Absolution
An Experiment in Immersive Storytelling
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Behind the Scenes:
Character Chart for Ksenija Horvat

Role

• Misunderstood Giovanni. Origin of the curse.

Values

• Nothing is more important than protecting her children.
• Nothing is more important than vengeance against anyone who has wronged her children.

Ambition

• To provide a good life for her two children.

Goal

• To find a safe place to raise her two children.

Conflict

• Ksenija simply wants to escape from her war-torn homeland and get to Naples, Italy, to raise her children. Her journey to Naples is full of tragedy, and when she arrives in Naples, she is violently turned away from God's house by a cruel servant of Him.

Epiphany

• She knows that God is perfect. She learns that men who serve God are sinful, and she takes it upon herself to punish them.

Backstory

•  Ksenija was raised Roman Catholic. Ksenija and her husband lived on the outskirts of Ljubljana, Slovenia, where they had two boys, twins. Her husband fell victim to the ongoing wars in her home country of Slovenia. After his death, she travels to Naples, Italy, with her young twin boys. She's heard that Naples welcomes refugees and thinks it would be a safe place for her children to grow up.

Story Summary

• Her journey to Naples is full of tragedy, and when she arrives, she's turned away from a church by Giovanni Rosiello. With her last bit of strength, she curses Giovanni and his descendants.
• Packing up her meager belongings, she joins up with other refugees leaving the area for Naples. The road is long and harsh, and they are stalked by wolves along the way. During a particularly gruesome massacre in the night, she takes up a pistol from the travel pack of a refugee dragged off by wolves. She prays to God for protection, and to her surprise, the wolves leave her and her children completely unmolested.
• Every night after, she clutches her pistol and prays for protection, and every night her family is left untouched by the wolves. Night after night, refugees in the caravan go missing or are dragged off until she and her twin boys are the only ones left. They travel during the day, and she stays up at night, praying for protection and desperately clinging to the pistol that she has never fired. The wolves stalk in the darkness around her but never attack.
• Exhausted and starving, they finally make it to Naples on Christmas Day. She seeks refuge at the first Roman Catholic church she can find, Santa Chiara. While her twin boys wait for her, she knocks on the church's door to seek entry.
• A balding young man answers the door, and she feverishly tries to explain to him about their terrible journey from Ljubljana. He shuts the door on her and physically blocks her entrance. Tired and frustrated, she screams at him that her children need help, but he doesn't seem to care. She slaps him, punches him, and spits in his face. He strikes her so hard that she falls to the ground.
• Ksenija's anger boils, and she decides that she will bring down the wrath of the God that protected her from wolves on this evil man. She lunges at him and rips some of his hair from his balding head. She runs off, tightly clutching to the hair, to retrieve her children.
• That night, huddled in an alley, she prays to God to bring justice to the evil man. She takes up the earth from beneath her to fashion an effigy of a wolf. She places the hair stolen from the evil man and the bullet from the pistol she never had to fire inside the effigy. She beseeches God to bring forth the wolves to prey upon the man and his descendants. She cuts her own hand and drips her blood upon the clay figure. After she is done with her prayers, Ksenija and her children spend the night in the cold alley, huddled together for warmth.
• Ksenija stalks the Santa Chiara and hears everyone calling him Rosiello. She buries the effigy of the wolf in the ground by the church and keeps an eye on the man for weeks. During the night of the Wolf's Moon, she watches as a huge wolf burst forth from the church and into the night. She is still there when, in the morning, a naked Giovanni stealthily returns to the church, uninjured but covered in drying blood.
• She digs up the effigy and makes sure her children know their story and suffering. She makes them promise that they will continue carrying out her holy retribution by stalking the Rosiello family line and cursing them by burying the statue close by when a Rosiello is near Giovanni's age. Her twin boys promise to keep the vengeful tradition alive as long as the Horvat clan lives. Ksenija, seeing the resolution and fury in her children's eyes, prays that one day God will have mercy upon the souls of the Rosiellos, but that day should only come when one of her direct descendants chooses to sacrifice their own life to save a Rosiello.

Notes

• The Mosaic law explicated the necessity of hospitality. Having known from their years in slavery in Egypt what it was like to be a foreigner at the mercy of their hosts, the Israelites had a special kinship with strangers, which the laws of Moses reiterated: “You shall not oppress a stranger . . . for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Ex. 23:9). In Leviticus, Christ’s golden rule is prefigured: “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Lev. 19:33–34). — from https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/hospitality-is-biblical-and-its-not-optional
• The meaning of the name Ksenija is "hospitality."
• Giovanni has twins after he is cursed, forever linking the Horvats and Rosiellos together.