Mythic Venice March #City23 #Dungeon23

This year I’m participating in Dungeon 23, which is a writing challenge where people write each day to build up a series of rooms for a megadungeon. In the City 23 variant, which is what I’m doing, a mass of material to be used to write a gazetteer for Ars Magic or Magonomia about the City of Venice. I had to take some time off for illness, so there are only 19 entries in my journal for March.

The Ducal Palace

The cool thing about writing on real places is that real maps exist.

The Ducal Palace is now a museum, and their webpage has floor plans, so you know where the facilities are when you visit. They also have room descriptions and illustrations of the development of the palace over time. During the Ars Magica period it is the Zianni Palace, but by Magonomia it’s the 15th century Foscari Palace. See Palazzoducale.visitmuv.it. Their maps are presumably copyright, but as the palace is real, an illustrator making floor plans for me is fine because it’s real data, not artistic IP.

I could go room by room in the description, I won’t now, but I might in the final book.

There is a virtual tour on Google Art and Culture that allows you to walk through it, and also there are further maps on Wikiarchitectura.

Notes from Chromatopia by David Coles.

Colours and dyes are interesting in RPGs because they are treasures and spell components.
I’m going to use “Chromatopia” as my basic book for this, because it sorts by historical
period and is generously photographed. I may then supplement with “Colour” by Victoria Finlay and with “The secret lives of colour” by Kassia St Clair. Each of these also has a textile history for weaving magic.

There are still painters making their own materials in Mythic Venice, but they can now also buy paint, varnish and other supplies at speziale stores, which are apothecaries.

Coles introduction : notes for Shape and Material Table

Alum is used to turn dyes, liquid, into pigment which is insoluble. Note Venice has an alum monopoly because they use alum in glass making. Paint made this way is referred to as a “lake”.
Distemper is painting with a mix of warm rabbit-skin glue, chalk, and pigment, yet another use for monster hides.
Encaustic is painting with molten wax.
Gesso is a mixture of chalk and glue, made of rabbit skins and bones.
Glair is clear egg white binder used for manuscripts and paints.
Gum Arabic is acacia sap used for watercolour and gouache binder.
Natron is a historically significant alkali.
Paint is pigment plus a binder.
Pink is the historical name for a lake pigment, it’s not a colour.
Potash is the historical source for alum from burned plants.
Tempera is an animal binder, egg tempera is albumen from eggs.

Coles’s problems in affording a mill, page 6, are a background for an Ars companion or
a Magonomia alchemist.

Coles can recognise the paints he made in finished works. In game this would let you determine if there’s been a theft or a forger in some cases. Also, an alchemist may know his secret formula has been stolen but can’t prove it, because it’s not obvious to others that it is a version of his paint, which is in the painting.

The Craftsman’s Handbook by Cennini is a 15th century manual of medieval painting techniques
which I will add to the length list of books to follow up with.

Basics

When you mix two colours to make a secondary, the new colour is less bright than the originals. With weak medieval paints you can’t just get a good red, blue and yellow and then
mix out your colours the way you can with modern paints.

Blue

The further you are from a thing the paler and bluer it looks.

Blue is not a primary colour to the ancients. It becomes popular in Europe in the 13th century when ultramarine, which comes from across the sea is the name, costs more than gold. It’s a symbol of the Virgin Mary and is made of ground lapis lazuli. 96% of the mineral is lost in the purification process. It’s bright in egg tempera, dark in oil. In oil you need to add white and this is the first crack in the painter’s axiom, of the time, of not mixing colours. Most modern blues are 18th century inventions.

Egyptian blue is a lost alchemical technique that creates a glaze which was an alternative to lapis lazuli. It’s called cerulean blue but it’s also used as a generic name for sky blue from smalt or azurite.

In Roman culture blue was a low status colour for barbarians, it only gets a boost during
the 12th century when it’s considered holy.

Venetian worker clothes are a pale blue because of a vegetable dye, I don’t hear that that
may be a British invention but I can’t see where I got that from.

An artificial azurite called blue verditer was really popular in the Middle Ages according
to Coles but I can’t find a pre-16th century source, there’s some argument that it’s
all azurite until the 17th century.

Indigo is known in Europe but it’s rare, it’s a luxury product from India which is where it gets its name. You can make an identical chemical either by fermenting balls of wood in urine or by letting air get into the murex purple process but do you want to make blue when you could be
making royal purple.

Woods annoying because it destroys the soil where it grows while the dye is being made
a scum rises out of it that can be used as paint, I’m not sure if it’s colour fast.
Woe dye is clear to yellowish I believe, the clothing becomes blue as the dye oxidizes.
The biggest deposit of azurite is in Hungary, azurite is mined alongside malachite, it’s
sometimes sold as the more expensive lapis lazuli, it’s hard, it needs to be washed
and sieved many times and needs many layers to build up hue because it’s so translucent.
Still it’s the best that the artists can afford and in Venice the gruelling prep work
can be done by your apothecary.

Chrysocolla is a solder for gold, it’s found with azurite and malachite and is used
as a pale blue in watercolour and egg tempera painting. It’s also very translucent and
is sometimes called cedar green.

Smalt is a blue pigment made of grinding cobalt glass and that appears around the 1540s.
In Ars Magica, we’ve done the kobold/cobalt thing before, I expect the paint is made from bloom of cobalt, blue crystals found with the metal, which may be a vis source.

French ultramarine was introduced in 1828 and it could be a treasure as a process. The traditional method of true ultramarine manufacture is detailed in calls in page 182 which is basically an enormous amount of washing and grinding.

Purple

In Ars Magica we’ve already written a lot about Tyrian purple: dye made for murex shells and lichen from the Canary Islands. Purple dye is ridiculously expensive, in Venice you’d be an idiot to wear purple because what you wear tells people how you expect them to treat you. If you wear purple you’re asking to be treated like a king. I believe one doge was violently deposed for dressing like a king.

The modern tendency to paint shadows as violet isn’t known in period.

The technique for making true imperial purple was lost in 1204 and rediscovered in 1988. it was lost in 1204 when the Venetian sect Constantinople, so secrets can be treasured as there’s a chance that someone found something that the characters can use as a sort of reconstructive
archaeology.

There’s another dye called Orchil which reaches Europe from the Levant in 14th century, first
found in Florence.

Red

The earliest red dyes are ochres, one of which (Veneto red) is exported from Venice for use as the colour of blood in painting. That’s useful for sympathetic magic.

In ancient Greece, people manufacture red lead which is more famous in alchemical circles as the beginning ingredient for all kinds of potions.

In the 8th century, people manufacture vermilion, it’s a very bright red made from sulphurous mercury which are the two parent substances in alchemy, this is cinnabar, mercury sulphide and the name Vermilion means it looks like kermes (discussed later) Cinnabar is the older name, the king of Spain sends prisoners to mine mercury at Almedin which is a natural source of cinnabar.

Kermes dye comes from shieldbugs. In the Eastern Roman Empire decrees were written
in this red.

In Venice, red is permitted but an opulent colour. Red is so popular for merchants that
the highest quality of fabric, scarlet, now makes people think of a particular colour of red.

Cinnabar is very toxic,

Coles has dragon’s blood on page 48 but it’s mostly what’s in the “Ancient Magic” book so I won’t cover it now.

Alchemists take note, you can change yellow ochre to red or brown by baking it. This is where the ‘burnt’ colours come from like burnt sienna.

Vermillion is what magi in Ars Magica use to rubricrate texts.

The little drawings are named after lead, minium, and your gaming miniatures are named
after the colour, minium originally came from Spain.

Red lead is cheaper than vermilion so it’s the most common red in medieval painting.

Lac is made from an insect that infests fig trees. It’s first imported into Europe in 1220 which is the starting year for Ars Magica. It gives its name to lake pigments and becomes the primary red dye, alchemists mucking about with the pH level of lac can get it to go from red to orange to violet, and it’s also one of the few paints that is edible. Its downside is that it’s not light fast.

Medieval people called kermes “baca” or “berries” because under the medieval paradigm
they might be berries rather than insects. A related product was called “grain” and ‘ingrained’
comes from the colour fastness of kermes dye. It’s also the source of the names of crimson and carmine. It’s slightly purple. Cochineal comes from the Americas and eventually it outcompetes kermes.

Brazilwood is a dye from Sri Lanka and it’s very popular although not light fast. It’s what the country of Brazil is named after, it has a fiery colour and its name means “brazier” wood.

Madder is imported to Europe by returning crusaders in the 13th century. The process of turning the dye into a pigment is extremely complex: the lake process has post-game development. Dependent on the mordant (that’s the fixative) used madder can turn brown or purple.

Cochineal exports from South America begin after the Spanish invasion in 1529. The Spaniards spread the story that the cochineal is a pea-like plant, it’s not.

Crocus martinus are iron oxide colours made alchemically from the 15th century onwards and it needs aqua regia which is a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acid or iron sulphate, which needs marshal vitriol to make. It comes in red, yellow, orange and brown colours. It’s not made industrially until the 18th century and it replaces some ochres, cardinals swap from purple to red in their robes in 1464.

Orange

orange is one of those weird colours that show up late, historically. In Ars Magica, people won’t know what you mean when you say “orange”, and if you show them something that is orange, in English at least they’ll say it’s golden-red. The name orange enters English when the Portuguese traders lob up to flog their fruit during Elizabeth I’s reign. The colour becomes associated with the ruling house of the Netherlands.

That being said there were orange paints, ochres, red leads, even Vermillion is on the yellowish side of red. The main orange paint from Roman times is is realgar (other than “red” lead) which is an arsenic-laced mineral. Have you noticed that pretty much everything I’ve described so far is very poisonous. Realgar and orpiment are mined together. It’s a red crystal that grinds into an orange powder. It’s also handy as a rat poison.

It wrecks copper and lead paints. Titian was a huge fan though and we are talking Venice so you’ll see some. The Dutch flag used to have an orange stripe but they gave it up in the 17th century because they couldn’t find a colourfast dye.

Yellow

Ochre, “red” lead and gold can be used instead. There are some yellow plant dyes.

Venetians really push yellow along by inventing powdered gold painting techniques and running slave plantations to harvest saffron. Saffron needs hand pollination and each flower gives three tiny stamens. We have covered this in Ars Magica before, because making spices
how some magi make money. The Venetian spice markets are where these shenanigans can be hidden most easily. I’d note that saffron isn’t light stable and that Zoroastrian priests used
to use it to write demon banishing prayers.

Venetians also import Indian yellow which is manganese salts. The technique for making it is lost. Modern studies hint it may have been from the urine of cows fed exclusively on mango leaves. Again secrets can be treasures. Europeans don’t import gamboge, which is the Buddhist robe colour, until the 17th century. It’s plant-based and not poisonous, which is odd for a paint in the period.

Coles mentions there are no dark yellows: you can add black to red or blue but if you add it to yellow you get green. If you invent it you get a new treasure, much in the same way as the person who invented mauve became terribly rich. I’d note this is a problem even today, I’m a bit of a fountain pen fan and many people quest for their perfect yellow. The problem is that if you have a yellow that’s too bright when you put it on a page you can’t see it. The temptation by people who make fountain pen ink is to give it a bit more depth of colour by putting a little bit of red in, which makes it an orange.

There is a yellow paint called orpiment (auripigmentum in Latin). As destiny would have it that Latin name was shortened to “arphenicum” from which we get the modern word “arsenic”. Caligula said he could get gold out of it but that’s not how it’s done in most Renaissance alchemical texts. Orpiment hates other paints, it turns lead and copper based paints black.

The basic yellow of medieval painting is called giallodini. Modern scholars call it lead-tin yellow. It doesn’t mix with sulfur and literally vanished from human memory in the 18th century to recently when it was rediscovered. Naples Yellow folkloristically comes from Mount Vesuvius (likely from 1600 onwards). It’s a lead-antimony blend and it uses the same name in period as tin-lead yellow so it’s hard to tell one from the other in documents.

Arzica is made from weld, a dye or glaze. It fades in sunlight and is used as cheap opiment. Its name is likely is a derivative of “arsenic” just because the colour is similar.

Stil de gran, which is yellow madder berries, can produce yellow, orange or green dye. It’s not light fast but it’s used to illuminate books. It’s sold as a syrup in bladders not as a powder.

Green

A safe, light-fast green is a sort of alchemical holy grail. In real life, it’s a 19th century thing which is why landscapes before look so varnishy brown and then they go absolutely nuts for pastoral scenes.

There are green ochres but they’re rare and there’s lots of green plant dyes but they’re not colourfast. You can grind up emerald which is expensive or malachite which is hard to source and tends to blue or you can mix blue and yellow but then it can’t be bright. Also the good blue is made up of ground-up semi-precious stones at this point and yellow is a poisonous nightmare.

The alchemical workaround is by making verdegris. This is done by boiling vinegar under copper sheets. Long time listeners may recall this is one of the ingredients in artificial saltpetre, used to make gunpowder. Do you want to sell your salt to poor artists so they can paint things or to well-financed kings so that they can shoot people? Verdegris isn’t a great green. It’s got a lot of blue in it but it’s there. Seriously make a decent green and the world will beat a path to your door,

I’m missing one ochre there: Verona green. It’s a pale, weak green used to underpaint skin tones in medieval art. For Venetians it’s mined nearby in Verona and in Cyprus. Modern artists call it terra verde or “green earth”. It’s not toxic and it binds well in oil but it has those colour limitations.

Malachite is found alongside azurite which is why it tends to blue. Its crushed and washed and panned to get a green powder but oddly for a paint material you don’t grind it fine, because once it’s too fine it’s translucent. So it can’t hold a bright colour, many people try and many people fail. Some Renaissance paintings have brown foliage in them because there was a brief fashion for verdegris resin paint which was unstable, but only in the medium term, so the painters at the time didn’t know that centuries on we would be looking at brown foliage.

White

Lead white is very popular as a cosmetic but incredibly toxic. The basics of making it are well understood. You take clay pots which are purpose built with an internal division. Put coils of lead foil in one side and vinegar in the other. Stack them high and cover them within manure. Seal the room and wait. Coles says you wait for 90 days: St Clair says 30, I’d note that Coles has photos of the result of him doing this. One also says it’s a 15th century invention and the other one says it’s in Pliny. The point of the manure is that it releases carbon dioxide and there is heat from the decay, so it’s cooking the lead. It is ridiculously toxic so it’s replaced by zinc white in 1782, and then in modern painting by titanium white in 1916.

Most silver in Europe comes from Spanish colonies in South America and is mined by slaves.

Chalk is used to make gesso which is the plaster used to prepare wood for painting. This is phased out once canvas becomes the substrate of choice. Chalk is brittle and that means that you can’t roll the paintings. It’s also used as a paint extender.

Talc is of great interest to Caterina Sforza who uses talc water as a base for many of her preparations.

Bone white is a great way of using up monster bits. Hartshorn white is made from shed deer antlers. it is gritty and it’s used to size paper for silverpoint. Silverpoint is when you draw using a
thin silver pencil much in the same way that you would use a modern lead pencil. You can’t erase as easily and you don’t get the same sort of pressure gradings that you can with modern pencils but I’m off into the weeds. Librarian note: sizing is the spray that’s put on the surface of the paper to make it ready for ink. Modern paper uses starch which is why when you get modern books even a little bit wet they become mould farms. Bone white is toothier. (Hello anyone else who’s into stationery) That means it resists the pen more than modern sprayed starch paper.

Black

Lampblack is ancient and just turns up as a freebie in most alchemical practices. Lamp black is basically what happens when hot smoke hits a cold surface. Technically it’s bluish black and the Romans burned wine dregs to make it bluer. Modern lampblack is purer than Renaissance lampblack.

Bone black is made by roasting bones with a little oxygen to make a charcoal. This is washed and ground. A use for monster bones. Ivory black is a way of using up the offcuts of the ivory carving trade, it sounds kind of necromantic.

Vine black: You know those charcoal sticks that people sketch with? They’re made in game period from grape vines. Modern ones are made from willow. Grapes are sacred to Venice’s first saint, Guistiana, and she has this whole Diana cult thing going on. Similarly char blocks can be made from the stones of fruit, notably peaches.

Graphite is often mistaken for lead. Actual lead and silverpoint are used to draw. In 1565 a huge deposit of graphite is found in Borrowdale in England. The first pencils have string or hide jackets. It’s also used for cannonball moulds, so the Crown watches the mine
intensely.

Gall ink has been written about extensively in Ars Magica. I finally bought myself some gall ink although it isn’t made from oak galls. It’s made from tea, but it is chemically similar. I can’t put it in my fountain pens because it’ll rot them out from the inside. It’s purplish in Ars Magica, after it oxidises. Technichally gall ink is clear untile it oxidises so they put lampblack in it so you can tell where you’ve put it on the page. Mine isn’t: has a sunset yellow guide in, and it goes to a strange muddy grey-green over time.

Logwood is an early, true black that comes from the Americas in the 17th century, True black dyes appear from about 1360 onwards. Before that people just used very dark browns, which fade. Brown becomes more fashionable after black is colorfast.

Kohl is the eye treatment that you see in Egyptian art. Its active ingredient is galena. They added color and scent to it. It’s mildly poisonous, which is why it’s used around the eyes: it prevents eye infections.

Printing presses use lampblacks, which are suspended in linseed oil. Venice is the European center of printing.

Brown

I’ve discussed ochres at some length already so I’ll just skip those.

Bistre is beechwood resin from the 14th century. It’s a charcoal used on a water base. It’s called caligo in Latin.

Asphaltum is a richer brown but it’s tarry and it won’t mix with water. It’s made out of asphalt.

Sepia is cuttlefish ink. It’s used as writing ink from the Romans onwards. It’s a drawing ink in the Renaissance. It’s made from carefully-dried ink sacks, so it is transportable. It is also an example of how you can make treasures out of monster innards. The process is given in detail, in Coles on page 89.

Walnut comes from nuts. It’s warm brown, colour fast, light fast, and the full process is in Coles on page 91,

Mummy or mummet is literally made from mummies. It was originally used medicinally. Mummy was originally the bitumen they were wrapped in, rather than the bodies themselves. Eventually the demand was so high that you got bits of people. It’s used in painting from the 16th Century. Obvious plot hooks like haunting, possession, necromancy, multiple possessions by shared people eating bits from the same mummy. By preference some people use mummified animals,
so it’s a little less disgusting.

On from colour…

The shape of the empire

The empire is broken into three chunks. The bit run by the doge directly, which is called the degardo, has been covered in detail. The Stato Dio Mar, which means the state of the sea, is the navally-supported empire. The Domini de Terrafirma are the dominions of the land.

What’s in the two non-degardo bits changes a lot. In 1220, the Ars period, the Stato Dio Mar contains Istria, the podesta of Constantinople, Euboea, the Cyclades and Crete, which is a weird case. By 1600 we add Corfu, Argos, Napulia, Duazzo, Alessio, Scutari, Drivasto, Lepanto, Patras, Navarino, Cyprus and some other places. They lost Istria, then added back bits (Cres, Reb, Pag, Zadar, Vrana, Novigrad) The Domini di Terraferma spreads out over northern Italy.

The Ducal Corno

The Corno is not a crown: it’s deliberately a hat. Sure, it’s a silk hat, with a gold circle around the brim, but if you get too fancy with it, other nobles will overthrow you. Every Easter the doge leads a procession to the deeply-suspicious nunnery of San Zaccharia and they give him a new hat.

Lots of writers suggest that it’s related to the Phrygian cap. This is the signature cap of House Mercere and their ancestors, the Milvi. They are hawk-formed shapeshifters and Egyptian priests, mentioned in their housebook. A note on Wikipedia links its shape to the hedjet, which is the white crown of Upper Egypt. Could the corno be sacred to Nekhbet like the White Crown? She’s the vulture-headed funeral goddess. Does it link to the Rotting Princess? Nekbet is related to the Eileithyia, the chthonic lady of the Eleusinian Mysteries. If so, is there a shen with an annual duration in the corno?

A shen, by the way, is a protective circle of rope. The descendant of it is something you’ll see as a cartouche. So, cartouches are a name surrounded by a protective magical rope. They’re called cartouches, because when the French saw them, the shape reminded them of the cartridges from their weapons. That’s not a term that’s used in period.

The love song of J Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.

I’m going to harvest this for, at minimum, a monster, and as an inspiration for split character sheets.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;

***

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Dandolo’s Wager (inspired by the history of Byzantine podcast episode 259)

We are so used to thinking of the sack of Constantinople in 1204 as fixed history that we
don’t ever seem to consider that, to the Venetians at the time, this was the final throw of the dice. Enrico Dandolo had re-geared Venice’s entire economy around the Crusade, then found out that his customers had no money. Annual trading voyages had been foregone. There was no way of getting in external money. The government had paid out of fortune in materials and labour. Could Venice go broke? What would that have done to the West?

Contrarily, what happens if the Order, or some magi, or some demons, front up with a loan for the Crusaders and say, here’s 85,000 marks. It’s a lot, but the plunder of Egypt might be worth it. Sole trade privileges to Egypt, well Alexandria, are hugely significant to the Venetians. Remember that the crusade that took out Constantinople was originally going to attack Alexandria. This was so that they had the wherewithal to sustain an army in an Outremer.

15,000 soldiers are shipped to the Lido, so they can’t attack the Venetians. Innocent III is much annoyed. The papal legate is left behind. Zara, which is one of the points of resistance on the shore of the Tyrrhenian Sea Sea, offers to surrender to Dandalo. When he leaves to consult with the other leaders of the crusade, Simon de Montfort tells the Zaran ambassadors that their city is under papal protection. When Dandalo returns, they have left. He chooses a siege.

As the new emperor flails about, Dandolo needs to keep him in power. If he’s deposed, Venice loses the cost of the fleet, Egyptian access, and Byzantine access. He needs to double down and he needs to do it every time something goes wrong. It ends with the sack and it claims some territory, but was a really great strategy to impoverish Venice’s largest trading partner? You can pour out Eastern treasure on the Lido shore and everyone thinks that’s fantastic, but the daily life of the people making the exports and shipping them takes a terrible battering in 1204.

The Most Holy League and the Treaty of Lodi

The Treaty of Lodi sits between the Ars and Magonomia period. It ushers in four decades of guarded peace in northern Italy, based on constantly-changing factions that seek a balance of power. Venice being rich is one of the heavyweights in this balance.

A direct effect of the treaties following Lodi is that embassies change from trips with a particular purpose to physical places with permanent staff. Venice gives its ambassadors a private budget for intelligence gathering as a matter of course. This is shocking to some of the other states, for whom spying is either irregular or done by a unit reporting directly to the monarch.

So the doge runs the Council of Ten, the doge may have agents, the Council of Ten do have agents, and they are appointed by a council which has a secret police. Then they appoint ambassadors who also have agents. There are agents everywhere. The Venetian argument is that this is cheaper than an army, and also it’s less likely to seize
power than an army.

The grand schools

A school isn’t an educational institution, it’s a cofraternity. There are “great” and “little” schools. The six great schools are supported by, and function for, the state. The little ones could be centred on a trade, a nationality, or a charitable cause. The great schools are all religiously motivated, the little schools are more flexible for PC and storytelling uses.

Scuole members are meant to be citizens but not nobles. Also, officebearers kept their role for ages, not like the patrician roles in the government, which were deliberately cycled rapidly to “prevent” corruption. Eventually, the state regulates the schools and delegates its social functions to them, so medicine, drugs, hospices, pauper burials, pilgrim support, all of that remains a government function but it’s run by the great schools. It also regulates their legal articles, which are called capitulars.

The standard structure after the state takes an interest for the great schools is that the financial members of a school elect as a board: a leader, his deputy, a treasurer, a scribe, and two staff members per sestiere, then another group to check the board’s finances on a regular
basis. Most small schools were linked to a church. Great schools each had a meeting
hall. The first floor is a large hall for business and charity and upstairs is a salon for meetings
of the members and a smaller room for the boardroom. These are sometimes lavishly decorated. Sounds a bit covenanty.

Initial thoughts on masks

I’ve been working on mask magic on and off for decades and there’s a version of it mentioned in the Istrian section of “Against the Dark”. I’ve also stated them up as a type of parasitic prosthetic in Episode 18 podcast, (yes it was that long ago). I think I was over-complicating it though, ours already has mechanics for possession, not just demons but fairies. Certainly Mormo is terrible, but it’s a model we could use. Similarly in Maginomia there’s an example of a symbiotic possessing spirit. It isn’t public yet so I’m going to stop talking about it and keep moving on.

Loosely male masks are white and female masks are black. Carnival lasts roughly from Christmas to Lent. Some people wear masks out of season. A person in a mask is socially anonymous. Even if you know who they are you are required not to say. There are rules for noppera-bo already in Ars Magica and I will probably reuse them now, Noppera-bo are a Japanese monster that has a face like an egg.

The Zanni.

This is a servant type that comes in two varieties, the foolish servant and the cunning servant.
Zanni generally wears patched clothes. After the Magonomia period this changes into the diamond shapes of Harlequin’s costume. He wears a mask but it doesn’t cover his mouth so that he can talk to his master. The longer his nose the stupider he is meant to be. This isn’t an anti-Semitic thing: it is a phallic thing. Although the gait of most Zanni emphasize that they carry heavy loads for living, they also do physical comedy and acrobatics. One of their walks is intended to indicate they are going off stage, which is a handy magical power. They also borrow props from other characters in a sort of magical way. They’re driven by their appetites.

Variants of the Zanni.
Arlechinno – see below
Scapino is an escape artist and he has green stripes on his costume.
Scaramouche is a little skirmisher, dressed in black like a Spanish Don.
Pedrolino is in all white clothes which are comically oversized and he doesn’t wear masks.
He wears infarinato instead,which is a white flour makeup paste. It’s a possible ancestor of modern clown whiteface.
Brighella is a cruel, vindictive, clever master of lies and an alcoholic who loves money. He wears white clothes and has an olive green mask.
Mezzetino is a variant of Brighella but less violent, more musical and rather more creepily flirtatious. He has a brown or rust mask and a short cape.
Punchinella has black or dark brown for a mask. He’s from Naples. Has baggy clothes which are white and carries a short stick as a weapon and a coin purse. He accidentally triumphs. He untangles the problems of others but not his own. There is a common saying in Venice: “a punchinella secret”. This is a truth widely known but not spoken of – a widely known truth, treated as a secret.
Pierrot is a late 17th century invention. He’s a sad clown and he’s a rival for Columbine’s affections. He wears whiteface instead of a mask and oversized white clothes.

Arlecchino or Harlequin

So he’s a servant but he’s a clever one. He often tricks his master and his romantic rival Pierrot. He is the lover to Columbine. He can’t do simple physical movements when acrobatic ones are possible. He often carries a wooden sword. He’s always hungry and he’s afraid of his master. He’s likely descended from a French demon, Hellequin. He’s possibly related to the Herla Cyning, the Earl King, in Walter maps book from the 12th century. There is a version of him in Dante’s Inferno. Oddly for a male character his mask is black. This could be because of his infernal origin. His mask has warts, small eyes, a short nose, and hollow cheeks. This could be a default demon.

Veccio

The Veccio are a class of characters. The name means “elderly”. They often serve as a barrier to prevent the lovers getting together. They’re generally the antagonists. Pantalone is the decadent merchant and he’s the source of Shakespeare’s pantaloon. There is a Saint Pantalone. I’m not sure that they’re related. Anyway he’s the butt of jokes. He’s usually the father of one of the lovers. He has enough money to meddle in the lives of others. He’s petty. He’s single. He does hell of a flirt. But he never marries. He’s violently over-emotional.

His costume is red with a cap, a codpiece, or coin purse. He has a sword, a medal, or a walking stick.

Balanzone, or Il Dottore, is a decadent, erudite doctor, often linked to Bologna. He is rich, vain and wordy. He’s a parody of the educated class. He’s either boring or clearly out of his depth. He wears a one-third mask and the robes of a scholar. He, optionally, has rouge cheeks, which is meant to demonstrate that he’s an alcoholic.

Il Capitano is a coward, a braggart. He tells tall tales about his exploits. He’s greedy, he changes sides. He wears a parody of military uniform, carries an oversized sword, and wears a mask with a phallic nose. The original of these is Magnifico Gloriosus, which dates back to Roman theatre. There is a competent, useful variant of the Capitano. He’s called a Scaramouchia, or Scaramouche in French.

Non-comic masks
Mattasin / Frombolatore
This is a warning costume. The person is warning you that they are armed with scented eggs.
Batua wears a classic white mask. The mask bows out at the base for speech and eating, so there is no mouth. It’s held on by a tricorn, a hat, no strap. The more I read, the more I see women wearing this, and a tricorn and a tabard.
A volto has a white ghostly mask, male or female.
A moretta is a small black female mask with no mouth, that is held in place by a button between the teeth. It’s sometimes called a virtue mask because the woman can’t talk. It’s considered very mysterious and erotic.
The De Coltra is a person who is bundled in a blanket. They are a spirit of fornication.
A Spirito Folleto is a screaming devil mask. It’s a female mask.
A Gnaga is a man dressed as a parody of a nanny.
A Viloti is a peasant or rustic mask.
A Povereto is a beggar costume.
A Vechia is an old woman.
A Bullo is a braggart in armour.
A Bernardon is a fake beggar with fake shoes. Pushed about in a barrow. He’s bandaged. He pretends to be syphilitic. He sings bawdy songs.
Salvadego is a savage man
A burritin is some dressed as a puppet.

Notes on the law enforcement for the poor. The rich get away with more.
1338, you’re no longer allowed to travel through the streets after dark wearing a mask.
1448, beggars may not wear masks.
In 1585, if you have a mask, you’re not allowed to carry a gun in the street anymore. Carrying blades is allowed.
1606, you’re not allowed to wear masks in church.
1703, you’re not allowed to wear masks while in gambling houses.
1718, you’re told to stop wearing them during the Lent

The mascheri, the mask makers, are legally speaking, painters. Masks are made of plaster of Paris, fortified with wax or leather. The leather ones are heavier and less comfortable for long-term use.


Ovi Odoriferi: Scented eggs.

These are blown eggs filled with rosewater, and they are thrown or slung at women flirtatiously, particularly during Carnival, when street vendors sell them. In 1241, they are banned from the Piazza. People were making noxious ovi, and some of them have ink inside. This is a classic splash potion.

Basically, it’s a potion grenade like a water balloon. I know there’s a modern version in Central and South America, which have confetti inside instead.

There is an odd note on italiancarnival.com, when you’re looking up these eggs. It shows a fortune-teller from Venice that’s communicating with someone by whispering through a hollow cane into their ear. I’ve got no idea why they’re doing that. I’ll come up with a good reason.

And I find that I have gone into the April material. So, let us stop there.