for Valdemar.
There’s a major war, a major disaster, or whatever, and something just happens and Valdemar loses. Maybe all the Companions are killed, or maybe there just haven’t been that many being born for the past few centuries. But Methos is the last one.
He did his best. He helped the survivors find new places. He watched over them being fully absorbed into their new countries and cultures and he alone was left with his Companion.
He has a close mind-bond with his Companion. They have been together for centuries. And now they are alone.
So very, very alone.
And then, after a thousand years, the Companion starts to age.
From what I can tell from canon, Companions don’t age in a general sense. They are born and age to adulthood and some of them are older than others, but they don’t die of old age prior to their Heralds dying, and when one of them (the Herald or the Companion) dies, the other generally follows soon after. It’s all part of the mystical bond.
But Methos’ Companion starts to age because he’s just eventually reached the end of his days. Or maybe the original prayer from the original King Valdemar has finally run it’s course since the kingdom of Valdemar is gone and forgotten.
His Companion can’t bear to leave Methos, though, and knows that Methos will go mad when their bond is broken.
So the Companion finds a white mare and sires a colt off of her. Which, despite them being the same shape and being inter-fertile, is pretty much bestiality and a sickening and taboo act if any one of their culture was left to know of it. But it creates a half-Companion half-horse mount for Methos to ride after the Companion finally dies.
And then the Companion dies and Methos goes mad with grief and loss. He rides the half-Companion mount, a poor replacement who can never be what his father was. But it’s enough, to keep him alive in his madness. And Methos rides that mount and a hundred generations of that bloodline, as it gets weaker and weaker, constantly diluted by regular horse blood and constantly interbred in order to attempt to strengthen the Companion traits, but getting the results of inbreeding more often than not.
Various translations of Revelations say that Death rode a pale or a sickly horse. And his horses were always pale and progressively more sickly, but he wouldn’t give them up for anything.
And somewhere in his madness he collected compatriots whom he called brothers to ride with him, as if they were Heralds, too, for all that they are no more Heralds than his sickly horses are Companions.
Until finally, the horse he rides is nothing more than a horse. He feels a stronger mind connection to his most recent bed slave Cassandra than to his pale horse, the great-to-the-Nth-degree descendent of his beloved Companion.
It is finally over. His long grief has worn itself out. His mind has weaned itself away from the bond he’d once had. His past was dead and gone and there was nothing for him but to move forward.
He looks at the campsite of the Horsemen and feels only disgust. It was like a sweat-soaked vomit-smelling sickroom after the patient recovers. He had made it the way it was, but he wants nothing more to do with it.
The last thing he does before walking away from the horsemen, walking away on his own two feet, is to slit the throats of every white horse in the camp, to ensure that his Companion’s bloodline is removed forever and entirely from the bloodline of horses.
The End.