#blake et mortimer

[experimental-elixir]

[egroll7]

...No one care about this?

[egroll7]

What if Olrik had actually seen these people?

long headcanon texts warning

Olrik and Rastapoupolos are clearly only in it for the mutual benefit.

…………

In The Black Island, someone pointed out that the mustached man with the cigarette holder and crisp mannerisms was Olrik. I agree with that XD. SO he could have known Dr. Müller. But back then, Olrik was still in a "testing the waters" mindset when he joined that outfit, so he'd view the exposure of the counterfeiting scheme as a stain on his record—something that didn't look good on his résumé.

Later, Olrik probably escaped from prison. He didn't plan to keep running Nazi spy missions, so he parted ways with Müller. The two of them might not have crossed paths again until Land of Black Gold. Müller is definitely older than Olrik, and when he saw the former colonel again, he might have recognized him and thought, "Well, well—look who's all grown up." Olrik would have remembered who Müller was too, but he wouldn't have wanted to say hello—after all, that was an embarrassing chapter of his past he'd rather forget.

…………

I have a bold headcanon about Olrik, Jorgen, and Sponsz.

It started with an interview I read, where Mr. Aubin suggested that:

"Olrik looks like a Syldavian officer, with his center-parted hair and his mustache, shiny as his boots. He might have been Jorgen's comrade, and the two of them took part in the coup against King Muskar XII" (paraphrased).

So it makes sense that Olrik and Jorgen would have a good relationship. Jorgen served as the king's adjutant and kept the king in the dark. In my view, Olrik probably worked at a lower level, feeding Jorgen intelligence and handling basic covert work.

I've always thought that during The Secret of the Swordfish (1946–1947), Olrik was pushing forty—The Mystery of the Great Pyramid describes him as "a man in his thirties". Working backwards from that, in 1937, Olrik would have been under thirty, younger than Jorgen, so his rank probably wouldn't have been equal to Jorgen's. Through that connection, though, Olrik could have secured a less conspicuous position, making it easier to slip away after the coup failed. That also conveniently explains why he never shows up in the main Tintin storyline—he'd have packed his bags and run the moment he heard Tintin had entered the palace.

…………

I once read a really excellent fanfic about Jorgen and Sponsz, but I feel so sorry 'cause I honestly can't find the link anymore.

In my version of things, Sponsz was still a small-time spy from Borduria, younger than both Jorgen and Olrik. Jorgen reached out to him, so he called Olrik and Sponsz to a safe house for a meeting.

They had some drinks and smoked (Sponsz hadn't learned to smoke yet, so he was stuck breathing secondhand smoke from both of them), exchanging information. But then Jorgen suddenly remembered that Castafiore's performance was about to air, so he turned on the radio.

Jorgen listened to opera because, as the king's adjutant, he had to adopt the aesthetic sensibilities of high court society—opera was a mark of status, and he genuinely enjoyed cultivating that upper-class taste.

Olrik, as we all know, can be seen as a piece of Jacobs himself, so there's a natural pull toward opera for him. Jacobs was a baritone and an opera enthusiast. But Olrik didn't appreciate opera aria at first—he preferred the storytelling in operas over individual arias—but since Jorgen was playing the program, Olrik couldn't really refuse to listen. So he just sort of went along with it.

Sponsz saw a senior colonel appreciating opera, and a charismatic high official also seeming to quietly enjoy it, so he felt he needed to fit in. But the thing is, Sponsz actually fell for Castafiore's voice at first listen—he's one of the rare few in the Tintin universe who isn't terrified by her singing.

It's likely that Sponsz had never received any proper education in the arts before leaving military academy-until Jorgen played that piece. Castafiore might well have become his gateway soprano, the one who first awakened that sensibility in him.

So in that odd atmosphere, he absorbed that impression, and it later became a nostalgic reason why, after he became chief of the secret police, he went out of his way to court Castafiore's favor.

What's most interesting is that this neatly explains why Sponsz wears his monocle on the same side as Olrik, why he uses filtered cigarettes just like Olrik, and why his vengeful, sardonic, sometimes theatrical tendencies (like throwing glasses) feel so much like someone else's. He used to have a bit of a baby face, but he wanted to become that ideal of "imposing, elegant, and aggressive" officer he admired, so Jorgen and Olrik became his direct templates for imitation. This meeting actually makes a lot of sense.

[egroll7]

Cats.

Once there was a great black cat, its coat sleek and gleaming like oiled jet, its limbs powerful and built for the hunt. It was born with the cunning and ambition of a born predator.

After honing its skills in the temperate maritime climate, it journeyed far, all the way to the mountains of Tibet, where it joined the snow leopard clans on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau—thanks to its boldness and craftiness, which surpassed even those of the cats born to those heights. The snow leopards followed the black cat as it pushed their territory outward, until it seemed the whole land would be claimed beneath their paws. In those days, the black cat's heart burned brightest. It truly dreamed—alongside the Snow Leopard King—of building a brand-new order across the mountains, where it would stand atop the snowy peaks as a commander.

But good days never last. The snow leopards began to whisper about this outsider among them, and unrest rippled through the kingdom like tremors before an avalanche. The black cat knew it had to find itself an escape route. Before long, the cream-and-white cat and the ginger cat arrived together. They rallied a host of swordfish carrying explosive mushrooms—swordfish that broke through the water, soared through the air, and tore through the snow leopards' defenses. When the cream-and-white cat dropped the explosive mushrooms, the snow leopotala palace crumbled in an instant, and their territory was reduced to rubble and ruin.

The black cat survived the wreckage by a whisker, falling from a lofty mountain lord to a fugitive hunted across the entire highland. It had no choice but to slip away in silence.

After a long exile, the black cat made its way to Egypt. Beneath the pyramids lay a legendary secret hunting ground—the Horus Chamber. Rumour had it that an old Egyptian cat had guarded that room for generations, and inside it were mountains of glittering treasure and endless cat food. The black cat's ambition stirred once more. It wanted to seize that hoard and reclaim everything it had lost.

It began gathering companions far and wide: an American cat with a rough-built frame and a reckless temper; a calico cat from the desert tribes, sharp-eyed and quick-witted; and a white cat in spectacles, low-key in its ways but deadly in ambush. Once the team was assembled, the black cat sweet-talked a German orange cat who studied caves, using its tunneling skills to chip away at the pyramids' thick stone walls, little by little, carving a way into that hidden chamber.

But when the black cat abandoned its three feline companions, slipped past the trap-filled labyrinth alone, and crept into the depths of the Horus Chamber—just as its paws touched those gleaming treasures—the cream-and-white cat and the ginger cat, who had followed all along, appeared once more to foil its scheme. Enraged, the black cat smashed the chamber's entrance to pieces. And then the Egyptian elder who guarded the place appeared, draped in leopard skin. To punish such desecration, it chanted an ancient spell: Par Horus Demeure.

The words fell upon the black cat and froze it in its tracks. A curse of forgetfulness wound itself around its soul. It lost most of its memories and wandered, dazed and aimless, across the scorching desert.

In the desert, a small, embittered British Shorthair scientist cat found the lost black cat.

It captured the great cat and performed a brutal, irreversible neutering on it.

And that act severed the black cat's original life purpose—that primal drive to expand territory, lead clans, and build new dominions—sealed it shut for good.

For an entire year after that, the black cat was reduced to a pet and a laboratory plaything. It was locked in a cramped cage, forced to carry out all sorts of shady errands for its master. If it so much as displeased the scientist, it would be beaten. It was even sneaked into the royal city to steal the queen's glittering crown—an act that drew the attention of the cream-and-white cat and the ginger cat once more. Its body remained strong, its hunting instincts intact—but it had grown afraid of the crocodile heads and eagle-head statues that those two cats kept in their collection.

Until one day, the cream-and-white cat and the ginger cat showed up again to stop the wicked scientist. The ginger cat looked at the lost black cat and spoke that ancient spell once more.

The sealed memories came rushing back like an avalanche. In an instant, the black cat snapped awake, broke free of the scientist's control, and avenged itself by killing its captor.

After escaping that basement, it was still the same formidable black cat—its sinister charm undiminished.

But something had changed. Quietly, irrevocably.

Before, it hunted to claim territory, to build kingdoms, and for the pleasure of a good meal.

Now, the instinct for conquest still thrashed in its chest—but the road to the throne had vanished forever. This neutered black cat no longer craved actual dominion over the mountains. Instead, it turned the hunt into a long, drawn-out game.

It was still a master of ambush and strategy, patiently laying traps ahead of time and watching from the shadows. When it encountered the cream-and-white cat and the ginger cat again, it no longer lunged to finish them off in one blow. It toyed with the traps, watching the two old cats spin in panic within their confines—like a child playing a cruel prank, savouring the struggle of its prey. It even scratched that very spell into an ancient Egyptian scratching post, baiting the two cats into the chaos it had stirred, luring them onto the invisible bats it controlled, sending the monument of world peace—a commemorative cat tree—crashing to pieces. It could have ended the hunt at any moment. But it chose to savour every second.

The black cat was fascinated by destruction—by the sight of the mountain realm reduced to rubble. Because it had seen that before, and had even led the snow leopards to create those very heaps of stone. Now it took pleasure in watching whole things shatter, fragment by fragment. It no longer longed to stand victorious in the open for all beasts to see. It preferred to use its dark coat as cover, hiding in the shadows, silently nudging the fate of the entire mountain forest—and proving, all the while, that it had never truly been broken.

[expired-elixir]

Eagerness

[egroll7]

Olrik embezzled GRU funds

I stared at this title and laughed for two days.

Okay, let's put the formal stuff aside for a second and talk about Olrik's actual financial situation.

The nature of his work and his personal spending habits mean he's never going to be a stable millionaire. His net worth constantly ping-pongs between upper-middle-class and straight-up wealthy.

1. Income side: Olrik's money comes from one-off commissions, smuggling kickbacks, and the occasional treasure-hunting gig. The first two are high-risk, irregular paychecks. The last one is kind of a steady trickle, but even that comes with risks—go ask Cheik Razek about why the Horus Chamber collapsed.

Mission failures, confiscated cargo, or even prison time can wipe out a huge chunk of his earnings too.

2. Asset structure: To dodge wanted lists, Olrik isn't parking large sums in public bank accounts. Either he's got accounts scattered across the globe, or most of his wealth sits in illiquid physical assets—art, antiques, bespoke suits, that kind of thing—which he'd have to launder later to actually turn into spending cash.

3. Spending side: Whenever he strikes it rich, he can't keep his hands off his wallet. Bespoke suits, safe houses, informant fees, intel purchases. Remember that time he fished two sacks of gold and jewelry out of Cornwall? Blew through most of it. That tells you everything about his live-for-the-moment mentality.

Also, the Arkaim sanatorium was a one-off base—probably used for less than six months. So it's temporary, a safe house that was always going to be abandoned eventually.

Here's the guess: he's not gonna blow the bulk of his income on decking out some temporary hole in the wall. He can do the math. At the very least, he's not footing the entire bill himself for filling that office with original artworks and high-end replicas.

And since most of those pieces are clearly Soviet Expressionist in style, we can assume they were sourced locally and shipped out to the middle of the Ural Mountains.

Now, let's talk about that Tatra 603 of his. The GRU supplies high-end official vehicles to senior agents and officers—the Tatra 603 is one of those models. So that car is almost certainly not his personal property. Maintenance, gas, repairs—all on the state's tab. That's one of the system perks he gets to enjoy for free.

So the truth is screaming at us: Olrik skimmed a fair chunk of GRU funding to buy local artworks for his office.

Here's how it probably went down: the abandoned sanatorium in the Urals needed to be converted into a temporary command post, lab, and asylum. In his budget requisitions, Olrik would've padded expenses under Kranz's section—line items like "ward renovation, equipment maintenance, facility upgrades."

And about that equipment maintenance—only Kranz and his tiny team actually know how to maintain and service that weird machinery. Outside auditors and military inspectors? They'd have no clue what they're looking at. All they'd see are paper receipts. They don't have the technical know-how to trek out to the middle of nowhere and verify how much maintenance "actually" costs or how many parts were replaced.

Those machines rarely break down anyway, since the team's competent. So major repair expenses were few and far between.

So Olrik could avoid one huge suspicious reimbursement and instead break it into dozens of small, piecemeal entries. Over a three-month cycle, he'd stack them up little by little. Each individual line item looked perfectly reasonable—no red flags for the auditors. Until the total quietly crept up to the equivalent of a hundred thousand euros in today's money—enough to buy a whole stack of experimental abstract art.

Part of that cash went straight into his pocket. Another part covered transport costs to get the goods to the sanatorium. And only a tiny sliver actually went to Kranz as a bonus.

That said, not all of it was public money. Some pieces were probably bought with his own funds—the ones that genuinely hit his aesthetic sweet spot. For those, he'd dig into his personal savings. State money bought the decent local décor; the sculptures, bronzes, vases that actually caught his eye,those came out of his own commission.

Man saved himself a pretty penny, honestly.

But he wouldn't push it further. He didn't want to risk getting turned in—even if his operations were totally independent and geographically isolated.

🤣Gotta hand it to him, though.Man's got some boundaries.

Kranz had no complaints. Olrik kept him very comfortable. All the paperwork, budget applications, military coordination, personnel scheduling—Olrik handled every bit of it. Kranz just had to focus on his experiments, completely insulated from admin, accounting, and military red tape. So Kranz never saw the sleight of hand behind the ledgers. All he saw was Olrik: the guy commanding armed troops, handling guns, running operations, his head full of practical tactics and conspiracy.

And that gave Kranz a gloriously warped perception:

Olrik was a halfway competent but simple-minded brute—good for fighting, good for providing space and manpower, and that's it.

It never crossed his mind that this "brute" was quietly skimming project funds under the "equipment maintenance" line to decorate his own office.

----------------------------------------------------

You can find supporting evidence in other storylines too.

E.g. Voronov Plot. Olrik was undercover as "Colonel Ilkor," embedded in the Soviet high command with Voronov as his cover.

Two hard constraints there:

1. He didn't have enough authority to freely misuse state funds.

2. He had way less freedom than in the Urals. Too many people had dirt on him, and his identity was fake—exposure was a constant threat. If his accounts or lifestyle showed even a hint of irregularity, the KGB would've been on him in a heartbeat, and colleagues could've ratted him out.

So his office was deliberately Soviet-spartan—barely a trace of personal taste. He used whatever the state gave him and didn't dare touch a single state kopek for personal art or decorative luxury. His appearance matched the system perfectly, leaving zero ammunition for anyone to call him out on "corruption" or "decadence."

Also in SOS Meteores. He worked for the Soviets too,and had similar setup and partners as the 8hab operation.

This time his partner was Miloch—same breed as Kranz: all-in on research, clueless about admin and accounting, and absolutely unwilling to touch paperwork.

And Miloch's huge equipment? You could bill maintenance costs sky-high and no one would question it. If that General came around to supervise, maybe Olrik would tone it down a bit.

Probably around this time he started getting his hands dirty, because he'd already decked out his own apartment with Japanese screens, porcelain, scroll paintings—that sort of thing.

Ugh. He's impossible, honestly.

"Isn't it totally normal for him to do stuff like this?"

"Yeah, it is. But I just wanted to write it anyway."

[egroll7]

Just some stuff.

[expired-elixir]