Player: Kat III
Species: Human
Class: Barbarian (Path of the World Tree)
Background: not yet given
L’arte de Vetraria — the House of Glass
Nestled in the southern tiers of the Capital, just outside of the Home of the Cogworks, lies L’arte de Vetraria — the house of glass. It’s said that at the outbreak of the Sibling Wars, an artisan of unmatched skill, Orbonne Tagliapietra, and an enterprising young merchant, Durnnam Soldorak, saw the need and opportunity for a beautiful new venture: bottling.
Amidst the bloodshed and fear of the Sibling Wars, potions of resistance, speed and healing were in greater need than ever before. Bottles that kept safe in a full traveler’s pouch, bottles that stayed cool over an alchemist’s fire, bottles that could shatter on throw to save and protect allies on the battlefield — before this moment only the greatest glass artisans could craft something that could do all three perfectly, pricing out the bravest members of the nation’s armies. Orbonne was sure that not only could his design perform every time, but that with the right techniques, any journeyman glassblower could achieve his vision.
Durnnam, who believed in his friend equally as much as he valued a chance for coin, began a campaign to make inroads with traders and alchemists’ guilds which spread further and further out in order to achieve their dream: a school for aspiring glass artists to learn Orbonne’s techniques. L’arte de Vetraria.
Origins
Hugo Syro was born under the rigid crystalline duomo of the head of House Tagliapietra’s beautiful stained-glass residence. With a crystal spoon firmly in mouth, people of the city whispered of Hugo’s great potential with reverence and greed.
Lucia Antonia, however, was born to a branch member of that same house under glittering stars, alone and afraid. As a member of the branch house, expectations were explicit and unchangeable — upon your 11th birthday, you will join the workshop of the Vetrarian apprentices until and unless you show enough promise to be worthy of investment. Conveniently the same age as the Heir, and with no father to speak for her, Lucia was cast as Hugo’s foil from an early age.
Lucia watched as Hugo’s knowledge and skill grew voraciously. He took every opportunity he was given with both hands, charging forward with the charm, confidence and competence of a boy who has never known failure. She watched as he raced through his apprenticeship, achieving journeyman and beginning his mastery training before his peers had even finished their basic training. She saw how easily things came to his hands, often before he even had to ask for them.
And Lucia burned with desire. She wanted those choices, she wanted those lessons, those teachers, those chances; she, who watched the sun move from east to west in shafts of scattered light, from dawn til dusk, whose hands itched for the mica, reached to melt and shape and create.
So under cover of darkest night, Lucia would creep into the workshop, alone and afraid, and clumsily retrace all she had seen — until one night, on the eve of her 20th year, she unknowingly recreated Orbonne’s lost techniques.
As the sun rose the next morning and fellow artisans entered the workshop to see a perfect recreation of those ancient vitrum structures, only one member came to mind as the culprit: Hugo Syro Tagliapietra, the Heir to the Great House of Glass. As artisans came to congratulate their prince, Lucia raged.
The Fallen Star
Session 1: The Baronet’s Commission
Hugo found her before she found him. Aboard the Indomitable, Lady Rose Larkspur showed off spectacles and a gown “by Hugo Syro,” including crystals that burst into illusory doves. Lucia answered her with a gruesome story about an exploding draconian and spent the rest of the conversation weighing her hammer. At the sky-dock she gave her lift ticket to an old woman who turned out to be faking, walked the thirty storeys of stairs, and told Elunia off for offering strangers mystery potions. In the Baronet’s study she wrote down the Mad Monk’s verse and read it back. She stole a coaster bearing the house crest and later used it to get a fifth off the party’s supplies. She also found Hugo’s signature on the study window. The Baronet said Hugo was on tour, unchallenged and nearly depressed. “I taught myself,” Lucia said, and “if the gods are punishing him, he must have done something.” In the alley she went into a rage, threw her returning hammer into a berserker’s head, and shared her strength with Korath and Sandy.
Session 2: Three to the Dawn
Lucia wanted to know who they had killed in the alley, and kept asking the right questions all day. At the Ouroboros airfield she low-fived a dwarf pilot on the way past, and he admired her beard enough to get out of his chair and fly them. She was sick on Varys during the landing. At the Stewpot she pressed the innkeeper on the Baronet (“a bit of an ass”), his new heir, and his stinking bodyguard. That was how the party learned that the Baronet and Greta had been in Bitter End a month earlier and that a band in green cloaks had walked into the valley and not come back. In the warehouse she called it human trafficking, and wondered whether they should hand the Baronet his relic at all. On the march she minded the camels, dropped a silver coin into Avandra’s cup at the valley’s edge, fished frogs out of a seep, made a soggy dinner in the rain, and fed the party maggots from a dead vulture. When the sunrise moved overnight, she was the one who pointed out that the verse says dawn, not east. Among the lost things in the valley she found a tool from her own workshop that she had lost years ago.
Attendance Log
- Session 1 Recap - The Baronet’s Commission 2026-09-30
- Session 2 Recap - Three to the Dawn 2026-10-07