mage, alchemist, engineer, would-be god
Don A M A D E O B R O N Z A N T I
Cyron Imperial War Magus of the Protean Order,
Warden of Obrau, Lord of Castle Dreist
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Ht: 6'5 / Wt: 200 / Hair: white / Eyes: brown
Age: ~600 / Creed: Capracian / Status: *UNKNOWN (previously Deceased)
With a steady clicking noise of unseen machinery, a gilded grate in the wall slid open and a fluted brass wheelchair emerged from within, trundling along recessed channels in the tiled floor.Piled upon the chair was a dark mass of opulent robes and quilted blankets. From their folds protruded a man's head, bald and shriveled, lending the hunched figure a silhouette not unlike an obese vulture.
His skin was brown like old leather webbed with creases and cracks, and stretched over the all too visible contours of his skull. His thin iron-grey hair looked like it had perhaps once been luxuriant, but it had long since retreated in infantile wisps to the furthestmost regions of his scalp. The sparse remains of his beard were neatly trimmed, lending his gaunt face a faded vestige of masculine severity.The robes were a deep rich wine colour, hemmed with a splendid bronze-hued brocade. Around his scrawny neck he wore an ornate copper gorget - a grandiose accessory which may or may not have served to hold the weight of his head upright.The whites of his eyes were so densely bloodshot, they seemed to blend with the brown irises, but his pupils remained sharp and black...
Amadeo Bronzanti was both a relic of a bygone era and also a radical proponent of new and terrifying sciences. As a retired Imperial Magus in the last days of the old Cyron Empire, he hid himself away from the world, extending his life unnaturally, and conducting his secret experiments in his tower high atop Mount Donnerquell. This was all in preparation for the day he planned to make himself a god and lead humanity into a new dawn.
Bronzanti employed many sorcerous, alchemical, and technological methods to prolong his lifespan. While these did not quite grant him the immortality he craved... it did transform him into something not entirely human.
The Genius of Bronzanti
As an officer of the Protean Order, Bronzanti was specialized in Magecraft that affected the physical forms of organisms. The Empire employed such magics to bolster the strength of their troops and to heal their wounded, but also made use of offensive forms - to weaken the bodies of their enemies, or to reshape flesh in a variety of harmful ways.
Due to the permanent damage inflicted on his body by magical Warp Sickness (due to his intensive Imperial Magecraft training), Bronzanti foreswore the practice of sorcery centuries ago. Although no longer an active spellcaster, Bronzanti remained an extraordinary polymath whose expertise extended to both the arcane and scientific realms.
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| The alchemical symbol that serves as Bronzanti's maker's mark. |
In addition to his arcane craft, Bronzanti was a self-educated artificer of undeniable genius. Founded in the sciences of the old philosophers, Bronzanti supplemented his art with knowledge gleaned from the tinkering Gnomes of Nockenheim, and from dissecting celestial machinery inthe form of a captive Servitor of Niam. As a result, his achievements in the field of engineering remain unparalleled in Duatha even to this day.
Numbering among his inventions were many clockwork automatons of astonishing complexity and versatility, a palace-sized machine to siphon divine energy from lightning storms, and a mechanized fortress that was both an architectural marvel and a factory to produce his Brazen Legions. He had also recovered the process of creating and forging objects in Faerie Glass, a secret art known to the Sidhe of the Mythic Age.
Additionally, Bronzanti was an apothecary, alchemist, and surgeon of the highest order. His knowledge of natural and supernatural biology was vast, and his vivisection skills were such that could graft body parts from disparate creatures together functionally, with minimal magical intervention.
The Folly of Bronzanti
Bronzanti was a narcissist and a megalomaniac; his genius was exceeded only by his arrogance. For him, the superior man should hold an uncompromising vision for the future, unshackled by common morality.
Although once he paid homage to God-Titans of the classical age, in his last stages of mad ambition, he held nothing sacred. For him, his inventions and ability to reshape life to his vision were evidence of his divine inspiration. He believed he walked a path of destiny, styling himself as a self-made god.
For the day of his eventual apotheosis, he had crafted for himself new bodies - ageless, superhumanly strong, and aesthetically and genetically perfect. However, his vanity never permitted him to be completely satisfied with his results, and he created many flawed clone bodies, always seeking to correct small flaws and to outdo the last. In the meantime, he remained bound in his original time-ravaged husk, unwilling to risk an accident in the transferrance of his faculties to a new body.
After centuries of the potions, serums, and surgeries Bronzanti subjected himself to in order to prolong his life, his ancient physique had become peculiarly mishapen. Although he appeared shrivelled and frail, beneath his robes his limbs were gnarled and oversized, with a grotesque hypertrophied musculature. This body was capable of brief bursts of movement and inhuman strength, but he preferred to remain at rest whenever possible. He spent most of his time in his automated wheelchair, conserving energy.
Similarly, Bronzanti's intellect was sustained by a variety of specialized drugs, but not without side-effects. By the time of his death, the years had begun to erode his mind - although he appeared lucid and still fiendishly clever, he was prone to mental lapses and confabulations, with past and present mingling in his memory. He was highly paranoid, convinced that all his old foes were still watched him, waiting for him to falter.
Chief among his many imagined enemies were agents of “the Emperor" (nominally Kaspar V, already dead for five centuries) as well as servants of those Gods who resented his brilliance and wished to see him fail. To an observer, Bronzanti might appear to be quite mad... but shrewd nevertheless.
One exception to Bronzanti's self-obsession was the kinship he felt with soldiers betrayed by their leaders. This was driven by his personal moral indignation over the Imperial officials and feckless nobles who squandered the lives of so-called better men such as himself.
In the Cyron Era
Five centuries ago, Bronzanti was a War Mage and decorated officer of the Northern Cyron Empire. He was molded by the Imperial training system - the tight controls, the psychological conditioning, the potions trainees were forced to take, and the rigidly prescribed spell codex that forbade innovation.
Like the others in these military schools, Bronzanti's power grew... but as his craft matured, he felt the weakening of his physical body. The rigors of Imperial Magecraft meant that most mages fell into steep decline by middle-age due to the decay of Warp Sickness, and were obliged to retire from magical practice. These men were expected to quietly accept their military pension and live out their few remaining years in comfort.
Bronzanti had no intention of following such a path. He had come to understand that the entire system of Imperial Magecraft was devised to ensure that those with magical gifts would ruin their minds and bodies with the untempered energies they were forced to wield in the Emperor's name. He vowed that he would never fade away and be lost to history.
Bronzanti saw how the Emperor feared the potential of the mages. He realized that the purpose of the Imperial methodology was not not simply to produce more powerful casters on the battlefield, but to prevent them from maturing into wizards who might go on to threaten the Imperial hierarchy.
This offended Bronzanti. He believed that a true magus was an elevated being who possessed abilities akin to the gods, and who shaped fate to his will. In the tradition of the ancient Apotheoi and the God-Titans before them, he sought to attain immortality for himself.
He knew there would be no place in the Cyron Empire for such ambitions. He rejected the orthodoxy set by the Imperial Order and expanded the scope of his research beyond the codex, covertly crafting spells to alter his own physiology. As a war-mage, he used magical techniques to harden his body -- but he also made more subtle changes to his internal organs, proofing himself against the Warp Sickness, and expelling the lingering toxins left by the Empire's performance-enhancing serums.
He carefully calibrated his magical usage to give enough to meet expectations, but always held enough back to reduce the impact on his health. Whatever he gave to the Empire, he was sure to save his best work for himself. For him, his “lifetime" commission to the Cyron Legion was only the first step on his path to godhood.
A Portrait of Amadeo Bronzanti in the Late Cyron Era
This large painting is a well-preserved example of Cyron Epic style, painted on a single treated wooden panel. It depicts a bearded Bronzanti, grey-bearded, but still hale and powerful. He wears an ornate suite of antique plated armour, and stands triumphantly on a battlefield. He is energized with magical fury, and bears a massive crystal sword.A black dragon lays coiled and spasming beneath his boot, wounded and cowed. Behind him, armies are pulling down a great black tower in a city by the sea. The tower is crowned with cruel spikes and wedges, and glints like glass as it is shattered into ruins.The black dragon is likely a symbol of the defeated nation of Malochovia, as their old capital of Solzniya falls to Cyron armies. This battle at the southern estuary of the River Vesna was the famous turning point in the Cyron Empire’s reclamation of Koshkovia some five-hundred years ago. This was the Empire's last meaningful victory in the final days of Emperor Kaspar V... the last Cyronic emperor to bear the diluted blood of Kaspar the Great.
Retirement to Auspenheim
Upon his decommission, Bronzanti did not take up an estate in a pastoral Imperial holding. Instead, he requested stewardship of the old Empire watchtower on the edges of the Auspenlands. He claimed it was an ideal spot for an observatory, to wile away his last years gazing at the stars. The Empire bestowed upon him the ceremonial title of Warden of Obrau, gave him the old tower, and promptly forgot all about Amadeo Bronzanti.
Bronzanti had chosen Obrau very carefully. He knew the lore of the region, and during his Imperial exploits in the Auspenlands he had discovered the Primordial bones beneath the Condor Ridge.
Despite feigning failing health, Bronzanti was still in his prime as an Imperial Warmage. He was able to challenge and defeat the Servitor of Niam bound in the God Shadow of Condor Ridge. He created a simple automaton to guard the Primordial corpse and captured the Servitor itself, for it was this being created by the ancient Telosian of Knowledge which truly interested him.
Bronzanti dissected the Servitor's body entirely, learning what he could of its divine workings and applying it to his own research. Performing a diabolical ritual upon its celestial heart, he twisted this holy being into a fallen thing - a devil who would serve as his familiar and helper, under the guise of the mechanical seneschal he called “Muse."
Bronzanti dissected the Servitor's body entirely, learning what he could of its divine workings and applying it to his own research. Performing a diabolical ritual upon its celestial heart, he twisted this holy being into a fallen thing - a devil who would serve as his familiar and helper, under the guise of the mechanical seneschal he called “Muse."
It is believed that it was then that Bronzanti abandoned the practice of sorcery in order to preserve his vitality. Instead, he relied upon Muse's infernal powers in all matters magical. With her assistance, he was able to subjugate the Faerie-kind of the region, construct the wondrous Castle Dreist, and build an army of new minions twisted by science and sorcery.
In return for these services, Bronzanti had bartered his soul to Muse... but with immortality as his goal, it was a pact he had little intention of honouring.
Events Leading to Death
When the Tyrson Company came to Castle Dreist to investigate Bronzanti's increasingly bold activities in the region, the old wizard made the tactical error of confronting them in person. Trusting in his defenses and bodyguards, he quickly found himself endangered.
In desperation, he enacted his emergency protocol, wherein his precious vital cranial fluids were be suctioned out of his brain and transported by a crystal tube system to the new body he had crafted for himself, deep in his subterranean laboratory. Due to the risks of this process, he had avoided committing to this transfer until there was no other choice.
What he had not counted on was the wind elemental unleashed by the druid Korvuus, which pursued his fluids down through the tube system, and destroyed both the laboratory apparatus, and Bronzante's new body on the other side.
Bronzante's consciousness was (perhaps imperfectly) preserved only by the timely intervention of his lowly laboratory assistant, Castor (himself an earlier failed clone of Bronzanti). According to Castor, when the intended host body was destroyed, he quickly re-routed the vital fluids into Bronzanti's clockwork golem Talos, which had been forged from divine metals harvested from the Servitor of Niam.
When the Tyrson Company penetrated the laboratory beneath Castle Dreist, Bronzanti confronted them in the form of Talos. After a titanic battle, Talos' body was destroyed and left to melt in a lava pool. Any remaining parts of the golem were assumed destroyed when Castle Dreist's lightning-core overloaded and exploded, vaporizing the castle and laying waste to much of the surrounding area.
Rebirth
Bronzanti has apparently resurfaced several months after the total destruction of Castle Dreist, this time operating out of a secret base in a hidden cove on the northerly coast of Iagos.
Evidence suggests that Bronzanti succeeded in constructing a new, healthy body for himself, which no longer suffers from the Warp Sickness he sustained during his Imperial Warmage career. Although Bronzanti has regained mastery of his extensive spellcasting abilities, it seems he has continued to dabble in the arts of alchemy, vivisection, and mechanical artificing.
While his skills seem unblunted by his brush with death, Bronzanti's resources were diminished after the loss of his Dreist facility. So far, he has demonstrated no capacity to produce Faerie Glass, and and no facility to collect divine energy from lightning sources. So far, he has seemingly only repurposed old automatons, lacking the material resources to produce new ones on the scale observed at Dreist. Even without these tools and methods, it is clear he now has other means in his repertoire.
Bronzanti's base-of-operations was originally a station for his underground rail line, which was used to ferry supplies and slaves to the Dreist location inland hundreds of years ago. When Bronzanti advanced his automaton development, his demand for slaves diminished, and this transit station was sealed off and left dormant. Since his recent defeat in Auspenheim, it now serves as a headquarters for the reborn Bronzanti.
Since his reappearance, Bronzanti has traded with various groups operating around the Helicosian Sea. He has alchemically produced the addictive narcotic Blue Lightning, which is distributed through the Black Dragons (former Malochovian Imperial Marines turned freebooters after the war).
He also employed the crew of the pirate-hunting vessel Helicon's Hammer to secure blue faerie coral from the Spire of Orcus. As part of payment, Bronzanti constructed a prosthetic arm for Eli van Hocke (who called him by the name Hephaestus).
When his Helicosian base was invaded by the Tyrson Company, Bronzanti appeared young and strong, with a full command of his magical battle arts. However, this form was eventually revealed to be a mystic simulacrum constructed of beeswax. This “False Bronzante" was unaware of his status as a mere copy up until the very moment of his destruction.
When his Helicosian base was invaded by the Tyrson Company, Bronzanti appeared young and strong, with a full command of his magical battle arts. However, this form was eventually revealed to be a mystic simulacrum constructed of beeswax. This “False Bronzante" was unaware of his status as a mere copy up until the very moment of his destruction.
BRONZANTI'S ACCOUNT
a madman in his own words
In my day, the Empire was still strong.
The capitulation of Delon, the sack of Gruziya, the Clarion rout at Laudric...
Our great Imperial War Mages made our armies strong.One mage to each cohort! This is why the Empire armies were so feared.And why was Imperial Magecraft so great?
Those with the gift for magic were recruited very young.
So much testing and training. Special potions and treatments.
Very hard training. Not all survived.But they gained much power. Very loyal.
The Imperial Method built iron discipline and strong bodies.
Those wizards of Clarion in the North... where were they?
Not in academies. Not in armies. Not on the battlefield.
They lived in shabby huts. In forests. Under hills. In ruins.
No wealth. No loyalty. Just some old men with sticks.
They might live for a century or two, but took precious few apprentices in that time.
And to what end? To make a petty curse? Summon rain? Talk to crows?
Maybe pull a rabbit from a hat?
An Imperial War Mage was a master of powerful magic by thirty!
Throwing fireballs, calling lightning, making the earth tremble!
Floods, storms, walls of fire and stone.
Once... once Amadeo Bronzanti was strong like this.
I could destroy and create. Sunder and mend again.
A soldier loses an arm in battle? An eye? A leg?
Bring me the leg, and next day you'd be fighting like new!I could make our soldiers into giants.
Then transform our foes into pigs, and use them to feed our giants.
Bronzanti was an artist like this! A maestro of flesh and bone!
So here is a question - if the Imperial Mages were so great...
Then why was the Emperor himself not the greatest wizard of all?
Why were there no mage-generals or sorcerer-kings in the Empire?
Imperials warmages, they won so many battles... and then... PAF!
They would go away. Disappear. No worries for the Emperor.Good trick, eh? Kaspar V was a very clever man. His generals too.
They made sure the mages could never rise too high.
Warmages spent their whole lives fighting, and then... they were done.
Released. Retired with an officer's pension. But no more magic.
If lucky, maybe granted an estate in Delon or Aesos for their last years.
Perhaps a pretty young wife or a companion boy.Then it all passes to the next... old soldier.
Magic training is like training the body.
It is a system. It is science. There is a right way... and a wrong way.
When you work a muscle hard, it grows strong.
But if you push that muscle too hard, and it will break.
And it will stay broken.
This is the sacrifice asked by the Emperor.
Fight well for the glory of the Empire. Be a big hero.
Then, at forty, a mage is already an old man. His body ruined, his spells weak.
This is Warp-sickness, from too much strong magic, practiced incorrectly.
Your bones hurt. Your brain is porridge. Your seed is weak.
Maybe you get one more decade, and then dead. No heirs.
Why did all Imperial Mages train this way?
Why take the constant tests. Why all the drugs and potions?
Was it to make stronger mages? Yes... but also, no.
Imperial magic was powerful, but they trained too fast, too hard.
The potions were too strong. The body was not ready.
And untempered arcane energies are too great.
For one brief moment, a man can hold the power of a god.
And then he breaks. And he stays broken.
Then... he can barely hold a spoon.
In this way, the Emperor stayed safe. The politicians stayed safe.
There were great old wizards to challenge them.
Just feeble old men. All used up, and no threat to their power.
Very clever.
But Amadeo Bronzanti is clever also. Understood this very early.
Followed the program. Took the tests. Took the potions.
But learned other arts too. Forbidden magic not found in the codex.
Studied many things; medicine, physics, geometry, engineering...
And kept all of these things secret from the Empire.
Bronzanti is an architect. I used blood and sweat to rebuild my body like tower.
Then I used sorcery, and other paths not so well-known
There are many ways to build a man. Or an Empire.
When I retired, they offered me an estate in Aesos.Nice house, green fields, warm air. Grapes on the vine. Shepherd girls, soft and brown.
But I said, no... give me the old tower on Donnerquell instead.
Nobody wants this, but it has a sky full of stars for my observatory.
They agreed. Named me Warden of Obrau. And crazy Bronzanti went PAF!
Disappeared, to be forgotten like all the others.
But Bronzanti knew what was really in this valley.
Donnerquell is full of metal. The veins run deep.
Silica Obdura from crystal roots that extend into Faerie itself
And other things... that I knew were here in this valley.
Oh yes... there are many legends about this place.
The Fading Folk and the Gods left too much of themselves behind.
And the lightning... Donnerquell means the wellspring of thunder
Here, one can smell the lightning, feel it caress your skin like hot rain.
They say lightning is the spear of the heavens, the wrath of the gods!
But no... I must disagree. Lightning is life!
It is the passion of the gods. The fruit of Zaeus' loins
A divine seed spilled upon the barren womb of earth.
This gift is not understood, and so it is wasted.
But what if this divine seed were to be collected?Captured like lightning in a bottle?
A bottle made from the glass... of Silica Obdura
Only such a vessel can contain this divine gift of life!
Here, Bronzanti has everything he needs. Resources, privacy, and time...Enough to create things never seen before. Enough to shake the heavens.This is why SPIES are sent to watch Amadeo Bronzanti.
The Emperor is afraid. The Fading Folk cower. The Gods themselves watch with envy!
But it is too late for them to stop me. Bronzanti's time has come!It takes a man of vision to put the world to order once more,To bend it to divine law and make manifest the destiny of humankindAs once the Titans did before us!But they have failed in this task, those Gods young and old.They do not show us the path, but rather fear our rise.And so, it is to Bronzanti to pluck power from their idle fingersAnd relight the divine torch myself!Such deeds require a guiding hand that is unflinching from the flames of greatness.The unfailing will of a man who will be reborn as a new God!* * * *
