Cesare Salieri

Born: Rome, 19 January 1492

Cesare Salieri is the eldest son of Giovanni Salieri, a minor purveyor of "sacred relics" to the many tourists and pilgrims of the city. While not by any stretch of the imagination a lucrative profession, it did provide well enough for Giovanni, his wife, and their six children.

His intelligence was noticed at an early age, and eventually an education at a Benedictine monastery was arranged for him, where he was given a better education than that which his parents could otherwise have afforded. In exchange, Cesare was pledged for a life in the Church.

Being primarily an irreligious and ambitious man who loved himself more than anything else, Cesare was quite content with the arrangement. The Church is the best place in the current time for men of more talent than wealth, and provides him with the best opportunity seek his fufillment. His education has helped to fashion in young Cesare a sharp mind and a sharper tongue - weapons of great power in Rome for one who can wield them capably.

Cesare has three great desires: wealth, power and carnal pleasure. Coming from a modest family, he craves the comforts he always feared would be denied him by the unhappy accident of his humble birth. Coming from a part of the city often put upon by the elites, he learnt to envy the power of life and death his social betters held over the great masses of the city. Preferring the intimate company of other men than to women, the renouncing of relations with women troubles him not at all. Indeed, life in the Church has brought him more opportunity to satisfy his more earthy desires than secular life ever could.

As he is not an unintelligent person, Cesare is not open about his ambitions. Still, anyone who spends any time at all with the young man knows that he is driven. Such drive, more often than not, is met with approval. After all, the power brokers in Rome are well aware that men such as Cesare are what the Vatican sometimes requires in order to ensure that the Church maintains and expands its sphere of influence over the secular world.

After leaving the monastery that housed him for many years, Cesare returned to Roma. He immediately sought out the priests of the Borgia faction, and offered his services to them. His talents and temperment were immediately recognized, and they quickly set about moulding him as someone who would be more-or-less loyal to their faction.

Many have whispered about the dark and villianous deeds he has done, as well as the black appetites that seem to have been awoken in him, but to date nothing has ever been even remotely tied to him. Indeed, only a few months after being accepted into the Borgia, Cesare voluntarily left Rome to join the Missionary Factions in Austria. He spent two months there before being sent on to Spain with the Papal Scholars. The time in Austria was considered a minor success, but in Spain Cesare truly came to prominance. Cesare has risen to be one of the most lauded young clergy active in the Church, and has found honours and treasures heaped upon him for his six months of extraordinary service. Officially, he was praised for diligent research into the thoughts and tendencies of the Castillian elites by reading through past writings. Privately, it was whispered that he actually acquired his excellent intelligence through seduction, blackmail, and extortion. Regardless, the Church was happy to have the knowledge Cesare provided, and he was well rewarded for it.

Cesare had started to look forward to his return to Rome, but fate intervened. Just as he was beginning to make preparations for his return, he recieved word that he was to travel on to Lyons to join the Borgia faction. Though discontented by this delay in his return to the home he loves, he once again found himself richly rewarded for his active service to the church. Enmeshed once again among his peers in the Borgia, Cesare played a part in helping his ally, Bartolomeo Gagliardi, rise in the faction, and was rewarded when Bartolomeo elevated Cesare to the rank of Priest during a temporary stint as Bishop of the Borgia.

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