Casaubon Reyes
Casaubon Reyes
Duke of Censorship
physical description
Contents
Passions & Skills
P: I believe chaos must be kept at bay (2) P: I want peace (0) S: Bureaucrat (3) S: Diplomat (3) S: Cool (2)
Bonds & Afflictions
A: I cannot reveal a secret (3) A: I have a mysterious nemesis (1) B: What I hide stays hidden (4) B: I know what you're really after (2) B: I protect those who can't handle the truth (2) B: I owe the Camorra, and they owe me (1) B: I have followers in halls of power everywhere (1)
Estate Properties
Censorship ... ... suppresses what's harmful (3) ... pacifies (2) ... operates beneath notice (1) ... can only delay, never destroy (1)
Attributes
Aspect 2 Domain 4 Persona 0 Treasure 1
A/D/P/TMPs: 6
Gifts
- Immutable
- The Nihil Obstat -- What appears to be merely well-made fountain pen is in fact a weapon capable of irrevocably destroying information with a mere touch, whether a whole book, a hard drive, a memory or a chromosome. Its endless ink also serves as a powerful and addictive intoxicant, capable of producing both mild euphoria and amnesia.
Background
It is the sworn duty of every child to rebel against the parental law, to upend the father's table of values, to stand athwart the wisdom of tradition. This duty is a special burden for those children born to freethinkers, atheists and monarchomachs. Alienation was Casaubon's birthright, and in a double portion: not only was his father a minorly infamous socialist and polemicist in mid-19th century London, but both his maternal and paternal lines sprang from decidedly non-English soil. Possessed of a sharp wit, an irascible temper, and his father's latent antinomianism, Casaubon took the only avenue open to him: he made himself more Anglican than the Archbishop, a Tory to make Bollingbroke quail, more British than the British themselves. He committed himself to the ideals of the Victorian gentleman: restraint, prudence, respect for tradition and skepticism toward novelty.
After finishing his education, Casaubon brought his formidable savvy and drive to the service of Crown & Country. He proved himself a kind of bureaucratic savant -- a man who had that rare gift of making unwieldy, impersonal and lethargic institutions act with efficiency and purpose. He showed a special talent and taste for the control and manipulation of intelligence, and to that end he served as a diplomat and spy in Paris, Berlin, Vienna and St. Petersburg; he oversaw the suppression of the socialist and anarchist threats; and he made sure the energetic London press didn't tell tales out of school. His acquaintance with the ways of the world -- the avarice and violence behind and beneath the trappings of civilization -- did not at first rob him of his devotion to duty; on the contrary, he saw that it fell to men such as himself to keep the latent chaos of Great Power politics at bay.
A man as well acquainted with the uses of power as Casaubon is bound to get the attention of the powers behind thrones. Almost from the beginning of his career, as he'd come to discover after his commencement, he'd been groomed and employed by the Camorra -- he was in debt to them before he knew who they were. Perhaps it was their malign influence, or perhaps it was just the natural course of things, but by the time of the Great War, cynicism had hollowed out his heart. He performed his duties in the Ministry of Information ably, but the zeal was gone.
In the aftermath of the war, amid the malaise that had fallen over a broken, wounded Europe, Casaubon had resigned himself to the loss of everything to which he had committed himself. He was quite unsure what the Camorra would make of his retirement, and contemplated without horror the possibility that he would suffer for the decision, but his mind was made up. In retrospect, it seemed quite perverse that the moment of that decision would be the moment his Imperator would choose for his commencement. (Who can fathom a Wildlord's mind?) The world that had grown pale and lifeless was replaced by a cosmos vibrant and dangerous; it provided him with renewed vigor and a new cause to which he could commit himself.
But this cause came to weigh on him far more quickly, and far more heavily than his mortal one had. His ennoblement meant that there was no escaping the Camorra, with whom he was forced to deal; he was forced to watch as the world and causes he loved suffered irreparable harm, as the world embraced youth and passion and license against tradition and restraint and duty; and his estate proved to be constantly embattled -- on top of a hostile Zeitgeist, something, whether Noble or Excrucian or Other, strengthened the assault. He has watched the coming chaos gather strength, and his best efforts to oppose it seemed to come to naught.
Casaubon today affects an air of detachment and reflection, but not far beneath the surface is the same choleric, severe and obstinate man he has always been. That affectation is not, however, false -- it is born of a sincere and profound yearning for what he calls 'peace', for lack of a better word.
