Name: Bento Belo
Age: 25
Gender: Male
Birthplace: Lisbon
Religious Affiliation: Pagan/Heathen
Secular Affiliation:
His bar/inn. He and it act as a medium between the classes and The Marseillan League. It serves any customers, so it is only partially a front for Ben's criminal affiliations.
His aforementioned connections to The Marseillan League, as almost required by someone in his position.
Bento himself remains in a perpetual state of neutrality, and while this means that he's not made any particularly loyal allies, it also means he has many connections and few enemies. His dealings with the criminal side of the world is one of balance; he gives people the means, or the connections, for what they need. In more succinct and metaphorical terms, Bento has pitched his tent in the middle of the battlefield.
Level of education: Mostly street-smart, but learned his letters from a country priest.
Social status: Lowest.
Occupation: Bartender/Business Owner, Frontman, Contact, Etc
Appearance: Bento is a man in his twenties who sports dark hair and boringly brown eyes. He was handsome, once, but now a somewhat crooked and scarred nose draws most of the attention away from his wispy hair or delicate chin or high cheekbones. His body is a commoner's; short in height, darkened skin, and small feet. Bento shies away from normal 17th century fashion, trying his best to wear darker and more trimmed attire, to better format himself as a man without a class; a man who connects people.
Personality: Bento is a somewhat jovial man; his line of work forces him to always smile and act unfazed, no matter what emotions are pulling at him on the inside. He has the air of someone with a lot to hide, but really, what he hides are not his own secrets. He has nothing but his work in his life, and so as contrary as it sounds, he is a very honest man. He knows what he is, and he accepts it. Despite his lesser education in fields like science or mathematics or history, he knows his letters, and likes to read when he can; he is quite interested in the different religions of the world. Ben, perhaps in an unwitting self-deprecation, has not interacted much with females (romantically). While his line of work is morally ambiguous, he considers that separate from his own morals as a human being. As such, he is a very independent man and follows his own versions of what is or isn't right. He is very interested in philosophy since he cannot understand the more pressing studies of the world, and tries to compensate for it with a studious knowledge of religions and philosophies.
Skill set: Street smart. Literate in some places. Has many connections. Well known. Learned basic daggerplay.
Languages: English, Portuguese, basic Spanish.
Bio: Bento, actually Ben Jr, was born the son of Bento Belo and Adelina Belo. His father was born in Sintra, where he eventually moved away from to Lisbon in order to find more work. There, he met Ben's mother, a Pagan woman who somewhere deep in her ancestry was a little bit French. Both of his parents no longer had connections with either of their families, forcing them to survive with only each other. His mother had no work or profitable skills, instead turning into an escort to help support the family. Bento didn't know why or when it happened, but he guessed some few years after his father met Adelina he had lost his faith, because soon enough Ben was forbidden any teachings of Catholicism.
It was a drab life diagnosed early on with a terminal case of poverty. It was a life that balanced itself, as the proverb goes, "on thin ice", and Ben knew this from an early age. His father was drafted to the shadier parts of lowborn society, doing things that even now his son hasn’t found out about.
Soon enough, things caught up with him. His mother, spreading her legs more dangerously for more dangerous men, fell through the ever-thin ice after she was used by a man too close to the count. Ben has blocked the day away from memory, but it's still there buried deep, the clanking of steel manacles and the gentle sobs of a middle-aged mother. Too close to the count indeed. She had been impregnated with his seed.
Ben never felt a large amount of love for his mother, but from what he remembered of the old religious teachings (for these, the world decreed, were proper), he was supposed to. The question of whether or not she was still rotting away in a cell or buried near the Sintra mountains still sits within Bento’s mind, like a sore blister on his lip that he can’t stop tonguing.
After that, his father decided it was time to move back to Sintra, and they did. There, they lived just as they had before, in poverty and silence, except Ben now without a mother. The years turned him from boy to man, and it was during that time that a country-priest (one that loved travel, it seems) taught Ben his first letters. His father, as Ben grew with the years and became self-sufficient, slowly stopped working altogether, metamorphosing into a street beggar, using his money now on liquor and alcohol. He became a vegetable in Ben's eyes, and he would take care of him as such for the years to come. He never understood his father's love for Adelina, as he had taken to calling her, but it had existed and leveled him to what he was now. Ben wouldn't judge it.
Taken care of by his son as if their roles were reversed, his father only goes out when the drinking is particularly bad, to yell out blasphemy and gibberish to passerby. It's a wonder he has yet to be taken away like poor Adelina, but then again, not many see him as human anymore. Ben sometimes wonders if his father understands what he does. Sometimes he wonders if cares.
Notes: Nothing of note.