Gregorio Zeppeli

Gregorio is a weathered, mature man whose lined face wears a permanently grave and stern look. His defining trait is his facial hair: a soul patch running from lip to chin, joined by two symmetrical, zigzagging strips of whiskers that trace his cheeks up to his hairline. He keeps his hair short in a flattop while retaining a small ponytail, and he appears across his life in a dark suit, the executioner's garb of his nation, and a surgeon's attire.

Somber and severe, Gregorio roots his devotion in both his monarch and his kin, and treats his triple burden as patriarch, surgeon, and executioner as a sacred honor to discharge flawlessly. He regards the monarch as a servant of God and obeys the law without exception, bristling at any hint of questioning an order. To guard against what he sees as the spiritual weakness bred by sentiment, he keeps almost no friendships, avoids social gatherings, and stays cold even toward his son, yet he never once raises his voice at the unruly Gyro.

He preaches that the Zeppelis belong to the monarchy and have no standing to indulge feeling, and he hands his every skill and conviction down to Gyro, from medicine and the Spin to the executioner's craft and a belief in miracles. For all his harshness, a genuine kindness lives underneath: after Wekapipo's exile he hid the man's sister safely in the countryside, keeping her blinded so that her husband might finally let her go.

A consummate practitioner of the Spin, Gregorio drilled the discipline into Gyro along with the family's every secret, and in his executioner's role he used it to relax the muscles of the condemned so a beheading came cleaner. His parallel trade as a surgeon gave him an intimate command of anatomy, precise enough to attempt reconnecting the optic nerves to the brain, and he trained his son in the Steel Balls to carry on that work. Though the Zeppelis normally reserved death sentences for grave criminals, one case condemned an innocent shoeshine boy, a verdict that struck Gyro deeply, all the more when the child offered to polish his executioner's shoes. Insisting the family served the state and had no say over who lived, Gregorio refused to act, so Gyro appealed to the king and secured a bargain: the boy would go free if Gyro could triumph in the transcontinental Steel Ball Run. Once Gyro had died, the Zeppelis left Naples for good.