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Application Supplement - History
Alexander von Cumore was born into an aristocratic family and raised in the royal quarter of the city of Zaphias, on the continent of Ilyccia. As the capital of the Empire, Zaphias is the largest city in the world; it's divided into a caste system and adheres to a strict social hierarchy – in other words, classism runs rampant, with there being a vast schism in treatment and resource allocation between the nobles and those of the lower class. By the time the events of the story start, Cumore is a captain of the Imperial Knights; he has his own large squadron of knights at his disposal, as well as a good amount of military power and political sway, though he's still ultimately subject to the orders of the Commandant, Alexei Dinoia. He doesn't reside in the castle quarters provided for the Imperial Knights but rather lives on his family's personal property with his sister, Mimura, as well as their servant, Sebastian; his parents are presumably deceased, seeing as Cumore owns the family estate and is the sole claimant to the family's status as nobility, but he uses his ranking and title to ensure that his sister is provided for.
Vesperia's story begins with the aque blastia in the lower quarter of Zaphias failing due to the theft of the core used to moderate it, causing the blastia to begin spilling water out into the streets and threatening to flood the entire area; the protagonist, Yuri Lowell, pursues the thief to the royal quarter and breaks into a residence in order to take the core back, but the thief manages to escape with the blastia core unapprehended. While Yuri attempts to leave the building, he runs into a pair of knights that serve under Captain Schwann; he engages them in battle and defeats them – only to be immediately caught by Cumore and his own brigade. Cumore heavily implies that this isn't the first time he's dealt with Yuri engaging in criminal acts; he orders Yuri arrested and thrown into prison "as usual," sentencing him to ten days as punishment for both the breaking and entering incident and attempting to evade arrest. He then proceeds to pointedly turn away, intentionally turning a blind eye to the fact that his knights beat Yuri before arresting him.
Yuri eventually breaks out of the prison in Zaphias Castle, finding the princess Estelle along the way and bringing her out of the castle with him as he escapes. Estelle decides to continue travelling with Yuri beyond that, and - since Estelle's willing involvement in leaving has been telegraphed to exactly no one else - this rather quickly turns into a Political Incident back at the capital, where Cumore is ordered to find the princess, bring her back to Zaphias, and punish those that "kidnapped" her. He tracks Yuri and Estelle across the sea to the continent of Tolbyccia, locating them outside the ruins of the destroyed city of Caer Bocram; he orders Estelle to return to Zaphias with him, and when she asks what will happen to Yuri and the pair of other party members they've picked up along the way, Cumore orders them tortured, drawn and quartered for the act of kidnapping a princess of the Empire. When Estelle tries to argue the point with him, he tells her to stop making so much noise and grabs her by the hand with the intention of dragging her off; he also changes his mind with regards to the whole torture thing, adjusting his orders in the direction of "let's just kill them all now." Before those orders can be carried out, however, he's stopped by members of Schwann's brigade; despite the fact that Cumore outranks him, Schwann's second-in-command tells off Cumore for being rash and making blood sport of criminals, and insists that Yuri and the others should be arrested and tried in accordance with the law. Clearly displeased with the confrontation, Cumore backs down and storms off, though he doesn't return to Zaphias – rather, he remains in Tolbyccia, taking up quarter in the Imperial Knights' headquarters in the city of Heliord.
During his time in Heliord, Cumore meets with Commandant Alexei, who orders him to go to the continent of Desier – specifically, he wants him to go to a particularly treacherous desert known as the Sands of Kogorh, where Cumore is to hunt down and kill a large and highly dangerous monster named Phaeroh. Cumore proceeds to disregard these orders entirely for the time being, instead choosing to stay in the city after Alexei leaves in order to pursue his own goals and ambitions. After some handwaved offscreen political noodling, Cumore is installed as acting magistrate of Heliord, where he begins soliciting the help of the townspeople in finishing the lower portions of the tower the city is built on (which are still being constructed) as well as fortifying the entire city. He convinces people to join the cause by making promises to them, telling them that they will be titled as nobility and given "more money than they can use"; however, anyone who joins him is immediately conscripted to do hard labor down below the city and not permitted to leave for any reason. They are made to work for long hours with almost no rest and little provisions, as well as no pay until the work is completed; Cumore works them until they're spent and doesn't particularly care if they die, as he just goes and lures in more people as soon as he's lost too many.
Some time after this begins, Cumore also meets with a man named Yeager, the leader of a guild that specializes in weapons dealing and assassination; unaware that the protagonist party is nearby, Cumore confides in Yeager that he's ignoring Alexei's orders and plans on overthrowing him to take over as Commandant of the Knights – he intends to do this by way of utilizing weapons provided to him by Yeager's guild, Leviathan's Claw, as well the weapons stockpile at a fortified Heliord, to start a war between the Empire and the Union (which is basically comprised of a bunch of guilds that are opposed to the Empire's rule and seceded). Yeager is backing Cumore in this endeavor, though he warns Cumore to actually be sure to take out the leader of the Union in the attempt, because it won't end well for anybody if he doesn't; Cumore reassures him that he plans on completely crushing the Union in order to ensure that he can ascend to power as Commandant.
Yeager accompanies Cumore beneath the city, and the party follows them; the party is understandably appalled at Cumore's entire forced labor setup down there, and go to confront him. (By way of Yuri hitting Cumore in the face with a rock to get his attention.) Estelle tries to order Cumore to stand down, only for Cumore to respond by threatening to kill her and commanding Yeager to take care of them, commencing in a boss battle. After Yeager's defeat, he calls out to his bodyguards, who deploy smoke bombs to cover their escape; Yeager and Cumore both escape the city in the direction of the harbor, where they abandon the plans to destroy the Union for now and get on a ship to Desier.
Upon arriving in Desier, Cumore leaves Yeager to his own devices in the port city of Nordopolica and continues onward, toward the Sands of Kogorh. He stops outside the desert itself in an oasis town called Mantaic, where Commandant Alexei has already removed the previous magistrate in preparation for Cumore's arrival. Cumore takes over as magistrate of Mantaic and proceeds to immediately throw the entire thing under martial law, decreeing that only merchants and those that are otherwise necessary to keep the town running are permitted to leave their homes, and those that aren't under house arrest are to be supervised by Imperial Knights at all times to prevent them from talking to travelers and other visitors from outside town.
The gag order turns out to be for a reason: every few days, the Imperial Knights under Cumore's control make rounds of the city, bringing a set number of viable adults to the outskirts of town, where they're loaded into carriages and made to wander the desert with very few supplies in search of Phaeroh. The mission is acknowledged by everyone to be blatantly suicidal; once again, Cumore doesn't seem to care how many people he loses, and it's fairly clear that once he's out of adults he'll move on to the children until either Phaeroh is found and killed or he depletes the town. He also makes it plain that he'll send his own knights out on the same mission, under the same conditions, and if they don't like it, he'll involve their families as well.
This lasts for approximately ten days after he arrives; the party shows up in Mantaic about three or four days after Cumore arrives, but leaves during the interim period between roundups – they hear about them, but they don't see them in action before they head out to the desert themselves. However, the party witnesses a session in action upon their return to the town; they come across Cumore preparing to send more people out into the desert, and while he starts out the same way he did in Heliord - promising riches and titles to anyone who succeeds in what he wants them to do, and insisting that their children will be provided for - he quickly dissolves into yelling at everyone, being unreasonably impatient, and just generally being an abusive asshole to everybody involved, his own knights included. Once again, the party is understandably outraged, and they send one of their members out to sabotage his carriages while he's distracted trying to handle the townspeople, ensuring that no one will be sent to die that day. Cumore storms off to find whomever was responsible for preparing the carriages, blaming them for the breakdown and intending to punish them; once he's dealt with that, he returns to his private room in the inn for the evening and falls asleep. Meanwhile, the party spends the evening talking about what should be done about him, if anything, only to largely conclude that there isn't much they can do to make Cumore listen to reason. They decide to leave him alone for now and go to sleep; however, Yuri is still angry and upset with Cumore's actions and decides that if Cumore can't be reasoned with, he probably can't be punished in any sort of way that he'd understand and learn from, either. As such, Yuri decides to take matters into his own hands and kill Cumore.
And so Yuri breaks into Cumore's room in the middle of the night with a weapon drawn and startles Cumore awake; visibly shaken, Cumore draws his sword and accepts Yuri's challenge, only to be quickly disarmed. Cumore yells at Yuri a bit, threatening him to try to get him to back off; when that fails, Cumore bolts, running off to the dunes on the outskirts of town only to have to draw up when confronted with a drop leading to a large pit of dry quicksand, where Yuri catches up to him.
Openly afraid now, Cumore begs Yuri to spare him, trying to tell him that he isn't to blame for the atrocities he committed because he was just following orders and had no choice in the matter; he also tries to bribe Yuri with promises of anything he wants, including pardons for all of Yuri's past crimes, instating Yuri as a knight, and anything else that money can possibly buy. Yuri replies by telling Cumore that he only wants one thing from him, and Cumore can blame whomever gave him his orders for his death. Yuri then moves to kill him, only for Cumore to pull away from him and accidentally fall into the dry quicksand below.
Cumore pleads with Yuri to not let him die; Yuri just asks him how many times his victims have begged the same of him before leaving Cumore to die beneath the sand.
Vesperia's story begins with the aque blastia in the lower quarter of Zaphias failing due to the theft of the core used to moderate it, causing the blastia to begin spilling water out into the streets and threatening to flood the entire area; the protagonist, Yuri Lowell, pursues the thief to the royal quarter and breaks into a residence in order to take the core back, but the thief manages to escape with the blastia core unapprehended. While Yuri attempts to leave the building, he runs into a pair of knights that serve under Captain Schwann; he engages them in battle and defeats them – only to be immediately caught by Cumore and his own brigade. Cumore heavily implies that this isn't the first time he's dealt with Yuri engaging in criminal acts; he orders Yuri arrested and thrown into prison "as usual," sentencing him to ten days as punishment for both the breaking and entering incident and attempting to evade arrest. He then proceeds to pointedly turn away, intentionally turning a blind eye to the fact that his knights beat Yuri before arresting him.
Yuri eventually breaks out of the prison in Zaphias Castle, finding the princess Estelle along the way and bringing her out of the castle with him as he escapes. Estelle decides to continue travelling with Yuri beyond that, and - since Estelle's willing involvement in leaving has been telegraphed to exactly no one else - this rather quickly turns into a Political Incident back at the capital, where Cumore is ordered to find the princess, bring her back to Zaphias, and punish those that "kidnapped" her. He tracks Yuri and Estelle across the sea to the continent of Tolbyccia, locating them outside the ruins of the destroyed city of Caer Bocram; he orders Estelle to return to Zaphias with him, and when she asks what will happen to Yuri and the pair of other party members they've picked up along the way, Cumore orders them tortured, drawn and quartered for the act of kidnapping a princess of the Empire. When Estelle tries to argue the point with him, he tells her to stop making so much noise and grabs her by the hand with the intention of dragging her off; he also changes his mind with regards to the whole torture thing, adjusting his orders in the direction of "let's just kill them all now." Before those orders can be carried out, however, he's stopped by members of Schwann's brigade; despite the fact that Cumore outranks him, Schwann's second-in-command tells off Cumore for being rash and making blood sport of criminals, and insists that Yuri and the others should be arrested and tried in accordance with the law. Clearly displeased with the confrontation, Cumore backs down and storms off, though he doesn't return to Zaphias – rather, he remains in Tolbyccia, taking up quarter in the Imperial Knights' headquarters in the city of Heliord.
During his time in Heliord, Cumore meets with Commandant Alexei, who orders him to go to the continent of Desier – specifically, he wants him to go to a particularly treacherous desert known as the Sands of Kogorh, where Cumore is to hunt down and kill a large and highly dangerous monster named Phaeroh. Cumore proceeds to disregard these orders entirely for the time being, instead choosing to stay in the city after Alexei leaves in order to pursue his own goals and ambitions. After some handwaved offscreen political noodling, Cumore is installed as acting magistrate of Heliord, where he begins soliciting the help of the townspeople in finishing the lower portions of the tower the city is built on (which are still being constructed) as well as fortifying the entire city. He convinces people to join the cause by making promises to them, telling them that they will be titled as nobility and given "more money than they can use"; however, anyone who joins him is immediately conscripted to do hard labor down below the city and not permitted to leave for any reason. They are made to work for long hours with almost no rest and little provisions, as well as no pay until the work is completed; Cumore works them until they're spent and doesn't particularly care if they die, as he just goes and lures in more people as soon as he's lost too many.
Some time after this begins, Cumore also meets with a man named Yeager, the leader of a guild that specializes in weapons dealing and assassination; unaware that the protagonist party is nearby, Cumore confides in Yeager that he's ignoring Alexei's orders and plans on overthrowing him to take over as Commandant of the Knights – he intends to do this by way of utilizing weapons provided to him by Yeager's guild, Leviathan's Claw, as well the weapons stockpile at a fortified Heliord, to start a war between the Empire and the Union (which is basically comprised of a bunch of guilds that are opposed to the Empire's rule and seceded). Yeager is backing Cumore in this endeavor, though he warns Cumore to actually be sure to take out the leader of the Union in the attempt, because it won't end well for anybody if he doesn't; Cumore reassures him that he plans on completely crushing the Union in order to ensure that he can ascend to power as Commandant.
Yeager accompanies Cumore beneath the city, and the party follows them; the party is understandably appalled at Cumore's entire forced labor setup down there, and go to confront him. (By way of Yuri hitting Cumore in the face with a rock to get his attention.) Estelle tries to order Cumore to stand down, only for Cumore to respond by threatening to kill her and commanding Yeager to take care of them, commencing in a boss battle. After Yeager's defeat, he calls out to his bodyguards, who deploy smoke bombs to cover their escape; Yeager and Cumore both escape the city in the direction of the harbor, where they abandon the plans to destroy the Union for now and get on a ship to Desier.
Upon arriving in Desier, Cumore leaves Yeager to his own devices in the port city of Nordopolica and continues onward, toward the Sands of Kogorh. He stops outside the desert itself in an oasis town called Mantaic, where Commandant Alexei has already removed the previous magistrate in preparation for Cumore's arrival. Cumore takes over as magistrate of Mantaic and proceeds to immediately throw the entire thing under martial law, decreeing that only merchants and those that are otherwise necessary to keep the town running are permitted to leave their homes, and those that aren't under house arrest are to be supervised by Imperial Knights at all times to prevent them from talking to travelers and other visitors from outside town.
The gag order turns out to be for a reason: every few days, the Imperial Knights under Cumore's control make rounds of the city, bringing a set number of viable adults to the outskirts of town, where they're loaded into carriages and made to wander the desert with very few supplies in search of Phaeroh. The mission is acknowledged by everyone to be blatantly suicidal; once again, Cumore doesn't seem to care how many people he loses, and it's fairly clear that once he's out of adults he'll move on to the children until either Phaeroh is found and killed or he depletes the town. He also makes it plain that he'll send his own knights out on the same mission, under the same conditions, and if they don't like it, he'll involve their families as well.
This lasts for approximately ten days after he arrives; the party shows up in Mantaic about three or four days after Cumore arrives, but leaves during the interim period between roundups – they hear about them, but they don't see them in action before they head out to the desert themselves. However, the party witnesses a session in action upon their return to the town; they come across Cumore preparing to send more people out into the desert, and while he starts out the same way he did in Heliord - promising riches and titles to anyone who succeeds in what he wants them to do, and insisting that their children will be provided for - he quickly dissolves into yelling at everyone, being unreasonably impatient, and just generally being an abusive asshole to everybody involved, his own knights included. Once again, the party is understandably outraged, and they send one of their members out to sabotage his carriages while he's distracted trying to handle the townspeople, ensuring that no one will be sent to die that day. Cumore storms off to find whomever was responsible for preparing the carriages, blaming them for the breakdown and intending to punish them; once he's dealt with that, he returns to his private room in the inn for the evening and falls asleep. Meanwhile, the party spends the evening talking about what should be done about him, if anything, only to largely conclude that there isn't much they can do to make Cumore listen to reason. They decide to leave him alone for now and go to sleep; however, Yuri is still angry and upset with Cumore's actions and decides that if Cumore can't be reasoned with, he probably can't be punished in any sort of way that he'd understand and learn from, either. As such, Yuri decides to take matters into his own hands and kill Cumore.
And so Yuri breaks into Cumore's room in the middle of the night with a weapon drawn and startles Cumore awake; visibly shaken, Cumore draws his sword and accepts Yuri's challenge, only to be quickly disarmed. Cumore yells at Yuri a bit, threatening him to try to get him to back off; when that fails, Cumore bolts, running off to the dunes on the outskirts of town only to have to draw up when confronted with a drop leading to a large pit of dry quicksand, where Yuri catches up to him.
Openly afraid now, Cumore begs Yuri to spare him, trying to tell him that he isn't to blame for the atrocities he committed because he was just following orders and had no choice in the matter; he also tries to bribe Yuri with promises of anything he wants, including pardons for all of Yuri's past crimes, instating Yuri as a knight, and anything else that money can possibly buy. Yuri replies by telling Cumore that he only wants one thing from him, and Cumore can blame whomever gave him his orders for his death. Yuri then moves to kill him, only for Cumore to pull away from him and accidentally fall into the dry quicksand below.
Cumore pleads with Yuri to not let him die; Yuri just asks him how many times his victims have begged the same of him before leaving Cumore to die beneath the sand.