Continuing on with the Rebuild, here's the revised/expanded/more interesting than the Wiki character profile for Mal Fnord. Most of this stuff is new in the sense that it's never been seen here before, but a lot of the ideas have been backing Mal's appearances for a while now. The big retcon here is I'm dropping the 'S' in 'S. Malaclypse Fnord' 'cos it's a stupid affectation and nobody uses it anyfuckingway. Also, it's written for a 2022 POV, so there may or may not be spoilers for certain things. Enjoy!
“Brothers and sisters, I have a scheme.”
History
The man originally behind Mal Fnord was born Sam Wildman in the little redneck mountain town that inspired ‘South Park.’ He was taught at an early age to always be one of the good people in the world, since there were too many of the bad. Sam was just another face in the crowd during his youth, a solid B student through his early school years, though he had a tendency to wander off on odd tangents, and his extracurricular activities often involved oddly elaborate plans that sometimes worked better than he expected.
And then there was The Game. Sam fell into The Game around his senior year in high school, and he was hooked pretty much from the first moment. As the years progressed, he started as a common n00b and ended as The Game’s last gamemaster and pretty much the only person who knew everything about it. It might have had something to do with his character, a wily sort of Wise Master archetype that had contingency plans for everything and always tried to cover all possible angles. This type of thinking appealed to Sam, and as a result he and his character – the man known only as ‘Malaclypse Fnord’ - began to blur together.
At the University of New Mexico Sam studied astronomy and political science when he wasn’t busking for beer money, and slowly rediscovered the joys of socialism and fell in love with the Carl Sagan ideal of the scientist as explorer and activist. Unfortunately, the world at the time wasn’t interested in activism, or even science for that matter. Graduating on the cusp of the fun stopping, Sam started working desk job after desk job to keep body and soul together. To keep his brain alive, he threw himself into The Game and into the local fandom, cultivating a network of contacts up and down the Rocky Mountains. The Game itself finally came to a rousing conclusion under his watch, and the remaining players stuck around, played a few smaller games and generally hung out.
When excited chatter about the new ‘miracle material’ started appearing online and in the cafes, Sam (who by this time answered equally to ‘Mal’) saw great potential, not just for things he’d dreamed of since he was little but for larger visions as well. Handwavium seemed to be the key to the end of scarcity, the end of resource conflicts, maybe the beginning of the Star Trek future that Mal thought was the best hope for the species. The plan to get hold of an ex-Soviet surplus shuttle and get out there to start work on the distant utopia, that came a little later. It wasn’t until almost a year later that he sprung the plan on old Game comrades.
That one... didn’t work out quite like Mal had hoped. By the end of the plan, he and his friends were branded criminals and terrorists in their home countries. As punishment, or maybe because they didn’t have any better ideas, for his sins Mal was named Generalissimo of the newly-founded Soviet Air Force. Since it was his fault they were in this mess, it was his responsibility to fix it, or at least make it better.
So he did, and the conversion from Sam Wildman to Mal Fnord was complete. Explorer (though since the end of the war he doesn’t get to run off into the wild much anymore), scientist (he still keeps his hand in when possible) and master politician, Mal Fnord is a SMOF’s SMOF, doing what he can to bring Utopia to Fenspace and, if only by example, to the rest of humanity as well. If he misses the simplicity of being just another face in the crowd... he keeps it to himself.
Handwavium Quirks/Abilities
Officially, Mal is a plain, unmodded human being like every other unmodded human being out there. This is a lie. The truth is a great deal more complex. Also, Mal doesn’t know this, though he suspects something’s a bit awry.
Random Facts & Personal Data
Fandoms: Star Trek, The Culture, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ken MacLeod, Carl Sagan, The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Lord of the Rings, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
The Visionary: Mal Fnord
Generalissimo & Chairman of the Central Committee
Generalissimo & Chairman of the Central Committee
“Brothers and sisters, I have a scheme.”
History
The man originally behind Mal Fnord was born Sam Wildman in the little redneck mountain town that inspired ‘South Park.’ He was taught at an early age to always be one of the good people in the world, since there were too many of the bad. Sam was just another face in the crowd during his youth, a solid B student through his early school years, though he had a tendency to wander off on odd tangents, and his extracurricular activities often involved oddly elaborate plans that sometimes worked better than he expected.
And then there was The Game. Sam fell into The Game around his senior year in high school, and he was hooked pretty much from the first moment. As the years progressed, he started as a common n00b and ended as The Game’s last gamemaster and pretty much the only person who knew everything about it. It might have had something to do with his character, a wily sort of Wise Master archetype that had contingency plans for everything and always tried to cover all possible angles. This type of thinking appealed to Sam, and as a result he and his character – the man known only as ‘Malaclypse Fnord’ - began to blur together.
At the University of New Mexico Sam studied astronomy and political science when he wasn’t busking for beer money, and slowly rediscovered the joys of socialism and fell in love with the Carl Sagan ideal of the scientist as explorer and activist. Unfortunately, the world at the time wasn’t interested in activism, or even science for that matter. Graduating on the cusp of the fun stopping, Sam started working desk job after desk job to keep body and soul together. To keep his brain alive, he threw himself into The Game and into the local fandom, cultivating a network of contacts up and down the Rocky Mountains. The Game itself finally came to a rousing conclusion under his watch, and the remaining players stuck around, played a few smaller games and generally hung out.
When excited chatter about the new ‘miracle material’ started appearing online and in the cafes, Sam (who by this time answered equally to ‘Mal’) saw great potential, not just for things he’d dreamed of since he was little but for larger visions as well. Handwavium seemed to be the key to the end of scarcity, the end of resource conflicts, maybe the beginning of the Star Trek future that Mal thought was the best hope for the species. The plan to get hold of an ex-Soviet surplus shuttle and get out there to start work on the distant utopia, that came a little later. It wasn’t until almost a year later that he sprung the plan on old Game comrades.
That one... didn’t work out quite like Mal had hoped. By the end of the plan, he and his friends were branded criminals and terrorists in their home countries. As punishment, or maybe because they didn’t have any better ideas, for his sins Mal was named Generalissimo of the newly-founded Soviet Air Force. Since it was his fault they were in this mess, it was his responsibility to fix it, or at least make it better.
So he did, and the conversion from Sam Wildman to Mal Fnord was complete. Explorer (though since the end of the war he doesn’t get to run off into the wild much anymore), scientist (he still keeps his hand in when possible) and master politician, Mal Fnord is a SMOF’s SMOF, doing what he can to bring Utopia to Fenspace and, if only by example, to the rest of humanity as well. If he misses the simplicity of being just another face in the crowd... he keeps it to himself.
Handwavium Quirks/Abilities
Officially, Mal is a plain, unmodded human being like every other unmodded human being out there. This is a lie. The truth is a great deal more complex. Also, Mal doesn’t know this, though he suspects something’s a bit awry.
Random Facts & Personal Data
- Has - well, had - one of the largest collections of conspiracy literature in the western hemisphere. Most of it was confiscated and “lost” during the Terror Gang debacle. He’s since replaced most of it with digital copies, but it’s just not the same.
- Knew Jeph Antilles back in The Day, and passed him an early generation of Faget-Lozino-Lozinskiy handwavium.
- Played guitar when a college busker, but these days he only brings it out for special occasions or after the third beers.
- Is solidly convinced that Tecate is the greatest beer in history, and after enough of them won’t shut up about it.
- Mal has been in a long-term relationship with runaway Stellvia heiress Sora Hasegawa since 2014, and the two of them have been in a tangled Heinleinian relationship with fellow Soviet Athene Weatheral since 2017. None of them get much sleep, but they’re happy.
Fandoms: Star Trek, The Culture, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ken MacLeod, Carl Sagan, The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Lord of the Rings, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"