Gangster's Paradise: Crime Roles, Dark Themes and Everything in Between ( A F A)

[CyranoDeBergerac]

mood music


About me: Like a lot of Americans this year I have spent more time streaming shows than usual. In my case I've been binging through almost all of the crime shows worth watching in the last few decades including: Oz, Sons of Anarchy, Mayans MC, The Wire,The Shield, Breaking Bad, Justified, The Sopranos etc.  I have become fascinated with how we use these types of settings to tell stories. And so I've created my own setting that I now love rping in and exploring some of the same themes as these shows. I have been rping for a little over a decade now, am in my last year of grad school, and am generally sapiosexual- which generally means that the more detail and passion we put into our writing the better. If you make me learn a new word to rp with you I'll love you forever. I'm available for mxf (very experienced) fxf (some experience) mxm ( little experience) fxm (no experience) trans women are women, trans men are men, nb also welcome.

Availability: Currently I'm working approximately 60 hours a week, I am doing my best to reply to every partner at least once a week, sometimes I succeed sometimes I don't. I am still taking on new partners but I'm leaning towards ideas that I mark as very interested though a more unique take on another idea certainly gets my attention. Looking for Isa, Dean and especially JB

About my kinks and Limits: Because of said sapiosexuality, my kink list is fairly extensive, it also varies slightly based on which of my below characters are being used. (Jax and Chico are bastards, JT and Colt are pretty vanilla, Devil Dog is probably standard or can go either way, haven't played Jimmy yet to figure out how he is in the sack. My own limits are scat, vomit, diapers, and bad writing.



My Setting: Haven City is a West Coast city in the fictional state of Jefferson that sits between Oregon and California. It is a dystopia for exploring the dark themes of the American experience. Especially those related to crime, justice, poverty and the systems we create. Just about anyone can be found in Haven City and any kind of crime. At this point in time the largest and most influential criminal organizations are: Di Capri Mafia (Italian), Hong Triad (Chinese) , 13th Street Regulators (multi-ethnic) , 91'er's (African-American), Los Vagos (Latine) , Reaper's Own Motorcycle Club (predominantly white, multi-ethnic) , No Label Gang (Asian, primarily Chinese) ,  the Nords (White supremacists) and the US Government. In order to keep this thread manageable for reader and writer I have kept most of the setting information in a World Building Thread . Most importantly, Haven City is slightly different for every partner. I am also developing variants of the setting for the 1860's (Lawrence Elgin as MC) and the 1920's (Jimmy Fabbri as MC)





My Characters: This world began with Jax and the 13th Street Regulators, but over time it has expanded and with that expansion has come more characters to show more parts of the world. If there is a part of the world you would like to see more of feel free to ask and I'd be willing to make a character or expand on it for you.  I have moved all my fully created characters to their own replies below, in this folder below you'll see characters that aren't as created as them. But they are still available for doing a role with if they interest you.

Characters Currently in Development

Nikolai 'Kolya' Kuznetsov, a Bratva hitman. Playable in the 1990's (first picture) or in modern day


Cody Griggs, Table Rock Reservation Resident, member of the Rogues

Julian Cross, dirty cop of the 70's, 80's, 90's, 2k and today.


Romell 'Big Rome' Woods, pimp and music producer from Queens, coming to Haven City to take over Haven City Records. With hostility if needed.


Zayden Smith, drug dealer from Kansas City coming to Haven City for new opportunities.

PM me if you see anything that interests you here.

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Giacomo 'Jimmy' Fabbri

"This American system of ours ... call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it." - Al Capone

Nickname: Jimmy

Gang Affiliation: Five Points Gang (In his youth) Slight association with the Di Capri Family and the Hong Triad

Birthdate: April 10th, 1895

Height: 5'11"

Weight: 140lds

Hair Color: blonde

Eye Color: Blue

Body Type: Average build, toned.

Tattoos: None

Criminal record: None, suspected of several murders and assaults but nothing proven.

Backstory

Born in one of the tenement slums of Mulberry Street, in the Five Points of Lower Manhattan, the son of a whore from Modena and an unknown man. He grew up in Five Points during the height of the war between Paul Kelly's Five Points Gang and Monk Eastman's Gang. Growing up around that culture of violence, in a world of poverty, it was inevitable that he ended up running with a gang as well. When he was young his mother died and he was taken in by the Di Capri family and was adopted as an honorary Sicilian. Celestino Di Capri and Jimmy formed their own gang that was affiliated with the Five Points Gang, running into future famous gangsters such as Lucky Luciano, Al Capone, Johnny Tarrio, Meyer Lansky etc. They were no one huge, but they made their way.

In 1913, he murdered a member of a rival Irish gang, the brother of a cop, and needed to flee from the consequences. For a year he took shelter in Italy, traveling through the country and visiting historic sights. It was the first time he was actually able to use that mind of his in order to improve and educate himself. By 1914 his travels had brought him to France, on the cusp of the Great War, he enlisted and fought in the trenches as a machine gunner, before catching the attention of officers and being moved to an Escadrille of the Aeronatique Militaire, by the time the war was in its final year he had gone from a simple gunner to a pilot in his own right. During Bloody April he was shot and shot down, breaking his leg in the crash, and needing to crawl his way back to safety through No Man's Land. For his bravery and service he was awarded multiple medals and commendations.

After the War and he had recovered, he returned to America, though he was still wanted in New York. Feeling adrift, he decided to go West, Took an apprenticeship with a private detective named Sol Erdel, and once that period was complete, set up his own shop in Haven City.

"Sample Starter: The Old Lie"

New York City, October 12th, 1912

"What was that name again?" Celestino asked as he put chewed on the butt of a cigarette, looking through his pockets for the pack of patches that he had just taken from the last saloon that the pair had been in.

Celestino 'Cel' Di Capri and Giacomo 'Jimmy' Fabbri were childhood friends, one from the Old Country and the other born here in America. They started out in the same tenement slum. Barely enough room to breath, let alone to move, and the kids in that place and either come together into gangs just for the strength in numbers or they were the ones who ran from the gangs because they lacked the numbers. Di Capri and Fabbri had been the former, quicker and more cunning than many of their counterparts they had drawn the attention of their elders. Paul Kelly of the Five Points Gang and he had given them work.

Real work, true vocational criminals, saved from wage slavery and decrepitude. It did not matter to Paul Kelly who your parents were or what they did. Jimmy's blonde hair and bombardier eyes that marked him as Northern Italian on his whore-mother's side and who the fuck knew what on his nameless father's side did not matter to Paul Kelly, so long as he brought in his dues and did what he was told to do there was little else that truly mattered to the behind-the-scenes politician and racketeer.

The same could not be said for other outfits. The Black Hand had crossed the ocean decades ago and other organizations had come with them. Camorra, 'Ndrangheta, and La Cosa Nostra. Each very particular about the lineages of their members. Yet, the Five Points was perhaps the most cosmopolitan place in the world and it had given Giacomo a good, cosmopolitan education in the school of hard knocks. there was no other place that Jimmy knew of where he could walk down the street and be called a 'bastard' and a 'son of a whore' in Italian, Gaelic, Yiddish, and half a dozen other languages before ever hearing it in English. And if he wanted to be called a bastard in Mandarin then it was a short walk to Chinatown and points beyond.

"Jonny the Cripple." Jimmy answered his question neutrally, the two of them sheltering from the fall winds in a side alley, just far enough back that they could not be seen by the gamblers rolling bones against the wall across the street. Their target was the muscle of the game, making sure that nobody snatched up the pot and ran who had not earned it. Their mark was easy to make out, even from this distance, he was the one lounging slovenly against the corner, a bottle of laudanum moving from his lap to his lips and back. Always with his left hand. The right never left the butt of the sawed-off that was hiding underneath a pile of newspapers.

"Why do they call him the cripple?" Cel asked, now searching his pants for the missing light. Jimmy's own cigarette sent smoke drifting up towards the heavens, wafting in the wind across the city in the direction of the skeletal skyscrapers that working men were building for who knows what reason. 

"Probably something to do with those missing fingers." Jimmy answered without looking at Cel, spying the missing ring and little finger on the man's left hand.

�Cel grunted, now looking for the matches in his socks. "Will you just fucking lose mine?" Jimmy complained, removing the half-smoked homeroll from his mouth and pressed it against the smoke in Cel's mouth until a blaze was really going. Neither of them said sorry, neither of them said anything. Just finished their smokes and waited until Jonny stood up to take a piss, walking across the street directly towards them.

"Wait for it. Wait for it... NOW!" Celestino called the shot and then the two boys who thought they were men stepped out of the alley in unison, raising revolvers up from their and filled the street with the song of death.

"Kadokhes!" Jonny cursed as the bullets tore through him.

�Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!

They did not stop shooting until Jonny hit the ground with his white shirt stained red.

"Hoy! Stop! Police!" Celestino was already running, but Jimmy was turning in the direction of the voice, a copper peeling down the pavement from the corner. "Don't you move you bastard!" The cop shouted, reaching for the pistol at his waist.

Giacomo moved. Only as much as it took to pull a trigger.

�Passchendaele, October 12th, 1917

I suppose all things considered, I'm lucky to be alive.

Blood matted and stained his blonde hair, painting his brow, but fortunately not flowing down into his eyes. The crackle of fire and the screams of machine guns filled his ears. Smoke, the burning of the SPADs.XIII's copper frame. Pain. Left leg. Crushed? No, he could wiggle his toes in his boots. Broken. More than once.

Drip.

Fuel flowed down from above and splashed onto the instruments of his dashboard.

Fuel. Fire. Need to move.

It was not a thinking thing that dragged itself from his cockpit and into the muck and mire of No Man's Land. He screamed, but he doubted that anyone heard him over the sounds of war and battle. The muck was cool, the muck felt safe. German bullets tore through the frame of his plane, hoping for a blind shot to take his life. Flame took hold of the fuel lines, there was little enough left but what was there exploded into life, a cherry of red and yellow amidst all this grey.

The Allies had advanced and the Germans had driven them back. Giacomo Fabbri lay there in the mud, feeling himself sink into it, but he waited. Minutes turned into hours. Grey day turned into black night. Now, slowly, always slowly, he began to crawl.

His arms did most of the work, swimming through the black earth. Right leg kicked, digging in at the knee, doing its best to drag his screaming left leg through hell.

Every breath threatened to drag his back or chest up above the horizon, and catch a bullet marked 'to whom it may concern.' His uniform soaked up the killing mud, weighing him down even more with every breath he took. Even breathing was death.

History and air reconnaissance reported that it was about a mile and a half from Passchendaele ridge, where the Germans were dug in, to the start of the Allies lines. His plane had crashed closer to the allies than the Germans.

See lucky.

Jimmy told himself as he stopped to regain his breath next to a puddle of mud-water. His plane had only crashed a mile away from the Allied lines. Not the entire distance and not behind German line. Pessimistically optimistic, the pilot heaved himself a few inches forward and brought his parched lips to the foul water. He drank as if it were milk from his whore-mother's breasts, or the blood of Christ Himself. The lukewarm lake easing the burn in his throat and the strain in his muscles. If only slightly. Who knew when he would get his next chance to sate that thirst.

Turning his eyes again to the west, he imagined that he could still see the setting sun as his muscles and bones begged for mercy yet received none. His next break came when he found his first body in the dark. Ridges of mud indistinguishable from ridges of bodies, his fingers gripped the top of a cleft and dug deep into red-mush until they grabbed at skull and bone. Roiling back in terror it took every ounce of willpower he possessed to not scream out. Staring at his bloodied hand in the dark time lasted forever until memory could return. Wiping the remnants of humanity off on the dead soldier's uniform he hefted himself over to the side and around the ruin that was once a man's skull.

The next bodies were spread too wide to move around. Digging elbows into ribcages, Jimmy scrambled over, diving into the next dip for fear of bullets from either side. Then he retched until his whole body heaved emptiness.

"Ave Maria, gratia plena," The words of the nuns mouthed from his lips as his elbows hauled himself forward, through the mud to the next pile of corpses. Sight stopped. Pain became everything, and then nothing. So much nothing. Endless, eons of nothing. Ended not by the first prick of the barbed wire, but by the shot of a sentry flying over his head.

"Aidez moi! Aidez moi! Pilote! I'm a fucking pilot!" His voice croaked French, then panicked back to Five Points finest. With that last exertion, he lay in the cool mud as dawn began. Rain falling down on his catatonic corpse.


Haven City, January 17th, 1921


�Fabbri's Private Investigations looked much as one might expect a solo practicing detective firm to appear, especially in a city so beset by criminality and debauchery as Haven City.

If you wanted the police they were down the block with the prohies and the g-men. If you wanted a gangster to solve your problems then you picked a direction and walked, one would find you shortly. If you wanted a soldier you went to the Fort. If you wanted all three then you found Jimmy Fabbri, and you left your comments about the state you found him in to yourself, grazzi. �

Rent in this hellhole city lost between the Wild West and the 20th century was cheap, but it was not so cheap that a private detective's salary could cover two rents and keep him equipped in snitches and the equipment needed to complete his work.

On the bright side, a trick of Haven City's climate meant that snow was rare, and even rarer that it stayed on the ground for more than a few days. Rain and cold, but little snow.

It was a fact that Fabbri appreciated as the crackle of lightning stirred him from his slumber, but not so quick as the crack of thunder. His 'bed' was a hammock hanging from nails placed into the wall behind his desk. Blinds closed for some peace and privacy. His office did look out on Main Street after all.

A knock on the frosted glass of his office door echoed the thunder and truly drew the detective from his dreamless sleep.

"One- One minute!" Jimmy called hoarsely as he rolled from the hammock as dexterously as his one good leg could allow. Broken fibula and tibia, combined with a fracture in his thigh meant that doing anything but putting his best foot forward was no longer an option for the former torpedo, former pilot, current private dick. Three suits were all that filled his closet worthy of public observation. The one that he had just slept in, the one he wore on special occasions and the one that he would sleep in tomorrow night. Frugality made a poor man rich after all.

His boots hit the wood floor hard enough that whoever was on the other side of the door no doubt heard his weight bringing them down beneath him. Sleeping with your boots on meant you could die in your sleep. Suspenders pulled up, creased in-line with his shoulder holsters. Right side was for the Colt .45, left was for the Star Model 14. His cross draw was better than his swing dance. Down in his boot was hidden a Trench knife, just in case somebody came in close enough to make that a necessity.

It was simple enough to inventory his attire. His office was another thing entirely.

The furniture consisted of one chair, an armoire, his disheveled desk and desk chair, a coat rack (opposite of the armoire), a disheveled filing cabinet to match the desk,  and a rug that the previous occupant had neglected to take with them for one reason or another. There was no waiting room save for the hallway, though the office did come with a bathroom that was about a third of the size of the entire office. The detective retreated to the water closet for a moment to check his appearance in the mirror, bringing with him the half-drunk bottle of sixty-three day old grape juice that had fallen asleep on his desk.

Adjusting his hair, the former aviator gave himself a sink-shower to wipe the shadows out from beneath his eyes and slapped his gaunt cheeks twice to scare off the last of Orpheus' charms. Spanish flu had found him while his leg was recovering in hospital and while he had survived the dual-ordeals, much of the man he had been had not.

Limping from the shitter he fled his shade and drug himself across the floor to the door, all the while passing meticulous records of what he knew about the goings on in this city, written in his own code and then translated into French. What might seem to be paranoia to some was just the proper amount of caution in the life that he lived. Contained in his notes were the goings on of bootleggers, opium dealers, pimps and politicians.

There might be no other person who could connect the dots of all that had changed about Haven City since the passage of the Volstead Act in a way that touched at nearly every corner of the underworld. The Hong Triad, still peddling opium and pretty women dockside. With the Dragon Head's blessing, Jimmy's old friend Celestino Di Capri had begun to pirate rum-runners making the journey south from Vancouver to San Francisco, providing quality spirits to compete against what the locals could brew in bath tubs and stills. Those local brewers called themselves the Fenians and they peddled violence and rotgut to buy guns for the Cause back in Ireland. all 32 counties would be free if things could be as they would be. Between all of these factions there was the Xanadu in Freeport. Haven City's first jazz club, black owned and black operated, and between there and an opium den in Chinatown the most likely place to find Jimmy when he was not working a case. There were others in the game of course, White Russians along the Boneyard and the Mexicans in La Libertad, but there Jimmy did not know the language, and that meant different complications came with that work.

All of everybody's business laid out in gibberish across his desk and in his filing cabinets. The detective stooped to restore a pile that had fallen from one place or the other onto the floor, then he closed his journey to his door.

"Apologies for the delay, I was sleeping." Giacomo said bluntly as he pulled the door open, unsure if he was hoping to see his next case, or a new secretary.

Roles:

• The Chanteuse/lounge singer at a bar Jimmy frequents
• A flapper, especially a student at the newly coed HCU or a rich man's daughter
• A nurse who had known him in Europe
• A nurse at the VA hospital in Haven City
• The widow of a murdered man, wants Jimmy to solve the case
• Jimmy's secretary
• A friend from NYC
• Your standard femme fatale
• The child of the head of the Hong Triad
• A Hong Triad prostitute or opium dealer
• A teen runaway known for running scams
• A clients cheating wife.
• Celestino Di Capri, one of his relatives or his wife
• A girl he meets at the Xanadu Jazz Club
• A Russian refugee, possibly a Bolshevik or anarchist

Musical Inspiration:

Playlist

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Thalia Greene

“Prison is like high school with knives.” -Raegan Butcher

Nickname: None

Gang Affiliation: None

Birthdate: Either 05/09/2001 or 10/10/2003

Height: 5'6"

Weight: 123lbs

Hair Color: Brown

Eye Color: Hazel

Tattoos: Five black birds on her left foot, (matching tattoo with her mom), maybe a prison tattoo

Criminal Record: Breaking and Entering

A Story of Two Thalia's

You might have noticed that Thalia has two birth days listed, that's because her age varies slightly depending on which story you might be interested in doing. If we want to do something with her time in prison then she would be freshly eighteen like the second date. If we want to do something with her time outside of prison then she would've just turned twenty-one. In either case the beginning of the story remains the same.

Elena Greene was a young, recent college graduate with a degree in social work when she had her daughter Thalia. The pregnancy wasn't planned, and the father wasn't in the picture, but Elena knew enough about the foster system to not want to give her child up. Instead, at twenty-three, Elena took on the challenge of raising her daughter and working a full time job in one of Haven City's worst neighborhoods, Oak Hills. Yet somehow, Elena not only made it work but became a foster mom to many other children along the way.

Thalia grew up street smart, staying away from the corner boys and anyone else who might drag her into a life that Elena was trying to protect her from. Sure she still went to the same school with bars on the windows and metal detectors as everyone else, but she got good grades, stayed out of trouble and barely went to any parties. Following graduation it looked like she'd actually be able to get out, two years at community college and then two years at HCU and she'd be able to take her degree and get the fuck out. Then she met Raquel.

Raquel wasn't her girlfriend, if Thalia had taken the time to stop and think that summer she'd have felt really guilty for becoming a cheater, but there was something about Raquel that made her feel alive. Which meant she started doing a lot of stupid shit that she shouldn't have. For instance, breaking into rich people's houses on the Terrace and taking things that they didn't think would be missed. It had just been some harmless fun, getting her wild side out now so that she could focus on school again in the fall, until the day they got caught. The pair hadn't even finished hopping the fence into the house they were going to hit when the neighborhood watchman came around the corner, quick on the trigger. Raquel got away, but a hollow point splintered on Thalia's left shoulder and took her down. A plea deal kept her sentence low, three years at Pistol River Women's Prison, with the first six month spent in the hospital with one arm in a slung and the other cuffed to the bed.

Pistol River was where the problems really began. Young, weak and pretty, Thalia was popular from the start, with lots of women looking to get up close and personal with her. She had walked into prison hoping to keep her head down and serve out her time, but she would quickly find that that wasn't happening. Instead she would need to do everything in her power to make it out of prison in tact , mentally and physically, and on time.  [this is where the '03 birthdate starts].

Eventually she makes it out on time, with a whole new outlook on the world and fewer prospects than she had getting into it. She moves back in with her mother and starts trying to rebuild her life, making a bit of money fighting in the Pits when she can and looking for work. [This is where the 01 date starts]

Roles:

• Raquel either sentenced to prison for something else, or on the outside.
• The girlfriend she cheated on
• A cop or stripper
• One of the other fighters in the Pits
• A gang member of leader in prison who makes Thalia her bitch
• A prisoner who takes Thalia under her wing to protect her
• A new girl to the prison after Thalia has made herself into someone with influence
• Thalia's cell mate
• A prison guard who protects Thalia in return for favors
• One of Thalia's foster siblings

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Jaide Verga

“Karl Marx: "Religion is the opiate of the masses."

Carrie Fisher: "I did masses of opiates religiously.”

Nickname: None

Gang Affiliation: 13th Street Regulators, Rogue Boyz,

Birthdate: 02/28/1997

Height: 5'7"

Weight: 127lbs

Hair color: Brown

Eye color: Green

Tattoos: J A X on her right knuckles R E G S on her left knuckles; stylized 13 behind her left ear, property brand on the small of her back, Tree of Life between her shoulder blades, patterns on the backs of her legs.

Criminal Record: Public intoxication, public indecency, DWI, drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace, driving without a license, possession of a controlled substance

Her Story

Life had Jaide's number from the fucking jump. Her mother Briana was a high school drop out, teen mom and stripper. Her father, Che Verga was a member of the biker gang Vibora, had bastards up and down the west coast and a family out at Table Rock indian Reservation, and at that point was holding down 13th Street for Los Vagos as a favor from his charter president Antonio Reyes to Los Vagos Corona Alejandro Reyes. If mommy and daddy issues were Jaide's biggest issues then she would've counted herself lucky. Instead she grew up in a city at war. At three her father became malinche, a traitor to both gangs when he became a founding member of the 13th Street Regulators. At seven, the war ended, but her best friend's father was murdered in the park they used to play in. At thirteen, Jax joined the gang and she became his girl. At sixteen she was pregnant. Then things got worse.

The pregnancy was tough and left Jaide in a lot of pain. The doctors had started her off on vicodin, and the troubles had followed after that. With a baby daddy that dealt H, oxy and codeine weren't hard to get ahold of, everything short of heroin and fentanyl she could get her hands on to numb the pain. When Jax was with her she was able to keep her shit together well enough to barely get through high school and to take care of their son. Then he went to prison and something in her broke. One day his mother came home to find Jaide OD'd on the couch, a small carpet fire and JJ sleeping in their bedroom. That had been the last straw for Kate and Jax. Kate dropped her off at rehab and never looked back, the next week a phone call from Jax promised her that she would never see their son again and that if she tried to go back to 13th Street, no one would be seeing her anymore.

For once in her life her dad came through for her, coming to pick her up after her thirty days in rehab and hiring her an attorney to see if there was any way she could keep custody of JJ. Unfortunately, even with Jax in prison, his mother still had better standing than a recovering addict, so the answer was no. From one fuck up she had lost her home, her friends, and her son. Over the next six years Jaide fluctuated in and out of sobriety and jail, couch surfing, living at a clean-living community and at her father's house with his wife and legitimate kids.

At the moment she is sober, but struggling, her main income coming from growing and dealing weed that she gets from a friend in Haven City. Still not over Jax, and not coping with her trauma she finds it difficult to form lasting relationships. People she comes into contact with fall into two categories, enablers who push her closer to returning to addiction, and saviors who could help her get her life on track. I'm open to roles with either and will be adding specific scenarios later.

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Jacob 'Jax' Jackson

You'll be walking down the street and you'll see a bunch of black dudes walking, not just any old black dudes, we're talking "thugs". And in the group, they got one, or two, sometimes as many as three white guys with them, you ever seen that shit? Well let me tell you something about those white guys. Those white guys are the most dangerous motherfuckers in them groups. It's true, man. There's no telling what kind of crazy shit they've done to get them black dudes respect, but i'll tell you they've done some wild shit.
Dave Chappelle, Killing Them Softly

Stats
Name: Jacob Jackson

Nickname: Jax

Gang Affiliation: 13th Street Regulators

Age: 1/19/1997

Height: 6'3"

Weight: 200lbs

Hair Color: Brown, shaved short. brown beard.

Eye Color: Brown

Sexuality: Bisexual (closeted)

Body Type: Light Heavy Weight, broad shoulders.

Tattoos: five dots on the webbing of his right hand, webbing on his right elbow, 13, colored in red with 13 white stars on right forearm, dagger on left forearm, upside down cross on his back, star on left elbow, date of father's death on ribs, banner across his chest.

Criminal record: A&B, multiple speeding tickets.

Ride: 1973 Chevy Camaro customized and decalled

Backstory

Born January 19th 1997, the son of a teenage clerk at a liquor store and a retired Marine paying for his drinking problems with a disabilities check. The 13th Street he grew up on was a war zone, a crossroads between the turf of the four largest gangs in the city. Murders happening every night and day; the sounds of gunshots and screams lulling him to sleep at night. Sick of the environment and the violence John Jackson and his close friend Jon Gayle joined together to form a gang to 'regulate' the violence of the community around them. As the third millennium dawned the 13th Street Regulators were born. Slowly, yet surely, over a period of four years the Regulators brought peace to their city. However, the price of peace was not cheap. After a Nord drive-by on a Regulator family gathering left Jon Gayle in the hospital John Jackson went on a months long rampage; watering the streets with Nord blood. Not even Gayle could call him off. John's rampage came to an end one morning when his body was found in the park where his son played. From that moment on, Haven City knew (relative) peace.

Fatherless, Kate Jackson did all she could to raise her son, with the assistance of his godparents, Jon and Joan Gayle. Jax grew up knowing his father was a legend of the Streets and his mother was one of the most prolific gun-runners in the Pacific Northwest. Always intelligent, Jax is one of the lucky few who could have 'got out', but from his early teens when that opportunity first seemed truly possible he found the idea seemed to be no different than abandoning his community and friends. Refusing to be so selfish he joined the 13th Street Regulators at the age of thirteen, insisting he not be spared the 'beat in' due to his father's legacy.

Jax's early career was marked with both ingenuity and violence. Much of his money was made dealing pills and marijuana to students at uptown schools and through leading members of his crew of the Regs in 'scrimmages' against young members of other gangs, especially Los Vagos and Nords. 'Scrimmages' were street fights between the young affiliates and members of gangs where the fighters would meet on a secluded back street and fight with fists, bats, and knives. At the age of sixteen Jax's son Jacob, Jackson, Jr. was born to Jax and his longtime girlfriend Jaide Verga. From there, their relationship began to spiral out as Jax's infidelities and Jaide's growing opiate addiction strained the relationship. It was around this time that Jax began fighting in the underground fight club known as the Pit.

Jax graduated high school and appeared to be going up in the world, until an encounter with a Nord outside of a bar left him behind bars. The Nord had spat on Jax's friend Tyrone Freeman; Jax had responded to the insult by beating the man's face until it was roughly the consistency of hamburger. Thanks to good lawyering and favorable circumstance what should have been an obvious aggravated assault conviction was negotiated down to a guilty plea to Assault and Battery. Jax was sentenced to twenty months in Denne State Penitentiary to begin the day after his nineteenth birthday. While inside Jax would kill his first two men, the first a member of the Nords who was trying to murder Jax in revenge. The second an informant who Jax needed to kill in order to maintain protection and make peace. His time in prison would prove to be fortuitous as while Jax was behind bars, Jon Gayle was videotaped murdering a state's witness and an investigation into the Regulators went federal. Had Jax been on the outside he likely would have been the one incriminated.

Upon release Jax faced two major challenges: he had lost his girlfriend to opiate addiction and his gang was under the threat of a RICO case during a leadership crisis. OG's of the gang put Jax forward as the successor to Gayle and he officially took over the position (helping mitigate the RICO case) in the fall of 2019 when Gayle was sentenced to fifteen to life for murder. Jax now must guide his gang in the difficult process of rebuilding following a federal investigation while fielding challenges to his authority and the peace his father died for from rival gangs.

Timeline

Since Jax is my main, and has been for a while, I've established a sort of timeline I play with him. I'm willing to play during any point on this timeline that is within the rules. This timeline is of course flexible based on the roles. But works as a good starting line.



1997: January 19th, Jax is born

2000-1: The Regs are founded

2004: John Jackson is found murdered in Glenwood Park.

2010: Jax joins the Regs, gets his first tattoo

2013: Jax's first son (Jacob Jackson, Jr. is born)

2015: Jax graduates high school.

2016: January, Jax is arrested for beating a Nord's face into hamburger for spitting on one of his friends. Pleads guilty to A&B and is sentenced to 20 months. February,kills his first man.

2017: Jon Gayle is recorded shooting a bound man. Is arrested not long after Jax is released from prison. What follows is two years of investigation, indictment and the trial.

2019: Jon Gayle is sentenced to 15 to life for murder, a push by OG's places Jax in his shoes while Gayle is behind bars.

It's All in the Name

Whatever your people called it: the Game, the Street, the Life, the rules remained the same.

Black, white, brown, yellow, red, no matter what your skin color was there wasn't much you could hope for when you came up hard. You couldn't hope for college, too poor for starters but you weren't going to make any friends in the school system the way you needed to be. You could joke about the NFL, NBA, or even the MLB, but there was no hope in it. Life wasn't a Disney movie like that. Might be if you had a talent you could end up wearing a gold chain and standing on a stage. You weren't planning to live your life long enough to collect Social Security, and only bitches died in their sleep. No, all you could really hope for, all you could really dream on, was that one day your name would ring out in some real way. Maybe even become a Legend behind that thing you do.

At one time Jax had had a choice, a teacher had approached him and told him that he had real potential, with enough meat between his ears that he could get out of the hood and go on to do something real with his life. All of those big pie in the sky dreams that teachers wanted from their best students. President of the United States, doctor, lawyer, neuropathic brain surgeon. They'd come at him with all of the speeches every time that he got suspended, went to juvie, or anything else that had him sitting in that same worn ass chair in the principal's office as always. They'd played it like he had a choice in what he was doing with his life every single time. And every single time he made the choice that they called wrong. But to him, it always felt right.

His family had built these streets, these hills. His grandfather's grandfather's grandfather had been spilling blood on the Street back when the Street was made of mud. That had been his mother's people doing that work. The OG Irish boys putting in the work from gold mines to Prohibition and beyond. When the neighborhood had started changing, started looking less monochrome, most of them had lost heart but his grandfather had stood tall and stuck on running a liquor store on one of the most dangerous corners in the entire city and never once getting knocked over or stole from. His father had met his mother working the counter at that liquor store, in the perfect hoodrat meet cute. Him being a veteran cashing his disability check, her being the one needing to get paid. Nine months later, or about that, Jacob John Jackson had been born.

Jacob. That had been what his mother named him and that's what she still called him, but his sandbox crush had tripped her tongue up on Jacob Jackson and given him a new name that he'd carried with him ever since. When his name rang out at the end of a fight, or as a line reference in some hometown hero's rap that was the name that sang. Jaide had given him the best years of his life, a ride or die, a son and a name. She'd held his hand while he cried and they put his dads mutilated body into the ground. Then she'd taken it all away. One OD that nearly burnt the house down and Jax had done something that he didn't know if he regretted or not. Promising her that if he ever saw her near his hood again that that would be the last time anyone ever saw her alive again. That had been two months into his time up the coast, not long after he'd killed his first man. That memory started to flash back, the four Nords coming for his life, the glass shive flashing in the light, aerated blood flying out of the skinheads neck, flowing down into the drain looking like cherry pop.

Shaking his head he knocked the memories and all the philosophy out of his head. This was the type of shit that happened when he smoked wet weed after getting his dick wet. Ended up thinking all those deep thoughts that he was trying to get rid of. He was a King now, responsible for all of the Regulators in Haven City, with ties to sets all across the country and a voice that could reach most places in the world. And with all of that power came all kinds of responsibility. Passing the joint dipped in LSD to the naked girl he was holding in his right arm he looked her in the eyes, wondering if she was a body he was going to regret.

"This shit is strong girl, so you be careful alright?"

Potential Roles:

• Jax's ride or die girl who pushes him to be more ambitious
• Daughter of the Di Capri mob boss going slumming
• An affiliate/female relative of one of the other gangs
• Jax's drug addicted baby mamma, fresh from rehab (Jaide or your own take on the character.)
• One of the girl's at Phantasies
• A lawyer/paralegal who is part of the firm that defends the Regs
• A girl with a "legitimate job" who finds herself falling for Jax
• Stereotypical good girl/bad boy
• The mayor or someone in her family/office
• A real estate woman who had an "arrangement" with Gayle
• A girl who grew up on 13th Street and has always been close to Jax
• A girl who 'got out' of the life but finds herself dragged back in
• A pop/hip hop star who had the gang's help to become famous and now needs another favor
• An undercover cop, could be part of the Gayle investigation or looking for the Mafia connection
• Jax's cellmate in prison, whether MxM or a pre-op trans woman.
• your idea

Musical Inspiration:

Playlist

His Type

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Francisco 'Chico' Reyes

“In attempting to maintain the existing order, the powerful commit crimes of control. … At the same time, oppressed people engage in … crimes of resistance." Victor Rios, Punished:Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys

Name: Francisco Reyes

Nickname: Chico,

Gang Affiliation: Vagos

Age: 24 (Same rules when it comes to timeline as Jax, I'll play him anywhere between c.16-23)

Height: 5'7"

Weight: 165lbs

Hair Color: Black

Eye Color: Brown

Body Type: Middleweight,

Tattoos: Stylized V on his right bicep, black dagger (stiletto) on his left calf, "Los Vagos" on his knuckles, 555 on the back of his neck,  hands praying the rosary on his left bicep, 'La Vida Loca' on his collar bone, five dots on the back of his left hand, webbing on his left elbow, weed plant on his right calf,

Criminal record: Possession of marijuana, dealing, assault, petty theft, shop-lifting, drag racing, possession of stolen property, resisting arrest,

Backstory

Born September 13, 1996 to Alejandro 'Rojo' Reyes and Miranda Reyes. Alejandro was the leader of Los Vagos street gang at that time, his father had been a founding member and other members of the extended Reyes family were involved in the criminal organization. This link, along with policing policies and cultural prejudices all but guaranteed that Chico and his younger siblings were criminals from birth. Born during the height of Los Vagos power in the city, when they controlled much of the inner city south of Route 91, Francisco was considered 'the little prince' of the city for the first few years of his life.

Unfortunately, those same years also included the decline of Los Vagos, coinciding with the rise of the 13th Street Regulators. Chico's father was arrested in 2003, not long after making a peace deal with the Regulators where Los Vagos ceded control of Oak Hills to the Regulators. Alejandro was relieved of control of Los Vagos, though still respected, and replaced by Chico's uncle. Alejandro was sentenced to fifty years of prison in Denne State Penitentiary, up for parole in seventeen, leaving Chico both effectively fatherless and the man of his household at the age of eight. Miranda worked to help feed her young family, and of course Los Vagos kicked money back to her, but it was still a struggle.

When Chico was ten his father was attacked in Denne and put in a coma. Chico began acting out, getting into fights at school; hanging around with his cousin Cesar and other Vagos; smoking, drinking and engaging other problem behaviors. Around this same time the Libertad and Oak Hills school districts were merged into one, so children of Los Vagos members had to go into enemy territory in order to get their education and government provided breakfast and lunch. While his younger siblings went to the local Catholic schools, Chico had already been expelled from them and so went to public school where he met one of his greatest rivals, Jax. The two would compete at everything; fighting over the smallest of reasons: from drugs, to girls, to sports, to just because. Chico was often the leader in 'scrimmages' between the youth of Los Vagos and those of the Regulators. One of the fuels for the fire of their rivalry was that Jax seemed to manage to avoid almost all comeuppance for his crimes, while the authorities came down hard on Chico. He spent more time in juvenile detention than he did in high school, with all but the dealing and resisting arrest charges under his criminal record being from before he was eighteen.

Chico was arrested for dealing marijuana and resisting arrest in the winter of 2014 as part of a push by the Mayor and new Chief of Police to have a larger arrest rate at the end of the year. They shipped him off to Denne before the New Year with a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. He left two baby mama's one pregnant and one with a two year old; as well as his family, on the outside, becoming the third generation of Reyes men to spend a portion of their life at Denne.

While in Denne, Chico did his best to behave as a model prisoner, finishing his GED, volunteering at the infirmary to be closer to his comatose/mentally handicapped father, and working as a firefighter out in the hills during the many flare ups and wildfires that plagued the West Coast during his time in prison. There were of course the inevitable blemishes on his record, but nothing serious enough to charge him with more time or prevent him from working in the dangerous line of work he was enjoying engaging in. Now Chico has served his time and been released, getting a job at his cousin's auto garage while looking into work for wildfire fighting for the next fire season. His time served, he is looking to provide and thrive in the freedom he has been missing for half a decade.

En el fuego

Who the fuck wants to live on the side of a mountain?!

Chico had been asking himself that a lot ever since starting work as a firefighter for the prison. Most of the fires that they were sending convicts on were the ones that the civilian and professional fighters didn't want to go to, or that were so bad that they needed all hands on deck in order to properly contain the conflagration. Both added up to the same thing in the end though. Chico hoofing it for miles up and down some pinche tu madre mountain in the Cascades protecting some rich bastard's winter home from getting burnt up in a fire one of his dipshit 'neighbors' started doing some dipshit white people shit. Some days though there were actual people they were helping by keeping these fires where they needed to be. Which was a strange concept for a man like Chico.

Either way, fighting fires was almost as good as dealing and murdering as far as Chico was concerned.

Once he had finished sucking in water and catching his breath it was time to get hiking to the exfil. And then back to prison.

"Reyes, you hear me Reyes?" Price was a Regulator, which meant he was a snitching pussy who needed his tongue torn out of his throat, but before he had caught fifteen years for first-degree arson he had been a firefighter in Haven City. That, plus all of the favors that the Regulators got for snitching and bribing the hacks, meant that he was the convict in charge when they were in the field. There was also a hack supervisor there, but he didn't do half as much as Price did to make sure they got everyone back alive. Al-in-all, Chico liked the motherfucker.

"I hear you Price, que pasa?" Most of what the CO supervisor did was watch the radios to keep the cons honest, double check the equipment on the way in and out to make sure that they hadn't stashed any of the pieces to use in the yard later, and half-ass his job of making sure they all got home safely.

"Briggs had the line break on him, 'bout three quarters of a mile down the ridge to your left, land clearer did its job so we're not getting swept up. Just need you to take a different way out. You head down the mountain to the north-west, off to your right a little bit, there's a house with a helipad where we're doing evacs. Get over there as soon as you can, everyone south of you is good to go to the truck. Over." Chico knew what Price was doing, what the move was in the Life they both lived. When you had eyes on the crown you always needed to be on watch for these things. Not every move involved killing your op. There were other ways to be.

"Heard. Price. Reyes out." Another good part of this line of work, it kept you in amazing shape. Running downhill was a lot harder than running anywhere else in the world. Chico had been running corners his whole life, the steps where he first learned to walk had been blood red before he'd even said his first words, jumping fences and sliding over cop cars didn't do much to prep you for barreling down a rocky mountain wearing a full kit. Force once he was glad no one trusted him to carry an ax. His heart was pounding in his chest and his eyes stung with sweat as he stumbled down the last bit of mountain and crested onto the road right above the ridge. The fire was at his back as he ran a third of a mile further up the hill and onto the helipad next to someone's driveway. The helicopter was filled with the prison crew, plus some politician, his wife and her step-kids. There was barely any room of the thing before Chico moved to get on it.

"My Teddy! I left Teddy!" One of the smaller children shouted as Chico went to climb up next to them. Their eyes met. Brown eyes met brown eyes.

Why the fuck would you build a house on the side of a mountain, orale, and then add stairs!? the tank of oxygen on his back slammed into the small of his back every other step. The tile on the kitchen floor looked like it was worth more than his mom's house, he thought, until he nearly tumbled over rounding the corner on the tile in the hall. It was easy to find the kid's room, weird how much it looked like his as a kid. The bear was laying face down on the bed. He didn't worry about heaving air as they climbed up into the sky. No one would open their mouths on it when they got back to Denne.



The heroin had been hidden in a false bottom of his oxygen tanks. 200 grams went a long way on Denne island. This particular heroin had been grown in the valleys of Oaxaca and had come to the United States through the port of Tehuantepec, and then it landed stateside in Oakland where some of it was shipped to Stockton and points south, and another major portion came to Haven City. Vibora Motorcycle Club brought it up from Oakland, but Armando Machado was the one who cut it and sent it here for Chico to smuggle it to Xolotl who dealt it through the whole prison. The Fresno Cartel and the Di Capri Family had been real specific about their new boundaries lines after the end of the Haven City War. Chico knew all of these things and more and he was allowed to live inside Denne. Because they knew that he would never fold.

"Been wondering why you signed up for this shift. The one in the infirmary made sense, gets you close to your dad. Plenty of people moving in and out. But this, I couldn't even think of how you were gonna make this some kind of play. Saving the teddy bear though. That was a good touch. I'm sure your parole board is gonna love it." Price was standing in the doorway of the locker room, already changed out of all his gear. Closing up the compartment with the H in it, Chico considered its weight for a moment before setting it aside. For this, his fists would be just right.

Potential Roles:

• Chico's ride or die girl whose had to put up with him being in and out of prison
• A mechanic who works at the autoshop
• Chico's baby mama
• Chico's parole officer
• An affiliate/female relative of another gang
• A girl who 'got out' but finds herself dragged back in
• A girl whose family (non-Hispanic) just moved into Libertad (Perhaps a Muslim girl in the New Mecca Projects?)
• A Dreamer, undocumented immigrant, or refugee perhaps has tension with Chico because she is law-abiding
• The social worker for Chico's children or siblings
• Chico's ex who broke up with him when he went to prison this last time
• A woman who would write him letters and visit him in prison
• A customer who comes to the auto shop
• A CI or undercover cop trying to get close to Caesar Reyes through Chico

Music Inspiration:
Playlist

His Type

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Jamal Tiberius 'JT' York

We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.

Malcolm X, 1965

Stats

Name: Jamal Tiberius York

Nickname: JT

Gang Affiliation: 91'er's

Birthday: February 17th, 1999

Height: 5'11"

Weight: 190

Hair Color: black

Eye Color: Brown

Body Type: Fit

Tattoos: (2020) None. 2023 (Stylized PK on his pecs, 12/26/19 tattooed on his ribs, African fist on right shoulder, green L8 on his left shoulder, purple 9 on his right hip, purple 1 on his left hip.

Criminal record: Disorderly conduct, failure to disperse, resisting arrest, interference with an arresting officer,  disturbing the peace (all related to a protest)

Ride: 1997 Nissan Senta

Backstory

Born February 17th, 1999 the eldest son of George York and Willow Young. George was a mail carrier who had a passion for reading that he passed on to his young son from an early age. Willow was a less productive adult, working the occasional odd job but spending most of her time home with her three kids, Jamal, Callum, and Trinity. They didn't have a lot, but they had enough and they had plenty of love and that got them through the rough times. Until a disgruntled postal worker shot up the post office George worked at, killing the head of the family. Willow was broken by this loss and turned to heroin for solace. Within three months of losing their father the York children lost their mother as well and went to live with their father's elderly parents.

For two years the family survived on various forms of welfare and charity and JT stayed on the stoop where it was safe, watching other kids run the Streets and the corners, playing at the Game. Social security, food stamps and welfare checks only went so far though, so as a way to supplement their income JT started working for his cousins' crew on the corner of 8th and Lincoln. For the most part he was just a look out, playing games with his friends after school and calling out if/when he saw other crews or police coming. These were the early years after Gayle's Peace, some of the safest times to play the Game. Doze and Ayon (his cousins) never let him skip school to work though, even from a young age the whole community seemed to see that he had the potential to get out and encouraged him in his studies. When he got older his cousins wouldn't let him work as a runner or any other job than look out unless he had finished his homework. The sight of him doing homework while working the corner became an almost comically common sight for locals, and he often made extra money 'helping' others with their homework.

JT left the corners for the most part when he hit high school, still hanging around enough to earn money from his cousins, he pursued high school debate and community service; he was able to earn a full ride to Haven City University working to earn degrees in Political Science and Pre-Law. While he had gotten out of the 'hood he still maintained ties with his congregation and his family, coming back for holidays and special occasions; which wasn't too difficult considering HCU was technically on the same street. His summers were spent working with various internships, various political campaigns and charities, including the Mayor's 2019 election.

As senior year began in fall 2020 JT was on track for a promising career, whether he continued on to law school or got a job immediately working in his field. Things changed though when he received a phone call telling him that one of his childhood friends had been shot and killed by a police officer while walking home from buying groceries for his mother. From that moment on JT dedicated himself to getting justice for his friend, Rayshawn Wallis, even if he'd have to go outside of the law to do it. Will he be able to retain his honest nature or will his quest for vengeance lead him back to the same Streets he had been struggling his whole life to escape?   

2020 Starter: No Justice, No Peace

The holding cell reeked. Blood, piss, vomit, sweat, tears and that indescribable odor of tear gas all mixed together into a fetor that hung over the space packed with black and brown bodies reeling and struggling to recover from the riot they had just endured. They hadn't been there looking for a fight, their permits were all in order, they had stayed within the marked boundaries of Elgin park, and all they had done was chant, sing, and had a few local community leaders speak. The police had been there from the beginning, decked out in riot gear and they had given no warning before they started the riot. Tear gas canisters flying over the heads of the crowd; rubber bullets flying through the air, only some of them bouncing off the ground like intended.

JT had lost track of time in those first few moments as the tear gas floated into the air and burnt his eyes. Someone threw a canister back at the police, he remembered seeing that, and then all hell broke loose as the pigs came in to beat the protesters down. Riot batons came down, cracking on heads and limbs. JT staggered to try and get away, as he turned a rubber bullet caught him in the side, knocking the wind out of him and bringing him to one knee for a moment. In front of him three officers were beating down on one person who had long since stopped resisting. Something had broken in Jamal then, never a particularly violent boy, he remembered howling like an animal as he tackled one of the cops. He had just been trying to get them off the broken form they had been targeting, in that he succeeded. Of course, their anger was then turned on him.

Now he sat in the holding cell of HCPD Station 5 with fifty other men crammed into a space designed to comfortably hold maybe half that number. His left eye was closed shut, his head was throbbing; when he touched where his head hurt his hand came away wet; his arms were covered with cuts and bruises and his whole left side of his body felt like it was one giant bruise. Barely conscious when they tossed him in, someone had been nice enough to secure him a seat on one of the few benches in the cell. He clenched his fists again and again, stretching the fingers to make sure nothing was broken and trying to find somewhere to direct the rage that was still building up inside of him. They had done everything right, followed all of the laws and did what the system told them too.

And they were still angry that they might not get away with murder.

Rayshawn Wallis had been his friend, they'd come up together on the corner of 8th and Lincoln. JT would sit there and do his homework on the stoop while Ray served as a runner for the crew that was dealing on that corner at that time. JT had run for a bit, had dealt a little bit, but when he had gotten serious about his studies and getting out of Pinesend Rayshawn had backed him up; stopped anyone from messing with his friend and let him hang around still. The two had played basketball together; gone to parties together; their moms were friends and they all went to the same church. Ray had been a kind-hearted guy-even if he dealt- and he hadn't even been dealing when the cop who killed him stopped him on the sidewalk. He had been bringing groceries home for his mom for her birthday. When he tried to adjust the bag in his arms to set it down the cop had shot him in the gut with his riding shotgun, then instead of calling for an ambulance he had handcuffed him and called for back-up. Rayshawn had bled out on the street in front of his mama's house. The idea that the man who had done that was probably going to walk free made his blood boil.

"York! Jamal York!" A shitheel calling out JT's name like 'Jamal' was the most foreign sounding name that he had ever had to say in his entire life pulled JT out of his angry thoughts for a moment as he raised his hand. "Yeah?" His voice was hoarse from the protest and it sounded different than he was used to. "Get over here you've made bail." The cop said, annoyed that he even had to talk to JT. JT squinted, an action that stung his face and swollen eye, it made no sense that he had made bail yet. And just him too. The movement had set up a fund for their bail expenses, but that wouldn't have even come close to making half o f their bail at this point. Confused, possibly concussed, JT limped to the cell door, walked through it and then followed the officer to the lobby. He was surprised at who was waiting for him there.

2023 Starter: By Any Means Necessary

An independent outside observer might look at the Game and think that it must be anything but conservative. The principal players are all people relegated to the bottom tiers of America's socio-economic ladder. Minorities, immigrants, the impoverished and the disabled. A drug corner is a communal space where all intersections of American capitalistic oppression meet to engage in commerce. The most profitable corners see the greatest overlap in intersections, the unwashed masses seeking opiates in order to ease their burdens while more affluent clientele drove through to seek a chemical comfort that might ease the burden of a burgeoning class consciousness. The Game takes place as this intersection of of oppressions at the bottom of America's racial and class structure. In those throws of desperation the conditions needed in order to develop class consciousness functionally do not exist. This problem is only confounded by an above average rate of functional illiteracy and a lack of foundational education. These factors, compounded by issues of gender performance and underdiagnosed disability, create individuals who realize that they are at the bottom of a hierarchy but hold little interest in dismantling those hierarchies. Instead the Game creates a collection of individuals motivated by desperation to rise in the hierarchy motivated by the trauma of the experience to further reenforce on those beneath them. 

In this essay I will -

"JT, you're doing that thing again." Alonzo tapped him on the shoulder in order to jolt him back to reality. The joint in JT's hand had burnt low, and his eyes had glazed over looking out at the dance floor in the living room of Haven City rapper R0-Q's mansion on the coast. The host wasn't stingy on the invites for his beginning of summer blow out, so you had actual celebrities rubbing shoulders with every day people from the hood and local celebrities of the yacht party class. At one point it would have been surreal to see the daughter of a state senator grinding up against a no account corner boy who only got in because his brother was worth something. That point had passed in the three years since JT had made the Game his whole life. Wholesaling heroin. Protection. Dealing pills to students at his alma mater. JT had gone from graduating with honors from a Pre-Law program to working outside of the law to make ends meet.

He had debts to pay and two younger siblings to make sure landed right out there in the world.

Alonzo called his name again and this time JT shook his head to get his mind clear. Some days JT wondered if he had lived too long in both worlds to truly feel at home in either of them again.

"Thanks man, I'm gonna go grab some air. You can chill." When JT had found Alonzo a few years back he'd been homeless and participating in bum fights to get by. Seeing the potential in the man JT had lifted him up and put him on the payroll as the muscle to watch his back when he was out and about. One of the lessons he had learned from his days as a corner boy was that you could never have enough muscle.

The warm night air and the smell of the sea was bracing as JT took to the balcony that overlooked R0-Q's yard and the path down to his personal dock. A stage was set up in the corner where the rapper and some of his latest finds had performed earlier into the night, but now it was crowded with more people mingling about, drinking, dancing and smoking like it was the night before the world ended.

For one of them it would be.

It wasn't the first time that JT had killed a man. No, he had popped that cherry with Officer Raymond Kristoffson in the bathroom of a rest station on the way up into the Cascades. Two shots to the back, one below the left shoulder blade, one through the right. Then another through the eyes while he was bleeding out on the floor. That time he had done it because it needed to be done, this time he was doing it because someone was paying him. Flicking the burnt out butt of his joint through the air and down towards the sea JT inhaled again and stretched out. One band apiece to take a life. One band more he could put towards his bills and his siblings' futures. A fair deal all things concerned. 

The guy who was dying was the type of dude to be the first one through the door and the last one to leave, so JT and his crew were sticking around as well. The plan was to wait him out through the night, kill him, and then use R0-Q's boat to take him out of sight of land, weigh him down and dump him into the surf. It was a simple enough plan with enough eyes  on the prize to make it doable.

Turning around at the sound of footsteps on the balcony JT locked eyes with the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen. Suddenly their plan seemed a lot more complicated.

Potential Roles:

• A girl from the Street who wants JT to get more drawn in to the Life
• One of his fellow protesters/activists
• JT's girlfriend
• The female relative of a member of the 91'er's
• A girl from the New Mecca Projects
• His dead friend's sister/girlfriend
• The female relative of a police officer
• A student or professor at HCU
• An affiliate/relative of another gang (especially Nords)
• A coworker at the Mayor's office
• A member of the 91'er's legal team who works closely with him because of his education

Music Inspiration

Playlist

His Type

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Joshua 'Devil Dog' Davis

Take me to the brig, I want to see the real Marines. - Lt Gen. Chesty Puller

Nickname: Joss, JD, DD, Devil Dog

Gang Affiliation: Reaper's Own Motorcycle Club Haven City (ROC HC)

Age: 4/27/1994

Height: 6'4"

Weight: 225

Hair Color: Blonde

Eye Color: Blue

Tattoos: 1st Reconnaisance Battalion unit patch on right forearm, Roc flying over a scythe on his right bicep, bull dog with the word Teufelshund under it, Celtic Cross between his shoulder blades. Black diamond on his right shoulder blade. A Pashto S on the back of each elbow.

Criminal record: Drunk and disorderly, public intoxication,

Ride: Indian Chieftain Dark Horse

Backstory

Born April 27th, 1994, in Milwaukee, the son of a truck driver and a vet tech, he ended up moving around a lot as a kid. From Milwaukee to Iron Mountain, Iron Mountain to Minneapolis, with a couple stops in-between. Mr. and Mrs. Davis ended up starting a farm outside of the Twin Cities. The middle child of five, the well had already run dry for college funds by the time he was even beginning to think of that decision. Always an outdoorsmen and patriotic he enlisted in the Marine Corps.

Joss enlisted on a six year contract and found he excelled at the work he was doing; rising quickly in the ranks and serving as a Scout Sniper in the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion. He spent much of his time flying from Camp Pendleton to Helmand Province and back. After a slightly above standard career, including earning a Purple Heart after eating shrapnel from an RPG explosion, Joss was honorably discharged as a sergeant. One of the men in his unit was the son of the Sergeant-at-Arms for the Haven City chapter of the Reaper's Own. Deon helped Joss get set up with a timber job outside of Oakwood.

The next year and a half was spent getting in deeper and deeper in the Reaper's Own. Originally as a hang-around, and then his year as a prospect. In 2020 he is the newest member of the Club, but also one of their best muscle, being good in a fight and a skilled shot. By 2023 he has sponsored his own prospect Ibrahim, a former member of Afghanistan's military police and a friend from his time in the military, and taken on a comfortable role as a full member of the club.   

Sample Starter: 2020 Lessons You Learn Prospecting an Outlaw Motorcycle Club

All things considered being a prospect for a 1% club wasn't too different from training in the Marines.

The goal of both was to break down the ego of the person to be trained, and provide them with the skills and knowledge needed in order to survive as best as possible under any likely circumstances.

That Joshua could understand. It was familiar, as was the sense of brotherhood that came with wearing a uniform again. Each prospect bought a leather kutte and was given a bottom rocker that read 'Prospect' by his sponsor. After a year of service and hazing, the prospect would face a unanimous vote to determine whether he could become a full-member of the club and be allowed to wear the top rocker and colors of the club. A Top Rocker that read 'Reaper's Own.' A Bottom Rocker that read 'Haven City.' And in between a reaper extending his hand with a blood red line across his palm and a roc flying over his scythe.

Joss wasn't the only veteran who found a form of peace in the brotherhood that came with riding with a motorcycle club. The original founders of the Reaper's Own in Colorado had all been veterans of World War 2, and there were several veterans in Reaper's Own Haven City. Oz, the Club's Wise Man, had worked on copters for the Air Force in the 70's. Loyal, the club's road captain, Deion, its sergeant-at-arms, and full-patch members David Longwater and Maddox had all served in the Army.

Lesson one: It did not matter that he had turned everything that Ahmad Ghazi Mujahid ever was and could be into a fine paste on the rocks from a mile away, or anything else that Joshua had done overseas that would qualify him as a badass. To them he was just another wannabe in a prospect kutte until he had proven himself otherwise.

This went double for Deion, Joshua's sponsor, who ran point on making sure that Joshua took the proper takeaways from his time as a prospect.

As a prospect, Joshua's main tasks were to remain gainfully employed. He split his time between working at a timber company owned by a friend of the club to cover his rent and dues and working at the Club's auto shop. When he wasn't working he was serving beers to members at the Bird, a bar and grille restaurant that shared a parking lot with the clubhouse, or running errands for members like filling up their bikes or giving them tune ups. It was hard work and hard hours, getting well into twelve to fifteen hour days that blended one into the next.

It wasn't like Joss needed to take care of all of the needs of the club alone. There were sweet butts, like groupies but for bikers, that were waitresses at the clubhouse and the Bird and old ladies who also made sure that the members had their fill of drinks and food as well.

Lesson two: If a prospect has enough time to even think about getting laid, then a prospect has too much time on his hands.

The Club came before everything, evening coming. Which, ended up working out alright for Joshua anyway. Cut down on the amount of awkward conversations that followed a good hookup when he tried to explain why she couldn't stay the night without talking about the pills he needed to take to not wake up screaming.

Lesson three: your brothers, your bike, your booze and your bud were the only mental healthcare you needed.

Therapists and priests were only complications when you entered into the life of an outlaw. None of them could be trusted to hold the type of secrets that such a man could hold within his mind, and so the only people you could turn to were those men who rode beside you and shed blood with you.  At heart they were men from an older, wilder time. Vestiges of the days when a man could earn a living with  nothing but a pistol on his hip and a solid horse beneath his saddle. A simpler time.

Lesson four: Once you had had your hand on the president's wife's tit you couldn't call her 'ma'am' anymore.

'nough said.

The other lessons were much the same. Don't break up between brothers unless you absolutely have to, and if Deion says the fight is done then that's when you absolutely have to. Don't serve the VP tequila when his wife isn't around. The Reapers don't deal product, just mule it. It's harder to learn how to shoot from the back of a bike than it looks. Some days you're going to have to shoot a customer if you want the rest of them to comply. The simple things in life like that. 

But the most important lesson that Devil Dog, as the club had started to call him, learned while he was a prospect was taught to him on a warm summer night in Colorado Springs where Reapers from all over the world had gathered for an international rally. There was drinking, smoking, live music, racing and partying of all kinds and the prospects were run ragged keeping up with it all. In the middle of the night Deion had pulled his prospect away from the bar and sent them up on a ride into the mountains until they had the most beautiful view of the mountains and the valleys around them that Devil Dog had ever seen.

"You know why I chose to sponsor you?" Deion asked as they looked out at the starry night.

"Because Dre vouched for me?" Joshua guessed.

"No, I got you the job cutting logs for that. When I vote to let in any prospect, or to patch-em them in after their year is up, I ask myself one question. Just one. 'Will they make my club safer in the long run.' And if the answer is yes they get my support. If not, well they had a year to convince me right? I've seen you go above and beyond for this club in the last year, you've held your shit down, and if I'm being honest you're a damn lethal motherfucker. No matter what happens tomorrow, you remember I told you that."

That was the last order that Deion gave his prospect, because the next morning at dawn, Devil Dog received his patch and the real hard work began.

• A girl who hangs around the Club, perhaps a 'groupie' to the club
• One of the Club members female relatives
• The girl of a club member in prison
• A civilian in Oakwood
• A girl in a town Devil rides through often who wants to runaway with the biker
• A pastor's daughter
• A girl affiliated with another gang
• A nurse at the VA
• Coworker at the bar
• A fellow veteran (male or female) who knew Devil Dog before he became a criminal

Music Inspiration:
Playlist

His Type

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Constantine 'Dean' Colt

Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity - F.B.I. Motto

Nickname: Dean, DC

Gang Affiliation: United States Government (FBI)

Birthdate: September 13, 1993

Height: 6'1''

Weight: 180

Hair Color: Dirty Blonde

Eye Color: Green Eyes

Body Type: Lean, muscular.

Tattoos: None

Criminal record: None

Backstory

Born September 13th, 1993 in Jeffersonia. His father owned a general store in one of the suburbs of Jeffersonia and his mother was a stay at home mom. In contrast to the other families here, the Colt family was a well-adjusted, average  suburban middle class family with 2.5 kids and the white picket fence. Growing up with shows like the Rifleman and Gunsmoke Dean developed a keen sense of justice from a young age, the only thing he seemed to enjoy more than doing what's right was baseball.

Colt played baseball his whole life, starting in little league and going on to play for his high school team and for a travel team. His sophomore year of high school the Recession hit and greatly damaged his family's finances. Colt had less time for baseball as he needed to pick up shifts at his father's store, but the young man managed to juggle work, school and baseball. A task that Colt managed to excel at. His junior year he was offered a full scholarship to several colleges, and partial scholarships to many more, he settled on Haven City though. It was a Division I school and a solid Law School affiliation.

For three years Colt was your typical college athlete/frat boy. Then, one winter night when he was walking back from the gym, he came across  two guys harassing a girl in an alley outside of a bar near the campus. Dean engaged he two men, but injured his left shoulder in the act, the injury was bad enough that he needed to undergo surgery and missed his last season of college ball, as well as his opportunity to go pro. Instead, his resume and situation caught the attention of the Special-Agent-in-Charge of the Jeffersonia field office. Recruited by the FBI and given as much training as the Jeffersonia office could spare, he was sent undercover to a ranch out in Malheur County to help deal with the rising militia problem.

After nearly a year undercover Dean helped the Bureau make the case and was transferred to Quantico in DC and then worked with the DC office for a time. Life conditions have now brought him back to Haven City, where he has been assigned to the resident agency. Managing to keep his cover intact for all that time, he maintains a cover as working with Haven City's professional baseball team, just in case he would need to go undercover again in a pinch. 

Sample Starter: Misfortune 2015

When Dean's shoulder popped it was louder than most things. For a moment he imagined it echoed over the hills and steppe of the high desert, bouncing off the trees and disturbing the local jack rabbits.

Shifting the strap of his rifle from his injured shoulder to his right one, Dean kept his eyes on the horizon, the Gacy family and their friends were serious about keeping watch for rustlers and other intruders. Especially if they might be federals or Bureau of Land Management.

"Damn, they really f-f-fucked you up didn't they D-Dean?" There was no need to ask who Nathan 'Livewire' Gacy meant when he said 'they.' Not with how much vitriol he put into the pronoun. Dean Colt had found his way east from Haven City on the coast because Livewire's big brother Donnie was a big baseball fan and had apparently been looking forward to seeing Dean make the transition from HCU Hawks and had been looking forward to seeing him make the transition to the pro's. When Donnie heard the news about Dean's career ending injury defending a girl from being harassed, he'd driven down to Haven City and offered Dean a job as a ranch hand on Basque Ranch, the Gacy family's multigenerational cattle ranch and homestead.

For some reason the Gacy's all seemed to assume that the men who Dean had fought were black.

Maybe it had something to do with all the imported Southern accents and battle flags.

"I'm just happy to be out of that sling and doing things with it. Doc says another six months and I might not even feel it most days." As far as Dean could tell, every family had a Livewire- the runt of the litter who had earned his nickname and his stutter by climbing up the weathervane during a lightning storm and the bolt had blown his body down off that tower forty feet and he'd come out of it healthy as ever. The one who did stupid things to try to impress his elders and still somehow managed to survive it all.

"Y-yeah, I  'sp'sp'spose that makes sense. B-bet those b-boys are thanking their lucky stars the c-cops got to 'em before D-Donnie did. You w-want a snuff?" Livewire was holding out an open tin of snuff, having already taken his own hit a moment before. Dean's face was a mask, green eyes betraying none of the sense of contempt he felt towards Livewire's racism.

"Don't mind if I do." Like the two of them were old pals or something, Dean pinched the snuff into his nose, tasting the mix of mint and nicotine that came from the Gacy's home made tobacco products. Dean had been a teetotaler when it came to tobacco while he played ball, never chewed, smoked or snuffed it- but sobriety wasn't a respected and masculine virtue with the Gacy's of Basque Ranch, and Dean needed to do everything he could to get in their good graces.

That was the only way to get enough evidence to put them all in cuffs and behind bars for as long as the law would allow.

Marc Harvey, the Special Agent in Charge of the Jeffersonia field office (the highest ranking FBI agent in the state of Jefferson) was also a baseball fan and had made it the mission of his last decade on the job to wipe out as much of the organized crime in the state as possible, from mafia to triads to white supremacists and their militia Harvey wanted to move on to retirement with as many scalps on his belt as possible. And 'by any means necessary' included recruiting a fresh college grad without the years or experience to be a special agent to go undercover with a gun-running, cop-killing, body-disappearing family of fanatics. Simply because he was in the right place at the right time.

The sound of spurs jangling announced Josie's arrival.

"Nana has Dad busting out the long table. Says she wants the benches full so you boys best come in and wash-up for supper." Dean didn't know much about the way things normally worked among 'biblical, constitutional, family values' groups, but the Gacy's at least seemed to have more matriarchs than patriarchs on their compound. Kay 'Nana' Gacy wasn't Josie's grandmother, but her great-grandmother.

"N-now, J-Josie can't you see w-we are in the middle of very important s-sentry b-business right now? R-right this very minute Federal agents from the Bureau of Intimidation c-could be b-bearing down on us at this very s-second. And you want us to abandon our s-sacred duty to wash our hands for s-supper?" Josie's response to her uncle's impassion appeal was to survey the empty horizon, shrug, and shoot them both a suit yourself smile over her shoulder as she started to strut her freshly nineteen year old self back towards the ranch house.

"We'll be right behind you." Dean assured her and then gave a meaningful look to Livewire. Let's humor the kid, and I'm hungry. So convinced, Livewire turned back fast enough that he soon overtook Josie to not seem like she was leading them back to supper, while Dean took a more leisurely pace and let his long legs carry him beside the Gacy family princess.

Rifles were returned to the armory and hands were washed in the spicket so as not to track mud into the kitchen that was thoroughly the domain of Nana Gacy and Avery Gacy. The only use the men of the ranch had in that kitchen was ferrying crockpots, dishes and trays from the kitchen door to the long oak table that seated the forty-three strong Gacy family and ranch hands. It had taken Dean some time, but he was confident he'd finally been able to put the whole family chart together. You had John Gacy, family patriarch and target of multiple federal investigations, his mother Kay and his wife Avery. Then you had John and Avery's sons: Donnie, Chaz, and Livewire. Ilyana was Chaz's second wife imported from Russia to raise his two kids from his first marriage and give him one herself. Chaz's first wife was one of the many missing persons with last knowns near Basque Ranch. You also had Gacy family cousin Ken Wolfe and his son Clay and an assorted collection of other distant relations family friends and employees that Dean was now welcomed as part of.

John said grace from his seat at the head of the table, and then had the radio turned on so that they all could listen to the Jumpers game. Dean was understandably quiet, listening to the team he would have been playing for play, but in truth his quiet hid how much he was listening to. The Gacy's tried to be discrete when it came to talking business at the table, but it was easy enough for him to pick up Livewire being shushed by Chaz for talking about a meeting with another family for tomorrow night. Just another thing to report to Supervisory Special Agent Bowen on his nightly report.

Roles

• A girl from the Rez
• One of the other agents in Haven City
• A relative or affiliate of a gang (bonus points for Nords)
• A CI he is managing
• A girl trying to get out of the Life (maybe a Phantasie's girl)
• An ex girlfriend from his days in college
• his fiancée who crossed the country from Washington DC when he got the new assignment
• Josephine Gacy, member of the Gacy family Dean first went undercover in

Music Inspiration:
God's Gonna Cut You Down - Johnny Cash

His Type

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Teodoro 'Theo' Jolicoeur

"You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word." - Al Capone

Nickname: Theo, TJ

Gang Affiliation: Di Capri Family

Birthdate: February 17, 1993

Height:5'11"

Weight: 160 lbs

Hair Color: Black/Dark Brown

Eye Color: Brown

Body Type: Thin

Tattoos: None

Criminal record: none

Backstory

Born February 17, 1993, Theo was born on the wrong side of the sheets. His father, Thomas Di Capri was the son of long time Di Capri Family Boss Giacomo Di Capri. His mother was a Haitian immigrant living in Pinesend named Clio Jolicoeur. Both of his parents were heroin addicts, and as Pinesend was under the influence of the Bratva at that time Thomas could not move openly through the area. He could not marry Clio and he could not publically visit his son or the mother of his child. Theo never met his grandfather as he died later in the year without ever visiting his grandon, but both his grandfather and his uncle Alphonse (who was Theo's godfather) ensured that Clio's expenses were paid for and that Theo was taken care of as well as he could given the situation. When Theo was three years old his father died of an overdose leaving him in his mother's care. At seven Robert Vitale, consigliere to Boss Al, arrived at Clio's apartment with two mafioso in tow. Theo was told to gather his things and come with them. From that day on he lived in the Di Capri mansion on the top of the hill with his cousins. Moving from one of the poorest areas in Haven City to a mansion and attending a Catholic private school was a serious change, but Theo adapted well.

Living life as the only black boy in a family of Italians, and then visiting his mother in Pinesend left him with the ability to move in different circles and solve problems dipolmatically. Boss Al recognized this natural skill of his and nurtured it, enocuraging him to do speech and debate and paying for him to go to Berkeley in order to get a Business and Communications degree. It was Boss Al's policy to keep the younger generation as far away from street level business as possible, allowing them to keep their covers as working for his various business interests. On paper Theo is a marketing representative for their lemon business, in reality Theo serves as a messaggero a liason between the Di Capri Family and other criminal organizations, effectively working as the right handman to Theo's cousin and bestfriend Underboss Augy Di Capri.

Theo loves his family, loves the life style that he is accustomed to living through them, but he also experiences a significant amount of detachment and 'seperateness' from those around him. Even wealth and power can grow exhausting when not shared with the right person.

Sample Starter: So Will Burn My Soul 2024

 
December 31st, 2017 Ibiza, Spain 

"This man Farouk, he's been making things difficult for our friends in Amalfi and our friends in the Rock." Marco Casanova was what the papers would call the consigliere of the Di Capri family, a role he had held since the early 2000's with the arrest of the last consigliere. Sometimes you needed to catch a charge in order to protect the family as a whole. Theo had known the Corsican, as he was called being Corsican by way of London, for much of his life. It had been Casanova, who also acted as the family's chief legal consultant, who came to Theo's mother's house in the projects of Haven City and taken him away while Marie Jolicoeur was nodding off on the couch with a needle in her arm. 

Theo's uncle, Alphonse 'the Boss' Di Capri had raised Theo with his three children, Melanie, Augy, and Amelia giving him every opportunity that he could provide for Theo's success. When he was asked why he showed such generosity to the son of a Haitian junkie the answer was always the same 'Matteo Di Capri was my favorite cousin, regardless of whatever vices he had, you were his son.' Theo had repaid this generosity at every opportunity, earning his full ride to Haven City University's business school on more than his father's last name, graduating with honors and taking the job as a brand representative with the Di Capri's liquor label, Blue Grotto. In his first two years he had increased sales by 15%, and he was on track to do it again this year as well. 

That's what this New Years trip was supposed to have been about. Theo and Augy hitting up the clubs in Ibiza during one of the busiest nights of the year and making sure that the bottle girls, promoters and bartenders were pushing their label hard to customers. Making the most out of the licenses they had bought and the deals they had made earlier in the year. But here they were, sitting at a cafe discussing a murder with a police officer and the Boss's consigliere. Both of them were young, not having made their bones yet, what could be called 'associates' to the family. But that didn't mean that they couldn't be called upon to do work like this when needed. 

And according to Capitan Barcelo Theo was the only one who could do it. 

"Farouk is a rat, but he's clever and he's paranoid. He knows that he's angered a lot of powerful people with his bullshit, and he knows that his days are numbered. If I send in my men, or the riot police, then he will rabbit and when he knows that there's no way out he'll set the entire port on fire to make us pay for it. If he's going to be taken, it will need to be by surprise. And he will see you coming from a mile away." 'You' was Augy, who had more of his mother's light complexion than the darker Mediterranean look of Casanova. The captain's eyes returned to Theo in an instant, looking him up and down with something less than respect. "You will fit in just fine, and once you are close enough to do it, you run to a safehouse and my men will come in. Certainly they will find plenty of suspects fitting your description." Augy's eyes narrowed for a moment, catching the disrespect in the Captains tone if not the exact meaning of the Spanish. 

"You listen to me, this is my cousin, my blood. You make sure he gets back whole. You hear me?" Augy threatened in passable Spanish that weakened his message more than he knew. Theo waved the protective hand that he'd placed on his shoulder off, trying to calm his best friend down. It would not be for a few more years that the godfather's son became underboss with the strength to back up such a threat. Besides, it was not like Theo hadn't heard worse from mafioso's in his own home. 

"Alright, I'll do it." A gun was found for him, a nine millimeter ghost gun from the Philippines with a suppressor that should buy him a few more seconds to run before everything went to hell. A bike and a messenger bag and outfit was found for him, plenty of people running around delivering necessities to the bars and clubs around Ibiza tonight, and with his curly hair down low he looked just like the thousands of other Africans moving through Ibiza Town that night. He found Farouk in a jacuzzi, with a woman on either arm and four guards milling about the place. None of them spared the bike messenger tying his shoe a second look until the pistol came out, and by then it was too late. Two slugs flew from the barrel of the gun, shots ringing out as the back of Farouk's head exploded and his face disappeared under the bubbling pink water. He fired three more shots, one to the arm of one guard and the others just to keep their heads down, jumped onto the seat of his bike and peddled for his life. 

12:01 January 1st found him ducking down in a rickety bed, glancing out through the blinds to see if the helicopters overheard were moving by. 

That was how Theo Jolicoeur made his bones. 

January 1st, 2024, Haven City, Jefferon, United States of America 

This year there was no business for Theo to conclude in foreign locales. The Di Capri family had gathered together on the Amalfi Coast for Christmas and then promptly scattered again. Theo had had opportunities to celebrate the New Year in Ibiza, Hong Kong, Dubai, and New York, but he had instead chosen to return home, initially planning to welcome the New Year by himself. He had broken things off with his goomah (mistress) several months ago, and the idea of ordering in a girl to keep him company had not appealed to him. Augy and his wife were in Aspen, enjoying the slopes, and Melanie had gone with a boyfriend to party in a Hollywood mansion. Solitude and tranquility had seemed like the order of the day until Amelia had texted him to inform him that there would be a New Years party at the Di Capri mansion, and she expected him to attend. 

Reluctantly, Theo had dressed himself for the event, $10,000 Armani suit, $30k diving watch, $3000 Italian leather shoes, his hair already straightened and tied back so that those who needed to could pretend that he was just a darker kind of Sicilian. When he arrived at the place that he had called home for a decade and a half the part was already going, and it was clear that he was over dressed. Amelia had taken more influence from Project X than Succession with this party, and it made the hairs on the back of Theo's neck stand on end as he moved through the halls looking for the host of the party. 

Part of him could only laugh at himself as he moved passed party goers drinking and smoking, girls without tops enjoying the heated pool at the center of the mansion and boys with no names worth knowing embarrassing themselves at the pool table. Here he was, a mafioso, a messagero who had bled on a saint and tossed the picture into a fire worried about his cousin's party getting out of control. Laughing he slipped into a bathroom and pushed out the party goers doing lines off the sink. Leaning against the counter and looking himself in the eyes, splashing water on his face he stepped out of the bathroom expecting to find his cousin, say hello and then goodbye and go back to his penthouse apartment and a sense of tranquility. 

Man proposes, God disposes.

Roles:

• Theo's goomah (mistress)
• Theo's therapist
• Augy Di Capri's wife
• Alphonse Di Capri's latest trophy wife
• The daughter of another mafioso
• A politician/a politicians' daughter or staffer
• A girl from the 'hood who Theo meets while visiting his mother
• An escort/model that Theo calls on to be his date to a Di Capri event
• A woman affiliated with the Hong Triad or Fresno Cartel
• A woman unaffiliated with the criminal world who Theo goes to for a sense of stability

Musical Inspiration:

Playlist

His Type

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Franko 'Frank the Tank' Pasqaule

Nickname: Frank, Frank the Tank
Gang Affiliation: None, Formerly Di Capri Family

Sexuality: Straight

Age: 46

Height:5'11"

Weight: 185lbs

Hair Color: Black

Eye Color: Brown

Body Type: Muscular

Tattoos: Crossed out L.C.N. on right bicep, Anarchy A over his left pec, black sword on back, 2:29:04 on right pec,

Criminal record: possession of a deadly weapon, reckless endangerment, public intoxication, discharge of a weapon in city limits, suspected in over forty homicides over the last thirty years, loitering, vagrancy.

Backstory

Born 5 April 1974, in the Italian community of Venice the Haven City that Frank grew up in was different from the Haven City that he became a man in. Save for some cocaine dealing Los Vagos the city was at peace. For fifteen years he grew up thinking that his father was a simple manager at a limoncello distillery. In his sixteenth year he was driving his father and his father's friends around so that they could get out of the car and kill Russians or Triad men. By the time he turned eighteen he was pulling the trigger himself. Frank had his bones made by the time he was nineteen and had made a name for himself on the Street by the time he was twenty-one.

For over a decade he was indispensable to the Di Capri Family, one of their best soldiers and on the fast track to becoming a capo. Good soldiers were hard to come by  during the Haven City War, always being replaced. Save for a short stint in the County jail, and a few visits to the hospital, Frank kept himself in the fight the whole war through. Come 2003 though, there was less of a need for soldiers since the War had ended and the Peace was on. Old rivalries still existed though, and the Peace wasn't perfect in the beginning. Some of those rivalries came for Frank, only Frank had gotten him a wife and a daughter. Emilia and Molly. And when the triggermen came to take their shot, they didn't take their best. Emilia and Moly died, but so did the triggermen.

Wounded, alone, and feeling betrayed for being denied vengeance, Frank left the Di Capri Family; and having nothing to lose he became a stick-up man. Robbing drug dealers as a way to get his revenge at the world, but also searching for a way to end up dead in an acceptable fashion. Fifteen years of sticking guns in the faces of the most dangerous men in the city and still no one has been able to step up and get the job done. Frank lives alone, but occasionally attracts others with nothing else to lose into his style of life on the Street. it takes a special kind of person to survive long as a stick-up artist though.

Sample Starter: Frank the Tank's Last Year, 2024

  No man should be on the Street at fifty. By fifty you should be in prison for the rest of your natural born life, retired and living off of your poorly budgeted riches, or still hustling, but leaving the hard work of it to younger, faster men. As Franko Pasquale entered into his fiftieth year he was none of those things. Like the Ancient Mariner or the Wandering Jew he found himself cursed with eternal life, damned with a body that simply refused to lay down and die. He had been shot more times than he could count, stabbed a lesser number, hit with cars, burnt with Molotovs, and blown up twice. There were too many times where he was bleeding on the pavement and should have simply stayed dead, and yet every time his body had stood up, seemingly of its own accord, and walked itself to a place where he could find aid. Or was dragged there by people who considered themselves his friends for one reason or another.


For twenty years he had been robbing some of the most dangerous drug dealers in the United States, picking at the margins of some of the most dangerous drug dealers in the world, and for twenty years he had not died. This was either a miracle or a curse.

On the first day of the New Year Frank was alone. This itself was a dangerous thing, but not a rare one. It had snowed in Haven City, itself a rarity due to the climate and the ocean, three inches, maybe four. Enough to make traffic hell for anyone who was out driving on the New Year. Frank wiped the snow from the placards on the graves, Maria Bianchi Pasquale September 7th 1974- January 9th, 2004; Emilia Alexandra Pasquale January 29th, 1995- January 9th, 2004. The groundskeeper had removed the old dead flowers he had left, but kept his engagement ring on the stone where he had left them. Frank replaced the flowers, snapdragons and Christmas roses, and knelt there in the snow in prayer. His heavy coat with its many pockets and hidden weapons kept him warm in the cool breeze as he thought about them. Remembering Molly's, she always preferred being the Italian Molly than the thirteenth Maria, hair reflecting the early morning sun, the way she smiled as she flipped pancakes and sizzled bacon. How Emilia laughed at the show that was on the television and talked about what she wanted to do for her birthday later in the month. He told them about his year, apologized for not visiting more often, apologized for keeping them waiting so long.

Anything to not think about the pain from the hole in his chess where they belonged, and the way that their bodies looked mangled on the kitchen floor.

Time didn't matter as he stayed there kneeling, talking to them silently. Not shaking from the wind or the cold. When he heard the sound of the car door shutting behind him hatred twisted on his face. He was already moving before the shooters lifted their guns, taking cover behind the tombstone to the right of his family's as the submachine guns opened fire.

The would-be-killers fired from the hip, kicking up dirt and snow and plinking lead off of the marble tombstone. Frank hunkered down and counted the seconds, lifting the Mossberg 500 and it's leather strap out from under his jacket as the adrenaline began to pump. Seven shells in the shotgun, including the one in the chamber, the 9mm Beretta on his left hip held fifteen, and the Glock 21 on his right hip was chambered in .45 and held fourteen.

He didn't wait for the hail of bullets to stop before rolling and angling the barrel of the shotgun around the stone he fired and pumped in one smooth motion, catching the flanker int the gut mid stride and dropping him to the ground. Only idiots wasted bullets on covering fire for no reason, and there was always a flanker.

"Motherfucker!" "Kill that bitch!" Two voices rang out, but three were firing, staggering their shots now. The barrel came over the top of the stone and barked twice. Then he rolled left, passed his family's stone, passed the next one, and when the assailants were firing in the gaps hoping to catch him he went over the top.

There were three of them, not counting the one holding his guts together and dying. One was resting his SMG on the hood of the sedan they had come in, one was staggered behind the monument of an angel, lifting his weapon to blast him away, and one was to his right, reloading. Two shots to the man behind the monument, enough to pepper and drop him back, but not enough to kill and Frank leapt to the fool reloading. Teeth and blood painted the snow when the butt of the shotgun broke his jaw.

"Freak!" the driver shouted the name of his toothless friend, as two bullets forced their way through the gap between collar bones and into his heart.

Shotgun hanging from his side Frank leapt to his feet again, a pistol in each hand. They sang that deadly song in unison, 9mm to the man behind the angel and .45 at the car. His eyes dipped back and forth between the sights, aiming low to start to make up for the recoil. Most men, even trained gunmen, were not prepared for a mad man to charge forward shooting at them. The first .45 tore through the plastic around the wheel well, the second glanced off the hood of the car and the third tore away two of the driver's fingers when he lifted the SMG above the hood and fired blindly. Kevlar held for the first two shots, MAC-10's were good for lots of pops but not as much for penetration. The third shot went through, but Frank didn't break stride. Moving around the hood of the car he saw the driver cradling his mangled hand, saw the plea in his eyes before he put a bullet above the right one. The last shooter took his moment, while the car and the trees blocked his sightline, to rush the road to the trunkside of the getaway car.

Frank was waiting for him, guns resting on the hood of the car Macedonian Style for stability. When the shooter screamed into sight both men emptied their clips, and once again Frank was standing at the end of it. The car was shot to pieces and it didn't get his bleeding carcass far, but it got him far enough. He ditched the car blocks away from his destination and limped the rest of the way. He collapsed in front of a door, but he woke in a bed that wasn't his, naked and with several new sets of stitches.

Roles:

• A prostitute or drug addict struggling
• A teenage runaway
• a cop (dirty or otherwise)
• An affiliate with any of the major gangs
• another stick-up artist
• a nurse or medical student that patches him up

His Type

  

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Musical Inspiration:

Playlist

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Jason Hruby

"If ultimately one sides with the police against the gangsters, it is merely because they are better organized and more powerful, because, in fact, the law is a bigger racket than crime." - Raffles and Miss Blandish by George Orwell

Nickname: Red

Gang Affiliation: HCPD, SCAR/STAR Unit, 91'er's, Bratva

Birthdate: June 4th, 1983

Height: 6'2"

Weight: 196lbs

Hair Color: Blonde

Eye Color: Green

Body Type: Lean

Tattoos: SKWAD on left bicep, https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx77PSyiBrE/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=cf40b073-76fe-464d-a63d-3df3404d4774 on left arm/shoulder, houses on right arm, baby mama and child on left pec, BASTARD on left calf, Aces and eights on left shoulder blader, Pentacle with a Punisher skull in it on back left hip,

Criminal Record: none (investigated for murder, police brutality, bribes, racketeering, prostitution, rape, drug use and drug dealing)

Backstory

Born June 4th, 1983 in the Northside neighborhood of Haven City. On paper Northside is just farthest north streets of Pinesend, but the difference is literally black and white. Northside is a monochromatic community historically Ashkenazi Jewish, Czechoslovakian, and Russian. For the entirety of Jason's childhood the neighborhood was controlled by the Bratva, the Russian Mafiya in Haven City, and for the first seven years of his life it seemed like Northside was a bastion of law and order in comparison to Pinesend. Then, the year he started elementary school the Haven City War started in earnest. Members of the Di Capri Mafia and the Bratva broke into each other's homes, killed each other in their sleep, and burnt down their restaurants.

Northside was never so bloody as Oak Hills or Pinesend, but the effects of the war were felt. Even still, the casualties of the war never hit home until the Little Christmas Massacre in 2002, his senior year of high school. On January 6th, a large majority of the Bratva in Haven City were gathered in a warehouse in Pinesend before going to church to celebrate the holiday. While they were there they were ambushed by members of the newly formed 13th Street Regulators and the Di Capri Family. Fifty-three members of the Bratva were murdered in the massacre, which meant that many of Jason's classmates started the spring semester without fathers. Jason would later say that this was what motivated him to enter the police academy right out of high school.

The truth was that Jason had little other prospects going for him at the time, failing to get into an affordable college with a basketball scholarship and the police offered him a  way to use his physical ability and do something that he thought was meaningful. When he enrolled in the police academy Jason was not a crooked cop, he was still idealistic, thought that his job was to protect and serve, and that if there were a few bad cops he would be able to help turn the police force around. One year on the Streets of Haven City changed all that. 02-03 was when the Haven City War chagned up, slowed down and came closer to an end. More arrests, more deaths, and more shootings than any other year. A police budget expanded through post-9/11 funds allowed them to combat the crime in the city. (or so the official story goes for how the Haven City War ended. ) Though before it did end Jason's life would change forever.

He was an ordinary patrol officer, called to respond to an officer involved shooting at a SCAR (Street-level Community Available Resources) anti-gang unit raid. When he arrived he witnessed a body bag being wheeled out and accidentally saw Lieutenant Frank Skaryak and Detective Demetrius Alpert pocketing funds and drugs from the house they had hit. Captain Skaryak looked at Jason and tossed him a banded stack of hundred dollar bills and told him that there was more where that came from for men who knew when to keep their mouths shut. Jason took the money, and two months later found himself transferred to SCAR as a detective. Skaryak served as his 'rabbi' supporting hsi carreer as Skaryak's own career advanced.

Now, nearing a point where his twenty years are almost up and he has successfully lined his pension with illegal gains, Jason is a sergeant just as corrupt as the men who brought him in, the second in command to Lieutenant Alpert in the STAR anti-gang unit. He has not necessarily had equivalent luck as a husband or a father, but he knows plenty of ways to get what he wants when he wants it. More frequently lately he's been going to the needle in order to silence the ghost of the moral compass he once possessed.   

Rank and Defile

The fourth floor of the Northeastern Precinct of the Haven City Police Department was reserved for the sole use of the STAR Unit. HCPD's Gang intelligence unit and gang busting squad had been operating out of the Northeastern for almost its entire existence, save for a few short years in the 80's when it had been housed in Central HQ and had been named SCAR. At some point in the early 80's ,when the crack epidemic had been really starting to get the violence in Haven City rolling, someone from the unit had stepped out for a smoke or something and noticed that HCPD HQ, the FBI resident agency, and about half-a-dozen other alphabet agencies were all pretty much on the same block and decided that it would be better if the team that was running around, being rowdy with gang bangers and wise guys should probably be a little further away from people who might give a shit about what 'being rowdy' meant. Which, considering the number of brutality and other cases that Internal Affairs had tried to bring forward on members of the unit, both when it was SCAR and when it was STAR, might have been the smartest decision for everyone who was involved.

Jason Hruby , called Red by his friends, was waiting outside of the building for his quarter-hourly smoke break. The city making every city-owned building smoke free had certainly created an amount of inconvenience for the recovering addict, but it also meant that he was right on the scene when the new recruit that they were waiting for came walking up from the parking garage on the back of the building. Back door had an electronic lock, which meant you weren't getting in if you weren't already supposed to be in the building, and Jason would bet his left testicle that the day where HCPD had its shit together enough to send him a rookie that had access to that backdoor had not yet come. So Jason took in one last breath of poison and exhaled it before waiving down the rookie.

" [YC's Last name]! Rook! I'm Hruby, your trainer, let me put this out and I'll take you up." Putting the cherry out on the wall he slipped the other half of the Marlboro into his breast pocket and then gestured for the rookie to come with him. Of course, he held the front door of the building open for her, if for no other reason than to see how her rear-end stacked up to others that had walked through that door.

The lobby of the building looked like the lobby of just about every other police station that you'd walk into during the day. Not too many people lingering about, an officer or three at a front desk, maybe someone coming in to bitch at those officers about something, and a few criminals being moved around or processed at various places. Everyone's shoes echoed on the hard marble tile which made the entire place hell for anyone with ADHD or sensory issues. Jason ignored most of it though, heading straight through the room to the elevator in the back right, hitting the 4 button and waiting for those doors to close before starting their dialogue.

"So I know you've probably heard a lot of shit about STAR over the last few years, especially with all that bullshit behind Rayshawn Cole and Officer Kristoffson, but let me tell you it straight. STAR is the best damn crime fighting force in the damn city and don't let anyone tell you differently. Not Internal Affairs, not the news, and not some professor or politician with their head stuck up their ass. This unit has a mandate to identify and apprehend individuals involved in gang activity in Haven City, especially those that present a credible threat to the good citizens of Haven City and the Commissioner's peace of mind. To be real, we rip and run, kick ass and take names. Ya dig?"

The fourth floor was all STAR, getting off the elevator you stepped into something resembling a lobby-hallway combo. Off to the right there was a sign for a bathroom and off to the left was a water fountain older than the rookie. In front was a door with that crystal fogged glass that said the full name of the unit in black letters Street Tactical Autonomous Response Unit. It took two steps to cross from the elevator to the door with the brass doorknob and opened up into a room that looked like an office with your typical police desks, though every desk was a mess, and the calendar was a 'Phantasies Best' Beer Calendar. Sitting at the first desk was LaKeesha Ward looking angered as she pressed her Ticonderoga into the form so hard that it was leaving an imprint on the desk.

"Hey Keesha baby, how's it hangin'?" Keesha responded with a one-finger salute. "Where Bear and Ro-Ro at?" A silent but emphatic thumb nod over her shoulder to the door at the end of the room. The other five desks were empty. The doors to both the sergeants office and the lieutenants office were both shut.

"Don't mind Keesha, she's just pissy because she's in-office until her shooting is reviewed. So many cases getting reviewed these days wait time has doubled. She'll do alright though. department ain't gonna fire their only black dyke. She's the type that takes her shit out on everyone else. We're very diligent with our paperwork and admin in this unit." Jason walked down the center aisle of the desks, and then veering back
to the right and towards that door. His voice didn't change between slurring and talking about administration.

"You're an asshole Red!" "I told you don't call me that Keesha!" Like two people who might be friends and playing at hating each other, or who might actually hate each other and an outsider could never tell.
Beyond the wooden door the space was set up like some kind of mancave from the early-2000's, old carpet that had long ago become too dirty to properly vacuum or clean. Sitting in the sunken in center of the carpet playing on the XBOX were the two officers that he was looking for along with a third man.

"Bear, Ronnie, Hunter, this is [Rookie]. She's the Rook I was telling you about showing her around the place. Marq still around the way? Sweet. [Recruit] these boys are some of the rowdiest, rough 'n' tumble bastards you ever gonna meet. Bear even got an Union citation for how many skulls he cracked back in those riots. Ronnie, has been successful on three undercover ops, one working with the DEA. And Hunter, Hunter's 27th on this year's sergeants list, and that's after taking twelve weeks off to help his wife with their new kid. My man used vacation time on it, you hear? We are some elite motherfuckers out here, and we work city wide. Vagos, NLG, LCN, Regs, and Nords. We'll tangle with anybody trying to fuck with this great city. And we'll get it done right. That's what you step into if you come up into STAR. Now, drop your bag up here and we'll hit the road for a ride along."

Sample Starter: Addict 2024

Being a dirty cop was a lot like being a heroin addict, no one woke up one day and said 'I want to be a dirty cop' the same way that they didn't wake up and say that they wanted to get addicted to junk. And not even the good stuff, I want to be an addict on the trashiest gutter heroin that you could put on a spoon. Jason felt that he was an expert on both topics, being both a dirty cop and a heroin addict. Recovering heroin addict. He correct himself, lighting up a cigarette as he stepped out onto his porch, looking at the empty street, quiet with a dusting of snow on the sidewalks and the road.


It was rare that Haven City saw any snow, or even got cold enough for water to freeze. Something about where the city was placed, right on the coast, west of the mountains, and even further west of the high desert, trapped them into this warm bubble of coastal climate. Which meant on the rare day that snow did come, maybe once or twice a winter, maybe not at all for a few years- everything sort of stopped. Corner crews showed up low on men, just enough to guard the stash and doll out product to whatever fiends needed their medicine to avoid the worst of the withdrawal. The ones who could make it through a day without it were the ones who stayed home. Even if there wasn't much snow on the ground, no one was rocking snow tires or chains, so if you went out there was still a chance to lose yourself in the slickness and slide yourself somewhere you didn't want to be. You had to really want someone dead to take the time to go out and wet their block on a day like this.

They say hoes don't get cold, but even the hoes of Haven City stayed in on a day like this. The same was true for dirty cops. Stamping out the cherry of his cig he turned away from the cold back inside and sent an email to the Captain at the precinct. There were copies of all of the important files from the office either on his computer or in physical form, and so he told his captain that he would be working from home today. Going over files, reviewing strategies and preparing depositions for court dates that he wasn't going to be expected to attend. It had been a while since his testimony was considered reliable in a court of law. Too many IA investigations had made sure of that. The only work that his team was going to be doing on a day like this would be responding to emergency calls for wrecks and other accidents. A long time ago Jason would have leapt at the possibility of doing some actual hero work. Even after he'd started with STAR he'd still enjoyed doing the hero shit, getting cats out of trees, helping old ladies across the street and allat. Now he left that work for younger cops, and let that tingling feeling come from putting away the bad guys who couldn't pay anyone for protection fees.

That was the problem with the way this system worked, as far as Hruby was concerned. You had people like him who started off wanting to make the world a better place and do the right thing, but they had no money, no power, no influence, and the only way for them to acquire it was to do things for those who already did. And almost everyone who already had it were a bunch of crooks. But it was him that was going to be the fall guy if IA could ever get charges to stick.

"Why the fuck am I still doing this shit?" Hruby said to himself, looking over at the pictures he had on his desk. His big, Northside home felt too cold and quiet on days like this. He had bought it for his first wife, and had made sure it had enough room for the family to grow. It had been hard, finding the clean cash needed for the downpayment and to cover the mortgage, and it had been one of the things that had first gotten IA on his back for real. The stress of that, the work he did to earn it, and the drugs and women he used to forget had ruined that marriage, and he hadn't done much better with his second wife. But a scholarship for the families of police had certainly helped her pay for college. At the end of it all, forty years into life, the sum of all of the things that he had tried to earn through his corruption was: three kids on child support, two alimonies, a mortgage for a house he lived in alone, a hundred day sobriety chip and one of the dirtiest jackets in the entire force. It was moments like these that really made you feel the weight of it all.

Reaching for his phone he scrolled through his contacts and thought about calling his sponsor. But then he stopped himself, and dialed another number instead.

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Roles:

• wife/baby mama
• girlfriend/mistress
• rookie cop
• fellow dirty cop
• a criminal informant
• a prostitute or someone he's groomed
• a fellow addict
• a lawyer
• a gangbanger's girl
• a lawyer
• Internal Affairs detective
• community organizer/politician
• undercover cop
• mental health responder

His Type

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Jesús Benjamín Ramage Jimenez

"The best wisdom that I can know, is do right and fear no man." -Proverbs of Good Counsel in Book of Precedence

Nickname: JB, Chuy,

Gang Affiliations: Vibora Motorcycle Club  (Nomad Charter)

Sexuality: ?

Birthdate: 10/12/2000

Height: 6'3"

Weight: 190lbs

Tattoos: serpents on both forearms, 'do right and fear no man' under his collar bone. Queztacoatl ouroboros on his sternum. Woman made to look like his mother on his left bicep, NOMAD over his shoulder blades. stylized V on his right bicep.

Criminal record: juvenile record expunged, drunk and disorderly and other humble charges as an adult.

"Backstory"

Born October 12th 2000, in an Oakland hospital to single mother Lana Jimenez. His father, Benjamin 'Benjy' Ramage was murdered on the corner of 13th and Water St in Haven City on February 29th, 2000 by Lana's cousins angry that he refused to marry her or even stop sleeping with other women. This murder was the final catalyst in the formation of the 13th Street Regulators by Benjy's friends and family. Their first order of business: avenging their fallen brother. Lana, scared by the violence and unable to call family the same people who were killing her blood family she ran and settled in Fruitvale, Oakland, California. Jesús never knew his father, but he grew up with many 'uncles' of various relations to him. The only wisdom that he received from his biological father was an inscription on an iron ring he'd given his mother 'do right and fear no man.' The Jimenez family grew up in East Oakland when it was going through a period of change, different policing methods, controversies and fluctuations in crime levels. As a teenager, Jesús controlled corners in the dangerous Murder Dubbs and spent his last year and a half of high school in a juvenile detention facility for his crimes. The closest thing that he had to a father figure in his life was Felix, one of his mother's boyfriends and a patch holding member of Vibora MC, Oakland. VIBOAK, when he got out of juvie instead of encouraging him to get a GED Felix got him a job as a mechanic and sponsored him as a patch into VIBOAK. Three years later, in 2021, Jesús  announced that he would be going nomad, joining the wandering Nomad charter welcome at any table he found in his path. From that moment on, Jesús wandered. His heart set on seeing every corner of the world that he could manage, expecting an untimely death like so many of those that had come for his family. 

Roles:

• Some dead guy's girlfriend (see below)
• One of his baby mama's from across the states
• A girl from the neighborhood his mother lives in
• The girlfriend of an incarcerated or deceased biker
• One of his girlfriend's fresh out of jail
• A hitch-hiker
• An undocumented immigrant
• A meth/crack cook or pot farmer
• Tattoo artist/sweet butt for one of the charters he passes through
• Preacher's daughter
• A woman about to swear her vows as a nun
• Miami drug mule
• Farmer's daughter
• Waitress at a sleepy restaurant/truck stop

Sample Starter: Nomad, 2024

Nomad n. an individual who roams about.

The only thing that Jesús really knew about his father was that he was a motherfucker. To hear his mother tell it he was just some crazy ass white boy from Haven City who had a bitch in every zip and got killed for it.

It wasn't as if Jesús spent a lot of time thinking about his father, like most fatherless sluts he found that his life tended to stay a lot more stable the further from his mind his father was. It was harder to keep the dead man's shade from darkening his door when you knew at the end of the year you'd be older than he was when he died. Under those kind of conditions, you started to see similarities between the story of the man he had been and the story that you were making of your own life.

Jesús had never been that smart, the only school that had ever been for him had been the school-of-hard-knocks and all of those psych evals that the school had run him through while they were figuring out the best way to get him away from his peers had never really registered as anything important to him. He didn't know what ASPD stood, for or what a 'comorbidity' was or any of the other long list of acronyms that the school had put on a paper and showed to his mother before shipping him off to juvie. He didn't drive fast, party hard, fight harder, and fuck harder than all of that because of some collection of letters or a family history of 'maladaptive behavior' he did it all because that shit was fun. And sometimes he did it just because.

There had been no family to tell him about 'the family demons', no wall of wanted posters of men that shared his eyes. No it had just been him, his mom, and occasionally Felix or another 'uncle' checking in on them. Family was the crew on the corner and the MC And now that he was a nomad, family were the people wearing the same kutte and sporting the same ink and colors as him in whatever city or town he found himself in. Vibora may have started in Oakland, but they were everywhere now. Fresno, San Ysidro, Tijuana, Veracruz, Bakersfield, Jeffersonia, Reno, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Galveston, Miami, all over the American South you could find men sporting the ouroboros of Quetzalcoatl on their backs. The bottom rocker of his kutte didn't have the name of a state or region on it, like it did for nearly every other member of the club. His simply read 'NOMAD', because he was a man without a home. Things were easier that way, when you could just pull up roots in a moments notice and be gone from everyone's life when you gave them trouble. And when things were good, you were always welcome back into the fold. Back into the family and community without anyone questioning the humanity of a man who could love as hard as he did but be gone before morning.

For once, Jesús woke up alone. Whatever girl had warmed his bed last night must have lit out before dawn to beat him to the punch. Rising from the creaking bed in the no-tell motel Jesús chased away a hangover with a little bit of hair of the dog, and lit up the butt of the blunt they'd shared last night just to get at what little bit of THC might be left between the rolling paper. Snuffing out the butt Jesús started to look through the floor for his stuff, he found his wallet still chained to his jeans, but wasn't too surprised to find it empty of cash. Getting dressed was the easy part as he slipped off his kutte and sprayed himseld down with axe, stepping out into the sunlight in riding boots, jeans, and orange flannel and his kutte, his saddlebags and backpack over his left arm, gun hand free to work the Sig Sauer on his hip if the need arose.

Which, judging by the size of the man who slammed the door of a new Dodge Charger and started to stride across the sandlot parking lot with aggressive purpose.

Jesús didn't remember the name of the girl sitting in the passenger seat of the Dodge, he didn't remember the name of the town he was in or even the state, but he did remember that he had one in the chamber as he sized the approaching man up. The biker was a big man himself, at 6'3" he was taller than most people and he spent enough time lifting heavy things to keep himself well-built. Still, the man approaching him made Jesús feel small. Easily a head and a half taller than the biker, and built like a linebacker, the angry man had arms the size of Jesús's thighs and traps for days.

"Let me guess you're-"

"I'm her boyfriend, you piece of shit and I'm gonna-" BANG. Jesús hadn't really needed to hear more about what Trees-for-Arms was going to do to him for doing everything he'd done to his girlfriend the night before. The way he was coming towards him gave him all the context clues he needed. So, instead of waiting to get his ass beat in a fair fight, the nomad had drawn his pistol quick as the viper his club was named for. At less than ten-feet it wasn't hard at all to put the .357 SIG under Trees-for-Arm's eyes. What brains he had were painting the sand as Jesús lowered his saddlebags onto his Road King and climbed on top himself. The engine roared as he backed it out of the parking spot, passed the body of the man he'd killed and then started to ride it out of the dirt lot. He stopped for a moment though in front of the Dodge and gave the girl in the passenger seat a look that could have said 'Are we done here?' or 'You coming or what?' he gave her a few seconds to answer before he was speeding out of the lot and making his way for some kind of border.
With a new backpack or without.

"His Type"

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Nolan Baum

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” - Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Nickname: Bomb

Gang Affiliation: Nords, The Brand

Sexuality: Bi

Birthdate: February 6, 1983

Height: 6'1"

Weight: 170 lbs

Hair Color: Blonde

Eye Color: Blue

Body Type: Lean

Tattoos:18 on his right forearm, 48 on his left forearm, Nazi eagle on his chest with ths swastika on his sternum, "i have" on his inner right thigh, 'nothing' on his groin, 'to say' on his inner left thigh, 'Blood' on his right outer forearm, 'Honor' on his left outer forearm, blue-eyed devil tattoo on right outer bicep, H8 on his left outer bicep, Life Rune above his right hip, Othala Rune above his left hip, ORION on his left calf, NAF on right calf, SPQR between shoulder blades with laurels going on the blades, AB shamrock and swastike on the side of his neck, Valknot on the small of his back, Totenkopf on the back of his neck, old fashion bomb with the lit fuse on his belly button

Criminal record: first degree arson, hate crimes

Backstory: Unrepentant

Born February 6, 1983 in the Oak Hills neighborhood of Haven City to a stripper and a truck driver for one of the shipping companies that moved products from the port. The Baum household was poor in Nolan's early life, living in one of the tenenment apartments that were being set up in Oak Hills around taht time. Nolan's father and mother would often fight over how long Nolan's father was gone for and Nolan's mother's job as a stripper. The crack epidemic had also started to take off in Haven City with Los Vagos pushing in large amounts of cocaine to help fund their increase in power and Nolan's mother ended up caught up in it. All of these strains on his parents' relationship, as well as Nolan's father's various infidelities, caused them to break up when Nolan was barely four. Nolan stayed with his mother as she went down the crack whore career path, growing up as one of the few white families remaining in the increasingly black and Latino Oak Hills. [/color][/font][/size]

In 1989, when Nolan was six, the Haven City War broke out and Oak Hills became a battleground. Drug dealers fought each other outside of Nolan's elementary school, his mother was traded from pimp to pimp like property and he had few friends to find solace in his miserable life. Rescue came in the form of Ewell and Karen Darby, two prominent members of the Nords. As part of the Nords front of simply being interested in the betterment of the community they paid for Nolan's mother to go to rehab and took Nolan in for a time. It was in the Darby home in Glenwood that Nolan first began to learn the evil's of white supremacy and white hate. By the time he was thirteen he was serving as a lookout for Nords while they were going about their business destroying non-white businesses and dealing meth in Glenwood park. At fifteen he started dealing himself, as well as taking part in gunfights throughout the park.

In 2000 Nolan and two other boys firebombed a minority owned business or worship space (can be changed based on partner) and were arrested and charged. Nolan was sentenced to twenty years in Denne State Penitentary, with the possibility of parole in ten. While in prison Nolan joined the Brand, headed by the former leader of the Nords Arthur Wright, assaulting, killing and intimidating other prisoners and guards as needed. In 2007 Nolan took part in the beating of Alejandro Reyes that left the gang leader in a vegetative state. Nolan's various transgressions prevented him from receiving parole, but he did earn his GED while in prison and did not earn any additional time on his sentence. This qualifed him for membership in what became known as the 'Class of 2021', criminals arrested as part of the crack down that is credited with ending the Haven City war that are now being released at the end of their sentences.

Nolan's future is uncertain now hardened and instituionalized, he returns to the Nords and his old home knowing one certainty. Blood in Blood out. 

Backstory: Reformed

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Up until 2019  Nolan's path was largely the same as his unrepentant self. Save for one internal change, at some point in his journey a seed of doubt began to form in his faith in the lessons of white supremacy that had been drilled into him from the moment the Darby's had rescued him from the conditions of his childhood in Oak Hills. The memory of his best friend in Oak Hills, a young black boy, did not disappear no matter how hard Nolan tried to repress the memories and deny his old friend's humanity. In 2019 a fight with other inmates left Nolan in critical care and close to death. The prison chaplain Reverend Jeremiah Luther visited Nolan's bedside every day, despite the various verbal disagreements (and obvious other reasons) that the two had shared in the past. The Reverend reached out to Nolan at his weakest and began to reach through and crack Nolan's radicalization. Nolan continued the act of being a white supremacist in public, knowing that any sign of regret would soon lead to his death, but internally he knew that he wanted out. Now that he has finally served his sentence Nolan is back into a world that has advanced and changed so much in the twenty years he has been in prison and he barely knows where to start. What is clear though, is that he will not let the second chance that Reverend Luther has offered him go to waste. He will find a way to make up for his past mistakes and become a better person.

There is one obstacle to his path of redemption however, the Brand has always been blood in, blood out.

READ THIS FIRST

Before I put down the possible roles I have in mind I want to make one thing absolutely clear: fuck Nazis, fuck the 'alt right', and double-mother-fuck white supremacists. While I'm willing to entertain most roles for this character, I do not wish to glamorize the lifestyle or ideology the character follows. I would prefer any role that uses this character (whether repentent or not) take the approach of movies like American History X and Skin, where his ideology is deconstructed and show to be as pathetic and horrible as it obviously is. Sorry for getting serious for a moment, but I didn't want to scare anyone away from doing any rp with me because of this character.

Roles:

• Reverend Luther's child or sibling
• The relative of the rabbi, imam, pastor, or owner of the building that Nolan burnt down in his youth
• Nolan's cell mate/bitch in prison
• A member of the prison staff
• A girl affilaited with the Nords
• Another member of the Nords
• Someone who lives in the same trailer park or apartment complex as him
• A friend or ex-girlfriend from before his time in prison
• A police officer
• Any you come with that I'm blanking on right now.

Sample Starter: Amazing Grace 2024

For twenty years Nolan had sat in a cell up the coast and not said a word to anyone about who had put him up to burning down that holy place, or any of the hundreds of other crimes that he could have sung about. Twenty years, his entire youth, most of his life given to something that he no longer believed in. Something he had bled for, killed for, painted his skin with hate for. No wonder he couldn't stop himself from slamming junk into whatever vein he could find now that he was out, the list of people who hated their bodies and their own skin more than him was a very, very short one.

When he had walked back across that bridge to the mainland and freedom he had done so with so many plans, with the ways that he would go about freeing himself from the Brand. Blood in, blood out be damned. But one of the things that made the people he grew up with so appealing at first was one of the things that made them so hard to get away from in the first place. They were the only family that he had. The Council, the leading group of white men who told the other hateful white men what to believe and what to do in order to make money, knew exactly what he had given away for them. Donald Irwin had been his first cellmate in Denne, and they had been close, which meant that Donnie made sure that they provided him with everything he needed getting back into life. They paid for his trailer and the land under it, covered his groceries and other expenses, gave him a new member to clean up his shit and drive him around. A little bit of passive income. Of course they wanted him to work, no one liked useless mouths to feed, but they understood that they had had him in hell for twenty years, comfortable, powerful, but still in hell and that any man deserved to spend a bit of his freedom however he wanted. But Nolan knew there was a limit.

He'd gotten out of prison at the end of 2020. 2021 he had done little but get high and make appearances at family events and meetings. If someone invited him out to do something he went, but it was never particularly enthusiastic and never with particular enthusiasm. Part of it was that he realized just how much he had given up now that he saw what the men who hadn't gone up the coast had. Part of it was that he knew there was no way that he was going to get out of this life alive unless he had money, and the only way for him to get money was for him to do something evil to earn more. It was hard to believe that the people who had said they would help him out of the situation still would the harder it came to go away. He'd taken some steps though. Moved from the Glenwood Trailer Park to a shitty apartment in Pinesend, told the young man who was supposed to help take care of him and keep him sober to fuck off more often than not. Donnie kept sending him the money, and Nolan kept slamming it into his arm.

And yet, somehow the shit in his arm never nodded him off.

It was a rainy night in January, that was Haven City for you forty degree days and plenty o rain in the middle of winter, and he was wrapped in a rain jacket and a blanket, unshaved, unshowered, and only warm because of the poison in his blood, stumbling block after block away from the corner he'd lit up on and towards who knows what. His legs slipped out from under him and he landed in a puddle next to some steps, scraping an eyebrow and not really feeling it. Somewhere in the distance he heard some people singing from inside of the building. That didn't really matter that much to him. He was warm, he was comfortable, and for the moment he had forgotten just how much he hated himself.

Damn was it going to suck when this high wore off.

"His Type"

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[CyranoDeBergerac]

Isa Khalid

"I don't even call it violence when it's self-defense, I call it intelligence." - Malcolm X

Nickname: None

Gang Affiliation: Al-Sayf

Birthdate: 3/20/2003

Height: 5'9"

Weight: 156

Hair Color: Black

Eye Color: Brown

Tattoos: none

Criminal Record: none

"Backstory "

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Isa was born the son of two Somali refugees in Tacoma, Washington where he spent much of his early life living in various affordable government housing projects. Always a good kid, though not necessarily the best at school, Isa worked during high school in order to help his mother pay rent after his father was killed in a drunk driving incident. in 2019 tha family moved to Haven City where they could get more affordable housing and Isa's younger sister had a better chance of getting into the local college on scholarships. Isa continued to work through high school, primarily as a roofer and builder, leaving him with little time to study after his shifts or before school started.

In 2020 local members of Los Vagos started pushing further into the slums that surrounded the New Mecca Projects, there were assaults, rapes, girls getting sexually harassed just walking to the school bus, not to mention the cocaine that the Latino gang bangers were pushing into the community. In response to that violence a community defense group (not a gang) was formed to try to limit the impact that Los Vagos had on the people living in the projects. As a fit young man Isa was pressured into joining Al-Sayf. With time going on though the community defense group is starting to look more and more like a gang in structure and activities, bringing guns to what used to be fist fights, pressuring businesses for protection money, and more. Isa is at a point in his life where he needs to decide what he wants to do with the rest of it and how he can make sure his sister and mother are protected. 

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Allah Loveth Not 2020+

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Not a single resident of what would become the New Mecca Projects had a say in its naming, and if any voiced any objections to it after moving in they were expected to accept it gratefully and to not make a fuss. Afterall, nearly a third of them were refugees, with no place to go but wherever they could be given. Beggars can't be choosers was the official policy of the city of Haven City, the state of Jeffersonia and the United States of America.


Isa had just graduated high school when the Khalid family moved south to these new projects, there were more being built to the south, west, and east, which meant that there was going to be construction work for years to come. That was good for Isa, he had never been a man for hitting the books, the numbers and letters had always flowed off of the pages no matter what language they were in. But he was good with his hands, carpentry, roofing, tiling, construction, cement, demolition. He could do it all and did it happily. $40,000 a year before over-time was enough to make a man sweat himself to the bone to feed his family.

The projects, themselves were ten stories high, four of them arranged in a square, with overhangs connecting the walk ways between the buildings. and a courtyard in the center where kids could play and you could feed the birds that gathered around the projects. For the first year and a half the apartments were something like a new Mecca, the residents were able to settle in, able to live their lives, go to school and work and be 'productive members of society.' The community center in building A also served as a mosque for the community, hundreds of Muslims from all over the world gathering together to pray and eat together. Mullah Usman was a wise and educated man, who had lived through many great horrors and chosen to love life out of it. His sermons always left Isa wishing he were a wiser man, but appreciating the gifts that Allah had given him.

And then the Three Kings had come.

Three Kings Carniceria was the first butcher's shop within walking distance of the projects front door that offered halal meat. No more driving all the way to the supermarket to peruse the one aisle of halal food. And it had opened up just before Ramadan, meaning that every single fasting matriarch in the projects had hurried there to get all of the beef and chicken that they needed to feed their families for weeks once the sun went down. In thirty days Francisco 'Chico' Reyes had a monopoly on the supply of meat going into the projects, and by the end of the summer he had a contract with the housing commission that ran the apartments to supply catering for the various community events, and then they started to supply the food trucks and vendors that came over the summer.

Six months after the carniceria's grand opening came Los Vagos and the drugs.

If you didn't know what you were looking for, all you would see were young men, dressed in a particular way featuring orange and black, hanging out on corners and in public spaces. They would smoke, cat call and wolf whistle at the women walking by, and when asked what they were doing they would always claim that they were waiting for their girlfriends to get off of work at the carniceria. Some of them even started working for the food trucks themselves. But once you looked closer, you started to see the signs. Money being passed from hand to hand, crystals being traded a few blocks down. Order the right order in the right way and there would be some rocks hidden under your napkins when they were handed to you at the food trucks. And if you tried to open up a business on the main streets surrounding the projects you could expect that your first visitor would be a group of young men in orange, barely hiding the pistols in their waistlines, always commenting on the prices. Which was too low, which was too high, and occasionally offering veiled threats as to what would happen if protection money was not paid in a fully and timely fashion.

Fights started to happen in public, boys angry at other boys for how they were looking at or talking to girls, brothers getting jumped for putting bass in their voice when telling Vagos not to grope their sisters when they passed by. Small skirmishes here or there, but the tension built and built as the summer went on.

It wasn't quite October when the first rape happened, and of course the police did nothing. And then there was a stabbing, and one of the new businesses was forced to close because they missed a payment. Suddenly, all of the peace and tranquility that had been developed over the course of a year were vanished in an instant. People stopped smiling at their neighbors, stopped hanging around the courtyard unless they were there in numbers, and when it became clear that certain apartments were being used to store the crack that was being cooked, and even in a few apartments it was starting to be cooked as well. Isa's sister was seventeen, going into her last year in high school and he needed to drive her to school at 5am because he needed to be at work at six and couldn't have her walking to the bus stop alone. Their mother was too sick to work, but spent much of her time with the other women of the projects, knitting and praying. It was with questions towards their safety that Isa came to the office that Mullah Usman rented next to the community center, to be available when he was needed.

Isa waited on the bench outside of the closed office door, but it was not so soundproof as they seemed to think. There were two voices that came through the cracks in the door, not loud enough to be heard by the entire hall, just Isa sitting next to the door itself.

"They're selling crack in our homes, Mullah! To our daughters and wives! And when the girls can't pay in money they're making them pay in other ways. They're turning them into whores! If a brother or a father steps up, tries to do something to these men who are doing violence to us then he is outnumbered four or five to one and they beat him, cut him, it's a miracle no one has been killed yet. We must do something to bring justice back to this place, before things become worse than we could ever control." Isa recognized the voice of Brother Said, a learned man and also a firebrand. Already he had a following of young men on the projects who were eager for the violence that the man was calling for. Every Saturday those young men gathered together in Said's tenth floor apartment where his pretty wife would cook them food and serve them drinks while they discussed what must be done for what must be done.

"The police have been contacted, and they are telling me that they are doing everything that they can in order to make sure that these culprits are being apprehended."

"The police do not care about us, Usman, and you know it." Said retorted. "And bringing more of them to our homes only means inviting another gang to come and brutalize us, and to do so under the color of the law, where we have no possible recourse. We cannot rely on them. We must be the sword that severs the rot or all we will be slaves waiting to be killed."

"You are too confident Said, if you do what you wish then the police will be far more concerned with you than they would be with these drug dealers and traffickers. Muslim men, organizing and arming themselves in this country? The FBI would be knocking on my door and asking for names the second they heard of it, tearing through our books and interrupting worships until someone gave you up.

Isa had to strain his ears to hear Said's whispered response, imagining the man getting into the face of the Mullah when he said it. " Then I suppose it should be your concern that 'someone' never comes." There was silence for a long moment after that before Said said his farewells to the Mullah and left his office door. There wasn't surprise on his face to see Isa sitting there, so close and so nervous that Said might be aware that he had been listening. Instead, Said smiled and offered his hand to the construction worker.

"Another young man, overburdened by the troubles of our times. It's a pleasure to meet you Isa, if you ever find yourself burdened with the weight of what must be done, come find me. My door is always open." With that, the two men shook hands and something between a mentorship and a friendship formed.

There were twenty of them, on Dia de Los Muertos, when they came to confront the people poisoning and raping their community. They came with bats and with clubs, a few tasers, and one gun, and at first it was just a stare down. Each side waiting to flinch. But as Los Vagos started to realize what was happening their numbers started to grow. It was nearly 2:1 when Al-Sayf marched across the street for their first battle, and it was a bloody one. Broken ribs, stabbings, gouged eyes and snapped fingers. No bullets were fired for that first fight, though the police were called and broke it up. Some went away in handcuffs, others to the hospital, and the fastest runners and healthiest fighters slipped off into the night to circle back towards home. That first fight was a doozy, but it was not the end to the violence. More men and boys came to Al-Sayf, looking to make names for themselves and do what they could to protect their community.

They weren't a gang, they were an organization for community defense. But as they started to collect their own protection money from businesses, smoke their own cannabis and tobacco, dressed in new ways and carried new guns, things would start to change in ways that no one could have predicted. And Isa, being a veteran of that first fight, began to be seen as something akin to an OG.

Roles:

• Girl next door
• One of his classmates who actually went to college
• A good Muslim girl his mother would like to set him up with
• A girl attracted to the gang life style that is starting to form
• A cocaine addict/crack whore he finds himself infatuated with
• A Latina girl or the girlfriend of a Vago (all West Side Story style)
• One of the girls who works at the same construction company as him or the daughter of one of his coworkers

His Type

 

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Lawrence Elgin

Nickname: N/A

Gang Affiliation: Law

Sexuality: Straight (probably?)

Birthdate: Unknown, 1840 or thereabouts

Height: 6'0"

Weight: 170lbs

Tattoos: None

Criminal record: None

History

His gravestone reads Lawrence Elgin ~1840-1924 "The memory of the just is blessed."

Pioneer. Lawman. Chief of Police. The man who would bring respect for the law to Haven City never knew what year he had been born, but guessed it was around 1840 or thereabouts. He drifted between homes for children between Boston and Washington until he was old enough to work as a message rider, eventually work with the post office led him to residence in Washington D.C. At the onset of the war he caught the attention of Lafayette C. Baker, a spy for General Scott, later Provost Marshal of Washington D.C. and Colonel of the National Detective Bureau. Elgin never saw a battle during the War of the Rebellion, but he spent many sleepless nights dodging patrols and scouts weaving between the circle of fortresses that surrounded Washington and Richmond. When the war ended his patron's influence began to wane sharply and Elgin chose to celebrate the peace by lifting up his stakes and travelling west to Haven City, where a new gold claim had been found and word of opportunities in a developing city enticed him.

Despite being a greenhorn in western travel, Elgin was elected trail guide on the Oregon Trail earning an additional $500 for his efforts to lead the party across the Great Plains, through the Rocky Mountains, and along the Applebees trail in the Cascades to reach the westernmost city on the American Pacific.

In Haven City, Elgin established a hardware store with his partner Alvin 'Vin' Daley. Attempting to avoid complications, they find that their new home is a county that is currently split with strife. A feud between the Haskell mining family and the Johnson timber barons is growing more and more dangerous. When the city marshal is murdered, a series of events lead to Elgin being elected the new town marshal, in growing conflict with the corrupt Sheriff of the county.

Lawrence would earn national fame by ending the Haskell-Johnson War in favor of the the Johnson Family in a shoot-out where he was backed by six friends.

• Himself
• Vin
• Jeremiah Ramage, mountain man
• Hong Funshan, Chinese revolutionary and head of a tong
• John Fields, freedman, bounty hunter,
• Padraig Gayle, gunsmith and retired outlaw
• Hawk, Rogue River gambler and surveyor

The story of the Johnson-Haskell War and its conclusion was told internationally, eventually turned into the subject of books, films, and other media. in 1877 Lawrence Elgin would be made the first Chief of Police of the Haven City Police Department, he would serve in this position until 1915, and would die in 1922 watching the city that he had given his life to gleefully fall into corruption as the age of the bootlegger replaced the age of the gunslinger.

Roles:

• Preacher's daughter/missionary
• brothel worker
• Chinese migrant
• A woman he fell in love with on the Oregon Trail
• The widow of a homesteader or the first Town Marshal
• A freedwoman
• A Southern firebrand
• Any other Western role we can think of

His Type

Sample Starter: Arrival, 1867

Their first sight of the Pacific Ocean came to them once they had finally crested the Cascades. Sloping down below them were hills teeming with settlers, prospectors, homesteaders and timbermen. It had taken them nearly a year, setting out from Independence, Missouri last summer, wintering on the eastern slopes of the Rockies, and now they met the late May rains rolling with them down the Cascades.

The wagon train had elected trail guides upon leaving Missouri, no one in the party had ever been west of the Mississippi before, but Lawrence Elgin and Vin Daley had impressed the party of greenhorns enough to elect them to the position and pay them for it upon arrival. Elgin with his stoic confidence and resume as a scout, message carrier and rifleman during the war. Vin with his easy going ways and quick talk. The two balanced each other when it came to navigating the travails of their travel.

Which of course they would, the two of them were bound to a joint hardware business when they made it to Haven City.

Three hundred souls in their party when the left Missouri. Two hundred and eighty when they finished their winter. One hundred and ten remained for their final descent to the coast. Most of those that were no longer with them had chosen to remain in Jeffersonia or the gold fields in southern Jefferson, instead of face further risk on the trail or in the ore fields of Haven City. Elgin and Vin had not been turned from their destination by these temptations. Single-mindedly, Lawrence had carried the party on his back towards the dream of what Haven City could be.

The road wound through the hills, into the forests where timbermen destroyed their backs and bodies for the timber that was building Haven City. The timbermen called out to the people of the wagon party as they came through, some friendly greetings and welcomes. Some recommendations of libations in the camps and the cities. Others began to offer propositions to the girls in the party until Elgin's watchdog gaze fell upon them. Then they offered the defense of a 'polite jest' and continued about their work.

Rain sent all but the necessary to what tents or homes that they possessed. Flows down from the hills turned what road their was into muck and mire. Members of the wagon party drifted off at the outskirts of the city, gifting their trail guides the $300 payment that they had accumulated for their efforts and saying their farewells.

"I wonder when they're gonna pave it!" Vin observed from the bench, driving their oxcart filled with supplies and equipment while his grey mare walked beside, tied to the side.

"I imagine soon." Lawrence shot back as his own horse found a deep puddle of mud that splashed up onto his duster and his cheek.

"Always the optimist." Vin answered, but sensing his partner wanted no words with him they both bent their eyes to the right side of the street, looking for the markers for their own plot of land. They soon found it, the empty space of mud on Main Street that would be their home and their commerce. To its right, a brothel. To its left a saloon, and across the street a simple home with a tin star hanging out in front of it. Not the Marshal's office, but his home at the moment.

"Well I 'spose we should introduce ourselves." Vin suggested nodding towards the brothel. Elgin only glowered at him.

"Fine, let's get the tent up first."

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Thomas Steadman

"He who is born with the Northern hoarfrost in his veins. Indomitable in war, and Death's lover." -Whethamstede's Register

AKA: The Man from York, Trouble, Tommy

Gang Affiliation: Stonehouse Crew (formerly), Numismatic Global Operations.

Sexuality: Bi/Pan

Birthdate: 2/22/1979

Height: 5'10 1/2'

Weight: 194 lbs

Tattoos: In development

Criminal Record: In development

"History"

Born February twenty-second, nineteen-seventy-nine, Tom's father was a wasteman. No good for anybody even himself. When he was around he was drunk and lazy and a poor example of what it was to be a man for his young son. His mother kept them fed off of support and doing hair and nails. But when she wasn't doing that she was lighting up a spoon and nodding off for a nap. Twas not long before Tommy started looking outside of the home for inspiration. Stonehouse was not the first council estate that Thomas Steadman and his mother lived in, it was not even the first one in Yorkshire. But it was the one where he found examples to each him how to be a man.

Roles:

• A Romani or Traveler (who also happens to be or is related to smugglers/thieves)
• A member of Reaper's Own, Glasgow Charter outlaw motorcycle club, or a Glaswegian criminal in general
• English rose/ aristocrat
• Roadman or fellow scally in Stonehouse, left behind when he started working with N.G.O.
• Intern or fellow student during his time apprenticing with N.G.O.
• Criminal or other character from any part of the world from his over two decades or world travel (ex. Swedish raver, Swiss banker, Moroccan mafia clan , Portuguese Model, Employee of an African Warlord, Fuerdai taking a walk on the wild side etc. etc. )

"Sample Starter: Stonehouse Cunts, Late 90's"

"Look at where we're from... If we are not monsters, we're food... and I could never be food."

Coming up in Stonehouse Council Estates in the first half of the last decade of the 20th century you knew that there were three men with whom you did not fuck.

Ollie Ramage was a brutal bloke from Belfast. Murders in York had nearly tripled the year that Ollie moved to town. The big man was particularly fond of a sawed-off shotgun hidden beneath a jacket, one blast from his cannon and all that would be left of you was pieces for the feds to clean up in the morning. Things had mellowed out since then though, Stonehouse was Ollie's undisputed fiefdom and the rest of York knew that so long as you let Ollie reach into your pocket from time to time then things could remain calm. Monk was Ollie's right hand man, the brother who was responsible for making sure that things went smooth and that Ollie's plate stayed clean. Friendly dude who had grown up in the neighborhood, Tommy had always appreciated the practical wisdom that the man could doll out at a moment's notice.

The third man was Amadeus Markham, street name Marble. Ran the roads for the brutal and the smooth. Keeping them stocked in a regular line of dealers and runners. The tolerant face for the significantly intolerant upper management. So long as you weren't coming back to the yard from your GCES. Well, all of this was true about Marble until recently at least. Someone had found him in the back roads beside the bins with his throat slit from ear to ear.

Tommy was still wearing the knife when he stepped out into the open market in front of the estates, taking Marble's place looking out over the youngers and runners making the moves needed to shot product to the fiends and eventual-fiends that passed their way down North Lane Rd on their way to-and-fro about their other daily business. Pay their dues, cop their powder and go off to smoke it out of a pipe or boil it on a spoon to place in their favorite vein. No one seemed to miss good old Marble as the school year ended and the season turned from damp wet spring, to damp wet summer and more fiends were finding their way to Tommy's lane by the day.

No one save Immigration Service who had been putting pressure on Marble about his mother's status. Oh, and Marble's mum presumably.

Stonehouse was no South London council estate, no metropolis of millions around it, and it was still significantly smaller than the market at Leeds, but there was nothing wrong with being a big fish in a tiny pond. Whenever the big fish chafed at the surrounds he just needed to flex his leviathan muscles and cause some splashes and suddenly the banks were eroding away and the ocean was forfeiting some of its magnitude in order to avoid seeing what happened when yet another leviathan broke from its confines and invaded into open waters. Sharks that had grown used to the current competition of the ecosystem they existed in would rather pay respect to the leviathan in the pond than to rub gills with it.

The same could not be said for Yorkshire scallywags and fiends who found themselves needing to deal with and respect a new man handling the front of a shop that they had come to take advantage of Stonehouse's hospitality.

An epithet had come with Thomas Steadman when he stepped up from shotting to supervising the shotters, 'Trouble' had followed in the air in his wake from his younger days on the football pitch. A low sliding tackle here or the wrong sneer and word there would soon lead to a young Thomas leaving his designated position on the field and a bench clearing row would soon follow. An injury sustained to the leg ended his football career opportunities early, but you could still find him near the pitch ready for a brawl if any of his mates were in need of a pugilist.

And that energy followed with him from the pitch to the roads. Over time his leg healed, but not all of the way. And in moments of particular agitation, whether it be a customer lodging an unreasonable complaint, a fellow scally not showing the proper respect to personnel and property of the Stonehouse Crew, or a dispute between said personnel itself, his limp would come back out again as he swaggered his way towards the problem and insured that the problem was resolved swiftly and economically.

'Here comes Trouble!' was the call from the upper levels of the estates as he made his way to swift result.

More than anything else. A Yorkie, a scally, a drug dealer, a murderer, and Englishman Thomas Steadman was a problem solver.

"Sample Starter: The Man From York, Present Day"

"But the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't brag himself."

One rare day in an ill-spent youth, Thomas Steadman had been walking through Little Italy, just shy of the LSE with a bag of carefully manicured and banded bills over his shoulder when said shoulder bumped into the brief casing carrying arm of Marco 'The Corsican' Casanova. At the time Marco was an employee of the holding company of a subsidiary within the larger consortium of financial investments and front corporations that made up Numismatic Global Operations. Thomas had been obviously what he was, from the diamond in his ear to the trainers on his feet, and Marco had barely needed to guess to know what was in the bag.

Yet, Thomas had chosen to apologize for running into the Corsican, where most roadmen would have cussed, threatened and blustered. No matter who it was they may have run into or where exactly they were. It was the death of most low level criminals in the end, failing to recognize when they were out of their depth.

From apologies to introductions. From introductions to hor d'oeuvres and discussing the finer things of life. Somehow, whether it was luck or guile, young Thomas 'Trouble' Steadman was able to impress the Corsican businessman and a patronage was established. In return for services rendered and future employment to assuage accrued debts Marco and his associates greased the appropriate wheels and filed the necessary applications in order to allow Thomas to make up for the GSCE's he had missed, to attend a-levels, Uni  and beyond.

Twenty years on, Thomas Steadman had lived a life that few others could even imagine.

He had toasted poteen with Travelers and sipped Bordeaux with barons. Toasted his fair skin from Svalbard to Tierra Del Fuego. Smoked hash with emirs and Bedouin chiefs as casually as he did yardies and leftists lost in the jungle. Princesses and priestesses had danced with him in ballrooms and skyclad at lost forest festivals. The world was his oyster and he had worshipped her lust pearl for all it was worth. And in return, the world in which he walked had given him a kind of reputation that opened doors wherever he went, even without him saying his name.

'The Man From York killed more men than Ebola' was an exaggeration, but not by an order of magnitude before the 2016 outbreak. B. Accty, M.AC in forensic accounting, well-read in the fields of international business, foreign affairs and international law. Chemistry and culinary arts as hobbies and pastimes along with a particular handiness when it came to household improvements, or anything involving rope and hooks really. At the same time as these academic accomplishments the Man From York was more than proficient when it came to firearms and the application of martial arts. Yet, the first lesson of combat he had learned in Stonehouse still remained at the forefront of his mind.

'Don't start none and there won't be none.'

Today found him in Belize City, tourist hub for the Anglos whether they were looking to dive and explore the biodiverse underwater paradise of the Belize Barrier Reef or slip on their khakis and field hats, climb into their jeeps and going looking for the Lost City of Z among the old Mayan ruins that dotted the country. One of the principle laws of economics was that where the rich white people went, thence one would find cocaine and Mary Jane. An equally ubiquitous principle of economics that whenever one found themselves selling narcotics to rich white people, a certain type of face needed to be worn in order to keep your customers content and comfortable about the business that they were doing and the misery that they were enjoying the profits from. Such a face that made it difficult to imagine that Pete (or Pedro) the Plug could hack a man to death with a machete or elsewise visit violence upon the competition.

Yet, to many great misfortunes, some men wore that mask so long that it became their true face. Leaving them ineffective when it came time to ward off the competition. All businesses suffered breakage and loss of product. It was an acceptable risk. But to potentially lose access to an entire market, that was unacceptable.

Thomas left the hotel on the boardwalk dressed like the businessman type of tourist, off to make an appearance at the branch office before expensing fifteen thousand dollars of champagne and prostitute and file one report.  Comfortable Oxford's on his feet, good for style and athleticism. Sport coat, trousers and vest all a muted blue-grey to contrast with the white underneath. Around his neck was a red bow-tie that paired well with the blue-black spectacles resting on his earlobes. Folded and draped over his right forearm was this morning's newspaper. Print form to contrast with the palm sized Kindle resting in his chest breast pocket.

His true destination was not the branch office, but a small tourist bar with cabana pretensions draped over a cigar lounge-diner. Many shades of brown assaulted the eyes while your nostrils were infused with a vanilla-brown sugar incense that brought a slight water to the eyes. When he arrived there was only the man behind the bar, who worked the cappuccino machine as if it were foreign technology brought fresh from the saucer. Steadman left his tab open and sipped at the warm drink while thumbing through the latest news. The tourist bar had two primary ingresses. Blue-green eyes remained affixed on the entrance closest to the bar, while the reflection of the door to the deck in his watch kept him aware of any who might come upon him from behind. One hour passed. Then another. Two refills yet the Man From York did not show a hint of a jitter.

Finally the men who Thomas was waiting for finally arrived.

Neither showed discipline, moving straight to the bartender and talking to him in hushed-yet anxious voices. In a country where English was the official language, they chose to speak Spanish. talking about far too much far too openly with a stranger in the room. Perhaps they thought he was simply and especially stupid American. Finally, the bartender silenced the two newcomers and cocked his head as if to speak over them to his one customer of the morning.

"My apologies sir, these are my cousins. My mother is very sick and I am going to need to close early. Please leave." Well, at least he was polite about it.

"I am sorry to hear about your mother. But I am afraid that I must stay." Thomas spoke with clear, precise diction. His Northern brogue not suppressed, yet controlled. Much like the SIG SAUER micro-compact pistol that he slipped into his palm and kept hidden beneath the folds of the newspaper draped over his arm.

"Listen, buddy. Fuck. Off. Before I make you fuck off." Said the ruder of the two new comers. Shaved head, broken nose, scarred chin. A brawler not a thinker. His wiry friend was not that much better.

Thomas sighed. "I would recommend you reconsider your tone, friend. I won't be leaving before I -" Big, scarred and ugly went for the pistol behind his back. A 9 millimeter stole away his dome and used it to redecorate the ceiling. BANG! BANG!

The second shot split wiry's brow. The third parted his hair and tore through the bartender's right shoulder. Newspaper discarded on the floor and pistol blowing smoke, Tommy rounded the bar and secured the weapon that the bartender was reaching for as the man whimpered and cried, looking at the ruin of his arm. Checking him for any other weapons, once Thomas was secure he examined his handiwork.

"Everything is alright old chap," Tommy fixed the bartender with a broad grin and slapped his face to draw him away from the setting in shock. "A through and through. Lucky the bullet did not catch the ball and socket. Splinters everywhere, leave your shoulder a right mess. Can you still feel your finger tips? No. Well that might be the shock setting in, or it could be nerve damage." The bartender winced as Thomas 'disinfected' the bullet wounds with rum. "Now listen close - Carlos, I have this nice little kit here. Needle and thread. A bit of gauze and all your problems will be forgotten. But first, first Carlos, you need to tell me where your mates learned about our delivery schedule. If you do not tell me, your day is about to become much, much worse." 

His Type, 90's Girls

His Type, Modern Girls

His Type, All Others

[CyranoDeBergerac]

Zayden Truth

"I just want to conquer people and their souls" - Mike Tyson

Nicknames: Zay, Zay-Day, Zayd,
Gang Affiliation: Kansas City Kings (formerly), Truth Syndicate (name pending)
Sexuality: Bi
Birthdate: March 25th, 2001
Height: 5'5"
Weight: 141lbs
Tattoos: dragon tattoo, (left shoulder/chest), نار (An-Nar, 'The Fire in the Next World', back of gun hand) blacked out on his right forearm.
Criminal record: Juvenile record expunged

"History"

Born in Kentucky while his father was stationed at a base there, not quite six months after Zayden was born the deadliest terror attack in US history was launched and Zayden's father spent the next year of his life in Afghanistan. The pattern continued, he would return, then go off to bring democracy to one place or another. While his father was off being a war hero, Zayden was left alone with his mother who was beginning to develop her own habits in the state of Kentucky in the middle of the opioid crisis. Eventually his father came home, but he was different. Eyes lost somewhere in the horizon, beer always in hand, temper like a flash in the pan. A training position opened at Fort Riley, just outside of Kansas City. Here, with time and energy committed, the Truth family absolutely imploded. By high school, Zayden was more out of the house than in it, crashing at the home's of friends and rarely appearing at home himself. Once his father was gone, the dealing started. Friends of friends back in Kentucky helped create a pipeline, merging street corners with bases all over the south. By the time that he was twenty. his network was running national, moving parallel to major gangs. Then, he heard of an opportunity out west. Territory in Haven City that might be up for grabs in the near future. So he packed up three Escalades worth of gunners and dealers, plus two U-Hauls worth of product and furniture and decided to stake a claim in HAven City and make a future happen. 

Roles:

• His ride or die from Kansas City
• His bottom bitch (whore who runs his whores)
• The younger sibling of Karl and Lev Mudrik, leaders of Zayden's allies the Cyrillic Boys.
• A model or up-and-coming rapper.
• One of his corner crew chiefs
• A local dirty cop
• A local criminal looking for security
• Some civilian

"Sample Starter: Long Live the King, March 18th 2024"

Three hitters, all in black with bullet proof vests and ski masks slipped into the dark alley behind Benny's Barber Shop well before the ass crack of dawn. Each hitter came equipped for a firefight, Colt M4 Commando's in their arms, extra mags hooked to their vests and sidearms at their hips. Bump stocks, suppressors and giggle switches, these warriors did not give a fuck as they came up on the one guard placed on the barbershop's reinforced back door.

Linc and Sonny had spent their time overseas, the sandbox and elsewhere. This wasn't their first rodeo on a door breach and they took point. Zayden was just behind them and to the center. They had been friends with his father, battle buddies. Yet, it was the son that called the shots for the veteran killers now. The boy had become a man and won them their lives and received their loyalty in return. Gave them a cause to fight for and reasons to live. Now, in the dim twilight of morning in a city they had never been they were going to make him a king.

Tadpole was anything but little. Massive man in height and width. The type of  physical threat that you couldn't knock over with a 12 gauge. A real leg breaker. Problem was? His baby mama liked the fenty that Zayden was selling, And enough money to buy a one way ticket to anywhere else was always enough for a bribe in Haven City.

"Aight man, Ima just grab my loot and bounce if that's alright with you semper fi motherfuckers." Tadpole said, his hands up by his shoulders to show he was no threat. Zayd's Beretta with the long suppressor came up quick, all muscle but a lightweight between the ears, Tadpole dropped quick from a Mozambique Drill. The two veterans were rolling into position in and instant as Zay holstered his pistol and brought his assault rifle up. Sonny took the left side, Linc took the right. Sonny's MasterKey went to work.

BLAM! BANG!

The wall's of Jericho came crumbling down and the M4's called the dance. All three hitters fired at once, just like they had practiced.

The back half of Benny's was a narrow hallway, not quite six feet wide. The perfect shooting gallery for three automatics. Trey Parker was closest to the back door, hands occupied by a magazine. The heavy door crashed into his as the slugs ripped through salon chairs and mirrors at the opposite side. Tracers flew over Trey's prone body tearing through King's jaw and opening up Benny's belly. Edie Pierce died fourth as she was coming up from ducking the shotgun slugs. Linc's crossfire cut her from crotch to crown and blew her body back against the thin door to the backroom, bringing it down under the weight.

Booker was Zayd's kill. The last living bodyguard had been watching the front with all of its glass and no traffic in the five am street lights. At the sound of battle he dropped back and braced himself against the dry wall. The hero actually managed to get his pistol up, offer Duke hope of covering fire as he leapt from his chair next to his dead brother and barber to the hope of cover and escape on Booker's other side. Zayd's shot was quick and precise, taking away Booker's face just beneath the eye before his pistol could whistle more than twice. All three hitters let their triggers blaze with Duke caught in the open. They killed the junior plug of everything north of Route 91 a hundred times before his body hit the floor. Their one moment of lack of professionalism in an otherwise text book massacre.

No words needed exchanged, no instructions given as Linc crossed into the room and cleared the backroom and secured the stash while Sonny and Zayd saw to the bodies to make sure there were no survivors. Trey Parker died with the barrel of a rifle between his teeth and a plea for mercy in his eyes.

Five minutes after their arrival Zayd, Sonny and Linc left Benny's Barbershop with its newly shattered windows and blood stained linoleum floors with a bag of bills under their arms. Luce was waiting for them in an Escalade with a blacked out license plate at the other end of the alley.

Before 8 am on a Monday Haven City would know that the old King was dead, for the first time in over a decade Khalil Smith's face would be on tv beside a picture of his little brother Duquan, the klaxon underneath the picture reading "Kingpin's +5  Massacred Gangland Style in Pinesend, Police Seeking Information.'

Zayden did not typically watch the news, especially not in bed, but he certainly did that morning. 

"His Type (girls, boys coming later)"