Bezan is a near southeast duchy of Amber. It is the center of the cloth industry. Raw wool, flax, cotton, and the like is brought here to be spun into cloth. The bolts of cloth are then exported, but some is also used by the tailors and weavers of Bezan.
Bezan often sets the fashion of the season. The wealthiest of Amber commission a single special outfit, and before long, one finds the design copied repeatedly by the tailors of Amber City itself, as well as the other major urban centers of the kingdom and beyond. Bezan experiments a great deal with new types of fabrics and dyes; some of the results are good, and sometimes entire ducal courts find themselves clad in the pumpkin orange that appears to be all the rage for a month.
Bezani tapestries are greatly prized. The master weavers are capable of turning out everything from a small decorative wall-hanging, to a room-spanning series of tapestries depicting an epic in marvelous, vivid detail that could be the envy of many a painter.
There is nothing overtly magical about Bezani tapestries, though the owners often swear that images within the scenes are moving. "The eyes on the portrait of my ancestor moved!" cries a noble. But the weavers laugh at him, and his friends tell him that he's drunk too much. Sometimes people come into the room and swear that something's changed in a scene -- a sheep's moved to the other side of the tapestry, or the green knight has defeated the white knight when it used to be the other way around. But people often don't have a very good memory for detail -- perhaps it's just the rampant paranoia floating about the kingdom.
Bezan is quite cosmopolitan, owing to its status as a trade center. It is one of the lands that quietly arranged for Oberon to slip past when he was making his final drive for Kolvir. The Bezani know that people buy clothes no matter who rules.
One of the duchies at Amber's heart, Vesantos is an old power in the land, a bastion of civilization and culture. It is a prosperous place, with great fertile fields and thriving trade; indeed, there is an excess of wealth, though there are still those who live in extreme poverty.
Vesantos consists of a handful of small cities surrounded by manors and fields. There is a significant gentleman-class, and life seems to be arranged for the convenience of the genteel. While one can be said to be "retiring to one's country estate", in reality one is rarely more than a few hours' comfortable carriage-drive from the city, and one "goes to town" often.
Vesantos is a culture obsessed with purity, both physical and symbolic. The problem is, of course, that it is difficult to run a prosperous society without contaminating one's hands with the sins of the world. Over the centuries, solutions have evolved for this thorny problem, in the form of the Penitents.
Penitents are those men (almost always men, though there are a few rare women, women being considered more naturally sinful) who first devote their lives to achieving personal purity, which makes them capable of moving on to the second stage of their careers, which is assuming the debt of sin of others, and atoning for it on their behalf.
In order to become a Penitent, one must first be entirely worldly -- one must first partake in nearly every vice available to man. A Penitent can only atone for those things which he has personally experienced in one form or another; thus, those users of Penitents with particularly exotic sin expurgation needs may occasionally run into difficulties. Having become thoroughly sinful, the Penitent then embarks upon atonement, achieved through the usual ways -- pilgrimages, fasting, flagellation, hair shirts, charity to the poor, and the like.
When the Penitent has at last achieved personal purity, he is ready to enter into the service of another. It is a great mark of prestige to keep a Penitent on one's estate grounds; the very best estates have natural caves well-suited to Penitential dwelling, but for others, there is a thriving industry in artificial cave construction.
There, the Penitent takes on the burden of the household sins, and atones for them. Depending on the nature, depth, and quantity of those sins, the Penitent may serve more than one member of the household. In general, it is considered inappropriate to keep more than one Penitent on one's estate; if there is another household member needing a Penitent, they should, the thought goes, be wealthy enough to afford their own estate and Penitent.
As such, Penitents tend to also serve as the household wise men, a councillor and an advisor. Many Penitents have seen the world, and, prior to entering their self-imposed hermitage, were well acquainted with a variety of lands and personages. Penitents almost never leave their caves; the members of the household come to them. Becoming a Penitent is an excellent career for a younger son of the nobility, and many such men eventually return to serve in the family cave. However, it is also not impossible for a suitably ambitious fellow off the streets to become a Penitent, though it may take some doing to raise money to commit some of the more exotic vices life has to offer.
Ritual washing, frequent bathing, light use of perfumes, and the wearing of scarves around the lower half of one's face are all hallmarks of the non-Penitent, a symbolic gesture at cleansing oneself of one's sins, as well as not contaminating others with one's evil, and vice versa. For the normal citizenry, life otherwise proceeds in a relatively typical fashion.
There is a thriving industry that caters to the Penitent, both during their period of debauchery, and their period of atonement. Of course, the former serves the general populace as well (as does the latter, though it gets used much less frequently), and it's generally well known that regardless of what one's particular vice is, it is likely that it can be found somewhere in Vesantos -- for a price. Many a young rake of Amber has come to Vesantos looking for the legendary Tome of the Penitent, said to contain an exhaustive catalog of sins, including a detailed description of the Hundred Improbable Acts -- and then take advantage of the Vesantos industries catering to those seeking to expand their sin repertoire.
Vesantos is particularly well known for the skill of its swordsmiths, who craft the finest fencing blades, and, to a lesser degree, swords, available in the kingdom. It has an active duelist scene, as well, as casual murder is a vice that every Penitent wants on his resume; the duelists vary in skill, from Penitents picking up just enough knowledge to be competent, to professional hired blades.
Corran is always fashionably dressed, of course. Fashionably -- not necessarily tastefully. Corran seems to find a need to be a living advertisement for his duchy's products. Though if he's bad, his wife Meryem is worse -- especially when she's trying out new hairstyles, too. The entire nobility of the duchy once found itself wearing lemon-yellow and purple for months on end, when Meryem decided the colors were delightful for her complexion (they weren't) and Corran, ever the indulgent husband, decided to dress to complement her whims.
Corran is a middle-aged, slightly pudgy fellow, fond of good wine and good food. He is generous to a fault, rather easy-going, and often lets the merchant's guild that really forms the true power in the duchy just run things as suits them. Corran does have excellent judgement of character, when he chooses to apply it, rather than just letting things go.
Unfortunately, one of the ways he chose not to apply it was in choosing his wife. Meryem is effectively a Wagnerian soprano, with all the tendencies of a diva. People write poetry to her eyes, and tailors do their best to flatter her ample figure. If she could execute cooks who overcooked the meat, she probably would. (Instead, Corran ends up waving a hand and saying, "Tut there, good fellow, perhaps you could bring my delicate flower something different," while his wife looks daggers at him.)
Corran is generally surrounded by small, bratty children, whom he doesn't bother to keep out of court and usually has candy in his pockets for. Cats instantly see him as someone easily manipulated and his castle is full of strays that wandered in and that someone left a dish of cream out for.
The merchant's guild, however, has a goodly number of men of power. They push Corran into appointing competent emissaries that represent his interests outside the duchy, and consequently, Bezan does quite well for itself.
Ricardo was the third son of his father, who considered him sufficiently far down the line of succession that he permitted the young man to pursue a career as a Penitent. Ricardo was nearing the end of completing his gauntlet of debauchery when an unexpected plague swept through Vesantos; when it was over, his parents and two older brothers were dead, and the Captain of the Guard had to be sent out to locate him. Eventually, after a lengthy search, the Captain found him passed out drunk under a paisley chaise, elegantly coiffed in a blond wig and translucent (but well-padded) ballgown, in one of the more interesting Entertainment Establishments in the Isles of the Sun. The Captain hauled him over his shoulder, dumped him on the ship, and sailed home, and the thoroughly unprepared young man was thrust unexpectedly into the limelight as the next Duke Vesantos.
Ricardo is relatively young; he was born after the conquest by Amber, and is thoroughly cosmopolitan, having seen much of the world. As an aspiring Penitent and student at Tarraign's Academy, his exploits were legendary; even today, tales circulate there, growing with the telling. He still has something of the air of a rake about him, and the services of a superb Penitent have allowed him to continue a lifestyle which is dissolute even for Vesantos. He has proven to be a competent ruler, likely the result of great charm, reasonable intelligence, and good advisors.
He is currently unmarried, and his only heir is his nephew Marco, though given his predilections there could be any number of illegitimate children out there. Tall and slim, he keeps his curly black hair cropped short; his features are sharp and handsome if a bit fox-like. He is always well dressed, favoring red and white. He is urbane, a little flippant, and given to double entendres and practical jokes.
His crest is a red wineglass, tipped at a slight angle, on a field of white.
Vittorio is the ancient Penitent of the Dukes of Vesantos. Nobody recalls exactly how old he is, but rumor has it that he is the original author of the Tome of the Penitent. Vittorio is said to have invented and committed no less than two dozen Original Sins, and to still, even at his great age, be capable of singlehandedly whipping himself into unconsciousness.
He is the hermit that all other hermits aspire to be. Back bent by old age, he has a great man of shaggy gray hair that covers his face and flows over his shoulders and down his back. He speaks in gravelly tones, weighing his words carefully and pronouncing almost everything as if it were of immense gravity. He has served multiple generations of Dukes, and is known to have a mind of great cunning and wisdom. What secrets he holds, few can even guess.
Not quite twenty years old, Marco is the son of Ricardo's older sister. He is a serious young man, tall and slender like his uncle, with a face of almost sensuous beauty -- dark liquid eyes, perfectly sculpted features, thick curly black hair. He is intelligent, conscientious, and thoughtful, skilled at most things he touches and a fencer of great repute.
It is rumored that Marco is a Heretic -- one of those men who believes that individuals are responsible for their own purity, and that one's sins cannot be transferred to a Penitent, or even atoned for after the fact, but that to be pure, a man must actually live a pure life. Those rumors further claim that Marco feels that Ricardo brings shame to the ducal seat (indeed, it is rumored that he may even fornicate upon it with women of ill repute), and that great sweeping reforms are needed in Vesantos to restore the land to its proper glory and purity.
Regardless of the truth, Marco is both fastidiously clean and has never been seen acquiring the services of a Penitent (though there are those who do choose to keep such transactions secret), nor does he seem to have indulged in the other worldly pleasures so appreciated by other young men of his social class.