Scenario 2: Bastions of Love

Harlequin

No matter what the outcome of the last scenario was Arlechino has gone back to being the servant of Captain Matamoros only. How this may have occurred is entirely up to the players themselves but should be defined before scenario 2 begins. The continuity between scenario 1 and two should be absolute but forgiving, so that no characters are completely alienated from one another because of events in scenario 1.

The Bastions of Love

Who could have known that the card-shark that turned your purse inside out was a cardinal and spy for the Vatican? Who would believe that you, Arlechino de Sprufadelli, is now a key player in the secret war between the Papal state and lovely Vendora and may be instrumental in her downfall? Well, those are the sad facts of the situation and came about thusly:

It was a rough night on the rafters of the card-club the Bummed Badger. The slum dwellers mingled with the disguised slummers (some of them with "of's", "vons" and "de's" in the middle of their true names. Here they were known as "bait" and you figured the time was ripe for some serious fishing. A falsely one-eyed and incredibly dangerous-looking individual sporting a wide assortment of personal weaponry was chosen as the mark on the solid reason that "he cannot possibly be as mean as he looks." Unfortunately he was and an hour and ten games of German Knecht later you owed him a hundred thousand Florin, the rough equivalent of a horse. A horse made out of solid gold. All attempts to run were hindered by a varied and singularly hostile assemblage of thugs, racketeers, bone-men and even a few Turkish assassins who all seemed to work for the gentleman with the patch. An offer was presented. You were in no position to refuse.

Apparently Mr One-Eye turned out to be His Eminence One-Eye, a cardinal of Rome on a covert mission for the papacy. Your mission, and you were given no option to decline, was to extract solid information on Vendoras great western bastion. One-Eye claimed there was a secret door to the outside, that can be opened with a certain combination of words and gestures. All you have to do is find out what those gestures are and you will not be cut up into thin ribbons and used as sloppy shoelaces for the Swiss Guard. The problem, of course, is that any information about the secret door is, well, secret and known only by the household of the duke or possibly his chancellors…wait. Isabelle, your onetime halftime mistress and object of your master the Captains desires. She must know! Hmm. Soon a devious tactic hatched in your mind.

Your task will not be simple and even if you succeed the consequences for Vendora will be dire. The freedom of Vendora will be crushed by the steel boot of the Vatican. Her whores and gamblers will be burnt at the stake, reducing the city's population to less than half. Her children will be forced to quit their spitting and her priests their fornicating. Her alehouses will be forced to close before they have opened and a evil combination of Sunday and Monday will go on all week, except for Mondays that will be even worse. But failure equals Arlechino-ribbons. Easy. To hell with Vendora, here comes Arlechino the archtraitor, greatest spy in all Italy! And this is his plan…

First the flames of The Captains passion for Isabelle were fanned. Done. He is hornier than a rabbit on the Spanish fly. Secondly he must be made to believe that he has a chance of conquering her. A few words about how you overheard a conversation about her latest tour of amorous exploits among the military men of Vendora and that too was fixed. Now for the hard part; the captain must believe that Isabelle's newest infatuation is military architecture and that she uses talk about moats, bastions, keeps, baileys, sally-ports, and gatehouses as metaphors for the parts and activities involved in lovemaking. It does not take much imagination to decode the meaning of crumbling towers, wide open gates and brutal frontal assaults, now does it? This is the thought you have planted in the Captains mind. To gain an audience with Isabelle the Captain has disguised himself as Turetto Bodega, a Spanish military architecht while you pretend to be Tosh Mack Osh, a Scottish Free-Mason and Alchemist with arcane insights into the secrets of magical architecture. You pretend to have studied everything from Stonehenge to the Pyramids and have brilliant (according to your own bizarre judgement) insights into their construction and meaning.

The plan is for the captain to suggest different improvements of Vendora's defences (they will likely include very tall unshakeable towers) as a way of seducing Isabelle. You will try to steer the conversation towards the Bastion and it's secret back door. Try to get the captain, rather than you, to make these inquiries as it is important to seem as innocent as possible. Finally you must get the captain to reveal the password to the secret back door. Maybe under the pretence that it's secret is not safe anymore and needs to be re-secreted by a master magical architect - like you. You will need to push the captain quite explicitly in this direction since he is unlikely to take this route himself.

To further complicate things you are quite uncomfortable in your character as a stiff Scotsman and must freak out with regular (every five minutes at least) intervals. How you explain these fits of farting, jumping, insulting and carrying on is up to you. Remember, one serious freak-out every five minutes. Begin with quite subtle things like a mispronounced word here and gradually grow more and more physical and absurd. If you're farting in the captains face and ramble on about grasshoppers building the Vatican at the end of the scenario you're on the right track.

And yes, you are wearing disguises, they just happen to look exactly like your own clothes.

Need some more fuel for your fire? Get more background on Harlequin here.