Appendix N Archaeology: Zenith the Albino by Terry Olson “To this day I advise people who want to write fantastic fiction for a living to stop reading generic fantasy and to go back to the roots of the genre as deeply as possible, the way anyone might who takes his craft seriously. One avoids becoming a Tolkien clone precisely by returning to the same roots that inspired The Lord of the Rings.”           – Michael Moorcock, introduction to The Stealer of Souls (Del Rey, 2008) Many of us come to Gygax’s Appendix N to explore the works that inspired both the D&D of our youth and our favorite fantasy RPGs of today. We read these literary progenitors for both insight and inspiration, and we begin to recognize their themes, plot-twists, villains, and heroes being adapted and personalized by today’s authors. But the writers whom Gary Gygax read were not writing in a vacuum. Surely they were adapting and personalizing the themes, plot-twists, villains, and heroes that they were reading. Who inspired them? Answering this question by reading further back in D&D’s ancestral chain, by going “back to the roots of the genre as deeply as possible” (as Moorcock puts it), is what we call “Appendix N Archaeology.” In this article, I’ll focus on the notorious Monsieur Mountebank Zenith, a primary source of inspiration for Michael Moorcock’s mythic character, Elric of Melniboné. If you haven’t heard of Zenith, it’s because your opportunities were limited. Despite the fact that he was popular pulp hero-villain in about 80 issues spanning the time between world wars, by 2001 the only Zenith-dedicated novel had only three copies of its 1936 printing known to exist. But Michael Moorcock changed all that. But let’s wait a few paragraphs for that story. We start with Elric and his connections to our hobby, and transition to Zenith from there. First, let’s set the scene: Laughing at his own failure and at his own futility … the albino turned and disappeared into the maze of mean streets which opened out before him. Such a one was the cynical, laughing Elric, a man of bitter brooding and gusty humor, proud prince of ruins, lord of a lost and humbled people. If you think this a quotation from an Elric story, then you’re only half right. Read on…...