The quiet town of Charles Springs (Freeform, modern pulp, action, crime drama)

[mia h]

Basic Premise
Imagine a quiet(-ish) town where everything appears to better than normal, a throwback to a more innocent age where everyone knows their neighbours and doesn't feel the need to lock their doors or put burglar bars on the windows. But being this facade is an extremely well organized and crime syndicate, this organization has done such a PR job they've managed to convince most people they don't exist, they've turned a town that was a wretched hive of scum and villainy into something that's closer to Leave it Beaver.

The quiet criminality of the town is going to be broken when a small group of bikers arrive in town and a plan is formed to displace the current crime boss.

Inspiration from other media
If you took Banshee, Breaking Bad & Springbeakers and stuck them in a blender then that is the sort of feeling the game is trying for.

Welcome to Charles Springs

Welcome to the town of Charles Springs, population 13,478. The town was founded in 1783 and has seen a great many changes over the past two centuries, originally established as little more than a logging camp and trading post it was the discovery of natural spring waters in the hills above what is now Glenn lake by Edward Charles that gave the town it's name. The fortunes of both Edward Charles and the town were vastly improved as the 'perfectly clean and clear mineral waters' were sold to well-to-do New Yorkers as cure for everything. The Charles family owned most of the town which included building a mineral water bottling plant and the towns first paper mill, an industry that has survived in the town until the present day.

The town's fortunes and industries continued virtually unchanged until 1920 and the advent of prohibition, when Charles Springs turned into a hub bootleggers in New York State with the forests and mountains providing hideouts for any number of stills and store houses of Canadian imports. Along with the booming alcohol industry came organized crime and it has never been too far under the surface of life in Charles Springs. The rackets and the bosses might have changed many times since 1920 but there is no part of life in Charles Springs that hasn't been touched by organized crime at some point.

And right now another big change is headed towards Charles Springs, change that will disturb the current order and will leave everyone having to choose sides, a change that is riding into town in a cloud of dust, a cloud of dust left by....

Game Type

The game is going to be freeform and will end up in the Extreme Human section.
The reason it will going in that section is because of the violence elements of the game and not because of any sexual elements.
Because this is a modern pulp game it shouldn't be a big shock if players end up good ol' knock down, drag out fights with all ensuing blood, bruises and broken bones which places it firmly in the Extreme section. However that doesn't mean that absolutely anything goes, anything that wouldn't be suitable for BDSM section has to be agreed on by all players.

[mia h]

Geography

To make life easier the fictional town of Charles Springs, NY is based on the real town of Moreau, NY. All the amenties and attractions of Charles Springs are where you would find them in Moreau although given the organized in crime in Charles Springs the activities are going to be less legal than their real world counter parts. So the airport acts as a hub for smuggling and shipping, the paper mill on Allen Street also acts as meth lab, the resort also has casino that's used to launder money and so on.

Organized crime

Organized crime in Charles Springs has been run by the Lee family for the last 25 years, although how it has been managed has changed radically. Sam Lee was the original head of the family who through guile and brute force took over several rackets in the town before convincing the other criminal bosses that they'd all be better off under his leadership. Two of the other bosses declined the offer and neither they or their families were heard from again.
Sam wanted to build a criminal legacy to last and slowly introduced his children into his life of crime and each of them were soon managing different parts of the empire, with Sam's eldest son Jason being groomed to eventually take over family business. That transfer of leadership came sooner than expected when Sam Lee was gunned down in front of the civic center, the man responsible for the murder was never caught.

There was an immediate change in how crime was run in Charles Springs, with Jason handing security over to his younger brother Peter who created a private army of thugs and enforcers who cracked down on even the slightest hint of disloyalty. Jason also ended up bribing almost every public official in Charles Springs giving him and the criminals virtual carte blanche, crime levels soared and nobody under the Lee's protection felt the need to hide what they were doing. Everyone in town knew that if you ordered pizza from Joe's you could get drugs delivered along with the pizza, eventually Joe's gave up the pretense of being a pizza delivery firm.

Around 10 years ago there was another significant change in the Lee family when Jason and Peter were busted for having drugs in their car by a rookie cop who didn't know any better. What should have been a quite night in the holding cell turned ugly, ending with the death of another inmate and murder charges for the Lee brothers who are now serving life sentences in New York's Upstate Correctional Facility. This meant the family business fell to Sam Lee's youngest child Hannah, knowing that this was the authorities one chance to break up organized crime in Charles Springs she did the unthinkable and turned all of the families criminal ventures into legitimate businesses. She is seen by many residents of Charles Springs as the reason they got their town back from the criminals, and Hannah is on the boards of several local charities. However the truth is very different, there might be less open and obvious crime in Charles Springs but organized crime still exists its just far better managed than it was by the Lee brothers. Not every official is corrupt and taking bribes, just the one's Hannah needs so that the wrong questions don't get asked. The strip club is still a front for an escort service but the services are only available to regulars and nothing is ever allowed to happen on the premises. The meth and ecstasy labs might be producing more than they ever did, but none of those drugs are ever sold on the streets of Charles Springs. There are many people who know the truth about the Lee family business but they also know that saying anything would be the last mistake they ever make.

[mia h]

Characters

While I expect that the majority of characters are going to fall into the first two general groupings there are a couple of other groups that people might fall into.

The Lee "family"
Hannah Lee is the current head of organized crime in Charles Springs and there are a surprisingly large number of people who work for her in some capacity, although only those who are directly involve with the illicit activities are part of the family. The criminal activities require various skilled people from accounts to chemists, from hired muscle to strippers.

The Wade "family"
The new troublesome arrivals are headed for the home of Melissa Wade. Melissa moved to Charles Springs 13 years ago but nobody in the town would guessed at her previous life of crime. The new arrivals have been pointed towards Melissa as someone who can help them, so under Melissa's tutorage they set out to install themselves as the new crime kingpins. The group is very small so each member has a different area of expertise to aid in the family's quest.

The local authorities
These are the fine upstanding local officials of Charles Springs; the Mayor, the Police Chief, even the janitor at the local High School. The levels of corruption and bribery in Charles Springs has dropped off significantly over the last decade, but that doesn't mean everyone is clean. The local criminals still know which skids to grease but in the impending conflict between the Wade's and Lee's the honest and dishonest local authorities may be the deciding factor.

The average Joe's
The citizens of Charles Springs that are just trying to get on with their lives. They are unaware of the depth of the links to crime in their town but as events unfold they end up in the crossfire and may find themselves dragged into the conflict.

NPC's

While I do get a little OCD about organizing NPC's anyone is free to create any NPC they like to move the game along. However I will be maintaining a directory NPC's so that there aren't 12 different owners of the same 7-11.

Character Sheet

Code Select Expand

[b]Player : [/b]
[b]Name : [/b]
[b]Age : [/b]
[b]Gender : [/b]

[b]Occupation(s) : [/b] <Character that work for the Lee family will usually have a legitmate cover occuption for their life of crime for example stripper\escort, Paper mill quality control manger\Head meth cook>

[b]Physical Description\Image : [/b]

[b]Background : [/b]

[b]Sexual Preferences : [/b]


Feel free to either drop a CS here or PM it to me

[Ket]

I'm totes in.

[mia h]

Updated the opening posts with more game info and background.