| This is a Left-Handed Legacy.
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Death, like me, is a liar, a thief, and a trickster. Where he is cruel, though, I am kind; what he pilfers by degrees, I take all at once.
No inheritors of ancient secrets handed down from remote ages of the world, the so-called Charlatans of the Carnival Melancholy trace their origins back to the Great Depression — particularly to the droves of migrants wandering throughout the vast desolation of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. At that time, across the American Midwest, Consilia, like Sleeper populations, trickled away and disappeared utterly as arable land withered and the dust storms closed in to devour the remains. Those were bleak times, hopeless times, and people did whatever they had to in order to escape from it, in whatever small ways they could. Some, however, aspired to a somewhat more literal deliverance from the death that surrounded them.
He went by numerous aliases, depending upon which one-horse town his carnival happened to be visiting at the time: Alaric Swift, Jacob Brauer, Hezekiah Munson, and many more. He was good-looking, with a quick wit and an easy charm in the manner of many Acanthus. To the Awakened of his acquaintance he was called Lucius Nero, fiddling while the world as they knew it burned. Within the Silver Ladder he was regarded as a joker and a bit of a rogue, lining his threadbare pockets with the meager wealth of dustcaked yokels in exchange for a few hours of wonder and laughter. And, if one or two people went slowly mad in the wake of his passing, none were the wiser, for those were days in which crushing, endless sorrow took hold of many hearts and did not let go. To Nero’s thinking, he gave a little bit of joy and he took a little something in return — a fair trade.
The truth of the matter is that Lucius Nero delved into many dark magics during his long circuits through the Dust Bowl, searching in vain for some way to rise above all the dying he saw and so desperately feared. Eventually he learned to steal the miraculous light that burns within every person and used those plundered spirits as the ante in his gamble to swindle the Reaper. Nero never found what he was looking for, but he did manage to transform himself into something else, something more than merely Awakened — something blasphemous. When the day at long last came that the dust stopped choking the nation, Lucius Nero, show- man of the wasteland, chiseler of souls, was the first Charlatan of the Carnival Melancholy, and his was the power to extinguish the human spark in exchange for a wink and a nod from Lady Luck. In time, he passed down his lore to a handful of others who carried it to the far corners of the nation and beyond.
Nowadays, the Awakened of the Carnival Melancholy remain faithful to their roots as clowns and comedians, mummers and mountebanks. They hawk their dross and walk away with a prize more precious than gold. An infection within the Silver Ladder, these willworkers are possessed of all the skills of showmanship necessary not only to enact the old rites of the order, but also to make them compelling and even entertaining. Following their own skewed view of the Elemental Precepts, the Charlatans see the Awakened as one nation in exile doing whatever is necessary to survive and prosper, while they themselves seize the Imperium Mysteriorum and ascend the Silver Ladder upon the backs of the Sleepers, dragging along their disincarnate souls as they walk the path toward the everlasting Supernal.
Some, as did their spiritual ancestor, Lucius Nero, still search for the secrets of immortality, but others are content merely to have their fun at the Fallen World’s expense and to crack wise at the terrible grandeur of its bleakness until they choke on laughter and shuffle off the stage, smiling. Socially cunning and too damned charming for anyone’s good, Charlatans often manage to ingratiate themselves into some comfortable corner of local Awakened society, whether as long-term resi- dents of the Consilium or just as transients bartering for a few nights in a comfortable bed and at a well- stocked dinner table. From the good, old-fashioned, “Step right up!” to offers to sell MP3 players that “fell off the back of a truck,” to games of three-card Monte on street corners and in back alleys, the Carnival Melancholy keeps alive the ways of the charismatic grifter, running a long con on life itself.
Attainments
- Nothing up my Sleeves
- The Slow Hand
- Nostrum Remedium
