A Hero who belongs to the Rilasciare may earn Favor in Vodacce in the following ways:
• Publicly exposing a Prince’s agent is worth 3 Favor. Common methods of exposure include pamphleteering, soapbox harangues or whispering campaigns carried out in the market or other public spaces.
• Humiliating a Prince or thwarting his goals is worth 5 Favor. Unlike exposing an agent, this humiliation need not be public—if the Prince knows and the Rilasciare know, that is enough.
A Hero who belongs to the Rilasciare may spend Favor in Vodacce in the following way:
• Causing a major disturbance costs 6 Favor.
Whether inciting a bread riot that draws the guards away from a noble’s residence or orga-nizing a demonstration that clogs the streets near the gate and allows a Hero to escape her pursuers, agents of the Rilasciare’s pull with the common folk is unmatched. A Rilasciare Hero should note that such disturbances usually invite retribution from tyrants and must be careful not to put those he cham-pions in harm’s way too often.
Sophia’s Daughters
Those who champion the rights and freedoms of Vodacce’s women are torn between two strategies for making these dreams a reality. The first, clandestinely advanced by Desiderata, Mistress of La Passione, claims women must seize their rights, by force if necessary. To that end, she has worked to ensure that the women of La Passione train in the “manly arts:”
armed and unarmed combat, shooting, conditioning and other such physical pursuits.
In opposition to Desiderata’s dreams of insurrec-tion and armed struggle stands Teofila di Tamamello, Mother Superior of the Church of St. Dorothy in Agony and close confidant of Prince Donello Falisci.
She believes that she can advance women’s causes without throwing the Nation into chaos. To that end, Mother Teofila schools her charges in politics, history and law, the better to advance the cause of reform from within. She plans to start a school for young noblemen within her church, in the hopes that early exposure to women of such talent and intellect will shape their sympathies in the years to come.
Neither side has been able to overcome the other, as each has the support of one of the founders of Sophia’s Daughters. Juliette stands by Desiderata, her teacher and mentor. Intimately acquainted with the amoral cruelty of Giovanni Villanova, she knows that only force prevails against him and his ilk. Valentina, while no less aware of her husband’s inhumanity, believes that open rebellion will lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent women at the hands of their husbands and lovers, a cost she is not yet willing to condone.
While the identities and relationships of those involved remain unknown to most rank-and-file members, the disagreement is very much in the air, and each Daughter finds herself drawn to one approach or the other.
Favor in Vodacce
A Hero who belongs to Desiderata’s faction of Sophia’s Daughters may earn Favor in the following way:
• Defending a Vodacce woman from violence or oppression at the hands of a man is worth 2 Favor. This defense is worth an additional point of Favor if it involved giving the man a
A Hero who belongs to Desiderata’s faction of Sophia’s Daughters may spend Favor in the following way:
• She may purchase the aid of a Strength 10 Brute Squad for 4 Favor using the same rules as the Rilasciare entry in the Core Rulebook (page 269). The squad is composed of masked Sophia’s Daughters, and unlike their disorganized Rilasciare peers, the squad may be given specific and detailed instructions as to what to accomplish. For an additional 2 Favor, the Brute Squad may be given a single special type and ability (see core rulebook, page 192) that the Hero may activate using her Hero Points. The squad lingers until defeated or the Scene ends, at which point it departs.
A Hero who belongs to Teofila’s faction of Sophia’s Daughters may earn Favor in the following way:
• Providing help to the downtrodden is worth 2 Favor, or 3 Favor if the recipient of this aid is a woman. The aid in question must be non-violent, something along the lines of advocacy, helping to find a permanent shelter or providing a source of food or money.
A Hero who belongs to Teofila’s faction of Sophia’s Daughters may spend Favor in the following way:
• She may call on a fellow Daughter for aid at the cost of 4 or more Favor. Her ally has all Traits at 3 and single Skill of your choice at 3 Ranks, though you may not select Aim, Brawl or Weaponry. You may increase her Ranks in that Skill by spending an additional 3 Favor per Rank, or give her additional Skills, subject to the same limitations, at Rank 3 for 2 Favor per Skill, but you may not do both. Her services end with the Scene.
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cHAPTEr 4 | VOdAccEBernoulli
Prince Gespucci Bernoulli controls a series of enclaves running along the eastern coast of the Vodacce penin-sula. Protected from landward invasions by swamps, mountains and shallow coastal waterways, these cities and towns live and die by the sea, depending on it for food and trade and subject to its whims in all matters.
Currently, the cities of Pioro, Porto Spatia and Saint Andrea pledged themselves to Prince Bernoulli. He also claims the loyalty of the town of Orduño, whose odd name stems from nearby Lake Orduño, if you believe the Prince, or a lost bet with a Castillian admiral, if you believe the inhabitants.
Potenza
The first and greatest of Prince Bernoulli’s holdings is the ancient island city of Potenza, which guards the mouth of Lake Rosa and controls all seaborne trade with the lands of the Caligari and Falisci families.
The ability to inspect and tax cargoes coming from two of Vodacce’s richest families, combined with the
Bernoulli family’s exclusive license to trade with the Crescent Empire, have made Potenza a wonderland of wealth and excess.
As one of the oldest cities on the Vodacce peninsula, Potenza has grown from a hamlet into a formidable trading power, and its layout reflects this confused trajectory. The streets near the ancient center are cramped and twisting—an ideal location for late night assignations or assassinations—while farther out, grand boulevards reflect the city’s later prosperity. A rise above the great harbor once supported a fortress that later converted into the Bernoulli manse.
A sprawling complex of grand frescoes, white marble and gilded tracery, the palace leaves its visitors with no illusions about Bernoulli’s wealth and power. However, like the marines concealed within an opulent Vodacce carrack, the palace contains armaments every bit as deadly as those borne by the fortress that preceded it. In Gespucci Bernoulli’s lifetime, no enemy ship has stood against the guns of the palazzo.
Places
Il Arsenale
Much of Potenza’s wealth and status derives from its skilled craftsmen and artisans, called colonelli in the local dialect. Nowhere is this reality more apparent than in Potenza’s secretive guild of shipwrights.
Plying their trade alongside an artificial lagoon, and protected by thirty-foot walls patrolled by armed guards, these men and women can produce a barque in a day or a carrack within a week. The mysteries of this complex, known as il Arsenale, have proven diffi-cult to unravel. Most people know that membership in the guild is hereditary and permanent; they forbid marrying outside the guild.
An enormous longhouse constructed in the form of an overturned hull, il Arsenale’s guildhall is a thing of wonder. Called il Bastimiento, it provides a workplace, where everything from delicate ornamen-tation to major ship components are finished before installation. Cantilevered decks extend into the nave, providing work surfaces for a colonello, while a system of tracks, pulleys and platforms allows her to move pieces not only up and down, but also fore and aft. A colonello who cannot be bothered to wait for the next platform often navigates the interior by climbing on the rigging that operates the system.
Daylight enters il Bastimiento’s cavernous interior through oversized portholes along the keel and sides, while adjustable mirrors hung throughout the nave catch the light and reflect it wherever the colonelli need to focus during working hours. At night chan-deliers of wrought brass, glass and gold filigree supply light for meals and celebrations.
Gli Ghetti
Among the more peculiar features of Potenza are its outlying districts, known as gli ghetti, ghettos. In 900 AV, the city’s population began to outgrow the sliver of land it had been founded on. With their usual inge-nuity, the city leaders simply made more land. Using lumber cut from mainland forests, Potenza’s carpen-ters and engineers sank thousands of wooden pilings deep into the muck surrounding their island and then constructed stone platforms on these supports. Atop these foundations they erected homes, piazzas and palazzos, driving the supports further into the depths, where a combination of time, salt and silt have
trans-Today, the outlying ghettos of Potenza display an architectural wonder unmatched in Théah, where opulent houses tower over the canals that lap at their front doors. Here, the streets are made of water, and people navigate these tangled arteries using narrow boats driven by a single oar fixed at the back. Flooding is a frequent occurrence, and even the wealthiest of Potenza’s residents shrug their shoulders at a little high water, wading through their parlors when necessary.
La Città Sommersa
The artificial expansion of Potenza’s boundaries has inevitably involved pitfalls, sometimes literally so: in the nearly 800 years since Potenza built its first ghetto, war, storms and the occasional earthquake have sent parts of the city to the depths. Few have the time or inclination to clear this detritus, with new construc-tion rising atop the ruin of the old, giving rise to what residents call “la Città Sommersa,” the Drowned City.
Whether starting from the edge of the city or a nearby canal, divers—called somozzatori, or frogmen—
swim beneath Potenza, navigating the dense forest of pilings in search of treasures lost to the sea. Among Potenza’s poorer citizens, it is common enough to see young people goading one another to take longer and longer trips beneath the water, driven by the need to prove her bravery to her peers or simply in search of a trinket for a sweetheart.
The activity is dangerous in the extreme. What little light filters down from the canals quickly fades, leaving a somozzatore to grope his way from piling to piling, navigating by touch and memory more than sight. These would-be treasure hunters guard the locations of air pockets jealously, because once these vital way stations are depleted, they rarely if ever refill;
even a room full of air can quickly become a death trap if enough rascals visit it.
Finally, the waters beneath the city serve as a dumping ground for everything from sewage and garbage to dead bodies. In addition to being wildly unsanitary, this refuse attracts both local sea life, from catfish to sharks, and worse. Potenza’s wealth means that a great many somozzatori return with valuable trinkets, but maimings and deaths constantly occur among the city’s frogmen. Many simply vanish:
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cHAPTEr 4 | VOdAccECarnivale
The origins of Carnivale, the oldest and most beloved festival in Potenza, have been lost to history. Some claim that it celebrates the triumph of a Prince over his rivals, others a religious event connected to the life of the First Prophet, while a few claim it a pagan rite dressed in modern clothing. Whatever the origin, Carnivale is celebrated by everyone in the city, young and old.
But what clothing! All winter long, a citizen of Potenza works to produce a costume of surpassing extravagance, which she debuts during the days of Carnivale. Custom and tradition expects a true cele-brant to make her own costume, but in recent days, a wealthy and well-connected citizen simply hires tailors to make up for his own lack of talent. This sort of behavior is particularly scandalous because it goes against the key tenets of Carnivale: anonymity and equality.
A secretive guild of colonelli provide the former by producing the masks for the event, called mascherari.
To advertise their wares, these men and women stand on corners wearing their finest masks, while an interested customer may approach them to set an appointment for a home consultation. At the appointed hour, a masked personage—perhaps the same person, perhaps another, because mascherari traditionally wear different masks at each stage of the process—appears at the customer’s doorstep to discuss the finer details of his purchase.
Finally, the mascherari delivers the mask in a locked box to the client, to protect his identity during the festival. From time to time, the mascherari gifts a poor client with a far finer mask than she can afford, the better to confuse the issue of class during Carnivale.
Of course, creating a substandard mask for a rich patron is completely unheard of.
Accordingly, only the mascherari can identify the revelers during Carnivale, and this makes the guild one of the most powerful in Potenza. The licentious nature of the festivities means that the mascherari end up knowing the secrets and shames of Potenza’s upper crust, a fact they are not shy about using to protect their business or advance their interests.
During Carnivale, anyone may approach anyone else, and the festivities are open to all. Participants construct their own costume in secrecy, ensuring equality despite a person’s status. Thus, a poor but talented seamstress may find herself the belle of a nobleman’s ball, while a wealthy merchant who has never held a sewing needle in his life may find himself friendless and alone if his costume does not measure up.
Whatever the costume, Carnivale gives a Potenza citizen a license to behave as he wills. Epidemic drunkenness and fornication abound, and the more harmless sort of plotting comes to the fore: an offi-cious participant who does not give himself fully to the spirit of the festival may find himself tossed in a nearby canal. The city even permits Fate Witches to take part, exchanging their translucent lace veils for a more concealing fall of black silk.