[WFRP2e] The Power of One - Part 2 - "Transire Benefaciendo"

[MrAbdiel]

Signore Cestié composes himself, and embraces you in gratitude. It's just a lot to be hit with, for an old fellow; like having a whole life leap out of the past and slap itself down in the present, with all its old demands and obligations and complexity. Cestié shows you how to climb down much easier - he has climbed most of the buildings in this district at some point, and make your way back to the shop perhaps three quarters of an hour after the initial dramatics.

When you arrive, you find Bella charming her way through not just Biagio and Franchino, but also two more Cestié's who have shown up: where Franchino is taller and bespectacled, Salvi is broader shouldered, possessed of a shape that suggests a life of more laborious work, and has committed to squinting rather than admitting defeat to his diminishing vision. Neri is the shortest of the four brothers, though everyone seems somewhat short to you; but also the best dressed.

They are ensorcelled.

"...And it has wings, yes; but four, working in pairs that revolve over each other while they flap. Sort of like a... dragonfly, if its wings were socked into wheels that turned according to the pedalling put into the gearbox. It's quite remarkable - we've come all the way from Verezzo. Oh!"

With Maso returning, the rest of the Cestié's turn to face him. All of their expressions share some form of gingerly affixed concern, not wanting to spook him again.

"Maso," Franchino begins, "...Did you build a flying machine?"

* * * * *

It takes a little defrosting, but the great Cestié family jamboree progresses from standoff to warmth. Bella finds a kettle in the back room and boils it to make tea from a pot of dried Indan Fancy which, Neri assures, is better than coffee or any of the local teas. All of them are pleased to meet you and Bella; and all of them seem to be as genuine and good natured as your first impress gave you of Maso.

'Young' Neri (68) lives with his wife and his eldest, widowed daughter just a few storefronts down, managing his small but well regarded trading concern for the northern states of Tilea. His two sons manage most of the day-to-day of it now, and he and his wife Imilia spend most of their time doting on Imilia's even larger extended family, though he always has time for his brothers.

Salvi (72) worked at the store for years before making a move of his own after Maso left - he too his wife Leonetta, and their three daughters, and moved outside the wall to do 'work you feel the day after' - farming oats and raising goats. They also had four more daughters, all while both Salvi and Leonetta were in their late 30's and early 40's. They moved back into the city after selling the farm to retire to cope with a plague of grandchildren.

Franchino (79) has been the primary operator of the shop for thirty five years. The lads and the young woman presently tending to customers while this meeting goes on in a comfortably back room are his grandchildren - all the happy progeny of the one daughter, Ginevria, he had with his first wife Gilia. Gilia died a few years ago, and Franchino married a second wife, Lisabetta, for her warmth and companionship in their later years.

As it turns out, Biagio" (51) returned to Miragliano a little over a year after Maso left. His mother spirited him off to live with his "real father" when he was 12; but by the time he was 16, he understood the situation and wanted no part of it. He ran away, crossing three hundred and fifty miles from Pavona, through the forsaken Trantine hills, over the great river Tarano and finally across the Miragleanan countryside to walk into the city barefoot down the same track you took to get there from Grifone's farm.

"We all thought something had happened, until we got your letter. But all it said was that you were moving further south - I figured there'd be another and we could send one back to wherever it came from, but if you sent one, it never made it. I held out hope for about ... I'd say, ten years. And then I was angry for the next ten. And then I decided I was just going to beleive that you'd found somewhere to settle down and be happy. And I decided that's what I wanted for you, anyway." Surrounded by Cestiés, there are familial features that are discernably not present in him. Different nose, particularly; and better eyesight. But there's also that funny trait present that makes members of a family who have been together for a long time look like each other; the same odd magic that makes old husbands and old wives look like matched sets is at work here, and Biagio doesn't strike you at all as out of place.

"Biagio, I didn't know; I didn't know. I tried to see you, but I there was no way - I just... thought you had a new life with better things. I didn't know you'd come back on your own!"

Biagio gives a frail smile, and a little shrug. "It's my family, papa. How could I stay away?"

This is the closest Biagio comes to firing any kind of shots back at Maso. Considering his own right of grievance, it's very mild, and Maso accepts it with a nod, and a grimace. But after that, it's all right; some long forestalled hugs, and tears, and decades of Miragleanan gossip. The tale of the "Water Wizard" who had monopolized water trade in the city only to turn out to have been drawing from tainted wells and responsible for giving half the city the Yellow Plague. The story of how Borgio the Besieger, legendary general and mercenary maverick, claws to Princedom in the city, fought off an invasion from Remas, briefly invaded Verezzo until concessions were paid to him, and encircled and forced surrender from a Trantine invasion... before ultimately being stabbed to death in his bath with a poisoned toasting fork, leading to the present and ongoing rulership of his widow, the Dowager Princess Dolchellata.

Then it's Maso's turn to off tales of his own. He talks up Bella too - including some stories from before you arrived, in which she once stalled the tax collector who had come to town by drawing out of him ninety minutes of talk about his horse, while Polo, Cestié and Nogrom scrambled about town trying to find the stolen tithe that was owed to the Republic; and another, where the Rampollo Damio's wardrobe had been destroyed in a saboteur's fire, leaving him with nothing of quality to wear for a visiting senator's stopover in Bella Collina to refresh horses. In that one, Bella lacked the time to make a full outfit - so she made the front half of a fine outfit and pinned it to a peasant smock, instructing the Damio to make sure he was always front on to the senator - and got away with it.

And there's plenty of talk about the flying machine - though of this, everyone is naturally a little sceptical, since it involves Signore Cestié improving on a design that Leonardo di Miragleano abandoned. They humor him, but will need a demonstration to really take it on board. Still, it's clear that the most pride he has for anything is not in the machine, but in you; for believing in him, and inspiring him to bother with it at all; going through the crashes and fumbles of the testing. He makes sure to talk about the Troll, and the mutants of Silo Road, and the pirates; how you saved Gaulfredo and Vittorio from the goblins after escaping from the skaven, and found your way in the world without a word of Tilean in your mouth, and how watching you find your feet after such a wretched decade of suffering underground gave him no reason to remain self-pitying and idle in his quiet shop in a quiet village, waiting for the final, unbroken quiet.

Then comes the last part of the puzzle.

"The old man's upstairs. He can make his way down when he wants to, but he's tired a lot.
I... told him you had come back," Franchino explains, "...but I don't think he listened. He's still mad, Maso. But he's ninety nine years old - if you don't make peace with him now, you might not have a chance to do so on your way back from Nuln."

Maso holds your hand with his right, and Bella's with his left, as if physically drawing strength from your dual youthful vaults of courage.

"Alright. Well. There's no art for it. This was a meeting I didn't think I'd have this side of the soil."

Spoiler: OOC:

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Imagine if you had just accepted Cestié's discomfort and just skipped the city. I'd have been... crestfallen.

Give me a charm test, so I can see how you impress Signore Cestié Senior. Have a +20%, because you are a survivor of the hated skaven.