Neukomm

From EryriWiki

Character Name: Sigismund, Ritter von Neukomm

Player Name: Matt Mitchell

Game: Congress of Vienna

[edit] Character Description

Semisuccessful Austrian composer in the employ of the Prince de Talleyrand; impoverished enough to be on the take from Baron Franz Hager, the Vaterland's spymaster. Also a Freemason--quite jealous of colleague Ludwig van Beethoven, his superior in the fields of composition and masonic noonah, but still in line with the guild's secret pinko agenda. ALSO the boyfriend of Countess Roxandre Stourdza, Russian mystic/bombshell and member of an opposed secret society. In, therefore, a bit of a pickle as of the start of game.

[edit] Character History and In-Game Events and Also Some Musings on Life and Things

Copied from Matt Mitchell's LiveJournal.

In the recent Congress of Vienna LARP, I was playing a real-life minor composer named Sigismund von Neukomm. His deal in the LARP--not, one presumes, in real life--was that he was (a) a member of the Freemasons, who in this version of things were secretly a leftist organization seeking revolutionary chaos in Europe, and (b) in the middle of a so-far-so-good love affair with a Russian countess named Roxandre Stourdza (also a real person, though not as far as I know connected with Neukomm in reality). She knew about his Masonic proclivities, and he knew about her membership in--here's where things get gnarly--a Russian-orthodox secret society seeking to unite Europe as a Christian empire under Tsar Nicholas I. What's more, Neukomm's conflicting political and personal allegiances were complicated by the fact that he was pretty broke, and had in fact been supplementing his income with money from an Austrian spymaster named Hager. The starting goals that motivated Neukomm, in order of priority, were thus (1) to serve the Masons' needs; (2) to get Stourdza to marry him; (3) to given Hager a bit of info, but not too much; and (4) to find a source of funding other than Hager.

This was all in the backstory, mind you: I entered the game with all this preestablished.

What I ended up deciding to do was get hold of some money from one of my Freemason buddies. I ended up hitting up the boss Freemason: "To my schame I must tell you dat I em a bought men," I said in my crappy Austrian accent. "Dis is not good for our society." I explained to him that I wanted to get out from under Hager, and that to continue to get by I'd need money; he very kindly concurred, and we decided that the last bit of info I fed to Hager would be about the Orthodox cult--Hager was leaning on me for data of that specific kind, and obviously the cult was a potential enemy of the Masons--and would also contain a bit of misinformation invented by my new patron. This I did; after giving Hager the information I told him that I considered our business complete, relinquished the Wealth card I'd gotten from him, and went to find Stourdza. To her I explained . . . well, basically everything, though I didn't mention the names of my Mason pals. I was long-winded in all this, but it boiled down to "My dear, I muzt tell you dat I tink ve ahr both in däncher--dat men Hager iss gathering information on both our societiess, to vot end I do not know. I esk you now to be my vife, und sey dat ve must leave Euhrop behint uss."

It will not surprise you to learn that the Countess met this confession and plea--which was a little less demanding and a little more wussy than I'm making it sound--first with stunned silence, then, shocked at my gall, with a choked-up "So--you--you betray my confeedences, then ask me to marry you and leaf behind everysink I know?" And I, I stood--"Say no more," I said. "I understend. I vill not trouble you again. I voss a fool, to consider myzelf vorthy . . ." Out I go, mumbling self-condemnation; then we have the LARP equivalent of a montage of inadvertent meetings and hasty retreats. (These were pretty hilarious: in rapid succession, we almost bumped into each other in the first-floor hall, spun on our heels, saw each other at opposite ends of the second-floor hall, backed off again, then did the same thing in the third-floor hall). Then, after much mopery and a surprisingly amiable conversation about Art und Zufferink with Ludwig van Beethoven (of whom Neukomm was jealous professionally), I was approached by a highly distraught Stourdza. Her concern with personal affairs had drained away for the moment: in confidence that she could trust me with the secret (at which my fallow Austrian heart fluttered), she told me that various bad things had happened and she could trust no one. I vowed to help her and . . . er, well, I didn't help her, but it wasn't for lack of busting my ass, and in the end--

--in the end, like ten minutes before game over, we had a great tearjerker scene. We bumped into each other and she took me aside. (Into a cathedral, no less!) Did I steell, she asked, plen to leave Europe? Vell of course, I stammered; I vood hef expekted that dis vood serve her best. But if I left, she pointed out, she would be utterly alone; I intimated that (a) my instinct was always to be one step behind her and (b) I would never be further from her than she wanted me to be; she clarified that she could make me no promises; I accepted these terms; with hesitating steps we left the cathedral and joined the throng.

So that was three out of four motivations--the one that became most important to my character during the session was the one I didn't make, but that was narratively appropriate. Neukomm went out of game a tenuously happy, reprieved man, like someone who's on the mend from a sickness.

What I wonder is this: would I have screwed up the same things he screwed up? His major crime was this, and he said as much in-game to Stourdza: he told himself he was throwing everything away for her, but in fact he was still serving his old masters. He was also guilty of the Luciferian sin of saying he was beyond redemption rather than let someone tell him off. Obviously the former was the most in-character thing I could have had him do, his listed priorities being what they were--and yet. And yet, for all that I, in real life, think of love as the great priority before which all other concerns fall, I dare say I've sometimes been a slave to selfish practicality even as I told myself I was a devoted lover. Neukomm showed a lot of weakness in getting where he'd decided to go.

On the oooother hand, I didn't have endless hours to decide what to do; the ethically optimal solutions I thought of after the fact simply didn't occur to me at the time. And Neukomm tended to think of what he was doing as a last balancing-out of the books, a clearing of all his other debts before he committed himself to the affair he'd already begun.