Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné · Vol. II
To Rescue Tanelorn
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Michael Moorcock · Stories written 1957–2006, collected in the Del Rey edition, 2008
Fourteen works spanning the full Eternal Champion mythos — from its ancient origins to its modern avatars
Story categories
Eternal Champion · Core Cosmology
Elric / Chaos
Elric narrative stories
Law vs Chaos / Balance
Pre-history / World-Building
Modern avatar / Meta-Elric
Parody / Crossover
Part I — The Eternal Champion Cycle (1962–1964)
The Eternal ChampionScience Fantasy #53, June 1962Eternal Champion · Origin
John Daker Awakens — The War Against the Eldren
The novella that launched the Eternal Champion concept
John Daker, an ordinary twentieth-century man, is summoned across time by the ancient king Rigenos to inhabit the legendary body of Erekosë, the Eternal Champion — a hero fated to be reincarnated endlessly to fight for humanity. Called to a far-future (or distant-past) Earth of three continents, Erekosë is tasked with leading humanity's war against the Eldren, a beautiful immortal race Rigenos calls the Hounds of Evil. Erekosë leads a great naval campaign, captures the Eldren seaport of Paphanaal, and takes prisoner Ermizhad, sister of the Eldren prince Arjavh. He begins to fall in love with her — and to doubt the righteousness of his mission. Learning that the Eldren have always been peaceful and precede humanity on Earth, he is torn between his vow to Humanity and his conscience.
⚖ After a year of conquest through Mernadin, Erekosë is forced to confront the truth: Humanity will never accept peace. He and Ermizhad profess their love. He is declared a traitor by Queen Iolinda. In a terrible choice, he unleashes the Eldren's ancient superweapons — and in one hour destroys all of humanity on Earth, sparing only Ermizhad and Arjavh. He becomes immortal, marries Ermizhad, and broods on whether Fate used him as its tool. This is the founding act of the Eternal Champion legend.
The Two Continents of Humanity · The continent of Mernadin · Loos Ptokai · Necranal
To Rescue Tanelorn…Science Fantasy #56, December 1962Rackhir · Tanelorn · Grey Lords
Rackhir the Red Archer & the Five Gates
Introducing Tanelorn and Rackhir — cornerstones of the whole multiverse
The neutral city of Tanelorn — refuge for broken, wandering souls — is threatened by a vast beggar army raised by the Chaos-Lord Narjhan from the wretched City of Beggars, Nadsokor. Rackhir the Red Archer, a former Warrior Priest of Chaos turned scholar and wanderer, sets out to seek the aid of the inscrutable Grey Lords — beings pledged to neither Law nor Chaos. With the hermit seer Lamsar, he passes through five impossible dimensional gateways: through a realm of enforced dancing, through Chaos itself, through the Realm of Absolute Law (a perfect grey void), through the home of the timeless Guardians who built Tanelorn, and at last to the Grey Lords' wandering court.
✦ The Grey Lords direct Rackhir to the sky-sailing Boatmen of Xerlerenes. Racing back, Rackhir arrives just in time — the Boatmen's sky fleet, fire elementals, and his own arrows rout the beggar horde. Narjhan's armour is captured but found empty: Chaos has fled. Tanelorn is saved. Rackhir takes the sorceress Sorana — his old lover who had spied for Chaos — home to Tanelorn to learn its peace. The hermit Lamsar's parting words: "It was not a city you defended today. It was an ideal."
Tanelorn · The Sighing Desert · The Five Dimensional Realms · Mountains of Xerlerenes
The Last EnchantmentWritten 1962 — Published Ariel magazine, 1978Elric · Chaos Lords · Lost Story
Elric & the Palace of Kaneloon at the Time of the Change
The "lost" story — written as the final Elric tale, unpublished for sixteen years
Elric, wandering alone, encounters a deranged sorcerer named Slorg hunted by supernatural Hungry Whisperers — servants of the Chaos Lord Teshwan. Slorg, furious at Elric's refusal to help, uses his final power to banish him to another dimension: a barren stone plain under a white sky, the world of Chaos at its Time of the Change, when the Lords of Chaos rest and remake reality. Stormbringer is powerless here. Elric is taken to the Palace of Kaneloon — seat of the Lords of Chaos — and sat before nine sardonic demigods who offer him a terrible bargain: create something they have never conceived, or be imprisoned forever, conscious.
🎭 Elric watches the Lords of Chaos perform their dizzying cosmic creative pageant — reshaping all of creation from raw elements. When challenged, he conjures a single illusion: a perfect replica of himself, but with a mind containing the entire capacity of human consciousness — the paradox that the cause (a human mind) contains within it all the effects the Lords of Chaos can produce. They are delighted. They release him. He rides to Bakshaan, privately amused by the greatest joke of all.
An unnamed realm of Chaos · The Palace of Kaneloon · Bakshaan
The Greater ConquerorScience Fantasy #58, April 1963Historical · Eternal Champion · Ahriman
Alexander the Great as Vehicle for Ahriman
The Eternal Champion cycle recasts Alexander the Great as a possessed vessel of Chaos
Simon of Byzantium, a literate mercenary soldier, arrives in Babylon to join the army of Alexander the Great — only to witness Alexander's terrifying dual nature. The Zoroastrian Magi sect, led by Abaris (who may be the legendary priest of Apollo), reveal that Alexander's mother Olympias was selected by the Chaos entity Ahriman as the vehicle for his great plan, and that Alexander himself is now fully possessed. The forces of Light — Egyptian, Chaldaean, Hebrew, Indian, Druid, and Persian priests — are scattered and weakened. Simon rescues Camilla from Olympias's dark rites, flees across half the world pursued by supernatural huntsmen, and eventually makes it to Babylon for a final confrontation.
⚔ Simon faces Alexander at the Temple of Baal. With a javelin of the Magi he drives Ahriman from Alexander's body briefly. He then duels Alexander himself — who fights nobly and fairly — and mortally wounds him. Alexander dies human, clear-minded, grateful. Ahriman departs with the warning: "There will be others." The Magi disguise the cause of death as fever. The world is given breathing room. One incarnation of the Eternal Champion's battle is done.
Babylon · Pela (Macedonia) · Nineveh in ruins · Temple of Baal
Master of Chaos (Earl Aubec)Fantastic Stories, May 1964Pre-history · World's Edge · Earl Aubec
The Hero Who Made the World — Earl Aubec at Castle Kaneloon
The mythic deep past: how the Young Kingdoms themselves came into being
Set in the ancient world before Melniboné's ten-thousand-year empire. Earl Aubec of Malador, Champion of Queen Eloarde of Klant, is sent alone to claim the legendary Castle Kaneloon — a fortress at World's Edge, beyond which lies only the churning void of Chaos. Inside, Aubec defeats a labyrinth of his own mind's fears, repels a metal golem (by showing it its own reflection in a mirror — it fears itself), and reaches the tower where the Dark Lady Myshella awaits. She reveals the castle's true purpose: a threshold. When a hero strong enough to face his own imagination stands at Kaneloon, he can push out against Chaos — and new land crystallises from the void.
🌍 Myshella manipulates Aubec's ambition by suggesting he could create new lands for his queen's empire. He strides out along the causeway into Chaos itself, facing whatever his imagination conjures — and the world grows. As the story closes, a final line reveals the cosmic stakes: "Thus were the seeds sown of the Age of the Young Kingdoms… which was to produce the downfall of Melniboné." Earl Aubec's conquest of Chaos literally made the world Elric would later inherit.
Castle Kaneloon · World's Edge · The Cliffs of the Void
Part II — Modern Avatars & Elric in Other Worlds (1965–1973)
Phase 1 — A Jerry Cornelius StoryWritten 1965 · First published in this edition, 2008Jerry Cornelius · Modern Avatar · Transitional
The Dreaming City Reborn — Elric as Jerry Cornelius
The lost fragment that became The Final Programme — showing how Elric transfigured into his modern avatar
Set in 1960s London and Normandy, this fragment mirrors the structure of "The Dreaming City" (Vol. I) precisely but in contemporary dress. Jerry Cornelius — Elric's modern incarnation: ascetic, beautiful, ruthless, drug-using — plots with a group of shadowy figures (the cold computer programmer Miss Brunner, banker Smiles, casino owner Lucas) to raid his late father's heavily fortified château on the Normandy coast. His motives are revenge and the rescue of his drugged sister Catherine (Cymoril's parallel) from his brother Frank (Yyrkoon). Jerry navigates booby traps, kills a mute guard, and reaches Catherine — insensible from injections. He cannot wake her.
🔁 Published here for the first time as a standalone story, this fragment explicitly shows the creative mechanism: Moorcock took the first Elric stories and transposed them into psychedelic 1960s Britain to create The Final Programme and thus Jerry Cornelius. The mute palace guard, Tanglebones reborn as John Gnatbeelson, the sleeping woman, the escape — all echo Vol. I beat for beat. The Eternal Champion wears new clothes.
Blackheath, London · Southquay harbour · Normandy coast château
An Elric adventure commissioned for de Camp's sword-and-sorcery anthology
Elric and Moonglum are hired to investigate the Singing Citadel — a mysterious fortress that generates a mesmeric, irresistible music which draws travellers to their doom. A woman Yishana, ruler of Jharkor, enlists them. Within the citadel a sorcerous entity has taken hold, using sound as both weapon and lure. Elric must use Stormbringer and his command of Chaos to combat it, leading to a confrontation with the citadel's supernatural occupant — a being that has consumed the souls of all who entered.
⚡ Stormbringer's soul-drinking is central to the resolution, the sword feeding on the supernatural presence to empower Elric. Moonglum's loyalty and practical courage contrast with Elric's haunted ambivalence. The adventure reinforces the cycle's core tragedy: Elric saves others while his sword damns him.
Jharkor · The Young Kingdoms
Part III — Later Novellas & Experiments (1973–2006)
Written for bookseller and poet Bill Butler — one of the rarest Elric chapbooks
A self-contained Elric adventure set in the Young Kingdoms, involving a supernatural entity — a vast, ancient being of stone and jade whose emerald eyes hold sorcerous power. Elric, armed with Stormbringer and his pact with Chaos, must confront or bargain with this entity, which predates the age of men and belongs to an older order of the world. The story explores Elric's role not just as swordsman but as the last inheritor of ten thousand years of Melnibonéan sorcerous knowledge — knowledge that most men could not hold without madness. Published in a limited edition illustrated chapbook by Bill Butler's Brighton bookshop press, this is one of Elric's most obscure appearances, here collected for the first time.
🟢 The Jade Man embodies the theme central to the whole volume: that the world Elric inhabits is built on layers of older ages, each displaced by the next. The stone being is a remnant of a pre-human order, just as Melniboné itself will become a remnant. Published posthumously after Butler's death in 1977 — Moorcock wrote the rock song "The Great Sun Jester" for him.
The Young Kingdoms
The Stone ThingTriode fanzine #20, October 1974Parody · Self-Satire
Elric Parody — A Knowing, Affectionate Send-Up
Written for a friend's fanzine — Moorcock gently mocking his own creation
A deliberate parody of the Elric mode, written for Eric Bentcliffe's fanzine. The story plays with the conventions of the Elric stories — the brooding albino, the soul-drinking sword, the cosmic stakes — in a gently comic register. Moorcock, ever wary of taking himself too seriously, here demonstrates that the best artists can inhabit and lampoon their own work simultaneously. The story is a meta-commentary on the Elric formula: the Stone Thing itself is a monster that parodies the kind of hulking menace Elric routinely faces, while the narrative punctures its own pomposity with dry wit.
😏 Moorcock's note: "There's always a danger, as one's work grows in popularity, of taking oneself too seriously." This light piece is a palate-cleanser between weightier works, and a demonstration of Moorcock's comic gifts and self-awareness.
The Young Kingdoms (probably)
Elric at the End of TimeWritten 1977 · Published Paper Tiger, 1981/1987Crossover · End of Time · Comic
Elric Meets the Dancers at the End of Time
A unique blend: Elric stumbles into Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time sequence — played for dark comedy
Through a dimensional accident, Elric of Melniboné is pulled out of the Young Kingdoms and deposited in the impossibly remote far future inhabited by the languid, amoral, omnipotent aesthetes of the Dancers at the End of Time. These decadent beings — who can reshape reality as entertainment — regard Elric as a fascinating curiosity. To them, his brooding, his runesword, and his Chaos Lords look very much like the gods of Chaos themselves. Elric regards the End of Time with horror: a world where nothing is at stake, where suffering is long forgotten, where boredom is the only suffering. The story is primarily playful, exploring what happens when the darkest of tragic heroes meets beings for whom tragedy is inconceivable.
🎪 Elric's grim heroism is rendered absurd in this context and thus, by contrast, illuminated. The Dancers mistake his Chaos pacts for something they find merely aesthetic. Eventually returned to his own time, Elric's stoic sadness is both mocked and honoured. Illustrated by Rodney Matthews in gorgeous colour for the Paper Tiger edition. Moorcock's note: "M. John Harrison suggested the denizens of the End of Time would be seen as the Gods of Chaos by the likes of Elric."
The End of Time · (Elric's own era at resolution)
Part IV — Late Stories & Moonbeam Roads (1994–2006)
The Black Blade's SongWhite Wolf anthology, 1994Moonbeam Roads · Second Ether
Elric & the Moonbeam Roads
Connects Elric's late adventures to Moorcock's Second Ether sequence and the moonbeam roads — the dimension-spanning paths between alternate realities that link all the Eternal Champion incarnations. Originally published under the title "The White Wolf's Song," this story places Elric in the expanded multiverse framework Moorcock developed in his final Eternal Champion cycle, grounding his eternal wandering in the broader metaphysics of the Second Ether. An Elric who begins to sense the full pattern of what he is: not just a doomed albino prince, but one face of an endlessly recurring champion.
Written for the New Statesman's special Christmas issue, this story places the Elric/Zenith avatar in a modern-dress context — linking back explicitly to Monsieur Zenith the Albino, Anthony Skene's Sexton Blake villain who was Elric's original inspiration. One in a sequence of stories Moorcock wrote recasting Elric as Zenith or as a figure haunting the metatemporal detective's world. The crimson eyes of the title are Elric/Zenith's most recognisable feature, and the story uses them to anchor a supernatural mystery in contemporary London.
Modern London (likely)
Sir Milk-and-BloodPawn of Chaos anthology, 1996Metatemporal · Zenith · Historical
The Metatemporal Detective Meets the White Wolf
Written for Ed Kramer's Pawn of Chaos anthology, this story takes Elric into Moorcock's sequence of modern-dress Eternal Champion tales in which he appears as Monsieur Zenith — the aristocratic Albanian albino criminal of the Sexton Blake pulps — now linked to the Metatemporal Detective (Seaton Begg, Sexton Blake under his real name). "Sir Milk-and-Blood" is a title that evokes both Elric's pallor and his Stormbringer-fed vitality, and the story bridges Elric's ancient world with the detective fiction tradition that first inspired him.
Early 20th century · Multiverse
The Roaming ForestCross Plains Universe anthology, 2006Rackhir · Howard homage · Most Recent
Rackhir the Red Archer — A Nod to Robert E. Howard
Written for the 2006 World Fantasy Convention in Austin, Texas, in a collection celebrating Robert E. Howard — Conan's creator and one of Elric's indirect ancestors. The story returns to Rackhir, the Red Archer of Tanelorn, and is deliberately crafted to echo Howard's pulp adventure style while remaining firmly in Moorcock's cosmology. Readers familiar with Howard will spot nods to Conan alongside Moorcock's own multiverse concepts. The most recently written story in the volume, it circles back to Tanelorn and to Rackhir — the most human, least tragic of Moorcock's Eternal Champion figures.
Tanelorn · The Young Kingdoms · Texas (in spirit)
◈ Complete Publication Record — To Rescue Tanelorn, Vol. II