Below is the history of the Vezanti. Their lost swordstyle is the Vezanti Deathspiral.

The Vezanti...

The rivalries of the Cities of the Circle Sea are deep and fierce. If there is one thing the Free Cities share, it is a passionate nature.

These days, the Cities have their Summer Wars, and hire mercenaries to carry their City's honor and bleed on the battlefields that surround the Circle Sea. The brightly uniformed military elite of the various Cities rarely get involved in the Summer Wars unless victory is certain. The various emirs and trader princes make wagers on the outcome of the summer's fighting, all the while safe in their fortified manors and urban estates. Nowhere can a mercenary company find better pay than on the Circle Sea, and nowhere else can they die for a more pointless cause.

Occasionally, two or more Cities may ally and lay siege to their chosen enemy by way of the Circle Sea itself, destroying ships in harbor even as their mercenaries land and assault the enemy's gates. Never, however, does a City press their advantage and lay claim to a rival. The example of the Vezanti serves to insure that.

The Vezanti were once the proudest of all the Free Cities. They traded with the islands of the Circle Sea, and even traded across the skyways with other shards. Their city was a home to learning (indeed, most of the Library of Vesh was plundered from the Vezanti) and the Vezanti family themselves ruled with intelligence and foresight. Their people loved them for the prosperity they brought to the Free City, and the fairness with which they ruled. They were fair haired, violet-eyed, and had a leonine character to them. To compound their intelligence, wealth, and comeliness, the Vezanti seemed blessed by a luck that other Cities did not share. Were they touched by the fey? Blessed by the gods? None could say.

They eventually overshadowed all of the other cities, even Ohjavia the Golden. And slowly, over many years, the poison of envy gnawed at the hearts of the other Free Cities. Would trade not be better for all, they whispered, but for the presence of the Vezanti? Do they not need to be humbled?

And so, one summer, when raiding and the exploits of corsairs were at a height, the Nine Cities turned against the Vezanti, and waged war upon them. They choked the harbors, surrounded the city walls, sent the Shy Muses themselves to murder the very rulers of the Vezanti.

And the Vezanti, trapped, starving, with their own citizens finally betraying them out of despair, decided that as they lived proud, so would they die proud. They would not give an inch to their enemies.

And so, the blood of the ruling Vezanti met one night when their stronghold within the city was about to fall, and ancient tomes long thought lost were brought forth by the oldest and most learned of the family.

The Vezanti called out to the splinter-realms, the partially formed shadows of the true world. They reached out and contacted one of these flawed semi-worlds, a world that never knew joy, or mercy, or forgiveness. A world that was a twisted reverse-reflection of the Vezanti and their city... a world of devils.

A pact was made, and the Vezanti screamed it from their towers as the winds rose and the night darkened ominously. The Vezanti gave the devils free reign to make their homes beneath the city, in the waterways and subterranean canals of the buried Old City. In return the devils would beat back the combined army of the nine other cities, and ensure that the Vezanti did not die out. Should they die, the devils would be forced to return to their shadowy home, and never again know the pleasures of the true creation.

That was many years ago. The Nine Cities never speak of the Vezanti, for it is said that to do so earns the attentions of the devils that still can be seen flying slowly above the distant deserted city. Even the things looted from the city are hidden away and no one takes pride in owning them.

Yet one things troubles the Emirs of Ohjavia, the Harlequin of Phanosh, the Alleylords of Tantavos, the Ghost Council of Döss, the Peers of Mezzona, the Matriarch Mariner of Giulmari, the Sea-Kings of Han'Haarstan, the Despot of Choldai, and the Learned Sages of Vesh.

If the devils still live within the lost city of Vezanti (as a hundred dead thieves and would-be looters can attest), then in accordance with the last words the Vezanti were heard to say, does it not follow that there must be at least one last living Vezanti?

Some laugh, and say that devils are tricky creatures, and indeed a Vezanti might still live, perhaps frozen for all eternity, or enslaved to the devils that the family released, or flayed each night to amuse the fiends - yet unable to die and find rest.

But within such laughter the keen edge of despair can be heard, for if a Vezanti still lives...

They were the most refined, the most shrewd and intelligent, the most noble and comely of all folk throughout the Cities, with their violet eyes, leonine good looks, and infernal luck...

Worse yet, the Vezanti's were masters of the blade, and no citizen of the Circle Sea is so foolish to claim that their city's steel arts outstrip the legendary Vezanti masters. What if, some whisper, a Vezanti Master survived? Or even one of the many students?

Should a Vezanti still live, and NOT be a slave to a fiendlord, he or she cannot be a happy Vezanti.

Such a Vezanti would be driven by their pride and their lost legacy to exact some measure of revenge against those who joined together to destroy them.

And so, is it any wonder that the rulers of the Nine Cities, even those not in power when Vezanti fell, grow fearful and worried when one of their number dies, or a body of some minor noble or courtier turns up dead in a canal with strange spiralling wounds about the heart?

Is it the devils, some whisper.

Or is it the Vezanti?