#cassano arianamenzi

[vampiresuns]

Cassano Arianamenzi, the first of the Radošević-Cassano

hello i am SCREAMING, and i owe them an entire lung but @nonbinary-rue joined me in the being in love with her train and drew the OG Cassano, so please look at her

[vampiresuns]

Cassano Arianamenzi | The First Of The Cassano

picrew credit

Cassano Arianamenzi: The clever Court Archivist who would become Consul

I have mentioned in a couple of places, but particularly in this post, that the Cassano (and the Radošević-Cassano by extension) aren’t nobles, and they only ended up with the Consulship through a scheme, and no one quite knows how they did it.

Well, that’s not entirely true. This is Cassano Arianamenzi, the woman who would change the history of the Vesuvian Consulship forever.

Name: Cassano Gizem Arianamenzi.

Meaning of the name: ‘Cassano’ is the name of a series of towns, while ‘Gizem’ means ‘mystery’ in Turkish.

Nicknames: Cas, Ari, Arianamenzi

Family: She is the eldest of five children, and the daughter of a Philosopher who earned a Court Position as a scholar (Father) and an artisan who made instruments (Mother). They had her while fairly young so she was raised by her grandparents and great aunts for a portion of her life. This never brought her problems with her parents, who were very present, but taught her the importance of community. The Arianamenzi all raised their children that way and lived in a multi-generational household.

They lived in the edge between Goldgrave and Centre City. They were never particularly well off, though they had enough. All of her siblings studied through apprenticeships, and she did so on a scholarship on the account of being the daughter of her father. She often said rich people and aristocrats mistake education for class (for a reason), but once they learnt you had had an education without being like them, they suddenly praised you through romanticising your position in life, thinking anyone who wasn’t like them must’ve starved to be able to spell their names, because naturally everyone who wasn’t like them was stupid.

Clearly, these people got on her nerves.

Their siblings were: Riparte (she/her), Flavius (they/she), Eziz (he/him) and Nora (he him).

Favourite Food: Spicy Mussel stew.

Favourite Drink: Kvass

Favourite Flower: Cherry Blossoms

Birthday: September 7th

Age: 37 for the relevant events in her timeline, but she was born 377 years before the events of the game.

Zodiac: Virgo sun, Aquarius Moon, Aries Rising

Patron Arcana: The Devil (always reversed) and the Page of Pentacles

Devil, Reserved: freedom, release, restoring control.

Upright: ambition, desire, diligence; Reversed: lack of commitment, greediness, laziness

 Pronouns: She/Her

Languages Spoken: Vesuvian (common tongue and old dialect),Firentian, Prakran, Galbradan Bulani.

Magic: Language magic and language manipulation — she can tell the intention and honesty of people through their words, both spoken and written. She is able to perform different kinds of incantation, manipulate glyphs, and temporary and limited alteration of the world around her through words.

Being a ‘language manipulator’ is one of the few magical traits the Cassano possess. She wasn’t the first language manipulator in her family, and the Arianamenzi don’t know who was, nor they care. It skips generations, however.

There’s a couple of them between her and the current generation of the R-C, but the last language manipulators of the Cassano have been Vitale Cassano, Consul of Vesuvia, Aelius Anatole Radošević and Artemisia Cassano.

Familiar: A mongoose (Egyptian mongoose) called Pearl.

Song: Centuries, Fall Out Boy

The Poison Plot of The Vesuvian Court & Facts about Cas Arianamenzi.

Cassano began working as an archivist, handling the paperwork of the Court and the Consul, when she was 27. By the time she was 33 she was working directly with the Consul, though she mostly worked in the archives department, and the old Palace’s library. A year after she landed the position the Poison Plot began.

In the span of three years, three Consuls and two temporary placeholders were poisoned in the Vesuvian Court, as well as five other officials and a diplomatic envoy.

Cassano had began putting the pieces together on her own, mostly thanks to her magic and her job as an archivist, but she was able to win a new perspective on this when the Count of the time, a magician named Sibona, began venting to her, trying to escape both the Vesuvian summer and late spring heat, and her Court.

After the last of murdered Consuls was poisoned, Sibona, who had already figured out Cassano was also a magician, asked her why didn’t she solve it. If she did, Sibona would make her the Consul.

Cassano declined originally, telling she had no Courtly aspirations nor wished to end up dead, but eventually agreed. Count Sibona realised she knew more about politics than what she gave away, and decided to trust her gut about her.

She wasn’t wrong. Cassano was able to solve the plot and restructure some of the Court functioning, including the basic functioning of the Consulship as related to the City and working with a seven people integrated council (which you can read about here).

One of the reasons she was able to solve it was because Aristocrats dismissed her for not being one of them. Court Archivists and Court Staff were seen as invisible and she took advantage of it, as she did of her magic.

The Palazzo, however, wasn’t endowed to her. It belonged to the one of the murdered Consul’s who had no open succession. Whether Sibona let her get away with manipulating who it would pass to, or she never realised, Cassano didn’t know, but given how her magic worked, it was extremely hard to prove she had forged anything to begin with.

That Consul didn’t really use the building. Up to her, the Consuls lived in the Palace with the Count. She refused this because she couldn’t leave her family alone. Her family and friends were also the reason why she tried to procure the Palazzo in the first place. It was less about the status symbol and more about “these goddamn Aristocrats have entire empty buildings and for what, for fucking what.” She was able to safely house her entire extended family along with more than one friend.

She is the entire reason why the Cassano have the tradition of having the Palazzo opened to the people — the Arianamenzi realised that with this building, they could now help their community in an even bigger scale. While she “inherited” (aka took as a squatter) the Palazzo with everything in it, most of the collections have been donations from friends. The space is supposed to be communally kept. A lot of the paintings in it, and some of the oldest murals are there because she gave the opportunity to friends of her family by commissioning them, so she could show rich people their work.

They did try to poison her. She was able to anticipate it through her scheming and was, in fact, waiting for it, to the point she contacted one of her friends, an alchemist who was an expert in poisons from South End, to help her with a preventive antidote.

Most of it was to show Aristocrats what a little fraternity between people can do.

She firmly believed she had more in common with people in the street than the rest of the Court. A lot of what she believed and how she carried herself as the Consul is the origin of a lot of ways to be that the Radošević-Cassano as a family now have. She is also responsible for the saying “nothing mortal can kill a Cassano” (because the poison didn’t kill her).

When asked about how rulers should be, this was her reply: “A ruler shouldn’t be feared, nor loved. A ruler should be competent. Discussions of punishment or morality only detract a ruler from their one true command: to do their goddamned job.”

Count Sibona liked her because she thought Cas was weird.

It wasn’t Cassano who came up with the Consul ascension ceremony, it was Count Sibona who most likely came up with it to be a shit about Cassano taking an entire Palazzo without asking.

Her wife’s name was Caterina.

Because I believe Arcanaverse rapiers to be an invention of at least 150 years after she was alive, her sword was not a rapier. She learnt while she was studying and apprenticing under a scholar because she was bored.

She wrote two books in her lifetime: a book about political philosophy, and a book in the old Vesuvian Dialect about the origins, secrets and magic of Vesuvia. It is not, however, a history book. Instead is mostly about language magic and Cassano’s own theories about how to interject with the magic of the Canals if needed. It also has the knowledge passed down from Count to Count, because the Consul has always been supposed to be privy of it, because the Consul has always been supposed to rule in absence or incapacitation of the Count or their heirs.

This book has never left the hands of the Cassano family, except for a brief period during the life of Vitale Cassano (Anatole’s great great grandfather). In the Janiverse (@apprenticealec​‘s and my Arcanaverses combined) the book is stolen by the Scholars of the Sea Palace, but Amparo Mediavilla, wife of Vitale intercepts the middle man before it’s too late. In my regular Arcanaverse, it is taken for similar reasons, and Amparo still retrieves it.

Count Sibona also described her as a mongoose with the skin of a woman.

Her name became a surname with her brother Nora (the youngest), who takes after her as the Consul for around ten years before a niece replaces him. Nora introduced himself as “Nora, Brother of Cassano” which got constricted to Nora Cassano. Kin of Cassano was also very normal to refer to both her family and friends by Aristocrats so it stuck

[vampiresuns]

Interlude 1: Do Not Stand Over My Grave And Weep, Part 2

⟡ PART 2: FRIENDS ARE THE FAMILY YOU CHOOSE ⟡

2.2k words. In which Anatole’s friends start uncovering the mystery of his death and sudden reappearance. 

CW: Death and discussions of it.

What to catch up with Anatole’s Apprentice series? You can do that here.

He had met him at University. He had been his friend since he was 18 years old. Anatole and Medea had been Leonore’s first lasting friends, the first people who outside of his family, had taught him permanence was not entrapment. They had filled his life with growth and laughter; he had suffered their woes, he had celebrated their triumphs, he had followed them into Vesuvia despite his original wish to travel the world. 

He still travelled, but he always came back to them. Medea and Anatole weren’t just friends: they were family now. When Leonore closed his eyes he could see them holding hands and jumping into the water one summer evening in Prakra. He could see Medea using his thigh as a pillow under a tree. He could see Anatole dancing. He could see Medea and Anatole dressed to the nines for their new Court jobs. 

He would know them anywhere. He would know them by the way their steps sounded alone.

It took Leonore some moments to remember where he was, Octavia gently nudging him. Sabine, who he didn’t realise had gone, announced themselves again, saying they had lost Anatole’s doppelgänger in the crowd. 

Only it hadn’t been a doppelgänger. Leonore knew his best friend, he knew Anatole when he saw him. 

“No,” he said at last. “No, that’s him. That’s him, Octavia. That was him, and I need to find him.” 

“Leonore, wait! Anatole’s dead.” 

They began bickering about it, Octavia trying to stop Leonore from head diving into a wild goose chase, not realising Selasi, the Baker, was listening to them. 

“Excuse me, forgive me for overhearing, but are you talking about Anatole Radošević? The magician from Moonstone and Jasmine?” 

“Yes! His aunt owned that shop,” Leonore said, jumping to talk to Selasi, who inspected him with a careful eye. 

“I don’t know what prank you’re playing, but he’s alive as can be. I opened a little after the plague subsided and he and Asra have been getting bread from me for three years, almost. They’re attached at the hip, so if you know Asra—“ 

Leonore leaped to shake his hand. “I do know, Asra! Thank you, thank you so much.” 

Selasi tried to tell him Asra wasn’t around, that he was on a journey, but that he could tell him where to find Anatole if he promised he was a friend, but Leonore sprinted towards the shop without letting him finish. Sabine set off to follow Leonore as Octavia called to both of them, which left her standing alone with Selasi. She made some apologies, and Selasi told her not to worry. 

“Where did you say you knew him?”

“Leonore went to University with him,” she said, thinking the least she could do was to assure the man they were Anatole’s friends, not some random people with weird motivations. “I know him through his cousin.”

The baker hummed. “I didn’t know Anatole had any family besides his late Aunt and Asra.”

Something about the way he said it, the casual certainty of it, gave Octavia a chill. She thanked him, and tried to catch up with Sabine and Leonore, not wanting to say anything Selasi might not know. She risked him stopping them, or worse, telling Anatole, which she didn’t think would be a good idea. Octavia just had a bad feeling about it: she didn’t expect people to just know who Anatole was, or had been, that could be conceited. Anatole himself hated being anticipated by his job, wanting to have the opportunity to present himself and do the best he could do. 

Yet from there to the sureness Selasi had had when he said he didn’t know Anatole had any family besides Paris and Asra? It was weird. The Radošević-Cassano weren’t meant to be separated; if Octavia knew anything about them from Milenko, it was that they were very close knit. The only people in their families that Octavia could think of as not being regarded ever, were Matilda and Krešmir, Vlad’s and Valerius’ late parents, who hadn’t even raised the siblings. All she knew about them was that they were neglectful and Matilda had the idle ennui of someone who was too used to having everything, and was used to using cruelty for fun. 

Milenko had only talked about them a couple of times, and she had never heard the Consul even mention them, let alone Vlad, Anatole’s father. One way or another, the Cassano didn’t detach themselves from their family, nor did the Radošević, and Anatole had only ever been extremely proud of the people who had raised him. That had been their way since the days of Cassano Arianamenzi, the first of them, and she could testify that legacy had not washed away with time. If anything, it had become stronger. So why would Anatole not speak of it?

Unless he didn’t remember them. She had read about such a thing once, doing research for one of her most early plays. A shiver went down her back, making her hug her arms around herself and walk faster.

When Octavia reached the Moonstone Leonore and Sabine were talking to a tall man who seemed to guard the shop. None of them had seen him before, but he seemed to know them; he called them ‘people from before’. 

“You used to give Anatole clementines, which he doesn’t like—” he said. He was tall, covered in a cloak, and had moss green eyes, though they were barely visible.

“He says they taste fake,” Leonore completed.

“So he gave them to me, before— it doesn’t matter. You won’t find him here.”

The only thing stranger than the stranger was that none of them could remember him as they tried to piece their afternoon together. However, Octavia had heard Selasi say Anatole was occupied in the Palace, and perhaps they could try their luck there. 

“Then let’s go,” Leonore said, already standing up. “Maybe Medea knows something we don’t.”

Medea Pryce was the daughter of two archaeologists and the granddaughter of another one. Both her father’s and her mother’s family had settled in Vesuvia some generations ago because its cultural diversity and rich history was good for the archaeological craft. Anatole wasn’t the first Radošević-Cassano she had met — her Grandmother was acquainted with Bastiste Cassano, one of the Cassano elders, and thus with Consul Valerius, whom Batiste called her spoiled grandnephew. Medea’s parents, on the other hand, were acquainted with Atanasie Radošević and Aurora Tesfaye, uncle and mother of Anatole’s cousin Milenko. 

So when she met him at University, which she had begun in Prakra, just as he had done, the surname called to her immediately. Discovering they would course the exact same program, even if they had different aspirations and goals, another pleasant surprise. It would be nice to have someone to know, as Medea liked making friends.

What a friend she had made of him and Leonore, who shared housing with them. Anatole was one of those people who had the energy of a handsome stranger one shared enlightening conversation with, yet then never saw again. Debonair and hopeful, he was passionate and inspiring, a devoted friend and nothing if not extraordinary. He had his shortcomings, like everyone, but that wasn’t the way one measured their friends. 

Seasons came and time passed. They both studied and apprenticed in Balkovia for six months, and then they moved on into Vesuvia, Leonore following them, to their surprise. They laughed and hurt, they fell in love with their own people, they held each other, and Medea and Anatole drafted their plans for the future. It would be a great future, they were sure of it. Anatole’s self-introductory speech for the Vesuvian Court was a gem, Medea believed it so. They liked to fantasise about one day becoming Consul and Head of Staff, with all the things they thought they could help with, working together for the people of their City. 

No matter the crashes and reality checks, the hardships or how many times Medea had seen Anatole stand up to the Count and the new Courtiers, they held hands through it and continued onwards: The World and it’s calling of completion met its perfect match in Anatole’s Ace of Swords coloured Strength.

Then the Plague came and Anatole died, and Medea was left with all their plans, and no one to implement them with. 

After his death, things only got worse. She could tell something was going on with the Consul, but she wasn’t close enough to him to know what. She was somewhat closer to Councilwoman Cassiopeia, but she didn’t seem to know what was going on with her cousin either. The Courtiers hadn’t done anything of value for the City in three years, and all that Valerius ever seemed to do was to keep it afloat. The Court was destroyed, and with the Countess as lost as they all were, Medea didn’t know where they would end.

When she heard the Countess had found a new advisor she was thrilled. Fresh air was what the Court needed, and by the first weeks of this advisor around the Countess, it was clear they were doing her good, even if she had heard the advisor had had a rocky introduction with the Court. It seemed like it, because she knew from first hand experience that the Consul had come in furious to his office, refusing to speak to anyone, except to Cassiopeia, whom Medea was sure forced him to speak rather than him wilfully giving her any information.

He had only said something about something in poor taste, and how had he let the Countess know he would not tolerate it, but he didn’t say anything else. 

Her turn to meet the advisor came the next morning. It happened by accident, when she was delivering some documents to the Council of Vesuvia. Meet was a lax word for it, ‘seeing’ him, was much more appropiate: with his light golden blond hair, and bespoke clothes. The same unmistakable black eyes and the scar across the bridge of his nose. The same stride, the same height, the same face, the same looks. 

Her friend, her own dearest Aelius Anatole had walked into the Consul’s office seeking for an explanation about the way he had been received in Court. From there on, the morning was mayhem, absolute mayhem, and only now that Medea was sitting alone she could finally process it. 

“Anatole” had introduced himself fully, his name the right name, but the Consul wouldn’t hear it, immediately throwing himself at the throat of the “second-rate witch” for daring to use that name. Anatole continued to insist that was his name. The more the argument extended, it was clear to everyone involved that that was Anatole, even to the headstrong Consul — his panicked eyes gave him away.

Medea knew her friend, her friend had always had a presence, even if he wasn’t always aware of it. He still had it, he still stood in the same way the Consul did, he still turned his eyebrows in the same way, and the way he spoke. 

What he spoke of, too. 

The breaking point came when the Consul grabbed him from the shoulders, demanding to know what he wanted from him. Then, Medea saw him do something he hadn’t done in years: she heard the Consul speak Balkovian in public. Medea’s grasp with the language was enough to know he asked two things, two crucial things, that anyone who wasn’t Anatole couldn’t answer. 

Anatole answered the first one, something about a sword’s name, in his perfectly native Balkovian, looking pale and sickly-greenish. Cassiopeia tried to interject, but the Consul wouldn’t listen to anyone. Then the Consul asked his second question, something about ‘what was the tree’, or ‘what was the name of the tree’, and nothing else. Medea wasn’t sure. 

Anatole replied both of the questions: His first reply being ‘grapevine’, followed by a choked up ‘cult of Dionysus’; the second reply was ‘a beech tree’, looking like he was about to vomit after the words left his mouth. 

“Valeriy?” He said, as the Consul looked at him in horror, still holding him by the shoulders. “I think I’m going to pass out.”

Anatole did pass out, and the Consul, blushing cherry red as he realised the whole scene had been in front of half the Court office at his care, yelled at them to know what the hell were they doing, if not call for someone to take this boy to a bed. After it, the Consul stormed off, Cassiopeia power-walking behind him as she demanded an explanation from her cousin, an explanation the Consul refused to give, waving dismissively at her.

“Don’t you wave like that at me, Valeriy, unlike you, I know my own damn nephew when I see him.”

“Don’t call me that here.”

“Valeriy Radošević, I will call you however I damn please! Come back here!”

Medea didn’t stay to watch the rest. The Court was in unrest, it was so much that it had stirred the four other weirdos into watching and making the oddest commentary for anyone to hear. Medea didn’t need an in with them to know they knew something they all didn’t, and simply thought of the Court Staff too inconsequential for them to spare them half a thought.  

As if possessed by a thunderbolt, Medea stood up from where she was sitting as she ruminated. She needed answers, and she needed to talk about this to someone. She had an idea: if anyone she was close enough knew a considerable amount of death and ghosts, it was Amparo Cassano, but first she needed to talk to Leonore. They had supported each other in these 4 years Anatole had been dead, or presumed as much. Anything she did, it would be with Leonore. 

As she turned around after grabbing her coat, Leonore was calling her name. 

“Sabine is waiting for us at our place, they wanted to ask some questions first so I ran here. Octavia is trying to find Amparo, or anyone really. There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Good,” she said, as she grabbed his arm and began walking out of the Palace, “so do I, but not here. The Courtiers are around, and they cannot be trusted.”