MERCH!

Friday, November 27, 2015

Marcie Hawkins

Concept: Stage Manager of Crime

AKA: Most know her only as “The Operator” or “SM”  Only contactable by a very anonymized Email Address and a Skype number.

Desc: While not particularly athletic anymore, Marcie is still fit and has good energy. She wears clothes that she can move in and normally keeps her hair tied back. She still runs every other day and is uncomfortable in anything other than sneakers. Wears glasses. Her natural hair color is a bright red that she dulls down because it’s too conspicuous. 

History: Marcie doesn’t talk about her old life much. Orphaned relatively young as the result of a car accident she bounced around from indifferent family member to indifferent family member. Times were occasionally grim, but she never was abused and she was never molested or anything like that.  It’s just that, from the point of her parent's death onward, Marcie became very independent and very much a lone wolf.
  When she was old enough, she enlisted in the Marines. Learned everything they would teach her. Did her tour of duty, saw action even. and when she mustered out, took her G.I. Bill and went to college. 
     Marcie has a naturally organized turn of mind. It extends into nearly every aspect of her life. She majored in business, but along the way ended up dating an actor and getting involved in the college theater program. Marcie found that she had a natural flair for stage management and was capable of seeing problems before they occurred from a long way off.
     Adam was a very talented actor, but he was also the sort of creative type that often felt like he was wasn’t being creative unless he was destroying himself a bit.  As a result, he smoked, drank, and took many illicit substances.  He WAS able to keep level for long periods of time without some kind of incident. And they did have a decent relationship for the most part. 
   But then Adam got sick. Too many cigarettes you know?  And money got tight. and they both had student loan debts out the yang.
It turned out that Adam knew a number of sketchy people and so, when the money got tight he reached out to them. They put him to work as a face man on a con.  He was able to bring in some money doing this and cover some of the hospital bills, but he kept getting sicker and he wasn’t responding well to treatment. Finally, Marcie started asking him certain questions... and rather than let him dangle out there alone, she went along with him on the con.  The others weren’t keen on it until her organizational skills saved their collective bacon during a move gone wrong. 
      Marcie understands that crime isn’t the best way to make a living, but there are bills to pay and Adam still needs hospice care.

Attitude: “Who am I exactly? I am the woman who is running this operation. I am the woman who has compiled a dossier on you and your activities over the years. I am the woman who can slot this information into the hands of 6 separate law enforcement professionals with a single phone call.  Now you can either get your gear and do your fucking job...*takes off safety* Or...You can keep standing there making me think you're going to be a problem down the line.”

Skills: Marcie has ice water in her veins. She has truly superhuman composure and resolve. Physically, she’s more interested in stamina training and does yoga to remain flexible. She’s got a business degree and is very computer capable. She is educating herself all the time about criminal subculture and has dots in FS: Sniping. She’s got multiple specialties in Craft.

Gear: Marcie does a lot of her work on a Laptop which is normally top of the line. She is never without a pistol, 4 clips,laser sight, and a silencer. She has a loaded smartphone with useful apps and it can connect to the laptop to run scripts from voice commands.

Home: She dislikes meeting with other criminals for the most part, (There are a few very professional criminals that she actually likes.) but on those rare occasions when she MUST take a meeting or arrange a “Rehearsal”  The Danksy Street Theater is run down and decrepit on the outside. but inside, it’s warm, clean, and slowly being restored to its former glory.  Marcie bought the place a couple of years ago. She lives there, in a nice spot under the stage in a little apartment she’s made for herself.  Someday, She thinks, maybe she’ll get out. open the theater herself.  She keeps ratholing money away and slowly doing the rehab herself.

Circle: Marcie doesn’t have a lot of friends. But she does have a fairly decent Rolodex, and for her purposes, that’s just as good. Marcie is, with the exception of Adam, as lone wolf as they come. Adam...for his part, hopes that Marcie can find someone else. He’s worried she’ll close up after he’s gone...Which will be soon.

Story Uses:
* “Actors to your places please.”
Marcie is a brilliant planner and producer of criminal activity. She’s normally the girl in the van, owns the surveillance feeds, has a dozen diversions on tap should something go sideways. can divert police attention with effortless speed and guile. Can produce unimpeachable alibis. Has useful crafting skills. and on a couple of occasions, has broken out her sniper rifle and made certain that her “actors” were able to leave the stage. It’s a living.  The only weird thing is, she really isn’t interested in choosing the targets. She’s perfectly willing to accept jobs from outside parties. 

* “Standby cue 6. Cue 6...go.”
Marcie is the woman you call when you want things to go smoothly. When you don’t want unnecessary bodies or attention.  Granted. Things go wrong in crimes. Most people aren’t smart enough to think of 5 things, Marcie can think of 35. But even so, Marcie works very hard to not have to take a life.  But...You should be aware, that she CAN pull the trigger if she has to.
Marcie is the kind of criminal, that other criminals, PROFESSIONAL criminals want to work with.


Connections:
* While Marcie work mainly on heists and cons, occasionally, she is called about crimes involving the taking of lives. One of the few she'll work with is Immanuel Washington.
Don Pentangelli has occasional work for her. He wishes more of his boys had ice water in her veins like her.
T.C. Mitnick is in her Rolodex and does some of the work that keeps her off of law enforcement's radar.
* Clavo Hernandez is known to her. She's arranged for some documents from him through channels. Wouldn't know him if she saw him on the street, though.
*The Borland Farm is known to her. Once, There was a gig where someone got greedy, and then there were problems. Fancy that. Just one of those little things tucked away for a rainy day.
*Homer Conway is in the Rolodex under "Props"


Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Immanuel Washington

Concept: high-level Professional killer

AKA: Some spook quality paper with half a dozen ID’s

Desc: A tallish African American without a trace of fat on him. Has a swimmer’s build. moves like a martial artist. Keeps his hair short. Surprisingly empathetic eyes. Navy seal Tattoo.

History: It’s kind of hard to picture certain things.  Manny as a little baby with his mother holding him tight and singing to him. It happened all right. But it seemed that there were so many things that went wrong along the way.
Mama tried to raise a good boy. But the neighborhood was rough, and the church they went to was full of people who were just as bad in their own way. Manny could see it, even if mama couldn’t. 
   Manny wasn’t a bad kid really. He simply had a gift for violence.  He wasn’t wrathful or emotional or anything like that. He understood on some level that he simply didn’t feel things in the same way that others did.  It occurred to him that with little effort, he could become an utter monster.

And on some deep level, he realized that he didn’t want to be a monster. That he had to...HAD TO...harness this gift of his.  As soon as he was old enough, he enlisted in the navy.  He threw himself into the work of being a professional military man and eventually a Spec-ops operator.  Military service was exactly what he needed and also exactly what he needed to avoid. Eventually, the bad outweighed the good, and he waited long enough to muster out before disappearing. 

He took some time off.  He audited dozen of courses at universities. and then, when the time was right. decided that he should go into business for himself.

The thing about Immanuel is, He doesn’t do innocents. He ALWAYS refuses rush jobs because it’s too easy to find that he’s killed someone that WAS innocent if he’s not able to do basic research. (And as a group of Basque separatists found out, he doesn’t take it well if gulled into killing an innocent.) Oh, he’ll kill someone for money, but the only thing that comforts him is that most of the people he contends with have done something to bring him to their door.  When he saw the movie “Grosse Point Blank” he felt like he understood.

Attitude: Some people need killing. It is a thing that I am skilled in. I don’t kill cops or spooks or soldiers unless I have to, those men and women are just doing their jobs. I don’t kill women unless they are fellow professionals AND trying to kill me. I do not kill children.

Skills: Immanuel is a skilled hand to hand combatant, having dots in jiu Jitsu and Military Arts Combatics. He also has a good working knowledge of improvised weaponry.  He’s had more than one job that’s required him to walk into a hot zone entirely weaponless. He is skilled in the use of knives (Spetnatz knife fighting) and most military weapons in use by Seal teams.  While strong, his main skill is the ability to think on his feet and deal with evolving dynamics.(High wits and Dex) Also, he’s Eidetic and ambidextrous.
In addition: Immanuel has made up for an inner city education by becoming a skilled computer user and investigator.  He speaks 3 separate languages and has a fondness for poetry too, but it rarely comes up in the field.
Socially...Well. He tends to come off as somewhat terse and taciturn. He doesn’t seem to have any trouble intimidating people. They can sense a certain coldness in him.

Gear: As someone who is more than capable of killing with his bare hands, Manny rarely goes anywhere without some sort of arms. Usually two handguns under his armpits (Laser sights) Two knives at his wrists, Two in the small of his back. Two inside his belt. and two on his shins.  On a lark, he bought a strangling wire concealed in a wrist watch from a free-lance armorer. Turned out to work pretty good in a pinch.
Manny keeps intel on his clients and targets on a cloud server easily accessible from his phone or tablet. He is careful to keep nothing incriminating on either. Certain entities have discovered that intel is kept in a button-down mode and that if he’s kept from accessing it, information is slotted into the hands of a dozen law enforcement professionals.

Home: Manny lives in hotels. Manny owns a home, under another name. It employs a caretaker. That the caretaker happens to be Manny’s mom is surely just a happy coincidence.

Circle: Immanuel is as lone wolf as they come.  He knows a (very) few people in murder for hire, has a (very)small number of navy buddies and has a couple of friends from the old neighborhood. He doesn’t really see anyone regularly.  He has an agent that lines up contracts for him but the agent is carefully anonymous and he is just as anonymous to him.  It’s safer that way.

Story Uses:
“No, what you don’t understand is that I’m not like other guys.”
He’s really not.  Immanuel’s father was a part of a soldier improvement program. Immanuel was supposedly an impossibility. Immanuel’s father was supposed to be sterile. He was also not supposed to be able to buck his programming... And Immanuel is twice as good as his old man. (Seriously. give him ridiculous mental and physical and lot of similar merits.)

“Shockingly...I’m not here to kill you at all. But certain people are going to be very sorry I was sent.”
It’s not so much that he has a conscience, It’s that he has RULES.  and the rules are important. Even his mother suspects that Immanuel is a very dangerous man and has maybe done some bad things. But he knows that there is a line and he won’t cross it.  Otherwise...he’d never be able to look her in the eyes again.

Connections:
*Has fulfilled contracts for Don Pentangelli. The Don is impressed with Manny's professionalism. Most hitters are decidedly "buggy" in the Don's opinion.
Dr. Ronnette Franklin is one of Manny's friends from the old neighborhood. He's the one who taught her how to use the pistol she has.
Aldous Church is a professional acquaintance. Neither is attached to the other, but each knows the other is the one of the best at his job.
Charlie is actually Manny's uncle. Neither of them know this.