Anthony Heartstrings (Old)

## General Information

Anthony is a tsukumogami transformed from a Stradivari violin. He has been in Gensokyo from almost from the very beginning but kept himself to the wilderness for the most part, avoiding contact with humans and senior youkai. He doesn't seem to shy away from fairies and minor youkai, however, and can be found surrounded by and dancing with them as he plays lively music on his violin.

He also took to the craft of instrument-making in honour of his creator, and had made flutes and mandolins for his fairy friends. He keeps for himself a mini-harpsichord, a cello, and a shamisen that he keeps stashed with his tools in a roofed cart.

### ☯**Personality**

Anthony is a very emotional and empathetic person, easily influenced by others. He would find himself tearing whenever he sees someone crying, and likewise he'd smile widely when he sees someone brimming with joy.

Furthermore, music is his first language, and thus he is easily influenced by whatever music he hears, with soft music easily calming him down and violent music rousing him.

However, he is a gentle person at heart, and it would be extremely difficult to get him to act in a cruel manner, even when he hears music that is about cruelty, or encourages people to act in like manner.

Perhaps due to the company of fairies, he himself is quite carefree, and always eager to be helpful to other.

He has a dramatic flair, and one would see him using theatrical language accompanied by large, sweeping movements. He has a very aristocratic sense of honour and propriety, and through his carefree attitude and emotional freedom, one would get from him the image of a gentleman.

### ☯**Appearance**

His humanoid aspect takes on the form of a slim and tall young man, roughly between seventeen and nineteen. He has golden hair, brown eyes, and fair skin. He wears a black vest with a tie over a white undershirt. His trousers are black as well, and his shoes, made of leather, are of the same colour.

His violin aspect looks at a first glance like the average violin. However, with a closer inspection, one would see that his tuning pegs are plated with gold. Look closely at his soundbox and you would see the remains of cracks, rot in his wood that has been repaired sloppily. One would also notice that his colour had faded from a rich brown into a grayish tone.

## Backstory

Anthony was created in the twenty-sixth of August 1701 by the luthier Antonio Stradivari of Cremona. He was bought as a gift for a sickly young lady named Bianca Bonatti, to whom she brought great joy until her passing at the age of forty-eight, forty years from their acquaintance. When he was handed down to Bianca's niece, Noemi Alberighi, he was in as good a condition as he was when he was bought. However, he was not well cared for by his new owner and quickly deteriorated. After sixteen years of abusive neglect, he was forgotten in an attic and gathered dust for forty-two years when he was found by Giovanni Alberighi, his previous owner's grandson. Two years later, Anthony had become self-aware.

Unlike his grandmother, Giovanni cared for Anthony, bringing him back to decent condition. Even though his new owner wasn't as attentive as his first, he was happy.

He was handed down to Giovanni's son Nicola in 1836, which was when bad times were falling on the Alberighi family. Nicola cared for him as much as his first owner did, but the family's diminishing coffers made it difficult to maintain him and Anthony slowly deteriorated once more.

The final blow came in 1852. Nicola had lost his home a year back and had to become a street performer to keep himself alive. The local governor, who was facing allegations of witchcraft, wanted someone else to blame and pointed at Nicola, whose performances with Anthony swayed the audience a bit more than they should and made him the perfect victim.

Nicola fled to England, where he resumed his old life of a street performer.  However, the cold wore down on him and he died at March 15 1861 in the middle of the woods dressed in rags, his arms holding the violin close to him.

No longer bound to an owner, Anthony realised his being as a supernatural instrument. He cut off the tip of Nicola's right pointer finger and kept it as he left and looked for a way back to Cremona. He came back to the land of his birth in 1866 and looked hard for any traces of his original owner. After years of searching, he managed to find Bianca's shallow grave and retrieved one of her finger bones.

He fled to the nearest forest and stayed there, playing haunting, heartrending songs until November 13 1885 when he was knocked out by a strange disturbance. When he woke up, he was in one of Gensokyo's forests and had received a humanoid body.

He became a wandering musician much like his last owner, whose finger-bone he keeps with Bianca's own in a locket he hides under his vest. He kept to the forest, keeping distance from the humans and their business even as he took to instrument-making made creations that sometimes found their way into the village.

## Relationships

### ☯**Clara Rouge**

Clara stumbled upon Anthony one spring day when he was playing with fairies as he usually does. He felt no threat from her and swept her off into a merry dance. He was quickly smitten, and afterwards can be found seeking her out and singing her serenades. As of summer that year, roughly two months from their first meeting, Clara and Anthony are firmly in an exclusive relationship.

## Abilities

### ☯**Ability to Influence One's Mental State**

Anthony can influence the mental states of those within hearing rage with his playing. This is usually manifested by him setting the mood: if he plays a joyful song, those around him would find it easier to be happy and find it hard to maintain emotions contrary to joy, for example. While this may sound like something music does inherently, Anthony's music has an additional layer; there is a light hypnotic effect to his playing that makes it much harder to resist and prevents potential backlash.

Where, say, a cheerful song played normally would leave an angry person stewing in anger for half an hour, Anthony's playing would calm them down in a third or less that time, and make them feel joy in another five to ten minutes after that. His music always sounds pleasing to the ears, perhaps due to the hypnotism or perhaps due to his skill, or perhaps both.

### ☯**Ability to Perform by Oneself**

As a violin tsukumogami, Anthony can play his instrument aspect in ways that no human could ever hope to, such as that he can even play notes low enough to belong to a cello rather than a violin and make it sound as though there were more than one violin playing. However, this doesn't make him a master of his instrument; when bowing another violin, he is limited to what a normal human can do.

### ☯**Ability to Completely Recover from Injury**

So long as his instrument aspect isn't severely damaged, Anthony's projection can recover from even total obliteration. However, death still causes him severe mental and spiritual drain, and it can take up to a week for him to recover from one. Lighter injuries on the other hand are usually healed within a day or two.

## Spell Cards

 Arcanum [------------]
 Last Word [Antonio Stradivari]

## Weaknesses

### ☯**Vulnerability of Soul Vessel**

As a Tsukumogami, Anthony's main vulnerability is his true self, the violin crafted by Stradivari in 1701. While severely damaging or destroying his humanoid body will leave him incapacitated for some time, damaging his true self will leave marks in his being that can only be fixed by repairing his violin half. Such marks can be cracks appearing on his humanoid body, or his mental acuity being reduced. Destroying his true self means death to him. If one acts quickly enough, he may yet be saved by being transferred into a new vessel, but he would be changed as a result.

### ☯**Emotional Vulnerability**

Anthony is weak emotionally, particularly to sadness. Once he gets into a depressive mood, he broadcasts it through his song and thus brings him further into depression. Due to his past experiences with his owners leaving him behind, the notion of those precious to him being lost is more than enough to break him.

## Trivia

* He was attacked by a much stronger youkai not too long after he had entered Gensokyo, resulting in him being terrified of those stronger than him in general. This is the main reason why he avoids all company but fairies and weak youkai. He kept his phobia even after he himself had become a senior youkai after living so long.
* Because of his pairing with **Clara Rouge**, that character's owner (Questia) is free to use Anthony in the absence of his creator (Ryuunotaki) or even while said owner is present so long as it has been agreed upon beforehand.