Exarch Lorenzo Anzion - In This Painted World
Ah it's lovely to see you-
Oh, how are
the children-
Due to be Captain? Well of course-
My he's the spitting image of you isn't he-
Lighter around the jowls though hah!
There's a kind of stark, austere beauty to Narbonilla. He finds that it suits this summit, imbues it with a kind of clarity, a sense of focus. All those volcanic blacks, sheer whites. Glacial blues so deep and so rich that they make the eye ache, make some tendon, some nerve in the chest twinge. The deep waters that run darker still. And here and there in the dense fog of a mid-afternoon: the orange lights of Romi Bay. Aglow from the great geometric windows of the many leveled- angular megastructures that drape themselves over the jagged peaks, and snow-capped slopes. Colossal tubes and ducts worming their way into the bedrock, vanishing off the coast, to drink deep of the latent geothermal power- the terrifying, planet-cracking heat of the caldera below them. Communications towers rise up through the milk-pale mist, titanic spars festooned with dishes and transceivers and all the skeletal apparatus of deep-sky communication.
He's like a stain on this world, this place of regimented order, and he takes some perverse pride in that. In being so unmissable. So unmistakable. He catches the dirty looks and lets no hint of concern cross his features, as sharp and as delicate and as pretty as a razor. All in his finest crimson- he's a drop of blood on a sheet of ice, scarlet and unmissable. His elegant, flowing sleeves, the trailing hem of the jacket, and the almost scandalously low-cut tunic beneath all so at odds with the formal military dress of so many of the attendees. More than one -the younger ones, the newly minted attaches and hand-selected protégés- have done a little double take. Glancing down at themselves, then looking at him. Wondering if he's supposed to be here.
Oh yes. He seems to say with every movement, at once so casual and so calculated. At once sly and self-aware of that, and yet so coy, so disarmingly casual. Oh yes he is.
Are you?
Oh it's lovely to see you-
Yes I agree, I believe Alexander-
Ah, Exarch Hartford excuse me-
He's right you know, the attrition of the Clone Sanjak's-
Well surely someone
must do something?
Still. He tries not to let the strain of the day show. Being tired, being petulant- it makes him look
old, draws more attention to the omnipresent, probably permanent, shadows under his scarlet eyes than he'd like. Wrinkles the forehead if only for a moment and that won't do, that won't do at all. Not even a little bit, no sir. Ambiguously-eternal youth is one of the few cards he has in his hand and it's a play that, despite everything, never really goes out of style. That Fae and ever so subtly inhuman visage, the suggestion of too many, too-pointed teeth, the sharpness to the ears and the jaw and the sense that he and his reflection, his shadow are asynchronous somehow. That the one is larger than it should be. Doesn't move as he moves. That it's tinged red somehow and the imprint of it lingers on the underside of the eyelids.
It's not vanity is it? Not just vanity. He tries to tell himself that as the conversations whirl around him. A full head of pitch-dark hair and a splash of pelt to match across the smooth-muscled chest, dainty nails that are more like claws, skin so flawless and shockingly pale that the eye can't help but trace the pattern of bloodvessels and veins along the throat. It's a way to survive. To thrive even. Greying old men, soft across the stomach and soft beneath the chin and soft along the thighs, even -especially- the painfully straight ones.
They can't really get enough of him. And if they'll give him to the spotlight, well, then who's to judge him for grabbing the microphone and singing one out to the crowd?
Well, it is lovely to see you too-
I was thinking, this Exarch Korodore-
Oh a blunt instrument to be sure, he'd say as much himself-
Why yes, of course I've spoken to him-
Oh come now, it's indecent of you, let me make introductions.
He doesn't think about Rubicon. He doesn't think about the soft rains from skies the color of curling wood-smoke. The wind that'd blow, heavy and tinged with the storm and somehow so rejuvenating for it, through the halls of the open air palaces. The manors with their beautifully muraled halls and rows upon rows of graceful columns. The gardens swaying the steady breeze. He doesn't think about the pretty young men from the pleasure houses and the way they would smile, the same expression across a dozen professionally honed physiologies. A lifetime of skilled, easy companionship -easy to talk to, easy to laugh with, easy to adore- as half-guilty recompense and self-reward for a youth spent on the edges of anything like civilization. Accepting affection from the few who ever really saw fit to give it.
He doesn't think about how he watched the hammer come crashing down, everything collapsing and crumbling beneath the tectonic, idiot weight of an enemy that didn't even understand what they were fighting. Punishing them for something that, in their long litany of sins, somehow wasn't actually even their fault. The bitter irony, the black humor that then and now just tastes like bile rising up the throat. Like ash on the tongue.
If he doesn't think about it he can't miss it. And if he can't miss it then this is all so much more bearable.
My, it's lovely to see you-
It's so lovely to see you-
It's lovely to see you-
It's lovely to see you-
It's lovely to see you-
This is his life now. And he consoles himself with the fact that even after everything-
He's still infinitely luckier than most.
Actions
Political Action: Exarch Lorenzo Anzion spends the summit socializing and politicking at the Winter Palace, a (grateful) guest of Archon Fontera. Over the course of the endless meetings and briefings and conferences in tasteful rooms with unreasonably massive tables (alongside the liver-aching number of Working Lunches), he adds his voice to those agitating for action against the EEF. Doing what he can to smooth over and sell the idea of "We should listen to Rafael and Korodore and the rest of the psychopath cabaret and start making reclamation of the cloning vats an actual priority".
Political Action: Always interested in raising the social and cultural capital of his homeland, Lorenzo Anzion launches a pro-immigration campaign. Targeting populations displaced by the war and, in particular, those classified as hybrids or "abhuman" by the Mastery. Looking, perhaps, to corner the market on that particular cause. Kaiser is a Bastion world, largely untouched by the years of civil war or the Mastery's collapse, highly desirable as a destination for emigration regardless, and it is also quietly hoped that an influx of skilled and unskilled labor will both boost its profile and provide fuel for the new Economic Initiative.
Economic Action: Anzion's government looks to secure and develop its periphery. Planting flags and beginning industrial projects on many nearby shells, axial worlds, moons, comet drifts, and the like; with the cornerstone of the initiative being subsidies for local operations of the merchant marine. Always paranoid of being outmaneuvered or having its position undermined, this is, to an extent, posturing. Kaiser's sphere is Kaiser's sphere and Kaiser will be the one to principally profit from it.
