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The Benandanti: A Story


(Suggested game mechanics for the benandanti can be found here.)

The story of our clan? That is a good story. I will be happy to tell it to you.

There is day and there is night; there is summer and there is winter; there is birth and there is death. The things in the world, they must balance, or else the world would tip over and all the men and women would slide off, and then where would we be?

So, long ago - not so long ago as the old ruins at Numa, but before my grandfather's grandfather's time - there were some men, and they had an ambition to be very bad. They came from a great old line of bad men who used to rule all these lands through fear of pain. But those great old bad men, they all fell into ruin, so their sons thought their ways would not be for them. Their cousins were also bad men, who used the fear of the inescapable death to rule. Ah, but those cousins, too, were brought to ruin, so that way was not for them.

Yes yes, you are very clever; I do speak of the Bianco, who come from the Lorenzo and are kin to the Serrano. But I am telling the story and not you, so be quiet.

So these bad men, the Bianco, they thought, "Why did our fathers and our cousins fail?" And they answered themselves, "They tried to rule by 'fear of.' 'Fear of' something, something men can name and know, and so is not so frightening. You can attack 'fear of.' We, we will rule by terror."

And so they did. They made themselves most terrible, delving into dark secrets that no good man, no man who was not bad and also half-mad, would ever understand and so could name. Men tried anyway - because that is what we do - but the closest they could come was to name the name of the Great Evil, of Legion. And who knows, perhaps in their dark workings these men, they did join the ranks of the demons in some way. Because, you remember, Legion is not one, they are many - all the demons and devils that work against Theus and give power to sorcery.

Well, the world re-balanced itself. If these men would be Legion, then someone must stand for Theus, no? The Vaticine Church itself acted, sending its strong arm of knights to the fight. You know that story, with Sir Andare of Casigula Rosa? It is a very famous story, but not the one you asked for, so I will not tell it.

Well, Sir Andare was very brave and very holy but the Bianco were not so very stupid as to all be in one place at that final battle! It would be very silly to think otherwise. But such news should not be spread; still, their name causes terror in east Mantua. Then, to whisper that they still walked would have been almost as bad as never having fought them at all! So the Vodacce people, they needed to believe that the Bianco were gone, until the power of their terror was lessened.

So the Hierophant came to us, the Cymbr, and...

You don't think the Hierophant would speak to us? Is that more incredible, somehow, than the sun flying through the sky every day since the world began? One man came to speak with other men; it happens every day.

So the Hierophant, he asked us, who are notorious liars and storytellers and who no wise man believes, to remember the Bianco. To remember, and to balance. They called themselves the Walkers in Darkness; those of us who answered the Hierophant's call took the name benandanti, the Good Walkers. And so we walk, usually behind them, sometimes ahead, tracking and hunting. Dark and terrible things they often leave as they go, and these too we balance - so we know something of ghosts, and monsters, and devilish devices. And we, we have our own things, visions in dreams and the voices of the dead, that aid us in our times of need. We fight, the dark and the light, invisible and forgotten as the Hierophant wished, chasing each other through mist and fog.



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