Lady Carla Gianni, (1417-??) is a member of the Order of Hermes.
History[]
Betrayal wrapped in an innocent package; Lady Carla appears to be one of the Council's most fervent supporters, a tireless diplomat with a charming smile and impeccable manners. All the while, she actually works hard to undermine the whole fellowship, spreading gossip, seducing magi, slandering her associates and performing the occasional assassination. Is she an agent of Satan, or a Daedalean spy? A Church infiltrator, perhaps, or a firebrand revolutionary? None of the above. Lady Carla is simply opposed to the idea of mingled cultures, of people coming together to "bastardize" their Arts and water down the magickal supremacy that her Hermetic forebears have worked so hard to achieve.
Unlike many sorcerers, Lady Carla was raised with magick. Her father, Magister Augustus Saxeus Gianni, bani Bonisagus, headed the high Hermetic council of Florence. By all accounts a strict but generous wizard, he lavished constant attention and scholarship upon his only daughter. Apprenticed to one Contessa Regina Castiglione (a distant cousin to the author who would later write The Courtier), Carla excelled at elemental mastery and the Arts of Fate. When in 1457 her father is slain during certamen, Lady Gianni takes his place on the budding Council of Nine.
Unlike Augustus, however, Carla disagrees with the Council's mission. To her, the bastard Arts of reckless witches and heathens are an affront to everything she was taught to revere. Disgusted, she watches naked foreigners and babbling puffers defame the High Arts, pick fights with honest magi, and stir up trouble among the mortals. Like Heylel Teomim, she has decided that this so-called "Council" is doomed; unlike that rebis, she had decided to hasten its destruction by plotting with its enemies. In later days, it will be said that Heylel may have meant to strengthen the Nine with his treacheries. Lady Gianni means no such thing. She wants the Council disbanded, by force if necessary, but will not disgrace her father's name (or risk her own life) by opposing it openly.
To all appearances, Lady Gianni is beautiful, charming, well-bred and friendly. She listens intently to anything anyone has to say (for a variety of reasons) and meets with any representative who wants to be heard. Lustrous black hair, coifed in golden nettings, frames her olive skin; intelligent brown eyes look out from the face of a saint. Dressed in noble Florentine finery, this wealthy maiden spends incalculable riches to support the very Council she seeks to undermine; at night, her secret servants collect her information and funnel it into the hands of the Church, the High Guild and occasionally even the Satanist covens beneath the Italian streets. The allies she chooses aren't important, only the failure of the Council that would rather dilute the Arts than use them to fight.
References[]
- MTSC: The Swashbuckler's Handbook, p. 74, 76