Padre Jacopo Vaccaro
Appearance: Padre Jacopo is short even for an Italian, for he stands only 5 foot tall and he weights no more than 115 pounds soaking wet. Like his forefathers, he has the compact and muscular build of a vaccaro or cowherd. His skin is swarthy for his family originates in the southern portion of Italy where the Saracens have been known to pillage and rape. Like his skin, his eyes and hair are black. Like the majority of the Roman priesthood, he wears a clerical tonsure and has started sporting a goatee since his arrival in the pagan east. In dress, Padre Jacopo wears the traditional black and white schema of clerical habit. His only adornment is an ornate golden crucifix given to him as a gift by King Istvan of Hungary.
Background: The simple son of the vaccaro Gennarino of the Alta Murgia in Apulia, Jacopo was born on Monte Caccia under stars of fortune and adventure. The boy was born with gifted, his eyes were ever turned toward the heavens and his father despaired of him following in his own footsteps. Though Gennarino the Vaccaro had the fortune of many sons, the life of a vaccaro was a simple one and more concerned with survival than the acquisition of wealth. Yet, each son was a treasure to a hard working father, who had need of every extra hand to care for his herd. It was Jacopo's mother, Giuditta who resolved the despair of her husband and gave the boy to the church to raise.
Jacopo was taken to study in the ancient Church of St.Eustace in the city of Matera, in the province of Basilicata. There he lived in the Sassi di Matera or the Stones of Matera, prehistoric cave dwellings within the city. He was raised and mentored by Padre Renato who saw in the boy, the makings of a great prelate. Renato quickly discovered that the boy had an innate sense of time in keeping with the passage of the stars, an infallible memory and a staggering speed of comprehension with numbers. The boy seemed to absorb everything taught to him and could unfailingly recite whatever he heard or saw. After being educated in the calendar of holy days and hours of the holy orders, he quickly made corrections to the calendrical errors of the older priests and significantly increased the efficiency of the church's clepsydra. These innovations were originally met with disbelief, then with disapproval and finally with astonishment. The boy was interrogated to discover whether his knowledge came from infernal sources, but his gifts were exonerated by a canonical synod.
The boys fame spread quickly and after adolescence he and his mentor, Renato were summoned to Rome to meet the holy father, Benedict VII. The Pope was impressed with the gifts given to Jacopo by God and set the boy to act as apprentice to his court astronomer Hroderich, who was also a master astrologer. Hroderich was neither a monk or priest, but was devoted to gleaning wisdom from the stars themselves. Padre Renato objected to the him as a teacher, but before he could bring up his objections with the Pope, he died of a fever that came upon him with frightening speed and consumed him in body and mind. Hroderich consoled the boy with nightly visits to his observatory outside of Rome; there they charted the stars and it was there that Jacopo was to learn astrology alongside astronomy. Hroderich set the boy to creating horoscopes of all the great clerics of Rome as practice, unknown to Jacopo, those horoscopes allowed his new mentor to anticipate the election of the next pope and made him the most powerful man in Rome next to the holy father.
Jacopo was a very smart boy and it didn't take him long to realize what type of man Hroderich was and what he had done, especially after casting his horoscope. In a handful of years, the boy quickly surpassed his evil master's techniques and plotted to tie his mentor's murderer to the Antipope Boniface VII. Hroderich and his pawn “Malefatius” both came to a bad end during the summer of 985 A.D., when they both died mysteriously and their bodies where dragged, naked through the city streets to be left before the statue of Marcus Aurelius in front of the Lateran Palace. Thus, in the fervor that led to the destruction of the antipope and his astrologer, Jacopo's revenge was complete and he quietly stepped into the shadows with Hroderich's vast library of astrological charts and esoterica.
Over the next fifteen years, Jacopo would take the cloth and serve a long list of prelates and potentates culminating with King Istvan of Hungary. While in Istvan's court he foresaw the rise of Christianity in Transylvania and the rise of the House of Tremere. It was there, that he first had contact with "Stars Above", a heavenly spirit that was to aid him against the courtly intrigues and the plots of the fiendish, night dwelling Tzimisce. His journey to Ceoris has been a long one, but immortality and ultimate understanding are almost within his grasp. Since the stars favor his latest endeavor, his success is almost assured, only a misstep on his part could result in his fall.
Personality: Padre Jacopo is something of a fusion of his previous mentors, he takes after Renato in his humane ethics, but learned well the necessity of skullduggery from Hroderich. He is a man of optimism and intrepid intellectualism, tempered by worldly experience and the political awareness necessary to survive the intrigues of the Church of Rome. Although Jacopo has taken holy vows, he has known both the pleasures of the flesh and the forbidden lure of knowledge. As a scholar he is without faith, but accepts its necessity in the medieval world and even as an innovator, he cannot imagine a world without superstition and fear. His role is that of confidant to the mighty and purveyor of wisdom from the stars, for those who can afford his price.
Puppeteer: Jeremy Sanderson
