Maximolo Ricco

Max is the owner of Maximolo Ricco's Carnival of Wonders, which he runs with his daughter, Ariana. While there are four similar operations in the Basin, the Carnival of Wonders is far and away the largest, best known and most successful, consisting of an astonishing array of attractions housed in more than sixty brightly colored gypsy travel wagons.

Humble Beginnings

He wasn't always the celebrity he is today though. An orphan of Free Folk ancestry, he grew up on the streets of Calimba back before the Universities were built. He made his way as most orphaned children do, by being glib of tongue, light of fingers and fleet of foot when all else failed.
What he was especially good at, however, was distraction. Being naturally musically inclined, he quickly discovered that he could break out his battered, stolen lute and play for a crowded city street, dazzling them with his performance while other orphaned children took advantage of the distraction he provided and quietly fleeced the crowd. Thus, before his fourteenth spring, he was running one of the most efficient gangs of pickpockets in Calimba's entire history.
Efficient or no, his efforts did not go unnoticed. It was not the City Constable who cornered him, however, but an aging minstrel named Bracchus, who recognized his vast and largely untapped potential. Although Max was never officially adopted, Bracchus got him off the streets and saw to it that he had a proper, formal musical education.

A Rising Star

That single act of kindness changed everything. Max was a natural, and an accomplished, intuitive musician who could instinctively read his audience and make subtle adjustments to thrill and delight every crowd he played to. Technical proficiency mattered, but he quickly learned that "plugging into" his audience and delivering the performance they wanted to see and hear was at least as important, and he discovered that he could do that better than just about anyone.
Before long, he was the toast of Calimba. Gone were the days of scratching and struggling for survival on the streets. Everybody who was anybody wanted to hear Max play, and wealthy Lords and Ladies throughout the Loch region were lining up to pay him handsomely for private performances.
For his part, Max took their money and smiled, giving them exactly what they wanted in return, but even then, he knew he would not remain a performer over the longer term. He had a flair for management that rivaled his musical talent, and he had his eyes and mind set on a much more substantial prize.
Knowing how much money flowed through the Free Folk's traveling carnivals, and intuitively understanding that information was power, he determined to leverage one to give him the other. He could use his Free Folk ancestry to buy his way into a traveling carnival, using a combination of his musical talent, persuasiveness and managerial savvy to become invaluable to whomever the leader of the carnival was and then simply buy the Headman of the carnival out when an opportunity presented itself.
Finally, once in charge, he would give his mostly invisible carnival workers handsome raises and cultivate relationships with them to ensure their loyalty, creating a veritable roving army of eyes and ears which would siphon up information everywhere they went. By traveling along the most populated routes, he could collect a tremendous amount of intelligence and sell it to important people in each city he passed through...

The Carnival of Wonders is Born

He played concerts all along the King's Road which runs 'round the Loch until he was 27, then retired suddenly and unexpectedly, vanishing from public view.
He would not resurface for four years, and when he did, it was with his young daughter by his side and at the head of some 40 travel wagons - Maximolo's Grand Carnival.
Back then, the competition with rival carnivals was fierce, and Max did not always get the routes he wanted, but, being endlessly clever, he learned and adapted, and he relied on the scrappiness he had picked up in his youth from living on the streets.
With each passing year, his carnival grew in both size and fame, while his rivals slowly faded.
In just a handful of years, he controlled the largest and most successful carnival in the Basin, changed its name to the one we know today and look forward to each year, and got first dibs on routes.
His carneys made friends with orphaned street children in every city and town they passed through (and more than a few of these wound up joining the carnival proper), so that each year and at every stop, vast stores of information flowed into his waiting ears.
Very quickly, Max became one of the wealthiest and quietly influential people in the whole of the Basin.
In his 36th spring, while passing through the City of Calimba where he had grown up, he heard rumors that the city fathers were planning to build a Bardic College, but were struggling to come up with the funds to see it to completion. Max made a sizeable donation, which proved to be more than enough to complete the project and was offered the position of First Dean of the college in return.
He politely refused this honor, being more than happy with his current station, but the city fathers did have him sit for a portrait, which was later used to construct a bust in his likeness. That statue, along with those of other luminaries and patrons, lines the steps leading to the entrance of the Academy to this day.

Membership in the Donovengians

The years marched by, and with the passage of each, the Carnival of Wonder kept improving, getting bigger, better and more popular.
At some point though, people began noticing that Max didn't seem to be aging. At all.
The Free Folk are known to retain their youthful appearance well into their later years, but Max is something altogether different. He looks no older now than he did when he was thirty.
Many people have asked him what his secret is, and he has always declined to answer. Naturally, in the absence of a definitive answer, rumors spread like wildfire, with the most popular one being that Max was bitten at some point during his travels and is now a vampire.
The truth is somewhat simpler. Max is secretly a member of a group called "The Donovengians," founded by Alain Donovengian, an old money family from IronPort. The Donovengians work quietly and behind the scenes for the betterment of the Basin, confronting and defeating evil in whatever form it happens to take. Alain offered all of the founding members of his secretive organization access to magic which unnaturally extended their lives, giving them more time to pursue their good work.
The original members of the Donovengians included:

• Alain Donovengian himself (an artificer of renown who has built an incredible suit of Power Armor)

• Antoine LeBeau, a famous/infamous gambler from Calimba who is secretly a Warlock in the service of the Enchantress of the Silver River, and who can do the most amazing things with simple playing cards

• Amanahaali, an astonishingly talented Bard and one of the first graduates from the Bardic Academy

• And of course, Max.

When he was granted membership, Max was charged with the task of securing any cursed items or objects that the group recovered, keeping them out of the hands of those who would misuse them or fall under their spell.
Thus, Max's personal travel wagon is one of the most heavily warded locations in the whole of the Basin, and for a time, served as a kind of warehouse for cursed objects because after all, who would think to look for them in a gypsy carnival wagon?!
As the group collected a growing number of these, however, Max quietly reached out to the reigning Prelate of the Basin, Erich Castillar, and asked that a special vault be constructed under the Temple of the HighFather, to house them, making a sizeable donation to the Church to help see it done. Construction of the vault is now complete but persistent rumors hold that Max kept a few of the objects for himself...
A number of years ago, Amanahalli vanished while trying to gain entrance to the Lost Province of Jima. No trace of her has ever been found and she is currently feared dead.
More recently, one Vittora Franken was extended an invitation to join them. A rising star and recent graduate of the Academy, she ran afoul of the Justicaari when her experiments to conquer death went terribly wrong.
She asked for, and got a volunteer in the person of Lord Randall Stein, of IronPort, a charismatic and enormously popular man who wanted to live forever.
Remarkably, Vittora's experiments worked. She killed Lord Stein and successfully revived him. Unfortunately, the experiment left him horribly disfigured and it was several months before his mental faculties returned to him, during which time, he went on a bit of a rampage and Vittora was put on trial for murder and practicing forbidden magic.
The Donovengians saved her from execution, with Max distracting the guards while Alain and Antoine broke her out of prison. Once Lord Stein had fully recovered and was himself again, he too, was invited to join the group, although these days, he has forsaken his Lordly title and simply goes by the name the common folk gave him while he was on his rampage: The Franken-Stein monster...
All that to say that Maximolo Ricco keeps interesting company indeed, and heads what has become the most efficient intelligence gathering machine in the whole of the Basin, disguised as a Carnival.

Alignment

Chaotic

Age

Unknown

Gender

Male

Eyes

Violet

Hair

Long, straight and brown

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Surprisingly pale for a member of the Free

Height

6'3"

Weight

165 pounds

Known Languages

Max is known to speak Common, Elven and Dwarven.

Ruled Locations

• Maximolo Ricco's Carnival of Wonders