Jonas Niemand

In many ways the character known as Jonas Niemand is the central figure of the Arramverse. He turns up in many of the stories, thus linking its past, present and future. He appears under several names. His first appearance is in **GP**. When the character Karl Wollherz runs away from service with Serge von Tarlenheim after an argument with the stable boy and goes to ground he encounters Jonas as a 'ghost boy' who warns him that he should go back and apologise. Since the encounter was in the dark, Karl had little idea of the nature of the manifestation other than that he was a boy his own age and naked. Later in the story he encountered Jonas in full daylight, sitting on the altar of the chapel of the ruined castle of Tarlenheim. He was dark haired and unbelievably beautiful, with a small pair of blue horns on his forehead. When asked about them, he hastily apologised saying he forgot they turned up when he manifested. He also explained his nudity by saying he thought clothes were silly and scratchy and difficult to create, especially shoes. He nonetheless clothed himself when he went down with Karl to the modern house so he could exercise the horses with him.

It was Karl Wollherz who named him as Jonas Niemand (German for 'Nobody') . Karl and his friends among the Conduit Boys rationalise him as an 'elf' which in view of his inclination to tricks and mischief makes sense to them, though as they learned more of his nature they later agreed he probably was no elf, not least when he manifested in the Platz of Strelsau as a much more frightening child with black eyes as well as horns. He himself told them his official job was to bring things to an end. The other characters they encountered who knew of him were either terrified of him or aware that he was the greatest of the spirit world who ever entered the mortal realm, a prince who could not be harmed by anything or anyone, he was so great. Those who knew his true name did not dare speak it, but called him the Horned One. He made no secret that he was a prince of his people, who we learn were angelic in nature, though he admitted there were other more powerful spirits who opposed him. He could manifest with wings when he chose.

In GP we learn that there was a sadness in his life that in the opinion of his ancient friend St Fenice was making him more human than was intended by his Creator. He was kept at an immature childlike mental and physical state when he manifested in the mortal world. It gave him a sympathy with the powerless, but though he relished that persona, he could never follow his mortal friends into manhood, which was a constant sadness to him. St Fenice had prophesied to him that one day he would cross the boundary, and so he lived in hopes. His alignment with humanity increases in **GP**. He spends several weeks living as a servant boy in Serge von Tarlenheim's household during which Karl noticed that he acquired many quirks and gestures of a human boy. Jonas said that in all the millennia of his existence he had never spent more than a few hours in a physical form.

In **ISP** he appears in England to Freddie Winslow in a Christmas service at Burlesdon church, where Freddie notices him sitting in the children's gallery in the dress of a servant boy of his grandparents' day, listening intently to the Rev. Winslow's sermon. In the churchyard outside they exchanged words during which Jonas removed the memory block imposed on Freddie by Princess Osra and allowed him to recall the strange events during his mission to Glottenburg during its civil war. During the struggle with the princess and her radical faction Freddie and his friends in Munich have Jonas's support, and Frank Potts in particular learns a lot about him, being transported by Jonas to his magical playground of Eden (or Faerie, as Karl called it) and turned back into a boy by him. Jonas's defeat of the rogue magical faction in 1777 and the discoveries he made about humanity during it leads to a long pause in his engagement with the mortal world, as he lets his plan around his friend Prince Willem Stanislas unroll. His last dated appearance is in 1798 as he allies with the rival faction of the Dead to enact a huge spell that will give to the Prince virtual immortality in a sleep of stone.

#### *From Jonas Niemand to Lance Atwood*

Jonas's next appearance in chronological terms is in the early 21st century. In the course of **HaTE** the danger surrounding the gang of boys around Damien Macavoy determines him to support them. As they venture into the great wood of the Wenzlerwald the boys encounter one of what Jonas calls his 'houses': a sacred pool surrounded by monoliths, once apparently dedicated as sacrificial site to Jonas by prehistoric humans. It's some measure of the original inhumanity of Jonas that the human remains of the cult's victim's didn't concern him in the least. Jonas draws Damien, Reggie Mayer and Mattie Oscott under the water and into his realm where he befriends and plays with them, but warns them of the trauma about to come and promises his help. During their meeting they encountered Jonas in his usual form with horns, but holding the magical spear in which he had been encased during the Eschaton crisis, a spear that he says at one point is a metaphysical statement of what he is 'the spear in God's hand'. When challenged as to his name he says he has none and invites Damien to suggest one. When Damien scoffs he suggests 'Lance' in a feeble sort of pun.

The crisis of the Eschaton liberates Jonas/Lance from the spear and he and Damien are together in the military hospital's chapel when he reveals that he had held in the spear the resurrected soul of Elijah which he places in the empty dead body of the Elphberg heir and reanimates him as Prince Maxim Elphberg. He gloats that he'll now finally get his reward and be allowed the reward he'd long hoped for. But instead of being simply allowed to manifest as an adult human, the determination of the Great Council is that he should be made a fully human boy and so grow naturally into adulthood. Henry Atwood is persuaded by the Great Council's agent, Tobias the Seraph, to take on the boy Lance and adopt him. Lance is initially disgruntled but soon comes to terms with things as the arrangement allows him to grow up naturally with his friends and not be separated from them. And so as Lance Atwood he deals with puberty and growth into a gay adult, with Reggie Mayer becoming his life partner, as is described in **HBP**, **TR** and **TF**. In TR Lance finally confesses to Reggie that he is in fact the Satan, a revelation which charms Damien Macavoy as much as it disconcerts Reggie.

#### *The Jonas Arc*

The underlying arc of the Peacherverse is a redemption arc. It assumes that humanity was not so much fallen as misconstructed and misunderstood by the forces of Creation and the World Beyond. Jonas was the spirit most engaged with the mortal world, and so comes to disagree with the Seraphic order that humanity is just an inconvenient consequence of Creation. He tells Karl Wollherz in **GP** that even in prehistoric times humans could create things of the sort of beauty and intelligence that was not expected of them. What brings all this into focus for him is the period of the Enlightenment when humanity begins to create things and have ideas which were new and inexplicable. He regards science as the substitute for the magic they do not have. So he begins his research project into the changes in humans society that trouble him, using Willem Antonin (Wilchin) as both his agent in the world and his test subject.

Jonas exposes Wilchin to the light of Eden for a long time and takes him across the multiverse at the end of which Wilchin is mutated into what he calls a 'half elf', consummated when Wilchin sprouts angelic wings with the help of the profoundly magical Karl Wollherz. Though still mortal Wilchin has innate magic which he employs for Jonas in **ISP**, as his agent in the courts of Europe as 'M. le Comte de St-Germain'. Having proved that it was possible to forcibly evolve humanity by a mixture of science and magic, Jonas as Lance Atwood with his former enemy Tobias the Seraph, creates from his friends and allies a new magical winged race called the Petakhij, but also introduces genetic changes in the remaining human population which lengthens life and cures former inescapable decrepitude, the 'super-saps'.

**AA** *After Alex* **AD** *Alike in Dignity* **BR** *Blue Rainbow* **CO** *Count Oskar* **CP** *Chav Prince* **GP** *The Golden Portifor* **GS** *The Green Side* **HaTE** Henry and the Eschaton **HBP** *Henry and the Balance of Probability* **HFR** *Henry in Finkle Road* **HHP** *Henry in High Politics* **HO** *Henry in the Outfield* **HOP** *Heart of Oskar Prinz* **HS** *Hide and Seek (formerly The Chav Prince)* **ISP** *In the Service of Princes* **ME** *Maxim Elphberg* **TF** *The Fall* **TR** *The Regency* **UA** T*he Unnatural Archeologist*