Cynis Magnos
Cynis Magnos is a character played by Phantom Grunweasel in Bound Devil Chambers Conspiracy Exalted PbP game in RPG.net
Contents
Cynis Magnos
- Aspect: Wood
- Concept: Divine Pusher & Ascestic Pimp
- Motivation: Gain enough power and security to retire to an Immaculate hermitage in peace
- Anima:
- Anima power: For once scene, the Exalt is completely immune to the effects of plant based poison (occurs reflexively). The Exalt becomes a plant toxin. If someone makes skin to skin contact, roll (Stamina + Resistance) vs. essence to avoid poisoning. Add essence to DV against archery attacks and any attacks using wooden or wood-hafted weapons.
Description
Magnos is a tall, lean man with skin and hair almost the same shade of deep brown –his hundred and forty years of life have put a deeper, harder hue and gloss to it to it, like aged teak wood. His eyes are green and his hair is cropped very short. He invariably dresses in unadorned white robes. He always speaks in a quiet, dead-pan monotone that gives only a hint of the glacial depths of sadness underneath.
Attributes
- Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2
- Charisma 3, Manipulation 5, Appearance 2
- Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 3
Abilities
Caste
- Archery 1
- Medicine 5 (Drugs +1)
- Performance 4
- Ride 3
- Survival 0
Favored
- Martial Arts 5
- Bureaucracy 5
- Socialise 5 (Killing unwanted gossip or discussion +1
Others
- Awareness 2
- Lore 2
- Linguistics 3 (High Realm; Low Realm; River Speak; Forest Tongue)
- Occult 2
- Craft 3 (Water; Wood; Fire)
- Presence 2
- Integrity 3
- Resistance 1
- Investigation 4
- Larceny 4
- Stealth 2
- War 1
- Melee 1
Backgrounds
- Allies 2 (Verdant Field of Corn of the 3rd Coil, personal bodyguard, sifu and spiritual adviser & Shayera Bliess, outcaste Madame extraordinaire and would-be mistress)
- Backing 4 (Completely controls the Cynis vice network)
- Command 1 (Immaculate bodyguard under Verdant’s command)
- Connections 4 (Immaculate Order)
- Connections 2 (Smugglers, organised crime & provocateurs)
- Connections 2 (Realm Merchants)
- Familiar 2 (A highly intelligent and poisonous snake/drake that can grow to the size of a mount and shrink to the size of a rat)
- Henchmen 3 (Heroic mortal agents and heads of the network)
- Resources 5 (State-backed crime pays)
Artifact details
Not Relevant
Hearthstone and manse details
Not Relevant
Charms
Enlightening Charms
- Pasiap’s Humility
- Moment of Daena’d
Wood Dragon Style
- Eyes of the Wood Dragon
- Mind-Over-Body Meditation
Medicine
- First Medicine Excellency
Ride
- First Ride Excellency
Performance
- First Performance Excellency
Investigation
- Scent-of-Crime Method
Bureaucracy
- Finding the Waters Depths
- Thoughtful Gift Technique
- Distraction of the Babbling Brook
- Drowning-in-Negotiation Style
Socialize
- Second Socialize Excellency
- Sweeten-the-Tap Method
- Jade Defense
Larceny
- Observer Awareness Method
Virtues
- Compassion 1
- Conviction 3
- Temperance 4
- Valor 2
Willpower: 7 Essence: 3
Other traits
Essence 3
- Personal motes 10
- Peripheral motes 26
- Committed motes (peripheral) 0
Willpower 7
Health Levels: -0/-1/-1/-2/-2/-4/Incap
Intimacies
- The Immaculate Order
- House Cynis
The Four Questions
1) Why are you more loyal to the Empress and/or the Realm than the average Dynast?
Cynis Tetheon Magnos is a true believer in the Immaculate Order and as long they support the Empress, he will serve her unquestioningly. On a pragmatic level, he knows that he must keep the Empress in power: Magnos has made many enemies in and outside the Realm and he would not survive a change of regime on the Blessed Isle, and exile is simply unthinkable to him. He serves the Realm's interests faithfully in his dealings outside it, since they are identical with those of the Immaculate Order: Magnos' pimps and pushers generally arrive in a conquered city on the same day as the Immaculate missionaries and they very frequently work together against the native populace.
2) Who do you serve, apart from the Empress? Who else constitutes a superior?
Magnos still has a hand in the running of House Cynis' vice networks (although I'm presuming that after joining the Bound Devils conspiracy, he'll have delegated much of it) and so answers to the matriarchs at the head of the House. Magnos is ambitious and it is well-known that he hopes one day to head the House himself, but he is a loyal family member who has done no more than participate in the acceptable level of familial infighting in the meantime.
3) What did you openly achieve in the past century that makes you a worthy subject for historians of the next Age to investigate thoroughly?
He played a considerable though inconspicuous role in toppling three city-states from within, allowing the Realm to move in, and in putting down a widespread rebellion among four of the Realm's vassal states. Most famously, he also discovered and exposed a plot against the Empress' life among certain disaffected army generals (there is considerable debate among historians now as to how much they genuinely planned, how much they simply bragged about to Magnos' courtesans and how much he simply fabricated. It is generally agreed that the Empress did use the occasion for a purge of the upper ranks). He has also made House Cynis and the Realm very, very rich.
4) What weaknesses do you possess that aren't just personal failings, but could be exploited by your enemies to cost you the Game of Thrones? What are the fields of engagement where you can't just apply Game Theory analysis, but instead will act against your interests?
Simply put, there is a huge gulf between his beliefs and the life he leads. Although the Immaculate Order (who view him as a major ally) are quick to offer him various soothing justifications and temporary moral concessions, Magnos is aware that he is simply not living according to the Immaculate way. The contradictions involved will inevitably tear him apart unless he leaves his position -and gives up his only means of protection from his enemies. He is caught in a vicious double-bind. The first person with the insight into his character to exploit this will be able to break Magnos.
Backstory
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
