Mender is a character in Wendy and Richard Pini's graphic novel ElfQuest. The comic has been published on several languages, and has been a success. The comic was first published in 1978 and is still in press, even though there are not so many titles out right now. The Pini's are currently working on the first ElfQuest animated movie.
Facts
History
Personality
Mender Warp Bio
Mender facts
Name: Mender.
Means: Go figure... he's a healer and he mends wounds.
Age: Over 600 years. He's a mortal wolfrider but he's alive.
Elf soul-name: Yet unknown. He's never recognized.
Lovemates: He has a "first priority" lovemate named Yun, but he most likely shares experiences with his former lovemate Ember and Teir.
Short summary: Pure blooded Wolfrider raised by wolfrider parents in the peaceful Sun Village.
Closest family: Woodlock and Rainsong, parents (deceased.) Newstar, sister and Wing, brother (deceased.) He's the youngest of the three siblings. Grandson of Rain (deceased.) Niece of Pike. Uncle to Kimo and Serrin. Cousin to Sust. Grand-Uncle to Bowki (very possibly deceased). See family tree.
What else: Troll friend. Curious about humans. As a healer he has a natural interest for all types of living creatures.
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Mender history:
Mender's grandfather, Rain, was a healer. He lived at the time when Bearclaw, Cutter's father, was a chief. There's
more on Rain here. Rain fathered a boy, Pike, and a girl, Rainsong, though only Rainsong was born by recognition. Rainsong became lovemate with Woodlock. At least that's my conclution by looking at book 9a, "Wolfrider". It looks like the two of them are hanging together all the time over a few years. One example is the panel where they are playing with baby Skywise. Later on they recognized for the first time and Rainsong gave birh to a girl, Newstar. Shortly after the two became parents again, this time to a boy they named Wing.
When the humans burned down the forest where Cutter and his sixteen wolfriders lived, they escaped through troll labyrints and was tricked into the burning waste by the troll Picknose. After deciding to cross the desert to see what they would find, the elves found a place called "Sorrow's End", or "the Sun Village", where brown-skinned elves lived happily.
After a few years living in peace with these elves, most of the wolfriders set out on a quest to find their chief Cutter, who had left Sorrow's End a year earlier to search for other elves. But some of them stayed behind. One of them was the twelve-year old Dart. Mender's mother and father, Rainsong and Woodlock, had found that the peaceful desert life appealed to them and decided to stay behind to raise their two children, Newstar and little Wing, who was just a tiny infant when the wolfriders first arrived at Sorrow's End. And of course they didn't want to begin a big journey at that time, Rainsong being pregnant for the third time with - guess who - Mender! (Three recognitions for one couple is really really rare so I guess we must be happy Mender is alive at all! ;) Before Leetah and the others left, Rainsong told Leetah that she wouldn't worry about the Sun Villagers not having a healer, because she had felt that the baby inside her had magical healing gifts, just like her own father once had.
Cutter and the wolfriders found their sacred palace of the High Ones and the first quest was over, and Mender was born around this time. He was raised in the Sun Village, and didn't leave his birthplace until Rayek, Venka, Zhantee, Ekuar, Leetah, Suntop and Ember came for a visit in the palace.
But before this a lot of things happened. When Newstar was all grown up she joined Dart's jackal-wolf band and went with them to help Cutter and the other wolfriders at Blue Mountain. (Complete ElfQuest book 6.) She returned with the jackal-wolf band and the other wolfriders when Rayek first flew the palace to Sorrow's End. Wing was a teenager at that time, and Mender still a toddler. Dewshine and Scouter decided to stay in the Sun Village with their son Windkin, who was just a year or so younger than Mender, and the two became good friends. (Complete ElfQuest book 7.)
At the time the palace first visited Sorrow's End, Rayek, master of the palace, was obsessed with a "cry" Suntop, Cutter and Leetah's son and Embers twin, had heard. They discovered that the cry was the cry from the High Ones when they first crashed their ship on Abode, the elves' earth. Rayek believed that time was a circle, and that each circle spun for 10 000 years, and that it was nearly 10 000 years since the High Ones came to Abode. So he made the palace fly through time, taking Ekuar, Ember, Skywise, Leetah, Suntop, the troll girl Trinket and Ember's wolf Choplicker 10 000 years into the future. Rayek meant to be there to greet the firstcomers and prevent the ship from crashing, but he ended up letting it be after meeting his daughter Venka he never knew excisted. During the "dissapearance", as it's called, the many years the palace was missing, Wing recognized a Sun Villager named Bethia, (Wing, Bethia and Mender in picture to left,) and had a daughter, Serrin. (HY#2) Many years later Serrin recognized the well-known Dart and they had a son, Bowki. (NB#12.) Newstar recognized an unidentified sun villager and had a son, Kimo
The elves in the Sun Village who had wolf-blood knew that they would never see the day the palace would return because they would die of old age. So many of the wolfriders decided to sleep in the cocoon of the Preservers to keep from growing old. What also happened at the Sun Village was that the Go-backs under the command of their chief Zey decided to go to Sorrow's End to steal the "little palace", which is a piece of the real palace. The Go-Backs would kill to get the little palace, and so they did. As a healer Mender was most likely supposed to heal the wounded from the battle, but instead he became so angry he joined right into the war and (at least) broke another elfs back with his bare hands. Mender has sort of a split personality, he's a healer and he's a "damager", both kind and fierceful, and this was a pretty good example... many of the elves were wounded in this battle, and Mender didn't have the strengt to heal all of them. And that's another reason so many elves slept many years in cocoons while the palace was gone; they were waiting for Leetah to come and help Mender. One example is Newstar, who decided to sleep with her son Kimo, because he was wounded.
But not all of the wolfriders slept. Woodlock, Rainsong and Wing walked the path to it's natural end. Woodlock and Rainsong decided to count the years until the palace came back. They never managed to count all the years. Wing picked up where they stopped, but it wasn't long until he died as well. The three died of old age, and the Sun Villagers finished the counting for them. They are of the few wolfriders ever to die from old age.
Then we are back to the point where Leetah came to Sorrow's End to help Mender heal the wounded from the war. Mender became her student after this, and decided to come with Leetah to Cutter's holt to learn more. But it wasn't just because of Leetah he did this. He lovemated Ember while he was in Sorrow's End (HY#4).
He stayed with the wolfriders ubtil the time came when the elves had to split in two groups. One group was to go with Cutter to defeat Gromul Djun and get back the shattered palace shards, another was to follow Ember on her new journey. Mender was shocked that Ember chose Leetah to be her healer and not Mender, but he wiped those tears quickly, because going on a quest with his legendary hero Cutter was everything he ever dreamed of doing. So he joined in the war. He proved to be valuable for the elve's fight, and Cutter said during the war that the most powerful weapon they had, was the healer. (And yes, you can see Mender proud as a rooster in the back.) He was mortally wounded by an arrow, but his new troll friend Flam refused to let him slip away and started yelling and hitting him, telling him that he was a real sissy if he didn't stand up and fight. Mender reacted as Flam had hoped and bit his teeth together in anger as he healed himself. (Book 11a, Reunion.)
After the Shards war he met up with Ember again and joined her tribe. But he quickly became jalous when Teir joined the band again, and it came to show that Teir and Ember har developed a close relationship. There's more on this here! Yun helped him out of his misory and they soon became lovemates. The last we saw of Mender was that he had learned how to chape-change into a human. I'll bet he's in for a lot of fun and trouble doing this! (More about this period of his life can be read in the pages of Ember and Yun.)
Top
Mender's personality
Having wolf-blood and being raised on a quiet place has given Mender kind of two sides of his personality. (No, it's not like he has schizofrenia...) One side of him is the quiet, gentle, cool healer who takes each day at a time. The other side of him is a frantic, furious, mad wolfrider... when he sees the chance of a fight he will take it, and he doesn't give up easily either. Because even though he is 600 years old, he is still a young elf. When he was living with Cutter's wolfriders and during the Shards war I'm pretty sure we saw more of his wolf-blooded side than his gentle side, even though he was always loyal to Cutter and really happy that he was allowed to fight in a war. (!) And he certainly wasn't scared of snapping at Teir either... but in the latest stories he's been pretty gentle and well-behaved, at least in "Shadowstalker". His furious side might have been a teenage-thing, and that he's become more of a mature, adventurous elf now; he might have matured after the Teir-Ember thing.
Mender has a lot of friends, and he espesially, for some reason, get along really well with trolls. Of course there's Flam, but he also has a big fan named Trinket... and she's pretty crazy about him. She's been that way since the first time she saw him, but it might have something to do that Trinket wants to rival with Ember... Ember, as a chief, has seen how well he gets along with trolls and uses him when she needs to ask the trolls for a favour.
Mender seems to get along with everybody. Of course there was this thing with Teir, but other than that, he seems to find a friend in just about anybody.
He has developed a curiosity for humans. He's never known one and he's never shared any woods with any of them, so he doesn't have any experience with them at all. So he's recently started to shape-change into a human and "blend in" with them to learn more about them. That was the last we saw of him, in "Mender's Tale" parts 1 and 2. Aaaah! Can't wait any longer for the whole "Mender's Tale"!
Top
Mender Warp bio
Online bio here
MENDER
Warrior, healer, hunter, gatherer; son of Woodlock and Rainsong (deceased), brother of Wing (deceased) and Newstar
Age: over 600 years old, mortal
You are what you eat, and Mender is just about as schizoid as elves come. Fortunately, having a split personality hasn't driven him bonkers as it did poor Two-Edge. A pure-blooded Wolfrider, Mender is a throwback to Bearclaw's time when life was risky, short, and violent. Fighting turns Mender on (and with a healer's hormones that means really turned on!) But as a native Sun Villager, raised in the placid, agrarian atmosphere of Sorrow's End, Mender can't help having developed a gentler side. The battle for the Little Palace, probably the most glorious event of his life, divided him so that he ended up healing woulnds that he caused. Yet Mender shows pride rather than guilt for his violent streak. He would never give it up. He doesn't have a firm personal philosophy, which is why he had himself preserved under conditions identical to Dart's. Mender slept in order to meet Cutter and Leetah, seeing them as role models whocould help him balance his warrior and healer self. In the normally peaceful Sun Village where a healer's duties run toward minor gardening and hunting injuries, Mender's real chance to shine has been in his role as sexual initiator. A pretty boy and a dandy, he ougth to have face fur at his age. But he's obviously using his powers to retard beard growth. His history of initiations and teachings (including Ember) is elabirate enough to make even Skywise drool with envy. But has Mender ever loved? Has he ever felt anything so deeply that it has shaken him to his very soul?
From the Big ElfQuest Gatherum
Top
Mender history:
Mender's grandfather, Rain, was a healer. He lived at the time when Bearclaw, Cutter's father, was a chief. There's more on Rain here. Rain fathered a boy, Pike, and a girl, Rainsong, though only Rainsong was born by recognition. Rainsong became lovemate with Woodlock. At least that's my conclution by looking at book 9a, "Wolfrider". It looks like the two of them are hanging together all the time over a few years. One example is the panel where they are playing with baby Skywise. Later on they recognized for the first time and Rainsong gave birh to a girl, Newstar. Shortly after the two became parents again, this time to a boy they named Wing.
When the humans burned down the forest where Cutter and his sixteen wolfriders lived, they escaped through troll labyrints and was tricked into the burning waste by the troll Picknose. After deciding to cross the desert to see what they would find, the elves found a place called "Sorrow's End", or "the Sun Village", where brown-skinned elves lived happily.
After a few years living in peace with these elves, most of the wolfriders set out on a quest to find their chief Cutter, who had left Sorrow's End a year earlier to search for other elves. But some of them stayed behind. One of them was the twelve-year old Dart. Mender's mother and father, Rainsong and Woodlock, had found that the peaceful desert life appealed to them and decided to stay behind to raise their two children, Newstar and little Wing, who was just a tiny infant when the wolfriders first arrived at Sorrow's End. And of course they didn't want to begin a big journey at that time, Rainsong being pregnant for the third time with - guess who - Mender! (Three recognitions for one couple is really really rare so I guess we must be happy Mender is alive at all! ;) Before Leetah and the others left, Rainsong told Leetah that she wouldn't worry about the Sun Villagers not having a healer, because she had felt that the baby inside her had magical healing gifts, just like her own father once had.
Cutter and the wolfriders found their sacred palace of the High Ones and the first quest was over, and Mender was born around this time. He was raised in the Sun Village, and didn't leave his birthplace until Rayek, Venka, Zhantee, Ekuar, Leetah, Suntop and Ember came for a visit in the palace.
But before this a lot of things happened. When Newstar was all grown up she joined Dart's jackal-wolf band and went with them to help Cutter and the other wolfriders at Blue Mountain. (Complete ElfQuest book 6.) She returned with the jackal-wolf band and the other wolfriders when Rayek first flew the palace to Sorrow's End. Wing was a teenager at that time, and Mender still a toddler. Dewshine and Scouter decided to stay in the Sun Village with their son Windkin, who was just a year or so younger than Mender, and the two became good friends. (Complete ElfQuest book 7.)
At the time the palace first visited Sorrow's End, Rayek, master of the palace, was obsessed with a "cry" Suntop, Cutter and Leetah's son and Embers twin, had heard. They discovered that the cry was the cry from the High Ones when they first crashed their ship on Abode, the elves' earth. Rayek believed that time was a circle, and that each circle spun for 10 000 years, and that it was nearly 10 000 years since the High Ones came to Abode. So he made the palace fly through time, taking Ekuar, Ember, Skywise, Leetah, Suntop, the troll girl Trinket and Ember's wolf Choplicker 10 000 years into the future. Rayek meant to be there to greet the firstcomers and prevent the ship from crashing, but he ended up letting it be after meeting his daughter Venka he never knew excisted. During the "dissapearance", as it's called, the many years the palace was missing, Wing recognized a Sun Villager named Bethia, (Wing, Bethia and Mender in picture to left,) and had a daughter, Serrin. (HY#2) Many years later Serrin recognized the well-known Dart and they had a son, Bowki. (NB#12.) Newstar recognized an unidentified sun villager and had a son, Kimo
The elves in the Sun Village who had wolf-blood knew that they would never see the day the palace would return because they would die of old age. So many of the wolfriders decided to sleep in the cocoon of the Preservers to keep from growing old. What also happened at the Sun Village was that the Go-backs under the command of their chief Zey decided to go to Sorrow's End to steal the "little palace", which is a piece of the real palace. The Go-Backs would kill to get the little palace, and so they did. As a healer Mender was most likely supposed to heal the wounded from the battle, but instead he became so angry he joined right into the war and (at least) broke another elfs back with his bare hands. Mender has sort of a split personality, he's a healer and he's a "damager", both kind and fierceful, and this was a pretty good example... many of the elves were wounded in this battle, and Mender didn't have the strengt to heal all of them. And that's another reason so many elves slept many years in cocoons while the palace was gone; they were waiting for Leetah to come and help Mender. One example is Newstar, who decided to sleep with her son Kimo, because he was wounded.
But not all of the wolfriders slept. Woodlock, Rainsong and Wing walked the path to it's natural end. Woodlock and Rainsong decided to count the years until the palace came back. They never managed to count all the years. Wing picked up where they stopped, but it wasn't long until he died as well. The three died of old age, and the Sun Villagers finished the counting for them. They are of the few wolfriders ever to die from old age.
Then we are back to the point where Leetah came to Sorrow's End to help Mender heal the wounded from the war. Mender became her student after this, and decided to come with Leetah to Cutter's holt to learn more. But it wasn't just because of Leetah he did this. He lovemated Ember while he was in Sorrow's End (HY#4).
He stayed with the wolfriders ubtil the time came when the elves had to split in two groups. One group was to go with Cutter to defeat Gromul Djun and get back the shattered palace shards, another was to follow Ember on her new journey. Mender was shocked that Ember chose Leetah to be her healer and not Mender, but he wiped those tears quickly, because going on a quest with his legendary hero Cutter was everything he ever dreamed of doing. So he joined in the war. He proved to be valuable for the elve's fight, and Cutter said during the war that the most powerful weapon they had, was the healer. (And yes, you can see Mender proud as a rooster in the back.) He was mortally wounded by an arrow, but his new troll friend Flam refused to let him slip away and started yelling and hitting him, telling him that he was a real sissy if he didn't stand up and fight. Mender reacted as Flam had hoped and bit his teeth together in anger as he healed himself. (Book 11a, Reunion.)
After the Shards war he met up with Ember again and joined her tribe. But he quickly became jalous when Teir joined the band again, and it came to show that Teir and Ember har developed a close relationship. There's more on this here! Yun helped him out of his misory and they soon became lovemates. The last we saw of Mender was that he had learned how to chape-change into a human. I'll bet he's in for a lot of fun and trouble doing this! (More about this period of his life can be read in the pages of Ember and Yun.)
Top
Mender's personality
Having wolf-blood and being raised on a quiet place has given Mender kind of two sides of his personality. (No, it's not like he has schizofrenia...) One side of him is the quiet, gentle, cool healer who takes each day at a time. The other side of him is a frantic, furious, mad wolfrider... when he sees the chance of a fight he will take it, and he doesn't give up easily either. Because even though he is 600 years old, he is still a young elf. When he was living with Cutter's wolfriders and during the Shards war I'm pretty sure we saw more of his wolf-blooded side than his gentle side, even though he was always loyal to Cutter and really happy that he was allowed to fight in a war. (!) And he certainly wasn't scared of snapping at Teir either... but in the latest stories he's been pretty gentle and well-behaved, at least in "Shadowstalker". His furious side might have been a teenage-thing, and that he's become more of a mature, adventurous elf now; he might have matured after the Teir-Ember thing.
Mender has a lot of friends, and he espesially, for some reason, get along really well with trolls. Of course there's Flam, but he also has a big fan named Trinket... and she's pretty crazy about him. She's been that way since the first time she saw him, but it might have something to do that Trinket wants to rival with Ember... Ember, as a chief, has seen how well he gets along with trolls and uses him when she needs to ask the trolls for a favour.
Mender seems to get along with everybody. Of course there was this thing with Teir, but other than that, he seems to find a friend in just about anybody.
He has developed a curiosity for humans. He's never known one and he's never shared any woods with any of them, so he doesn't have any experience with them at all. So he's recently started to shape-change into a human and "blend in" with them to learn more about them. That was the last we saw of him, in "Mender's Tale" parts 1 and 2. Aaaah! Can't wait any longer for the whole "Mender's Tale"!
Top
Mender Warp bio
Online bio here
MENDER
Warrior, healer, hunter, gatherer; son of Woodlock and Rainsong (deceased), brother of Wing (deceased) and Newstar
Age: over 600 years old, mortal
You are what you eat, and Mender is just about as schizoid as elves come. Fortunately, having a split personality hasn't driven him bonkers as it did poor Two-Edge. A pure-blooded Wolfrider, Mender is a throwback to Bearclaw's time when life was risky, short, and violent. Fighting turns Mender on (and with a healer's hormones that means really turned on!) But as a native Sun Villager, raised in the placid, agrarian atmosphere of Sorrow's End, Mender can't help having developed a gentler side. The battle for the Little Palace, probably the most glorious event of his life, divided him so that he ended up healing woulnds that he caused. Yet Mender shows pride rather than guilt for his violent streak. He would never give it up. He doesn't have a firm personal philosophy, which is why he had himself preserved under conditions identical to Dart's. Mender slept in order to meet Cutter and Leetah, seeing them as role models whocould help him balance his warrior and healer self. In the normally peaceful Sun Village where a healer's duties run toward minor gardening and hunting injuries, Mender's real chance to shine has been in his role as sexual initiator. A pretty boy and a dandy, he ougth to have face fur at his age. But he's obviously using his powers to retard beard growth. His history of initiations and teachings (including Ember) is elabirate enough to make even Skywise drool with envy. But has Mender ever loved? Has he ever felt anything so deeply that it has shaken him to his very soul?
From the Big ElfQuest Gatherum
Top
Online bio here
MENDER
Warrior, healer, hunter, gatherer; son of Woodlock and Rainsong (deceased), brother of Wing (deceased) and Newstar
Age: over 600 years old, mortal
You are what you eat, and Mender is just about as schizoid as elves come. Fortunately, having a split personality hasn't driven him bonkers as it did poor Two-Edge. A pure-blooded Wolfrider, Mender is a throwback to Bearclaw's time when life was risky, short, and violent. Fighting turns Mender on (and with a healer's hormones that means really turned on!) But as a native Sun Villager, raised in the placid, agrarian atmosphere of Sorrow's End, Mender can't help having developed a gentler side. The battle for the Little Palace, probably the most glorious event of his life, divided him so that he ended up healing woulnds that he caused. Yet Mender shows pride rather than guilt for his violent streak. He would never give it up. He doesn't have a firm personal philosophy, which is why he had himself preserved under conditions identical to Dart's. Mender slept in order to meet Cutter and Leetah, seeing them as role models whocould help him balance his warrior and healer self. In the normally peaceful Sun Village where a healer's duties run toward minor gardening and hunting injuries, Mender's real chance to shine has been in his role as sexual initiator. A pretty boy and a dandy, he ougth to have face fur at his age. But he's obviously using his powers to retard beard growth. His history of initiations and teachings (including Ember) is elabirate enough to make even Skywise drool with envy. But has Mender ever loved? Has he ever felt anything so deeply that it has shaken him to his very soul?
From the Big ElfQuest Gatherum
Top