Name: Frederico Hainen Fulc-Este
Nickname: The Musician
Gender: Male
Age: 21
House: Jerbiton
Biography:
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Frederico spent most of his childhood in the shadow of the Alps, spending much time in Austria, Germany, France, Switzerland and Northern Italy – his family was a big swill of aristocrats, high and low, from all the way from Bavario to South Tyrol and everything inbetween. He was born to a noble family in title only, at this point. His mother was the current countess, and Italian woman with a lineage as long as the country's history. His father, a rather enigmatic figure – in that he left early without leaving any impressions on Frederico, beyond the fact that his name was Junko and that he came from some frigid hellhole out there in the northern countries. The family was not very rich – that is, in fact, an understatement. Her mother tapped an unexplicable heritage that seemed to trickle into her hand at the speed of piss dripping from an inflamed bladder or prostate. That is to say, slowly and sporadically, often accompaniend with sensations of discomfort and pain. She refused steadfastly to work in anything that could be seen as debasing to the circles she tried to fit in and she certainly never allowed her precious boy to be demeaned by such activity. She instead opted to make him learn of his birthright. Her mother had been a famous violinist and to teach musical instruments and music in general was considered an integral part of one's general instruction. She also took care of his instruction, as well as she could. They had to dispense with waiters or servants, and so, despite his mother's insistance, he learned to do many day-to-day chores such as cooking, sewing, and budgetting very early on. Dominating all this was his musical instruction, often at the detriment of his education or his personal wellbeing. He was gifted, that was for sure – he had it in the blood, as his mother like to put it.
By the age of 10 he was already playing for the convenience of aristocratic evenings and gatherings. By the age of 13 he was already playing solo pieces of chamber music. Despite his talent, no breakthroug came. He was born at a poor time and his mother's ambition and vision for him were, even by modern standards, hopelessly outdated. The aristocratic lifestyle she worshipped was dying out, giving way to the more simple conveniences of technology. She dragged her son from salon to salon, adrift in a world that she refused to acknowledge. If anything, she instilled into her son a love for old things – old places, old objects... and old ways of thinking.
His life took a turn for the unexpected and the bizarre during a performance in Venice. He was 16 years old at the time, playing the violin for a small audience at a private reception. He noticed that a man in the crowd, instead of devoting his energy to empty socializing, was instead staring at him intently. The man was perhaps in his 30s, with brown hair and brown eyes – a very dark kind of brown, almost black. He had a certain Byronic quality to him, moody and intense, with a smile that seemed made for mocking and not for laughing. The man continued to appear at the various performances until he eventually introduced himself.
He was a Count, going by the name of Count Benito Settembrini. He once told Frederico that he had a much older name, but that was a name he did not share with others. He was a man from Rome – and I mean that in the strongest sense possible. He declared that he was deeply interested in Frederico and that, with permission, he would become his impressario as well as mentor in his craft. He invited him to come and live at his villa in the suburbs of Rome, on the condition that he would leave the protection of his mother in favour of his own. The Count would provide directly to her financial needs, of course, and the young Frederico would soon be more than able to pay back his tremendous generosity.
What the Count meant by payment was not quite what young Frederico had in mind. It turns out that music was not the only thing the Count had in store for the young musician. The first indication was perhaps the villa of the Count itself. It was a vast complex that could be compared to a private museum. It contained art from all over the Mediterranean, with a strong emphasis on Italian, Roman and Etruscan art. This was a man obssessed with the past and aestheticism – and it turns out he was on a crusade. The modern world was but a shadow of the former world – a world filled with beauty and magic, one that awed man in the most profound sense of the word. He was a man frustrated by what he saw was the encroachment of an ugly world upon his precious past. He needed a pupil – and an ally – for he feared that his vision would die with him. He saw in Frederico, he thought, the same longing for a world of beauty and refinement. He had to agree, insofar that he had grown nostalgic for a world of yesterday his mother and her circle seemed to worship. This man, though, did not simply worship – but actively tried to bring about. The method was rather unorthodox – magic. The man was no simple aesthete or libertine, but a magus of some strenght and prestige of the Jerbiton line. A line, the Count revealed to the young Frederico, they had in common. His family was related – but had long fallen off the map and the magical talent of its member went untapped and untrained, to the point that manifestation had become inconsistant in the recent generations. For some reason magic had returned in force to Frederico – raw and only dripping and seeping into his work, instead of being fully utilized. To emphasize his point, the Count began to play the piano, and the song he played, infused with a melancholia known only to Italians, made the young musicians fall to the ground sobbing uncontrollably. From henceforth, the young man became the apprentice to the skillful, if mysterious Count. Frederico's career took off, and so did his magical talents. But the Counts true designs, his plans to bring about a return of a glorious past to bear upon the modern world, seemed an everdistant vision. For now, the young man was absorbed with his career and his training as magus, living two lives between the socialite flirting in high society and his intense and deep studies to the ancient and beautiful arts of the Jerbiton. His education did not only cover music, but a slew of other subjects as his mentor shaped him in the mold of the great Italian masters of the Renaissance. He would make him a poet to equal Virigil, Dante and Petrarch, and the likes of Raphael and Da Vinci – a renaissance man just like him, his vision of the perfect man, of the perfect Jerbiton.
He was initially hesitant to join the covenant, but the Count seemed to believe that the formation of such a covenant could very well be the opportunity they had waited for.
Other:
- Frederico's musical talent are focused on the piano and the violin, especially the later one. He is also very skillful at writing music.
- Spending his life among multinational circles, Frederico is well versed in Italian, French, German, Spanish, and Dutch. He can speak English decently enough and his working toward improving it. He also speaks Arab, to the insistance of his teacher, who also taught Latin and Greek to the young lad.
- Through the influence of his master and his Jerbiton heritage, he is incredibly knowledgable in Art History. He is also a capable painter and drawer. In a similar vein, he is also a decently competent engineer.
- The Count, perhaps channeling the Conte de Monte Cristo, taught him a considerable amount about poisons and other forms of intrigues more fitted to the social circles he frequented. He also received instruction in wielding the sword, drawing from the original Italian tradition, as well as the physical fitness of the Roman. He eschewed the gun entirely, considering it one of modernity's ugliest invention. In a fit of rebellion, stemming perhaps of a streak of deadpan practicality, he taught himself how to handle a handgun.
- He has an intense hatred of seafood.
- Unlike his master who tends to be a rather emotionally unstable and chaotic individual who tries to keep himself in check, Frederico is serious and rather serene, with a melancholie look about him. He is structured and methodical in his approach, but tends to slip into anger and other violent emotions when his plans are foiled or upset. The Count blames this on the Germanic blood that mingled into his family over the generations.
- His attitude toward money and lineage is pragmatic. Unlike his mother and even the Count, he is hardly wedded to either, and would prefer spend his days living in the Alps, the backdrop to his childhood and a place that he holds up with the same reveration the Count holds for his mythical Rome.
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