Pietro Villanova / Reinhard Muller History

Pietro's Family

The names Reinhard Muller and Pietro Villanova belong to one man.
So to know one, you must also know the other.

Reinhard Müller
Reinhard is the son of a dockside prostitute from the northern Eisen port town of Hafen in the principalities of Pösen/Wische. His father is unknown, but was most likely either Castillian or Vodacce (judging by his colouring), and probably either a sailor, a merchant or a soldier/mercenary. This sort of parentage is not uncommon in Hafen and would not seem at all unusual to anyone who knows the area.

As a child he was left to his own devices most of the time. His mother didn’t want him hanging around and getting in the way. When he was about twelve or thirteen he ran off with a band of mercenaries who were on their way to fight in the War of the Cross. Actually he followed them until, unable to lose him, they relented and let him tag along as one of the lads who carries stuff/looks after the horses etc. He learned how to fight, and was involved in the war from that point on until it ended.

After the war he went to Freiburg to try to find work. This was where he met Nikita Vasilievich Korov who took him on as a guide/bodyguard and introduced him to the Explorers’ Society, of which he is now a member.

Pietro Villanova
As with any vodacce, you must begin the tale with Pietro's family.

Father: Marco Villanova
First cousin to Prince Giovanni Villanova, Marco is well educated and politically astute. He has managed to secure a good position for himself in Vodacce society whilst avoiding being seen as a threat by the Prince. He is one of Dionna University’s major sponsors, and has donated large sums of money to various research projects, particularly in the fields of medicine and natural sciences. Marco’s greatest failing is that he is rather too fond of pretty courtesans (hubris: lecherous).

Mother: Oriana
An accomplished fate witch and dutiful wife, despite her husband’s frequent infidelity. A quiet, solemn woman still saddened by the loss of two infant sons. These boys would have been Pietro’s younger brothers had they survived. Both died within minutes of being born.

Sister: Alessia (teen fate witch)
Alessia was barely ten years old when Pietro left Vodacce. It is unlikely he would recognise her now at 15. She might not even remember him at all. They did not have a lot of contact when they were children due to the age-gap, their different genders and the fact that she spent a lot of time in training, learning to use her sorte powers. It was said she had the potential to become a very powerful fate witch one day.

Wife: Rosina
The marriage was a political arrangement and according to Vodacce custom the bride and groom first met on the day of their wedding after a polite long-distance courtship. Rosina was three years older than Pietro: she was 18 when they married, he was 15. As a member of the Lucani family, famed for their powerful fate-witches, she had hoped for a politically advantageous marriage to a powerful ,older nobleman. Instead she got some snot-nosed Villanova brat. (Pietro just happened at the time to be the Villanova noble who was most eligible/closely related to the Prince.)

Rosina had married into a powerful family, but her husband was very young, inexperienced and only just starting out in the Great Game. He was also a bad luck magnet (misfortuntate hubris). All this should have made him easier to manipulate if it hadn’t been for his weird fate strands. She soon realised that a lot of women wouldn’t risk using sorte on him due to the unpredictability of the results. If she were to have any influence over him, she would have to do what others were not prepared to. Regardless of the potential risk to herself she started to manipulate his fate strands. She even resorted to snapping a strand at random on occasions as a punishment for refusing to comply with her wishes. The risk paid off, and soon she only had to use threats to keep him under control.

Then, just when things were going her way, and her husband was finally starting to get interesting, the bastard ran out on her to go fight some stupid war in Eisen. He never came back.

The War of the Cross
The war of the Cross was a good excuse for Pietro to get out of Vodacce. He was sick of being manipulated, sick of politics and the great game, and most of all sick of being pushed around by his wife, so he left to make his contribution to the Vaticine cause.

During the war he got separated from his company (they left him for dead after he was wounded). Eventually he hooked up with a band of mercenaries. His talent for languages meant he’d already been able to pick up Eisen well enough that the mercenaries didn’t really question his origins. He gave them a false name, learned from them and stayed with them for the rest of the war.

After the war ended Pietro went to Freiburg to look for work. He adopted the guise of an Eisen peasant called of Reinhard Müller, and secured a position as a ‘shield man’ in the Explorers’ Society.