Application for King of Clubs

[cipherspeak]

Player name: Muzy

Characters played: Avery Hamilton [Jack of Diamonds/Ten of Diamonds if this application is successful], Elisha Kagan [Ten of Clubs], Jordan Novak [Ten of Hearts], Urania Apollonides [Six of Spades], and Zoë Kattalakis [Four of Spades]

Character Name: Elisha Kagan

Age: 33

How long They've Been in the Deck: Seven years

Character's Current Rank: Ten of Clubs

Face Rank Applying For: King of Clubs

Personality: Elisha is a quietly charming man with a sense of humor that can be both quirky and deadpan, and comes out at the most unexpected moments. He is, and will always be a military man, though he’s one that’s extraordinarily bad at taking orders - part of why there’s so much friction between he and the current King of Clubs, Alexander - and far better at issuing them. He’s highly manipulative, and something of a mastermind, always looking out to see how events are going to change or affect his plans. He’s serious, a true analyst, and doesn’t allow emotions to interfere with his work.

However, Elisha is also an artist. It’s not how he would define himself first, though it’s how he’s publically defined himself in the Deck for most of his seven years there, but it’s his outlet. It’s where his emotions run free, and it keeps him centered for doing his more important work. Despite this outlet, Elisha’s emotions sometimes have a tendency to break free, sometimes violently - he holds a grudge against Sieben Dietrich, with whom he had a complicated relationship, and Elisha is given to jealousy in his personal relationships, deserved or not. To deal with them, he sometimes turns to alcohol, but he’s careful not to too often, given the history of alcoholism in his family.

History: Elisha Kagan was born on October 15, 1978 in Lenox Hill Hospital, Manhattan, New York to Jonah and Reina Kagan. They were as wealthy as they sound, and Elisha spent the first six years of his life in the rarefied atmosphere of the Upper East Side as the only child of one of New York’s most ruthless real estate moguls and his socialite artist wife. Even as young as he was, Elisha was set on a path to follow in Jonah’s footsteps when tragedy struck. Jonah was shot down by a mugger during a botched robbery, and Reina decided that they were going to move somewhere safer.

Her definition of safer was Israel in the early 1980s, apparently.

Still, their wealth and their home in Tel Aviv - generally far away from the violence that has hit the headlines Elisha’s entire life - and the problems he dealt with had very little to do with the political situation. Instead his problem was his mother; Reina Kagan, a rich, vivacious bohemian artist, suffered from undiagnosed bipolar disorder her entire life, and after her husband’s murder she increasingly turned to drugs and alcohol to maintain her moods. This was usually unsuccessful, and by the time Elisha was in his early teens, he was the parent in the scenario. It was no surprise to anyone when she perished in a car accident when her son was sixteen.

What was a surprise was Elisha running away from home to join the IDF two years early instead of finishing high school and going to art school as planned. He spent the next decade largely as an army man, first as an explosives expert and then as an assassin in Aman, the military intelligence branch. It wasn’t until 2005 that he left the IDF, completely burned out and suffering from PTSD, and on May First of that year, he found himself in the Deck.
Character's Goals/Ambitions: For six years, Elisha was simply an artist - the Clubs’ court artist, eventually - and pretended, largely, that his past had never existed. But in June 2011, Andrew was assassinated, Argine named Alexander King of Clubs, and after considerable soul-searching, Elisha decided to advance to Ten and dig back into his past. In the last year, he’s built a small but effective intelligence network that he hopes will prevent any tragedies like that from happening again. He certainly has had no desire to become the Clubs’ King himself.

But as Alexander spent the year attempting to militarize a formerly peaceful Suit - and as the product of of a militarized state himself - Elisha began to take on more responsibility, acting as the point of contact for most of the other Suits’ Face Cards, being the person many of the Clubs went to, and circumventing the current King as best he could. It’s worked for most of the year, but with the current uncertainty and with Alexander’s persistant goal of turning the Clubs militant, Elisha has come to the conclusion that he needs to step up and challenge him.

His goal is the same as it’s been for the last year: protect the Clubs through knowledge and strategy, but allow the members of the Suits to be what they are - peaceful, creative, intellectual. He isn’t Andrew; his background is such that he could never be Andrew, but he remembers that it was Andrew’s Clubs that gave him the time to recover from his life Outside, and he wants them to be able to return to that.

Why should they be chosen for this position? Elisha is the Ten of Clubs with the most responsibility in the Suit. He developed an intelligence network beginning in September of last year and has built it into something small but effective, not as widespread as David’s, but more than capable of keeping him informed. He’s also trusted by most of the Clubs and has positive relationships with most of the other Suit royals, and his relationship with the Arcana isn’t particularly negative. He has a parental relationship with Eileen, a fairly positive relationship with Argine, and is good friends with Tegan. Most of all, he wants the Clubs to be able to be both protected and be the Clubs, and will do whatever necessary to achieve that.

Challenge: He’d known from the moment he’d decided on this course of action that he was going to have to issue this challenge in public. It wasn’t that he thought Alexander would reject it - Alexander had always struck him as the type of man who relished challenges. No, it was more that Elisha had distinctive ideas about what the challenge should be. They were Clubs; they did not live and die by the sword, no matter what Alexander wanted. The Clubs instead relied on their minds and their skills, and Elisha wanted that shown again. So he found Alexander in his favorite place, his little miniature coliseum in one of the courtyards, and he waited for the guards to cease practicing - but not long enough for any of them to leave. Let them hear this, he thought, let them spread the word. It only helped him.

“I challenge you for the position of King of Clubs,” Elisha said in a clear, carrying voice. “To a game of riddles.” His face remained impassive as heads swiveled towards them, though Alexander couldn’t say the same. The king’s face flushed and his lips thinned, but finally he nodded curtly. “Here,” he said. “In a week’s time.”

The news spread all over the Deck, but Elisha discussed it with very few people - Victor, his best friend, Hadyn. And the Ace of Spades, for what he expected to come after the challenge. Beyond that, he prepared, and when the day dawned, he dressed in one of his rarely worn suits and appeared in the same spot. The rules had been agreed upon in the interim: each man would prepare three riddles, the other would answer them as best they could, and the one who answered the most correctly was the victor. A simple coin toss determined that it was Alexander who would go first.

The king began with a classic - what is it you can keep after giving to someone else - that made Elisha smile slightly as he answered in a clear, sure voice. “Your word.” And then he read his first.

They went back and forth - the first riddles for each of them easier to answer, but each progressive riddle harder, requiring more thought. By the time Elisha answered Alexander’s third riddle correctly, there had been several long, quiet pauses. He was leading now, three correct answers to Alexander’s two, and everything hinged on the final riddle. The score would be tied and they’d have to go to a tiebreaker if Alexander answered it correctly. But then, that was why he’d saved the best for last.

“Sir, I bear a rhyme excelling
in mystic force and magic spelling.
Celestial sprites elucidate:
all my own striving can't relate
Or locate they who can cogitate
And so finally terminate.
Finis.”

He hated math, Elisha thought, but occasionally there were moments when pi was useful, and he tilted his head to one side as he waited patiently for Alexander’s verdict. The silence was long, and the king’s face grew frustrated as he tried to work out the answer, but finally he shook his head.

“I don’t know it,” he said, and lifted his chin. “But I counter-challenge you to swords, Elisha, in two hours time.”

Elisha didn’t hesitate before he nodded. “Of course, Alexander,” he said, using the name without the title for the first time. “The answer, by the way, was pi.” Eileen would be able to explain it to him, he thought as he stepped away. Right now, Elisha needed to prepare.

Swords weren’t his forte. He wasn’t bad at them - he had once even beaten Victor at them, and Victor was one of the best in the Deck - but Elisha preferred knives or his hands to long blades by far. And Alexander knew that, of course, but that was fine, because Elisha knew how Alexander thought. That was why he’d been practicing with Julien. Why he was ready now.

The crowd was almost to big for the arena, but that was to be expected, and Elisha merely nodded at Alexander before raising his sword. To win, he would have to be ruthless, but not as ruthless as he might like to be. Eileen was one of the faces in the crowd, towards the front, and he would not kill a man in front of her - not after everything else she’d seen and experienced in the past year. Only enough blood would be shed to win, and be decisively the King of Clubs.

They began. Steel clashed against steel, two very different types of soldiers danced around each other. Alexander was light on his feet, moving in a too-fast dance. He was almost impossible to catch, but Elisha had been trained in an art whose purpose was to win at all costs, to never die, and even now - with a sword in his hand instead of a gun - krav maga served him well. It kept him moving just out of reach when Alexander moved to strike and let him sidle in close when he moved to.

First blood went to Alexander, the blade of his sword slicing through Elisha’s cotton shirt and biting into his skin, and a smirk curled his lips. But Elisha just kept moving, because first blood was just first. It was last blood that counted, and last blood would be what he got.

It came at the very end of the fight, and Elisha ended up using Julien’s advice after all. Under his arm, where he doesn’t wear armor. He always forgets to shield that. Elisha’s sword drove into that spot, but not deeply. He didn’t push as hard as he could, and as much as he’d often wanted to over the past year. It would have been easy to, he thought; just put an end to the Alexander problem for good. But Eileen was watching. Everyone was watching, Elisha reflected, and so he halted his sword.

But they both knew. Elisha recognized that as he met Alexander’s eyes. “Do you yield?”

The silence was long, the only sound their harsh breaths, but eventually Alexander spoke. “I do,” he said. “Your Majesty.”

Elisha nodded as he pulled his blade free and stepped back. Alexander wasn’t without skills, but he’d never been the right choice for king. Still, Elisha thought as he helped the man to his feet. He could possibly be a good Ten.

Writing sample: See here

Character PB: Stuart Townsend