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| | ==Backstory== | | ==Backstory== |
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| − | Cynis Tetheon Magnos was born to an obscure branch of House Cynis: his mother had defied the house elders to marry a commoner, and a House Cynis steward at that. As a result, the matriarchs of House Cynis barred her from the family, forcing her to live in penniless obscurity in a remote province. Love quickly turned to resentment in the small household –Magnos and his twin sister Alena grew up in a house full of silence.
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| − | Magnos Exalted, Alena did not but grew into a beautiful young woman, and House Cynis agreed to allow the two of them to attend a season of House parties at the Imperial City, to see if they could be more pliable than their mother. At the parties, Magnos worked with systematic intensity, using the only resource at his disposal: his sister. Some Dynasts, he discovered, liked the thrill of corrupting country-bred innocence (and let certain secrets drop while doing so). After a while, Alena had learned enough to appeal to those who wanted sophistication in their courtesans. Magnos painstakingly coached her beforehand and debriefed her afterwards, and pretended not to notice the redrimmed eyes, the bruises, the growing exhaustion.
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| − | Cynis Tetheon Magnos’ findings impressed his superiors: it was rapidly agreed to let him back into the House and allow him to take a hand in Cynis business. Cynis Tethon Alena died when she was just twenty five.
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| − | In the decades since then, Magnos has risen to become House Cynis’ premier procurer and slaver. He has been married twice (once to a Scavenger Lands princess, as part of a brief, ill-fated Cynis flirtation with foreign politics; his present marriage is to Cathak Amoda –husband and wife see each other perhaps once a month, and have not shared a bed since the birth of their first and only child). He is the master of the Cynis vice network that spreads throughout the other houses: he also controls a vast part of the flow of luxuries, slaves and drugs to the Realm’s vassal states. Magnos has an uncanny instinct in handling such things: he knows exactly when cutting off the stream will result in a popular revolt; when doubling it will topple the government into corruption and who will take what bribes.
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| − | Many assume that his piety is a cynical affectation, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Magnos donates almost all of his immense personal profits to the Immaculate Order (the only luxury he has ever been known to indulge himself in a truly beautiful set of vellum Immaculate Scriptures), he keeps an Immaculate monk as a spiritual advisor in his entourage and he has at least once asked House Cynis for permission to dissolve his marriage and step down from his responsibilities in order to tend some shrine as a monk (he was, needless to say, turned down).
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