Rosario Sarrosas-Arroz

History

• Biography

  Rosario's from one of those thousands of alternate Earths with humans, anthros, and the animosity between them. The biggest difference between it and other Earths is the prevalence of Esperanto as a language. While Esperanto in our world was developed by a single person, L.L. Zamenhof, Esperanto in this world is developed by a council of scholars in Italy, centuries earlier during the peak of the Renaissance, with the backing of the Papacy for the spread of Catholicism with a Latin-based but Germanic and Slavic friendly language. There was an attempt made to switch Catholicism over from Latin to Esperanto, with the establishment of schools, academies, and the like. With religion as the common ground, the language and the religion flourished, but pressure from a large number of increasingly displeased conservatives kept it from a complete changeover. Soon, several denominations and branches gave up on the Esperanto project and went back to their Latin roots, while others continued giving services in Esperanto. And when it became apparent that it could reduce some of that annoying mistranslation problems for international dealings, it spread even further, and soon it became the secondary national languages of France, Germany, Italy, Austro-Hungary, the Netherlands, and a number of other countries, as well as completely replacing some minor local languages such as Basque, Luxembourgish, and Gascon.
  
  Rosario was born in a relatively middle class family in the city of Barcelona on November 22nd, 1907. His father, C�sar Sarrosas-Lanudos, was a writer and a member of the Generaci�n del 98, a group of novelists, poets, essayists, and philosophers active in Spain, pushing for the restoration of her literary and intellectual prominence after the Spanish-American War, and his mother, Arista Arroz-Cebada (or Arroz de Sarrosas, if you want to be proper), was a street fruit vendor. After the 1909 Barcelona Revolt, in which their home was ransacked and burned, and his mother's stall destroyed, they moved to Guernica to live with his paternal grandparents, who were the landlords for a small apartment building there, until they could get back on their feet. There, Rosario began his formal education, while his mother and father started somewhat anew.
  
  His school life wasn't too notable. He stayed on pretty good terms with his parents (until he hit that rebellious teenager age), passed with fairly mediocre marks, and made a decent number of friends, some good, some transitive. As the world around Rosario sunk into World War I, Spain flourished economically. In these years, while he was still a fairly young child, he spent his afternoons and weekends helping out at his mother's small fruit and vegetable tienda and his evenings playing pretend war with his friends. After the war ended, however, the economy stagnated and spiraled downward. His mother's shop, having had great business mere months earlier, now was barely making rent.
  
  One evening in November of 1918, Rosario was walking home with his father, now working as a newspaper journalist to support their family. He was feeling unwell and had a light fever, so he had been let off early, and he had promised his child that they would go to buy a "shiny, brand-new toy of his choice" as his birthday gift a few days early if he behaved well, and he certainly did (Rosario was no exception to the characteristic coony attraction to shinees), so they were off to the toy store, a cheery Rosario trailing behind. His cheeriness wouldn't last all that long, however. Suddenly, his father fell into a bit of a coughing fit.
  
  He quickly recovered, however, vowing again to quit his smoking habit before it killed him (Of course, he never did). Tobacco in this world was still very prevalent, although the presence of more sensitive noses generally meant that tobacco was generally heavily scented in order to reduce the acrid smell.
  
  Unfortunately, all was not well when they returned home. His mother had suddenly collapsed in a similar coughing fit and passed out. Having been chatting with a few neighbors over the latest local gossip at the time, she was very quickly taken to the local hospital for treatment. Sadly, she never recovered and died soon after, another victim of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. The news hit hard for him and his father, even moreso when he and his grandfather developed the symptoms of Spanish Flu a few days later. They both, almost paradoxically due to their naturally weakened immune symptoms which reduced the harsh effects of the disease-induced cytokine storm, survived without any post-sickness effects. It wouldn't be for quite a while before he begins to come back from his depressive, reclusive slump, however.
  
  What eventually brought him through these troubled times was, surprisingly, the promised toy his father had bought for him. A tin can containing the latest imported plaything for boys like he: a Meccano set. It certainly had cost C�sar a pretty penny to purchase it, and seeing the box collecting dust wasn't exactly making him feel better about it.
  
  A bit of encouragement was all it took. Rosario took to the mechanical set like a duck to water. He soon became fascinated with mechanical gadgets, to the point of -- years later -- starting to use his pocket money to buy old and broken clocks, crank-run toys, and music boxes to carefully take apart and see their inner workings. But for now, he caught back up in his studies, as well as most of his former friends, and everything was back to normal. He still remembered his mother, but he moved on with the help of his new hobby helping him take his mind off it, as well as the presence of his father and his friends.
  
  With the prodding of his father (despite his views about the established education system), he graduated secondary school with average grades, and even started dating another young 'coon in his neighborhood. By now, the year is 1925, and the era of constitutional monarchy in Spain has ended, and Primo de Rivera's coup d'�tat is a success. As his graduation gift, his grandfather gave him a navaja, a certain type of folding-lock knife, that he had used as a young adult in the military, and his father bought him a Astra Modelo 400 for protection. He also started to do some writing on his own, mostly in the form of a journal expressing his thoughts on the latest current events, the local occurences around town, and even a few fantastical short stories surrounding a chivalrous Zorro-esque (self-insert) hero, La Maskita Ombron.
  
  The hunt for a job was difficult. After several stints of manual unskilled labor, which bored him endlessly, a friend of C�sar had caught wind of his troubles. Finding out from his father that he had a fascination with tiny mechanisms and tinkering with small objects, he offered to take Rosario under his tutelage as an apprentice for his locksmithing business. Arthritis was beginning to take the aging locksmith by surprise, and his last assistant had been caught copying keys and stealing from his clients. Rosario leapt upon the opportunity, and spent much of his young adult years learning of the trade, including working with a few foreign locksmiths and suppliers regarding the cutting edge "clock locks" -- also known as Yale locks -- that had come from England and were growing in popularity.
  
  All the while, he'd listen to radio reports of the dictatorship in Madrid failing, the departure of Alfonso XIII, and the establishment of the new second republic. For several years, he continued like this, working. He counted his blessings almost every day -- it was a continuous, albeit relatively small, source of income in the economically depressed world of Pre-Civil War Spain, and could potentially ship his talents elsewhere and found his own business with a bit more training and economic know-how. Rosario even considered selling his gun, considering that he hadn't needed it yet. That all changed in 1934, however, with the Miner's uprising in the nearby city of Oviedo, its swift crushing by General Franco, which destroyed much of the city itself, and subsequent revitalizations of various anarchist and fascist groups. Swiftly losing faith in finding peace in the near future from both the military/government and revolutionaries, Rosario became a bit more paranoid, and restarted target practice in the farmlands outside town and tried to convince his rather staunchly religious teacher to get a way to defend himself as well. As news of more attacks and uprisings came along with the second republican elections, the town grew tenser, and so did Rosario. He was heading out of town less, suppliers and clients were less inclined to head into town or travel across the country, the news of all the political violence led him to carry his loaded pistol everywhere, and so on. On July of 1936, his fears were realized. Even more widespread violence broke out in Madrid, Barcelona, and several other major cities. For about a year or so, he continued living his life as business declined in the midst of the struggle between "tyranny and democracy," quietly planning and packing to flee the country and all the chaos. He wouldn't leave without his aging grandparents, however, and spent months on end with his equally concerned father trying unsuccessfully to convince them to move.
  
  His efforts proved too slow, for on April 26, 1937, the German Luftwaffe in aid of Spanish nationalist troops, bombed the city of Guernica. At the time, he was dropping off some food to his father, who had been interviewing Izquierda Republicana party leaders over the recent violence, while on the way to crack open a front door whose owner lost the keys to.