Name: Canio
Title(s): Pagliacci
Class: Assassin
Gender: Male
Attribute: Man
Era: 19th Century
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Personality: As a partner, he is paranoid, obsessive, and simply difficult to hold a conversation with. If it’s friendship and camaraderie that’s being pursued, one should look elsewhere. He is a clown through and through who has yet to find a proper way of articulating his own wish, varying from “that I had never married her” to “that I knew it was Silvio earlier”. At his core, he simply wishes that his life had been a peaceful one, one where he could have acted to his heart’s content, had a drink with friends, and live alongside someone who cared for him as much as he cared for her. In that regard, he can only be called a pitiful figure who loathes being pitied, but there might be some Masters who see such a hopeless case as someone worth fighting alongside.
Bio: The main character of the play
Pagliacci. An actor who plays the part of a clown, Pagliaccio, in a play within that play. The work as a whole is regarded as a core example of the blurring between art and life.
Pagliaccio’s story is that of a clown who is betrayed by his wife’s infidelity, and who is drugged before his wife and her lover abandon him. In
Pagliacci, Canio’s wife plays Pagliaccio’s own wife, and in fact is committing infidelity behind Canio’s back. Before a performance of the play, Canio discovers his wife’s actions through the aid of a friend, Tonio, and seeks to discover the identity of her lover.
Over the course of the play, Canio is manipulated by Tonio and assured that he will find out the identity of his wife’s lover during the play. To that end, he attempts to force down his emotions and act out the play, only for his emotions to overwhelm him. An interrogation of his wife as Pagliaccio soon becomes a true interrogation of his wife in the middle of the play, the audience enraptured by what they believe to be a genuine performance.
Fueled by madness and rage, Canio murders his wife onstage, the audience helpless to watch. In the assault, Canio’s wife calls out for her lover, Silvio, who appears on the stage to her aid only to be struck down by Canio as well.
The play concludes with Canio onstage, two corpses at his sides, and with the simple words “The comedy is finished!”
Weapon:
Knife BIG KNIFE, Clown Equipment, Normal Clothes.
Parameters:
Strength: C
Endurance: D
Agility: B
Mana: C
Luck: C
Class Skills:
Presence Concealment: -
Through acquisition of the Personal Skill “Vesti la Giubba”, Presence Concealment has been sealed.
Personal Skills:
Vesti la Giubba: EX
Putting on the costume. Forcing down one’s emotions, one’s heart, and one’s own nature. The core of the tragic clown which wears a smile even as his spirit starts to crumble.
Rather than the ability to conceal one’s presence, this is instead the ability to conceal one’s nature underneath another persona. In the eyes of the observer, Canio cannot be viewed as the Servant Assassin, Canio, but rather as the role he chooses to play. Even such things as the flow of magical energy around him become indicative not of his own nature, but of the nature of the role. The same holds true for attempts to read his status as a Servant; if he is playing the role of another Servant then their status will be displayed, and if he is playing the role of a human then no status will be available. Even if one possesses the ability to see through alignments, the alignment they will witness is not Canio’s own, but merely the role he plays. However, a role is only as complete as Canio’s knowledge of it.
This capability has reached nonstandard rank due to synergy with the remaining Personal Skills, with Canio’s own acting ability and with the madness that causes him to enter the role he plays entirely. At this rank, even entering combat or the indictment from an ally cannot shake his role, as the cries of his wife failed to move the audience until she had already perished.
Mental Disorder: B
The mind has become ill. Mental interference of B rank and below is shut out, but mutual understanding with the sane has become impossible.
The madness brought on by the infidelity of Canio’s wife, the blind obsession with seeking out her lover and bringing him to an end, the feral scream of a broken man as he loses the line between where he ends and the play begins.
Performance: A
Talent for acting. An art that moves the masses, blending sound and movement to tell a story with visceral human emotion. Canio’s profession, and one he bears considerable skill in. While not one of the greatest actors to grace the earth, he can nonetheless be considered first-rate in his art.
At this rank, performances can even generate an effect of fascination upon those who witness them; in order to resist this, a resistance to fascination at equivalent or higher rank is needed.
(Human Observation: E++
The skill to observe and understand people. It is not simply observing but also hypothesizing the livelihoods and preferences, all the way to their life, of people he may not even known the names of. This requires a tremendous memory that does not forget easily, but unfortunately, Canio does not have that. At base, this aptitude is low, and he is barely capable of noting 'how a person roughly is'.
The double modifier signifies two conditions. The first is 'ties' to the target; that is to say, the greater his relation to the target, the more capable he is of knowing them. The second is 'empathy', whether or not he is capable of relating to the target in some form. When one or both conditions are met, aptitude increases significantly. This certainly demonstrates the nature of Canio's own biases; the tie it possesses into his Noble Phantasm is equally apparent.)
Noble Phantasm:
Name: La Commedia è finita!
Title: The Fool's Errand is Done, May We Laugh at His Folly
Rank: A
NP Type: ???
Range: ???
Maximum Number of Targets: ???
Description: Hidden due to its nature and relation to the character. Separately PMed to the GM.
