presents...
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Red Ribbons is a 7th Sea game set in Vodacce. Our heroes are all members, by blood or by marriage, of the Donati family. Plot and counterplot fly thickly as members of the family vie for power both within and beyond the walls of their ancestral home. In the Great Game, knowledge is power - but are some secrets better left in the dark?
Brief chronological notes with links to game logs also on the calendar.
(For the casual webreader: The writing starts off pretty stiff and stilted, but picks up at or around Game 5. Also, the Story Bonuses aren't bad.)
Our story begins with life as more-or-less normal for the Donati family. The normal intrigues surrounding two marriage engagements slowly give way to more bizarre circumstances. There are a ghost, a witch-hunter, a cursed family bloodline, and unnatural secrets hidden in the recent past. When all is said and done, the surviving Donati brothers form a united front to pursue their dark destiny, and the power structure of the women's house has been fractured and must be rebuilt.
The Donati gain some things but lose others. Don Salvador gains a viscounty but loses his family name. Lady Gianina Donati gains the powers of a Lachesis, and Donna Francesca attains her heart's desire with Marco, but each loses the other when Francesca and Marco must flee. Father Angelo Donati continues to gain in reputation but must admit to himself that he has lost part of his soul. Can he reclaim it through love?
Changes start coming rapidly to the Donati, culminating in their involvment in Prince Mondavi's attack on the other Princes. As the war fights on, the Donati find their interests slipping apart. Father Angelo discovers new allies within the Church but holds a grudge against Antonio for his trying to kill Beatrice Caligari. Salvador has his duties as Mondavi's viscount, plus Marchessa Nemise Mondavi has revealed herself to him as a Daughters agent. Antonio moves his household to conquered Caligari lands, to administer them at the prince's request, taking Elsa Schubert and his wife Gianina with him.
PC goals and aims began to drift so far apart here that we stopped the game. The story is continuing somewhat in a series of epilogues, following the major players at least through the end of the war.
Volume 1: Sero, Ellen Locke, Tigran Mondavi, Renato Vasari, Montaigne minor characters, and Gabrielle Donati, all through the end of 1668.
Volume 2: Cristoforo Donati, Marco and Francesca, Zola, Teodora Donati, Anna Donati.
Volume 3: Beatrice Caligari, the nobles of Monfalcone, the Mondavi family, Pietra Donati, Bernardo and Lucia Donati.
Voume 4: Antonio Donati and Odessa Blanchard.
Angelo's player, echoing a friend who was reading along, that the game was "like a soap opera" and wasn't sure it would be possible to really predict the future of the characters. In soap fashion, the same heroes and villains should just keep orbiting each other ad infinitum in ever more baroque and twisted relationships.
That's true, but I think we can sketch some possibilities for "ever after" for them.
Lady Gianina Donati
The wives/courtesan conflict never bubbled up in-game, but with a baby on the scene and others possibly on the way, you can bet it'll bubble up now. Gianina and Zola will be in conflict, and Gianina's fighting from the better position. Of course, when Zola loses, that'll be when she reveals that Francesca is still alive.
Gianina's relationship with Antonio is liable to remain extremely conflicted, but will probably break in the end. He's the father of her child (possibly children as time goes on) and takes care to treat her well, but he's a monstrously callous man when it comes to anyone "outside" his care. If she tries to change him with Sorte, and if he realizes what she's doing, the relationship dynamic will quickly change - most likely to a classic "battered/batterer" one.
The breaking point will come when Antonio learns that Francesca and Marco (and Gianina, who knew all along) betrayed him and are still alive. Antonio will be willing to pardon his wife for her role in it, providing she helps him find the pair.
Happily Ever After: Gianina somehow manages to have her cake and eat it too, securing the fortunes of her children but also preserving her sister's life. Antonio will almost certainly have to die, but in such a way that she is not suspected in it. She raises Antonio's legitimate son to be a good man (for Vodacce), and he is accepted by his uncles as the next Lord Donati.
Bittersweet: Something has to give, either Francesca, Gianina, or the children. Gianina turns on her sister, or abandons her children to run away, or suicides to protect them all. At best, she runs away with the children to lead a fugitive life in a strange and far-off land.
Utterly Tragic: It all goes horribly wrong. She thinks she can help Francesca, but Antonio finds her and Marco anyway, either killing them both or killing Marco and leaving Francesca wishing he'd killed her. Back in Vodacce, he's cold to Gianina and begins to turn their son into a good little Lorenzo monster; the strega daughter may go to convent school, where she suffers a tragic accident. (Antonio is done with strega at that point.) Broken-hearted, Gianina turns inward for many years, emerging much later in life to extract her own horrible revenge against her husband just before his guards strike her down.
Elsa Schuman
Elsa, disgusted with Antonio's brutal policies, quits his service and returns to Monfalcone to work for the viscount. Her "relationship" with Cristoforo Donati, were it to be further developed, I can't help but see ending in the death of one of them - probably Elsa. (Strictly for plot reasons. If she goes, it can cause a change of character for Cris. If he goes, she probably sickens of the whole business and returns to Eisen. See Cris's epilogue for my thoughts on that.)
Alternately, they can stay in their current limbo, and Elsa remains in Salvador's household as he embarks on his own adventures in politics.
Happily Ever After: Elsa heals her spiritual wounds and becomes a voice for reasoned morality in Salvador's debauched household. She becomes his trusted advisor and conscience, mitigating Countess Blanchard's corrupting effect. When the countess (who's really tired of holier-than-thou Eisen getting in her way) moves against her, Elsa triumphs, not because of her strength in arms, but because her character and good behavior refuse to admit any other possibility. This victory of good over evil, of absolute justice, is the final vindication of a woman who feared that Theus was dead.
Bittersweet: Elsa doesn't quite find the peace she was hoping for. Salvador is better than Antonio, but the machinations he and his countess engineer still aren't good. A close-up view of the workings of Vodacce politics don't help Elsa's spiritual problems, and she remains bitter. On the other hand, Salvador is carefully but definitely doing good works - assisting women in trouble, working for their safety - and she finds helping him in that rewarding. In time, she may join Sophia's Daughters as well.
Utterly Tragic: She finds reconcilliation and peace just before dying in battle on the sword of her kindred spirit and lover, Cristoforo Donati.
Angelo Donati
Angelo wanted redemption, but what does a man who's plotted to murder his half-brother and mother, encouraged his brother's insanity, tortured and maimed his enemies, and seduced half the Rosary Society do to redeem?
Angelo is going to have to lose a lot. He's already resigning himself to the loss of his daughter as she prepares for her marriage. Pietra, a born Bad Seed if ever there was one, will likely appear back in Angelo's life in a few years as a creature so darkly evil that even Angelo may be shocked. The universe will exact a certain measure of payback as he has to work against the woman he helped create and still loves as a daughter.
Beatrice Caligari is another likely loss. She is too powerful, and now growing too mad, to remain safely alive. If she is allowed to succeed in her current plan, it will have dire and unexpected consequences. (The GM currently favors returning Caligari Island and its inhabitants, all undead.) Only Angelo can stop her, and it's doubtful that she'll ever forgive him if he does. (Well, Mateo could stop her as well, but he and Angelo may have a reckoning before that.) Furthermore, she'll have to be stopped from trying such a thing again, and none of the options there look good.
Happily Ever After: Angelo works against Pietra to stop her worst excesses, but she encompasses her own end when her plans go against her - just like Angela. Beatrice Caligari can somehow be reasoned with or cured of her godlike delusions, and the pair retreat into obscurity (possibly hidden by DKR).
Bittersweet: Mateo Bianco gets to Beatrice before Angelo, but Angelo quickly gets his revenge on Mateo. Angelo mourns for some time, eventually finding true comfort and his vocation in Theus. Filled with a new calling to serve, he returns to public life, teaming with an initially suspicious Bishop Giulia Masacci to champion the cause of the oppressed poor by the corrupt nobility. He is (figuratively) haunted by his losses, and preaching against the Black Principessa Pietra Mondavi is the second-hardest thing he has to do. (Seeing her today and knowing that the lessons of guile and deceit he taught her helped shape her into that is the hardest thing.)
Utterly Tragic: Angelo loses Pietra and Beatrice - possibly killing them both, or having them killed, regretfully but practically. It breaks him, leaving him utterly sick of the Great Game and how it twists people into monsters - himself included. He either retreats into his studies with DKR, or begins to play the Game again with twice the ruthlessness and recklessness of before: nothing really matters anymore, so why shouldn't he? He spirals down into self-destruction.
Viscount Salvador
Salvador has taken a snake to his bosom. Countess Odessa is a cipher for temptation and corruption. She gets people to cross their internal boundaries - in the bedroom, in the courtroom, in the cloister. Once the transgressions start, wherever they start, people find it easier and easier to justify other transgressions in other areas of their lives. She genuinely offers valuable assistance to his political ambitions - but at what cost?
(That's why Odessa is really only an interesting Villain if someone is playing a temptable, fallible PC. If you're playing a paragon of virtue who isn't tempted by anything and would never, ever slide to the Dark Side, she's got no teeth.)
Happily Ever After: Salvador eventually gets Odessa out of his life (possibly because of Elsa Schuman's "Happily Ever After" scenario, or else Gabrielle Donati in a similar role), but only after she's helped him make contacts with many influential noblemen. He'll have to watch out for her thereafter, but has allies to help save him from himself. When Mondavi shows his true, monstrous colors, Salvador works with Marchessa Nemise and her husband, Gallisus, to move the succession process along. In the utterly ridiculously fortunate version, Oreste and Pietra's machinations kill Gallisus; Angelo (or someone else) puts a stop to Pietra and perhaps Salvador himself avenges Prince Gallisus on Marchese Oreste. Nemise is strong enough, and has enough allies from her governing days, to insist that her children by Gallisus are the rightful heirs, not Mondavi's other son Riccardo. She rules as regent and eventually marries Salvador. He's not officially a Prince, he's a regent, but until the kids are adults he's effectively a Prince.
Bittersweet: Salvador compromises a little too much. He's doing good work for the Daughters, but to get it done, he's also doing... not such good works for other people. His infamous palazzo has been used much more than once to set up entrapments that provide blackmail material on notable nobles. He's a lot jaded and has had to grow a thicker skin. Sometimes, people do have to get hurt for things to get done - but he's overall still trying to do the right thing.
Utterly Tragic: Salvador compromises a lot too much. Odessa's influence erodes his moral compass entirely, and his youthful ideals drown in a sea of debauchery. Countess Morena and the Daughters find him to be less and less of a good ally, and finally consider him only a source of income (he gives donations out of habit, and to salve whatever's left of his conscience). His Arcana comes to rule his life, and he never achieves more than satiating his desires in Monfalcone.
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