“Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia, one of the less fortunate and most cantankerous polymaths of the Italian Renaissance”

Although technically living just after the 1510 time span, the story of Niccolò Tartaglia,the stammering Brescian mathematician (and would be maritime-salvage engineer) profiled in this nice piece in History Today, illustrates the intellectual ferment of the times, and the extent to which not only could patronage make a career and a reputation, but personal rivalries could break them.

Glassblower: Character 6: Dottor’ Dietrich, the masked medic from Munich with a steel scalpel in a brass hand

There is something especially creepy and atmospheric about the plague doctor’s mask, that long-nosed, face-covering and wholly useless accessory meant to protect the medic from the vile humors bearing the Black Death that has since become a classic carnival mask. So I wanted some spooky character to go with it. At a time when so much medicine was simply quackery and the science was being held back by a (not unreasonable) dislike of the idea of dissecting cadavers, those serious about developing it were often treated as ghouls. This was the start of the era of Burke & Hare style bodysnatchers, and so it followed that a true devotee of the new scientific medicine could not only find himself treated as a pariah, he could also be something of a sociopath:

Why do people not understand the importance of medical science? You did not account for the feverish and illogical reactions of parents when you began to dissect the bodies of dead children Do they not understand how this can advance our knowledge of the human body, its diseases and cures? You fled Munich when they burnt down your hospital, terribly scarred. Now you wear the traditional, if now rather antiquated plague-doctor’s mask to hide your ghastly visage, and a new arm – a wondrously-engineered clockwork engine of wood, brass and sinew – in place of your ruined left. In Florence you have at last found a haven of scientific exploration, and are determined to continue your experiments, even if you do still flinch at an open flame and are still grappling with the concept of ‘public relations’…

And, of course, it allowed me to include a clockpunk taser in the form of the wind-up Morpheus Rod.

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Hans Schlottheim’s Mechanical Galleon

The splendid BBC/British Museum series A History of the World in 100 Objects has a great program on this amazing piece of late-sixteenth century clockwork, a moving, music-playing, clock and table ornament, made for Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II.

This is what a lot of talent and a lot of money could buy you in 1585 – just think what could be done with the admixture of some clockpunk. However, what it does show is how widespread was the passion for clockwork in the Renaissance, this magic which could create self-propelled automata…

Glassblower: Character 5: Padre Taddeo, the Florentine father with alchemical aspirations

Faith and ecclesiastical politics were central themes of the Renaissance. Was the growing interest of science a way of learning the wonders of God’s universe – or a challenge to its ineffable creation? In the main, I posit that the Catholic Church regards the new scientific revolution in Florence as a threat both theological and (given its desire to extend its control across Italy) political. However, most of the prime movers of the Renaissance were both scientific and spiritual, and likewise I presume that many clerics wouldn’t necessarily accept such a stark judgement. Thus, Padre Taddeo, the priest who dabbles in alchemy:

Pope Julius II in Rome calls the current government in Florence and the new scientific revolution godless challenges to the Mother Church. You admit you are worried by talk of engines that think and automata that walk, but you have refused to abandon your god-fearing flock, and find that a spring-operated church bell rings as sweetly as one rung by hand. In any case, since it came to light that you also dabble in the science of alchemy – which you see as just the exploration of God’s mysteries, whatever Rome may say – your old enemy the corrupt Bishop Pazzi, now one of the senior figures in the Inquisition, is out for your blood. Working in Florence allows you to continue to do God’s work and ensure His presence even in the midst of this new, scientific world. And keeps you safely away from Rome.

One of the interesting challenges with him was avoiding also loading him up with clockpunk paraphernalia, while still giving him as much in the way of cool toys as the others. Hence his Alchemical Compendiary, his reliquary and his purely political asset, a badge of the Venetian State Inquisition (which wasn’t at all he same as the Catholic Inquisition, but was rather the feared Venetian Republic secret police). His goal of proving that the Alchemical Arts are a gift of God, not the Devil would be a life’s work, but it does give him something for which to strive!

One interesting potential conflict, which might have been a good theme in a long-term campaign but which I’m glad didn’t arise in the context of the convention game, would be how he feels about Mordechai. A Jew and a technologist: would Taddeo see him as a kindred spirit, testing the limits of his culture, or would he rather not be able to see beyond his cultural blinkers, ironically cleave to a persecution of the Jews even while he rails against the persecution of alchemists…?

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Opium in the Renaissance

Opium poppy spread from its original homeland somewhere between the Western Mediterranean and Asia Minor into southern Europe in Neolithic times and spread across the Middle East and Asia. Arabs were the main traders of opium on global trade routes and within the eastern Mediterranean until Venice rose as the premier Mediterranean commercial hub by the 13th/14th centuries, and with it took over the trade in what was at this time still a wholly legal substance, largely used as a medical sedative.

This was a highly-prized commodity, so much so that all the great navigators engaged on the voyages of discovery of the time were charged with locating sources of opium and ways of controlling the trade. Portuguese navigator Vasco de Gama’s opening up of the trade route round the Cape (1497-99) and then his trip to India (1502-3) allowed Lisbon to take over much of the opium business, undercutting Venice’s land routes, and in particular bringing it to India where it becomes a widely-grown crop.

Opium will not be smoked in Europe for several centuries yet (although there are addicts, largely from the wealthy, who take it several times a day drunk in a tincture), but it is still an important and valuable trade good. Will Venice be willing to accept the loss of its opium and simply buy it from the Portuguese like everyone else? What can it do? It cannot prevent Portugal’s fleets from taking the Cape route so instead it may have to try to make its land routes cheaper or safer, something which would require improved relations with the Ottoman Empire. Or maybe it will look to growing its own, which would require new territorial expansion for fields and labour-intensive poppy farming.

And will some Florentine chemist, himself seeking to push back the boundaries of science like the artificers and technologists, stumble on the refined form of opium known as morphine? Or maybe it will be the 17-year old physician, occultist, alchemist, toxicologist and botanist Paracelsus (whose real name is the splendidly-polysyllabic Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim), who is about to move to the University of Ferrara to study for his doctorate? He certainly later makes reference to a powerful sedative liquid he calls laudanum.

Himself? Why not herself? The monastery in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence sustains itself by its pharmaceutical workshop, producing cosmetics, distilled water and other compounds for sale. But according to a recent article in Renaissance Studies the convents of Florence also had a growing role in the industry, and one could see the nuns, being outside the control of the guilds and also seeking to compete with their more established monkish rivals, being perhaps more willing to experiment in the giddy environment of novelty and invention now ruling Florence.

Either way, morphine is a powerful analgesic – but also highly addictive. Where opium was a rare, low-level addiction for those who could afford it, the introduction of morphine could bring a whole new problem, especially as it starts to be used to treat wounded soldiers and the like. And with it, the value of the opium trade to Venice and Portugal would soar – and unscrupulous souls might consider expeditions for freelance opium trading across Egypt, the Levant and the lands of the Ottoman Empire.

Glassblower: Character 4: Mordechai the Jewish clocker and kabbalistic cryptographer

I especially enjoyed creating Mordechai, both as a rather different kind of character and also to explore a few aspects of the time and the setting. He’s a Jew who has to a considerable extent turned his back on his culture to embrace the clockpunk revolution, even though the world itself still sees him as Jew first, everything else second. He’s a clocker, as the programmers and builders of the early new water-clock-driven analytic engines are called, and also a kabbalistic cryptographer obsessed with numbers:

You resent having wear the yellow badge of a Jew, but if this is what it takes to be part of the new scientific revolution, so be it. The majority of Florentine Jews, who had been protected by the Medici, fled when they were ousted, but a few have since returned. Most are attracted by economic opportunities, but you are entranced by the new technologies. In clocking (technically, the science of analytic horologic), the programming of automata and thinking engines, man comes closest to the divine, and in the purity of codes lies the numerological glory of the kabbalah. The Florentines – including da Vinci himself – quickly appreciated your talent and passion, even if your father the banker and uncle the rabbi now in exile in Milan do not, something that pains you, even if at present it does not stop you…

As well, the character sheet gives an almost unforgivably short snapshot of the experience of being a Jew in sixteenth-century Italy:

It’s not easy being a Jew…

Florence is relatively liberal. Jews must wear a yellow circle badge, refrain from open religious rites and pay extra taxes. However, after a brief outburst of violence and looting in 1494-5, they are largely protected. In the Papal states, it’s much, much worse – there Jews have few rights and must wear distinctive conical red hats. In Venice, the law requires that they wear yellow hats and should only be on the street during the hours of darkness in the company of non-Jews.

It helped that the individual who played him at Recess had a particularly deft touch, bringing out some of the characteristics but not getting feeling the need to delve in the detail of what it meant to be a Jew in the Italian Renaissance to the point at which it would have detracted from the overall game experience for everyone.

Beyond that, though, like any good, l33t character at the leading edge of technology, I could also give Mordechai some fun gadgets, from the wind-up clockwork mini-crocodile to the lock-picking ring and the dry drive – not a Renaissance iPad itself, but the closest available analogue, a gizmo that can be hooked up to one or more water clocks (‘wet drives’) to provide a limited degree of processing capacity. Impossible? Of course, but the one area I give myself free rein in the 1510 setting is in weird clockpunk marvels.

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Dante Alighieri: poet, exile…ass-kicking vampire slayer

I see the ‘fantasy’ element of 1510 being rooted in its clockpunk and the consequent knock-on effects on the Renaissance, so don’t plan to use this idea, but it did tickle me. I chose 1510 as the default period because it provided the best mix of vital and interesting characters (da Vinci himself, Machiavelli, the Borgias, Michelangelo, etc) and events. However, one of the downsides is that this excludes Dante, the Father of the Italian Language, who lived and died in the late 13th and early 14th centuries (c. 1265 – 1321).

However, his greatest work, the 14,000-line, three-volume poem The Divine Comedy, is built around his journey through Hell, Purgatory and finally Paradise. What if that were true? What if he genuinely made that odyssey and returned to the mortal Earth transfigured by Divine power and purpose, an immortal agent of Heaven. When his time came, he took on the appearance of ageing and eventually faked his own death, seemingly of malaria. However, he dug his way out of his simple tomb and began his new life righting wrongs, hunting down That Which Should Not Walk The Earth or doing whatever else the Ultimate requires of its earthly agents.

Dante died an embittered exile from his beloved Florence. Does he bear a grudge, or is he instead a secret protector of his birth-city? Is he a foe of the clockpunk revolution, seeking ways to reverse Florence’s headlong dash to a new scientific and industrial humanism? Is he a cold-eyed killer in the name of Universal Love or a warm-hearted facilitator of the Great Good? And is his secret known? In 1483 Bernardo Bembo, the praetor of Venice, decided to build a bigger tomb to honor Dante’s remains. What did he think when he had the old tomb opened and found it bare? Did a miracle ensure there were bones there for him to bury? Or did he realize that there was more there than meets the eye?

Scion of a powerful Venetian aristocratic family, Bembo – who still lives as of 1510 – is a scholar, diplomat and known for his extraordinary collection of ancient manuscripts. Who knows what he may have gleaned from the secret tomes in his hands? If so, will he use his knowledge to try and use Dante for Venice’s interests? His son, the poet Pietro, was for three years a lover of Lucrezia Borgia’s, so maybe he would use his father’s discovery, whispered on to him as Bernardo feels the winds of mortality plucking at his cape, to ingratiate himself with his former lover and her ruthless and formidable family…?