Venice Sword & Blade

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Venice in the eighteenth century: Her ancient beauty lingers still. So too does Death whether dealt by the righteous Sword of Justice or the febrile blade of revenge. But who is to say which?</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>As the workers of the Arsenale Venice's great shipbuilding powerhouse cross paths with her artists maskmakers and Golden Book patricians they engage in fraught private struggles and bloody public clashes. Warring factions vie for dominion and no one is spared.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Meanwhile from his aerie at the end of the century the Venetian adventurer Giacomo Casanova bears witness to the unfolding drama. As he parses a murder revealed through his keen gaze are the currents upon which the century's ideas and events flow through Venice shaping the lives of her people.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Among these are Giulia Lama and Giambattista Piazzetta artists whose complex relationship plays out against familial intrigue and the intricacies of Venetian signorial society. Through the prism of Casanova's musings ever more secrets emerge from shadowed lives.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>At the same time Death stalks high and low; it lurks in the verses of Bartolomeo Dotti a poison-penned nuncio skulks in the cravings of Gasparo Cucato an Arsenale tough and strikes young artisans enjoying an innocent outing. The beautiful court artist Felicità Sartori confides to Casanova that perhaps the animus began in the time-dimmed machinations of a Neapolitan musician. Or perchance it lay srouded in the arcane knowledge of The Tusk brought to Venice from a land that worshipped Death's own goddess Thanth.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In the thousand-year epic of the Serenissima myriad questions rise and fall with her waters. In Venice sword & Blade the eighteenth century's answers to such questions satisfy the yearnings of some trouble the repose of others. Which might you have been...and why?</span></p>