Cyprien De Vauclaire
Player: Dorje
Concept: Disgraced Montaigne courtier and Porté sorcier, exiled to Jaragua by circumstance and curiosity
Nation: Montaigne
Religion: "Philosopher" (fashionable Montaigne atheism, increasingly unconvincing)
Wealth: 3 (Rich)
Languages: All Théan languages, living and dead (Linguist). Native Montaigne. Working Patwa Haragwen.
Secret Society: None (yet)
Arcana
Virtue: Wily (The Fool). Activate to escape from danger. He does not fight. He exits.
Hubris: Proud (The Sun). Receive a Hero Point when you refuse to deny a pointed accusation or insult.
Traits
| Trait | Rank |
|---|---|
| Brawn | 2 |
| Finesse | 2 |
| Resolve | 2 |
| Wits | 3 |
| Panache | 4 |
Montaigne national bonus (+1 Panache) applied.
Skills
| Skill | Rank | Skill | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aim | 0 | Notice | 1 |
| Athletics | 0 | Perform | 3 |
| Brawl | 0 | Ride | 2 |
| Convince | 3 | Sailing | 1 |
| Empathy | 2 | Scholarship | 3 |
| Hide | 1 | Tempt | 3 |
| Intimidate | 0 | Theft | 0 |
| Weaponry | 1 | Warfare | 0 |
Skill Sources:
- From Sorcier Porté: Empathy 1, Hide 1, Ride 1, Scholarship 1, Tempt 1
- From L'Ami du Roi: Convince 1, Perform 1, Ride 1 (duplicate, raises to 2), Tempt 1 (duplicate, raises to 2), Weaponry 1
- 10 additional points: Convince +2, Perform +2, Tempt +1, Scholarship +2, Empathy +1, Notice +1, Sailing +1
Advantages
- Sorcery: Porté (from Sorcier Porté background, x2)
- Time Sense (from Sorcier Porté background) -- always knows the exact time, sunrise and sunset within one minute
- Connection: Porté scholars and sorcier correspondents (from L'Ami du Roi background) -- his academic network across Théah
- Friend at Court (from L'Ami du Roi background) -- spend a Hero Point at a ball or feast to reveal a close friend in attendance
- Linguist (from L'Ami du Roi background) -- speaks, reads, and writes all Théan languages, including dead ones
- Rich (3 pts) -- starts each session with 3 Wealth. The quarterly disbursements still arrive from the family.
- Reputation: Disgraced (2 pts) -- the de Vauclaire name precedes him. +1 Bonus Die on social Risks that leverage the notoriety.
Sorcery: Porté
Capacity (2x Sorcery): 4 Minor Marks, 2 Major Marks
Free family Marks: Direct one-step blood relatives (father Gérard, brothers Sébastien and Rémy) always bear a Major Mark at no cost, so long as they live. These do not count against his limit.
Current Marks (suggested, to finalize with GM)
Minor Marks (4):
- His journal of Porté theory
- A good knife
- A bottle of wine (rotated regularly, because he has priorities)
- His signet ring bearing the de Vauclaire arms
Major Marks (2):
- His rented room in Kap-Kalfu (current safe harbor)
- A hidden location in Montaigne (emergency exit; he has told no one where)
Mechanics
- Sense: A moment's concentration reveals direction and distance to any Mark. Within 100 feet, he knows it is nearby but cannot pinpoint further. Free outside Action Sequences; costs 1 Raise during one.
- Place a Mark: Prick finger, blood on object, concentrate. Costs 1 Hero Point.
- Pull (Minor Marks): Open a portal, reach through, grab the Marked object. Must fit in one hand. Costs 1 Dramatic Wound. Also costs 1 Raise during Action Sequences.
- Walk (Major Marks): Open a portal, step through to within 5 feet of a Major Mark. Eyes shut in the walkway. Costs 1 Dramatic Wound. Also costs 1 Raise during Action Sequences. If insufficient space at destination, must choose another Major Mark or be lost in the Place Between Worlds.
- Passengers: Can bring others when Walking. 1 Hero Point per additional person. Larger groups attract more attention in the walkway.
- Blessures: Opening a blessure (letting the world bleed instead of him) always results in Corruption. No exceptions. He has never done this.
- Severing a Mark: A few moments of concentration. During an Action Scene, costs 1 Raise.
Backgrounds
- Sorcier Porté -- "You have mastered the art of Porté, the magical opening of doorways." Quirk: Earn a Hero Point when you close a Blessure that a Villain ripped open.
- L'Ami du Roi (Courtier) -- "You are, literally, a favorite courtier of the King of Montaigne." Quirk: Earn a Hero Point when you leverage the King's favor to solve a problem.
Reputations
- Disgraced (+1 Bonus Die when leveraged in social Risks)
Stories
The Walkway Speaks
Goal: Discover why the Place Between Worlds feels different in Jaragua, and what connection (if any) it has to the spirit realm of the Lwa.
Reward: Third purchase of Sorcery (Porté), representing a deepened understanding of his magic.
- Step 1: Earn enough trust from a practitioner of Kap Sèvi to have an honest conversation about the spirit world
- Step 2: Confront what the dead of Jaragua have to say to a man whose name is on their chains
Experience
Total: 0 | Spent: 0 | Unspent: 0
Description
IRC:
A lean young Montaigne nobleman in his mid-twenties, sharp-featured, with brown hair grown slightly past fashionable. Neatly trimmed beard. Porté blood-scars visible from knuckles to mid-forearm on both hands, uncovered. Dressed in Montaigne tailoring cut from local fabrics: structured shoulders, warm ochres and deep greens, one impractical brocade coat worn open in the heat. Smells faintly of good cologne losing a war with the tropics.
Full:
Young enough that people occasionally underestimate him, and sharp-featured enough that they usually stop quickly. Lean in the way of someone who forgets meals when absorbed in a problem but who, given access to a proper kitchen, can eat with an enthusiasm bordering on the theological. Brown hair worn at a length that was fashionable in Charouse when he left and has since grown past it, which he has noticed, complained about, and done nothing to fix. His beard is neatly trimmed, one of the few vanities he maintains with genuine discipline, as though this small insistence on grooming is the line between gentleman abroad and man who has lost control of the situation.
His hands give him away immediately. The Porté marks run from knuckles to mid-forearm, a dense map of old cuts and blood-scars in various stages of healing, the oldest silver-white and smooth, the newest still flushed. In Montaigne, experienced sorciers cover these with gloves and cosmetics. Cyprien does not. Among the noblesse, this would read as bold or gauche, depending on whose salon you asked. In Kap-Kalfu, among a people for whom scars carry a very different history, it reads as something stranger. He is aware of the unease his hands cause. He has not yet figured out what to do about it.
He dresses in Montaigne tailoring adapted to the climate with an effort that would be touching if it weren't so stubborn. Structured shoulders and good lines, but lighter linens in colors, warm ochres, deep greens, that did not exist in his wardrobe eight months ago. He buys local fabric and has it cut to Charouse patterns by a Kap-Kalfu tailor who finds him amusing. He always carries one impractical item: a brocade coat worn open in the heat, a silk cravat wilting slightly in the humidity, kidskin gloves he puts on for no reason and removes ten minutes later. One anchor to who he was before. He rotates them like a man choosing which wound to keep fresh.
Why Jaragua?
He did not come to confront his family's colonial legacy. He came to get away, from his father's bitter rectitude, from his brothers' resentment, from the suffocating non-existence of a disgraced house. He told himself he came for scholarship. This was not entirely a lie.
History
Origin
The de Vauclaires are, were, a Marquisat under the Duke of Muguet, administering lands along the northern coast where Montaigne's Atlantic trade interests concentrate. Not the wealthiest house, not the most prestigious, but respectable. Old enough to have the name. Connected enough to have the court access. Comfortable.
Cyprien's father, Marquis Gérard de Vauclaire, is a soldier by temperament and conviction: a hard, principled man who served with distinction in the Castillian campaigns. His two older sons followed him into military service, Sébastien, the heir, commissioned as an officer, and Rémy, who joined the Musketeers. The household ran on discipline, hierarchy, and the quiet assumption that service to the crown was the highest calling.
Cyprien was the third son and, by Montaigne standards, nearly an excess. He had no lands to inherit, no commission waiting, and no particular interest in acquiring either. What he had was Porté. Strong, early-blooming, unmistakable, and an aptitude for the social machinery of Charouse that his father found somewhere between baffling and contemptible. While his brothers drilled, Cyprien trained with sorcier tutors and cultivated friendships at court. He was l'Ami du Roi in the making, a fixture at the Château du Soleil, charming, quotable, and absolutely in his element.
The Fall
When l'Empereur withdrew support from the Castillian front, General Soussens and her troops were left to fight or die with no reinforcement and no explanation. Marquis Gérard de Vauclaire had served alongside Soussens. He had buried men under her command. When the court celebrated the war's end as a triumph, toasting victories paid for in conscripted peasant blood, Gérard did the one thing no Montaigne nobleman should ever do. He said what he meant.
Not through an envoy. Not veiled in metaphor. Not even loudly, those who were present say he spoke quietly, which was worse. He told a gathering of noblesse that l'Empereur had abandoned soldiers who trusted him, that the spoils were bought with lives the court considered beneath counting, and that he was ashamed to have served a crown that treated its people as expendable. In Montaigne, a witty insult is sport. A direct accusation is suicide.
L'Empereur did not execute the Marquis. That would have made him interesting. Instead, he simply forgot him, denied the family access to the Château du Soleil, removed them from every guest list, every commission, every appointment. Sébastien's military career stalled overnight. Rémy was quietly transferred to garrison duty at the edge of nowhere. The invitations stopped. The letters stopped. The silence was total and absolute, the way only Montaigne silence can be: everyone knows what happened, no one will say it, and you are expected to understand that you no longer exist.
Gérard retreated to the family estate in Muguet. He considers himself vindicated. His sons consider themselves ruined. Cyprien lost the only world he'd ever wanted to live in.
The Money
The Marquisat's income was never solely military. A portion came , has always come, from colonial interests in the Atabean, managed through factors and intermediaries at a comfortable distance. Plantation investments in Jaragua, administered by men Cyprien never met, producing wealth Cyprien never questioned. This is not unusual. Half the noblesse of Montaigne have similar arrangements. The money arrives clean, in quarterly disbursements, and no one discusses what happens at the other end.
Cyprien did not think of himself as complicit. He did not think of it at all. The wealth simply existed, and it paid for his library, his sorcier training, his silk, and his wine.
Summary: Youngest of three sons of Marquis Gérard de Vauclaire, a military nobleman under the Duke of Muguet. Father publicly criticized l'Empereur's abandonment of troops during the Castillian campaigns. The family was not executed or imprisoned; worse, they were simply forgotten. Stripped of court access, removed from every guest list, erased from the social world that was everything to Cyprien. He left Montaigne eight months ago, ostensibly to research Porté anomalies in the Atabean. He has not gone home.
Notes
- The de Vauclaire family drew income from plantation interests in Jaragua, managed through factors. Cyprien did not think about this until he arrived and could not stop thinking about it.
- Luc, the family's former factor, operates in Mariana territory to the north. May still be working for the ATC.
- The Kò nan Enspektè (Jaraguan intelligence corps) is almost certainly watching him.
- Eustache Dubois (Explorer's Society, half-Montaigne/half-Jaraguan) is a useful contact and potential ally.
- Bawon Ge's Sacred Ground power can shut down all Sorcery, including Porté, within consecrated ground. Cyprien does not know this yet.
Bringing Your Hero To Life
- What Nation is your Hero from?
Montaigne. Specifically, the northern province of Muguet, where the de Vauclaire family holds a Marquisat along the Atlantic coast. He grew up between the family estate and the court at Charouse. The estate was cold stone and his father's disapproval. Charouse was everything else. He has not been back to either in eight months. He does not miss the estate.
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2. How would you physically describe your Hero?
Lean, sharp-featured, a little too thin in the way of someone who either forgets meals or eats like he is trying to make up for all the ones he missed. Brown hair that was fashionable when he left Montaigne and is now just long. A beard trimmed with religious precision, because a man has to hold the line somewhere.
His hands are the thing people notice first. The Porté scars run from his knuckles to his mid-forearms, a layered history of old cuts: the oldest ones faded to silver, the newest still flushed. He does not cover them with gloves or cosmetics. In Charouse this read as bold. In Kap-Kalfu, among people whose scars tell a very different kind of story, it reads as something he has not figured out yet.
He dresses well. Not showily, not anymore, but well. Montaigne structure in local fabric. One deliberately impractical item at all times: a brocade coat, a silk cravat going limp in the humidity, kidskin gloves he puts on for no reason and takes off ten minutes later.
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3. Does your Hero have recurring mannerisms?
He quotes people. Constantly. A Montaigne poet for sadness, a Vaticine theologian for moral gravity (in a tone suggesting he admires the construction rather than the faith), a Crescent philosopher when he wants to sound worldly. He uses other people's words the way most people use hand gestures. When he cannot find a quote that fits the moment, he stalls. This is happening more often in Jaragua, where his library has not caught up to his life.
His hands never stop moving when he talks. Trained rhetoric; he learned to speak with his whole body and never unlearned it. The scars move with his hands and he is completely unaware of the effect this has on people watching.
When he is thinking and not talking, he goes still and quiet, one hand drifting to the opposite forearm, fingers tracing old cuts without looking down. If you see this, he is working something out. Do not interrupt him. He will either solve it or reach for the wine.
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4. What is your Hero's main motivation?
He would tell you it is scholarship. He came to Jaragua to study why Porté behaves differently here, to investigate the resonance between the walkway and the Lwa's spirit realm, to explore the Syrneth ruins beneath les Alpes Azurées. He would describe this with genuine passion and considerable eloquence and it would all be true.
It would also be incomplete. He is here because Montaigne became unbearable after the disgrace, and because chasing a scholarly obsession across an ocean is a much more dignified form of running away than simply running away. The research is real. The escape is also real. He has not fully reckoned with the proportion.
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5. What is your Hero's greatest strength? Greatest weakness?
His greatest strength is that he makes people feel seen. He reads a room like a text, finds the frequency that makes each person feel heard, and calibrates to it with an ease that looks effortless because he has been practicing since he could talk. This is the courtier's art and he is genuinely gifted at it.
His greatest weakness is that he treats this skill as a substitute for honesty. When things get difficult he does not confront, he charms. When a situation is ugly he does not sit with it, he performs. His reflex in any crisis is to become more delightful, as if being charming enough will resolve things by sheer force of pleasantness. This has worked for most of his life. It is not working in Jaragua.
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6. What are your Hero's most and least favorite things?
Most: Wine. He has opinions about wine that border on the spiritual. He can identify a Montaigne vintage by smell and will, if given the slightest encouragement, explain why. He also loves conversation that moves, the feeling of a good coat on his shoulders, the moment when a piece of Porté theory clicks into place, and being the most interesting person in the room.
Least: Bread in Jaragua. He will freely admit the cuisine is extraordinary, but the bread is wrong. He has explained this at length to people who did not ask. He once tried to bake a proper Montaigne loaf in a borrowed kitchen and ate the entire failed result while calling it an insult to wheat. He also dislikes silence in conversation (it makes him nervous), being ignored, and the growing suspicion that he is not as good a person as he recently decided to become.
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7. What about your Hero's psychology?
He intellectualizes before he feels. When confronted with something painful, his first instinct is to find a framework for it, a quote about it, a way to understand it that keeps it at the length of an arm. This is a coping mechanism he learned in a household where his father expressed disappointment through silence and his value was measured in social utility.
He is genuinely kind, but his kindness has always been a performance skill rather than a practice of sacrifice. He is learning the difference. The process is uncomfortable and he is not good at discomfort.
He also has a deep and mostly unexamined need to be liked. Not feared, not respected (though he will take those). Liked. Approval is the currency he was raised on and he spends it freely and hungers for it constantly.
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8. What is your Hero's single greatest fear?
That the walkway knows what he is. That the voices he hears in Jaragua, the ones that grieve instead of tempting, belong to people who died on land his family profited from. That when he crosses the Place Between Worlds here, the dead can see him and they know his name.
He has a smaller, pettier fear underneath that one: that he will become his father. Not the principled version of his father, the one who spoke truth to power. The bitter version, the one who retreated to the estate and stopped trying. He is afraid that exile is hereditary.
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9. What are your Hero's highest ambitions? His greatest love?
His ambition, stated aloud, is to write a monograph on the relationship between Porté and the spirit traditions of the Atabean that will redefine how Théan scholars understand sorcery. This is a real ambition and not a small one. It is also increasingly tangled with the question of whether he has any right to publish what he learns, and whether the knowledge is his to share.
His greatest love is harder. He would say "knowledge," and he would mean it, but the truer answer is that he loves being excellent at things. He loves the feeling of mastery, of understanding something fully, of being the person in the room who sees what no one else sees. This is vanity dressed up as scholarship, and he is only beginning to notice the seams.
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10. What is your Hero's opinion of his country?
Complicated. He loves Montaigne in the way that you love a beautiful house you grew up in and cannot go back to. He loves the language, the wit, the food, the clothing, the art of conversation as a contact sport. He believes, probably correctly, that Montaigne culture at its best is the finest in Théah.
He also knows, now, what that culture costs. He has seen the other end of the supply chain. He knows that the salons and the wine cellars and the opera are built on conscripted peasant labor at home and colonial extraction abroad, and that the entire glittering apparatus of Montaigne civilization runs on the labor of people the civilization does not consider fully human.
He is not yet brave enough to say this plainly. His father was, once, and look what it cost him.
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11. Does your Hero have any prejudices?
He has the residual snobbery of his class, though it is eroding. He catches himself ranking people by their diction. He has a reflexive assumption that education equals intelligence, which Jaragua is correcting with some force. He instinctively trusts people who are well-dressed and articulate, which is exactly the set of people most likely to be lying to him.
He does not have the cruelty that often accompanies these prejudices. He simply has the blind spots of a man who was raised inside a system and is still learning what it looks like from the outside.
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12. Where do your Hero's loyalties lie?
This is the question he is trying to answer. They used to lie with his family, or more precisely with the social world his family gave him access to. That world is closed. His father is a bitter man on an estate. His brothers blame him for nothing but associate him with everything.
His loyalty to Montaigne as a nation is abstract and increasingly strained. His loyalty to the people of Jaragua is new and untested and he is not sure he has earned the right to it.
If pressed, his deepest loyalty is probably to the work. To the idea that understanding something matters, that knowledge has a value beyond utility. Whether this is genuine conviction or a very sophisticated excuse to avoid picking a side is an open question.
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13. Is your Hero in love? Is he married or betrothed?
No. There were people in Charouse. There are always people in Charouse. Flirtations that felt significant in the moment and evaporated when the season changed. He is good at the beginning of these things and has never stayed for a middle.
He is not betrothed. Before the disgrace there had been vague talk of suitable matches; after it, the talk stopped. Nobody wants to marry into a forgotten name.
He is, at present, lonely, though he would rather drink bad wine than admit it.
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14. What about your Hero's family?
Gérard de Vauclaire (father): Marquis of Vauclaire under the Duke of Muguet. A soldier. Principled, rigid, and deeply bitter about the disgrace he brought on his family by speaking the truth about l'Empereur's abandonment of troops. He did the right thing, and it ruined everyone he loves, and he has never apologized because he does not believe he was wrong. Cyprien respects him and cannot stand to be in the same room as him.
Sébastien (eldest brother): The heir. Had a promising military career that ended overnight when the family fell from favor. Blames their father openly. Manages the estate with competence and resentment.
Rémy (middle brother): Was a Musketeer. Transferred to garrison duty at the edge of nowhere. Writes to Cyprien occasionally. The letters are short and do not say much. Of the three brothers, Rémy is the one Cyprien actually misses.
Mother: [To be determined with GM. Possibly deceased, possibly alive and managing the household with quiet dignity.]
Cyprien can feel all of them, all the time. The family blood-marks are always there, a direction and a distance at the edge of his awareness. He can never fully leave.
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15. How would your Hero's parents describe him?
His father: "Cyprien is the cleverest of my sons and the least useful. He has a gift from God and he uses it to fetch wine from across the room. I do not understand him. I have never understood him. He has his mother's face and his own particular talent for making everything into a game, and I sometimes wonder if he knows the difference between a game and the real thing. I worry about him. I will not tell him this."
His mother: [To be developed, but likely something warmer and more perceptive. She probably sees what Gérard cannot: that Cyprien's charm is armor, not vanity.]
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16. Is your Hero a gentle?
He was raised as one. Table manners, formal rhetoric, the code of conduct expected of a Montaigne nobleman. He can bow correctly for seventeen different social situations. He knows which fork to use. He has opinions about gloves.
Whether he lives up to the spirit of it is another matter. The gentlemanly code says your word is your bond. Cyprien's word is reliable, but he is very good at choosing which words to give. The code says you defend the helpless. Cyprien is coming to realize he spent most of his life in a room where the helpless were not invited.
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17. How religious is your Hero? What sect of the Church does he follow?
He follows the fashionable Montaigne position: l'Empereur considers himself a philosopher and an atheist, and the court follows suit. Cyprien professes no faith. He treats Vaticine theology as literature. He can quote the Third Prophet with the fluency of a seminary student and the detachment of a theater critic.
This position is becoming harder to maintain in Jaragua, where the Lwa are not a theological abstraction but a felt presence, where Sèvitès are ridden by spirits that are demonstrably there, and where the walkway is full of voices that will not be explained away by philosophy. He is not converting. He is simply finding that his certainties have less structural integrity than he thought.
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18. Is your Hero a member of a guild, gentle's club, or secret society?
Not formally. He is adjacent to the Explorer's Society through Eustache Dubois, who runs the chapterhouse in Kap-Kalfu. Cyprien has attended meetings and expressed interest in the Syrneth ruins. He has not committed to membership because commitment is not his strongest quality.
He maintains a loose network of Porté scholars and sorcier correspondents across Théah (represented by his Connection advantage), though the correspondence has slowed since arriving in Jaragua. Letters take a long time to cross the ocean, and he is increasingly unsure what to write in them.
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19. What does your Hero think of Sorcery?
It is the thing he is best at. It is the thing that most frightens him.
He thinks of Porté the way a surgeon thinks of a blade: with respect, with discipline, with an awareness that every cut costs something. He was trained well and he takes the work seriously. He bleeds himself to spare the world. He keeps his emergency marks hidden. He does not open his eyes in the walkway.
But lately the walkway is not what his training described. It has weight. It has texture. The voices do not tempt by enticement; they how and grieve. He is beginning to suspect that Porté theory, as taught in the salons of Charouse, is incomplete. That the Montaigne understanding of what the walkway is may be as parochial and self-serving as the Montaigne understanding of everything else.
He finds Kap Sèvi fascinating and unsettling. The Lwa operate on principles that Porté theory cannot accommodate. The idea that Bawon Ge's Sacred Ground can simply shut off his sorcery is something he has not yet learned, and when he does, it will rearrange several of his assumptions.
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20. If you could, what advice would you give your Hero?
Stop performing. You are in a place where the audience is not fooled and the stakes are not social. The people around you have survived things that would break you and they can tell the difference between someone who cares and someone who is being charming about caring. You are doing the second thing. Learn to do the first.
Also, the bread is fine. Let it go.