Stormbringer

For other uses, see Stormbringer (disambiguation).

Stormbringer is the name of the infamous black sword featured in a number of fantasy stories by the author Michael Moorcock. Created by the forces of Chaos, it is described as a huge, black sword covered with strange runes carved deep into its blade. It is wielded by the doomed albino emperor Elric of Melniboné.

Description

This powerful enchanted black blade is a member of a demon race that takes on the form of a sword, and as such is a force of Chaos. Stormbringer's edge is capable of cutting through virtually any material not protected by potent sorcery, and it can drink the soul from (and thereby kill) an unprotected human upon delivering any wound, even a scratch. Its most distinctive features are that it has a mind and will of its own, and that it feeds upon the souls of those it kills. Elric loathes the sword but is almost helpless without the strength and vitality it confers on him.

Stormbringer’s hunger for souls is such that it frequently betrays Elric by creating a bloodlust in his mind, turning in his hands and killing friends and lovers. The cursed nature of the sword adds to Elric’s guilt and self-loathing even as he feels pleasure when the stolen lifeforce enters his body.

Stormbringer has a "sister" sword named Mournblade, which was at one time wielded by Elric’s cousin and enemy Yyrkoon. It is identical to Stormbringer in most regards. Later stories reveal that there are thousands of identical demons, all taking the form of swords. Three such sibling blades appear in The Revenge of the Rose and many more "brother blades" are seen in the novel Stormbringer, but only Mournblade and Stormbringer are named.

In Elric of Melniboné, Elric and cousin Yyrkoon find the runeblades in a realm of Limbo and commence battle. Elric and Stormbringer disarm Yyrkoon, and Mournblade disappears. Yyrkoon is defeated, and Elric and his cousin return to Imrryr.

In The Weird of the White Wolf, Elric returns to Imrryr after a long journey and confronts Yyrkoon, who usurped the throne in his absence. Yyrkoon has regained Mournblade through unknown means and uses it to attack. Elric and Stormbringer kill Yyrkoon, and no further mention is made of Mournblade until it is later disclosed that it was recovered by the Seers of Nihrain, to be wielded by Elric's cousin, Dyvim Slorm. Imrryr is sacked, though the pillagers' fate is not much better, being pursued by the golden battle barges and the few dragons who were awakened, led by Dyvim Tvar. Only Elric's ship escapes, propelled by the aid of his sorcery.

In Stormbringer, Elric learns that the representatives of Fate, which serve neither Chaos or Law, recovered Mournblade from the netherworld. They present it to Elric and explain that the runeblades were designed to be wielded by those with Melnibonéan royal blood as a check against the might of the Dead Gods of Chaos. Elric gives Mournblade to his kinsman, Dyvim Slorm, and the two men become embroiled in a confrontation between the gods. Elric summons others of Stormbringer’s demonic race (also in the form of swords) to fight against a number of Dukes of Hell, brought to the Young Kingdoms by Jagreen Lern, theocrat of Pan Tang.

Ultimately, Elric's reliance on Stormbringer proves his undoing: after the utter destruction of the Young Kingdoms in the battle of Law and Chaos, just as it seems that the cosmic Balance has been restored, Stormbringer kills Elric, transforms into a humanoid demon, and leaps laughing into the sky, to corrupt the newly-remade world once more. The sword-spirit says to the dying Elric "I was a thousand times more evil than thou."

In the book The Quest for Tanelorn, a man claims that the demon in the sword is named Shaitan - a variant of 'Satan'. In the same book it is revealed that the demon can inhabit either the black sword or the black jewel, the jewel which was once embedded in the skull of Dorian Hawkmoon. Hawkmoon was an avatar, like Elric, of the Eternal Champion.

Books by Moorcock featuring Stormbringer

• The Stealer of Souls (1963)
• Stormbringer (1965)
• The Singing Citadel (1970)
• The Vanishing Tower (1970) ^[1]
• Elric of Melniboné (1972) ^[2]
• The Sailor on the Seas of Fate (1976)
• The Weird of the White Wolf (1977)
• The Bane of the Black Sword (1977)
• Elric at the End of Time (1984)
• The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)
• The Revenge of the Rose (1991)

Other media by Moorcock featuring Stormbringer

Tom Strong #31 and #32, "The Black Blade of the Barbary Coast" parts 1 & 2, feature albino pirate Captain Zodiac seeking the "Black Blade", a black cutlass marked with red runes. This appears to be a recurrence (a favored Moorcock trope) of Elric and Stormbringer's tale.

In popular culture

Games

• The role-playing games Stormbringer (1981) and Elric! (1993) are both set in Moorcock's "multiverse".
• The Black Sword is a fictional sword first featured in Ultima VII: The Black Gate, specifically the expansion disk Forge of Virtue. It is also less frequently known as the Shade Blade. The Black Sword is the most powerful magical weapon in the game. When the sword is activated in the game by double-clicking it, the Avatar is able to converse with the demon Arcadion, who is able to either instantly and noiselessly kill a creature, or create a fire field.
• The sword also appears in both Ultima Underworld I & II.
• The video game ZAngband features the sword 'Stormbringer' with similar vampiric effects and conferring increased strength and constitution upon the user.
• Stormbringer makes an unofficial appearance in the computer role-playing game NetHack, with many of the same attributes that it possesses in Moorcock's works such as a tendency to attack targets (including allies) by itself and sucking the force of the living beings that it hits.
• In the computer game Drakan: Order of the Flame there is a sword that the player can collect known as the Mournblade. In its sequel, Drakan: The Ancients' Gates, there is a similar weapon called the "Mournbringer."
• In the Warcraft mythos, Arthas (a prince who betrays his country and becomes undead, ending up looking rather like Elric) wields a soul-stealing runeblade named Frostmourne . Also, the minor character, Highlord Mograine, carries the Ashbringer. (The 'corrupted' version of this blade, which behaves more like the Stormbringer right down to the blade speaking to its wielder, was one of the strongest blades available to player characters of World of Warcraft for a significant length of time.)
• Mournblade (as Mourneblade) is featured in Konami's video game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and possesses the ability to heal the player character whenever he strikes something with it (much like how Mournblade and Stormbringer grant their wielder health and vitality when used to slay a foe, though the game weapon can grant health even when striking non-living objects, such as candles). Mourneblade is widely regarded as one of the best weapons in the game, and is considered a "rare" weapon.
• A sightly modified version of the Stormbringer appears in MapleStory as the Doombringer.
• Lost Souls includes Stormbringer and Mournblade as unique instances of a class of black runeswords called lzrelekoi.^[3][4]
• The AD&D module White Plume Mountain includes a sword named Blackrazor with similar properties.

Print

• In Dave Sim’s graphic novel Cerebus, the Elric parody character Elrod of Melvinbone wields a sword called “Seersucker”, which leads Cerebus to remark to himself, “Tarim! Who would believe a sword could get rusty enough to turn black?”
• The bunny girl in Gainax's legendary Daicon IV short for the opening of the 22nd Annual Japan Science Fiction Convention in 1983 flies riding on top of Stormbringer.

Music

• Mournblade was a British NWOBHM band who made two albums in the 1980s: Time's Running Out and Live Fast Die Young. Several of their songs feature references to Michael Moorcock's work.
• The band Hawkwind, who have had a long association with Moorcock, released an entire album about the story of Elric and Stormbringer, The Chronicle of the Black Sword. They have also released both a single and double live album expanding upon this work, Live Chronicles. The double live album package includes an Elric short story. The album itself contains various narrations and poems read by Moorcock.
• The 1980 Blue Öyster Cult song "Black Blade" on the Cultosaurus Erectus album was created as a collaboration between Eric Bloom and Michael Moorcock.
• UK hard rock band Magnum has a song named Stormbringer, about Elric and his sword, on the reissue of their Kingdom of Madness album. It was one of the very first songs they recorded, and was not commercially available until this reissue, apart from on "Archive", a 1993 Jet Records collection of previously unreleased demo and outtake material recorded between 1976 and 1983.
• The German metal band Blind Guardian’s song Fast to Madness is based on Elric and references Stormbringer several times. It is found on their Follow the Blind album. The song "Damned For All Time", also on "Follow the Blind", is a reference to the struggle of the Eternal Champion.
• The Italian metal band Domine has a number of songs based on the Elric saga and referencing Stormbringer and Mourneblade. Additionally, Elric and Stormbringer are featured on the cover art for all four albums. Michael Moorcock himself is specifically thanked and noted as an influence in the liner notes for each of their albums.
  • The Chronicles of the Black Sword ^[5]
  • Last of the Dragonlords (Lord Elric’s Imperial March) ^[6]
  • Dragonlord (The Grand Master of the Mightiest Beasts) ^[6]
  • Horn of Fate ^[7]
  • The Bearer of the Black Sword ^[7]
  • For Evermore ^[7]
  • Dawn of a New Age (A Celtic Requiem) ^[7]
  • The Song of the Swords ^[8]
• The song Bane of the Black Sword by American metal band Apollo Ra on their Ra Pariah album deals with the adventures of Elric and Stormbringer.
• The American metal band Cirith Ungol’s song Nadsokor from their One Foot In Hell album references Elric, Stormbringer and the city of beggars found in the Elric saga. Michael Whelan’s paintings of Elric and Stormbringer are also featured on the cover art of all four Cirith Ungol albums.
• The Spanish metal band Dark Moor features an Elric and Stormbringer related song titled The Fall of Melnibone as a bonus track on the Japanese edition of their album Hall of the Olden Dreams. The song was later made available to the American and European markets on the album Between Light and Darkness.
• The song "Borrowed Time" by the NWOBHM band Diamond Head on their Borrowed Time album deals with Elric and is told from his point of view. In this song, he refers to himself as “a slave to this black blade”. Elric and Stormbringer are also featured on the album’s cover artwork.
• The song Sword's Lament by American metal band Cauldron Born references both Stormbringer and Mournblade, along with a host of other fantasy swords.
• Italian epic metal band Assedium has the Elric and Stormbringer based song "The Messenger of Chaos" on their debut album Rise of the Warlords.
• The song "Legacy of Kings" by Hammerfall contains the line "Stormbringer lead us into the unknown."
• Hailing from tiny Whitley Bay in the Northeast of England, the Tygers of Pan Tang name originated from Michael Moorcock's Elric saga, where Pan Tang is described as a realm of Chaos-worshipping Mabden sorcerers.^[9]
• Deep Purple released a song about the blade entitled "Stormbringer".

See also

• Anglachel/Gurthang, the black sword of Beleg and later Túrin Turambar; and its twin Anguirel, from The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien.
• Dragnipur, a black, soul-devouring sword in the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson.
• Tyrfing, a cursed sword in the Norse Hervarar saga.
• Clarent, a supposed legendary sword given to Josh Newman in the book The Magician: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel it is described as a black sword and supposedly gives the wielder the ability to absorb the memories of the one being slain by it. It has an imfamous "hunger" to slaughter and is the "brother sword" of the legendary Excalibur.

References

1. ^ Variant Title: The Sleeping Sorceress
2. ^ Variant Title: The Dreaming City
3. ^ "Stormbringer". Lost Souls Wiki. http://wiki.lostsouls.org/Stormbringer. Retrieved 2010-08-09. 
4. ^ "Mournblade". Lost Souls Wiki. http://wiki.lostsouls.org/Mournblade. Retrieved 2010-08-09. 
5. ^ Domine's Champion Eternal album
6. ^ ^{a b} Domine's Dragonlord (Tales of the Noble Steel) album
7. ^ ^{a b c d} Domine's Stormbringer Ruler album
8. ^ Domine's Emperor of the Black Runes album
9. ^ Tygers of Pan Tang: Biography

External links

• Stormbringer.net — An overview of the Elric saga