The Tynte Family
The Tynte Family was a longstanding line of Malton elite and, right up to the Outbreak, still one of the most influential families in the city. Well-known for its reputation in the fields of culture and the arts, many of them managed to escape the city shortly after the Outbreak, where they now run the Free Malton Organization.
In The Beginning
The Tyntes, originally known as the Tyrleighs, came to Malton back in medieval times (rough estimate; 1659), when the entire town rested in the area encompassed by Havercroft, Stanbury Village, and all the suburbs in between (though they weren't called such at the time). The Tyrleighs were running from their native Cornwall to escape an attack on their family by the Sartains, a rival group with interests in the Tyrleighs' tin mining interests. By the time the family reached Malton, most of the elders were dead, leaving only the youngest son, Fletcher Tyrleigh, and his wife Paula. With the Sartrains' goons hot on their tails, the Tyrleighs settled down in Malton on the very easternmost edge of Ridleybank, changing their name and settling into a life of relative obscurity.
Only one man at the time would become of any note- Harald Tynte. Renowned as reedy but deft and quick of hand, Harald would move southeast into the tiny village of Crowbank, where he set up just beyond its borders and opened Malton's first haberdashery, as well as spawning one of the more embarrassing chapters of family history for the Sartains.
An Obsession With Fatalism
Decades passed. The city grew, and flourished. By 1800 the Tyntes, as they were now known, had spread across the city and then moved on, with only one man of the line remaining in town- Etrius Tynte, a struggling artist then living in a rickety apartment block in Chudleyton. In May of that year he had taken ill with a crippling case of influenza, and was evacuated to St. George's in Ridleybank, where he lay in the crisis ward for two months, half in and half out of a vicious fever.
St. George's keeps immaculate medical records, locked in a vault beneath the hospital, and the date in particular interest to this record is June 17th, 1800- the day a madman broke into the hospital and railed on through the corridors for nearly ten minutes before being hauled off. The records describe him as "ranting on in endless manner about the dead, and their claimance of the area", as well as a lot of typically madman stuff such as gnashing of teeth and flailing wildly. The particular madman has been lost to history (though it is believed that he was a death cultist of the Ridleigh line), but his effects shaped Malton forever- on that day, Etrius began to recover from his fever.
Released and hailed as a miracle of modern medicine on August 9th, Etrius raced back to Chudleyton and locked himself in his apartment right up until the end of the year, only leaving to get food and once when the heat failed for two days in November. As the year closed, the artist approached several prominent figures around the city for backing for his new play- "Vita Ex Silenti".
"Vita Ex Silenti"
The play was a staple of the Malton theater circuit right up until the last major stage theater (The Cowdrey Cinema, named after the famous stage company of the same name, Cowrey Collations) closed in 1956, converting into the Coward 7 Cinema. Vita Ex Silenti, which translated from the original Latin means literally "life from the dead", is a two-act orchestral performance based on Etrius' experiences while in the grip of the influenzic fever. Gripping in its writing and execution, the play describes the trials of a harpist, Enrico Calzani (quite obviously a stand-in for Etrius; the harp was his favorite instrument) who is sentenced to a stay of five years in Purgatory by the court of Heaven for blasphemy (crime against God).
This is not Dante's Purgatory- Tynte's Purgatory is more similar to Dante's Sixth Ring of Hell. Though no fire is present, everything is kept burning hot, and the first act of the play describes Enrico's run of torment in Purgatory. On the way he meets several who try to console him, all obviously based off local Maltonian figures (particularly prominent is Xavier Whisch, a caricature of Xander Whitlock (a man who ran a sizable farm to the northeast of Malton proper), who was a lifetime friend of Etrius'), but to no avail- his depression and suffering become more and more until he stands at the edge of the Pit- intended to represent Enrico's own encroaching madness, and it is at the end of Act One we see him walking its rim, howling at the heavens.
Act Two opens with him still howling, and shortly madness seems to overtake him- he attempts to hurl himself into the Pit and the Lake of Fire at its bottom, seeking any form of release from his anguish. However, he is stopped- as one of the dead grabs him as he hurls himself beyond the brink, hauling him back over. The main body of Act Two is a sizable diatribe about right and wrong and all that stuff, which is impressive to listen to but boring without a good stage set with it. Following the forty-minute doctrine on morality, the dead band together and raise a cry against Heaven for Enrico's release, and after a (thankfully) shorter argument it is given- Enrico's sentence is commuted to one year, which it turns out he has already endured, and he is set free again. Final curtain.
Yeah, So?
So very much. Tynte's play took off like a bottle rocket- audiences in Malton adored the work, and news of the story quickly spread across England- even to London. Suddenly, big names were knocking on the door of Tynte's apartment, where he was unsuccessfully trying to compose a new play, and hence turned many away. But then the door of the ramshackle building actually fell in one day, and Tynte gave up- the play would air in London. While it didn't stand out too much, it was a modest success, and certainly enough to keep Tynte going until the influenza came back and got him in 1818. He was only 40 at the time, and extremely fit- but then, influenza always targets the strong. With his death, too, died the Malton Tyntes- they live on around the world, but none of them ever touched the city streets again.
Vita Ex Silenti rose among critics of theater to the point where it made one appearance on the stage of the vaunted Globe Theater in 1826, and today still makes the rounds of the London theater circuit whenever a new press release is given "From The Walls Of Malton".
Far more important than the play's success was its effect on the city. Up until then Malton as a city didn't even technically exist- rather, it was a loose community of several small villages among the rolling hills of England. But people just HAD to see what the place was like to inspire such a work, and as such the towns finally signed a formal pact of cohesion in 1820, with several suburban councils acting under the direct watch of the mayor. First agenda- clean up the place.
Though Etrius Tynte did almost all of his work in Chudleyton, most people remembered the Tyntes best for their actions and life in Roftwood (not to mention that being the place where the play first was performed). Hence, though the gleaming Tynte Building stands in Chudleyton on the site of Etrius' old apartment, and though the red-brick haberdashery in Vinewood bears his name as well, it is Roftwood where his greatest testament stands- Tynte Mall. Four stories of red-brick and gold-tinted glass, it stands proud atop land donated by the city, and above all its doors is borne the stylized symbol of a harp- a testament to its great namesake, and to one of the primary founding influences of Malton.
