T.C. Mitnick

Concept: Black Hat for hire.

Desc: Terribly near-sighted. Overweight. He has a bit of a neckbeard. Although against the stereotype, He tends to dress well enough. He is scrupulously clean and does not smell at all of cat-pee.  He’s got good teeth which he takes care of and his breath is always nice.  His hair is short-ish by choice and reddish-brown. His gaze tends to wander because his mind tends to wander when people are talking to him.  He falls down a bit on the introvert side and talks little until he warms up to you, then, his brain is like an unleashed torrential storm.  He has a touch of Aspergers. (His girlfriend has it worse than him.) 

History: For the first 3 years of his life, Templeton Christopher Mitnick was more or less non-verbal. His parents were afraid that he was never going to be functional. But as they got him involved with some occupational therapy and some special schooling that they really couldn’t afford, he began to open up a bit. By the time they got him enrolled in actual public school he was verbal enough to get around and be functional.  And everyone relaxed a bit.  

   Although he was a voracious reader, he still wasn’t much for talking. He became fascinated at an early age with the family computer. (The first one they had, he ended up taking apart. It was never exactly the same afterward.) But after that, he began to get the idea that knowing how to program a computer was a lot like knowing how to cast spells in the fantasy novels he liked. Being a programmer was a lot like being a wizard.  And being a wizard was something that he coveted. No one talked to a wizard like they were stupid.

T.C had trouble in school. It wasn’t that he wasn’t smart. He was. He wasn’t able to focus on things that didn’t interest him. He also didn’t have a lot of friends. Most of the other kids thought he was weird, and even the couple of friends that he did have had trouble keeping up with his grasshopper-like brain. He was something of an underachiever at anything that didn’t involve math or computers. Often, the parents had to curtail his computer time in order to get his English and history grades up.

    T.C. got a scholarship to go to a technical school. He’d always been a machine at standardized testing and was able to simply crush both the ACT and the SAT. Once there, and on his own, and in his element for the first time in his life, he blossomed. 

     T.C. didn’t really get into professional hacking because he’s evil or even because hacking is illegal and therefore forbidden and fun.  It’s just that he’s always been interested in systems and taking them apart and putting them back together. He has to, occasionally stop himself, from fixing the vulnerabilities that allowed him into the systems in the first place.  

It’s just that, maybe the kid played a bit too much Cyberpunk or Shadowrun.  Something about the “Romance” of the hacker in those settings appealed to him and that probably would have faded after he got bored with it...Until he discovered that you could make ridiculous amounts of money doing it.

    He’s got a job working at Allied Business Data, working as a tape operator in their ancient tape machine facility. Cutting edge server tech, cheek by jowl with tape machine readers and reel to reel readers.  To date, he has never ever used any of the data that flows through the facility. Most of it is useless for the purposes of industrial espionage.   He works this job on the overnight because it requires 0.15% percent of his actual personal energy.  He spends much of his workday internet chatting and snacking, with the occasional catnap.  His co-worker Parikh does much the same.

     However, the one thing that his job at ABD does give him is a certain amount of anonymity. ABD is a large company, used to be huge and multi-national, back when huge multinational computer companies were a thing. He uses his access to borrow vast amounts of computing power for hacking and code-breaking. And in fact, TC found some useful tools in those old mainframes from when ABD had government contracts.  He’s improved on them since.  The very few times that they’ve been able to trace a signal back, they discovered that the hack came from “North Carolina”.  That’s as specific as they can get.  Part of the NC mainframe has an actual splice into the trunk lines there.  

Industrial espionage is nice and all, and the money is good, but it’s never steady.  And TC is just paranoid enough to expect that “Mr. Johnson” is always going to try to screw him on the deal.  This is why he is careful to never meet clients in person.  It’s also why he’s usually more interested in local and municipal systems. That money is a lot more steady. He’s got tools that can slot a new ID into the computers all over town and he’s got a co-op deal with a guy that makes fake ID’s that brings in steady money.  It’s nice knowing that if you need to leave the country, you’ve got papers that will get you out and money stowed in offshore banks. It brings a certain amount of bulletproof chill. 

Back in the day, he used to hustle hacking jobs at a place called the Donut Hut.  Now he pays a younger kid to do the hustling and pass the interesting work up the chain to him.  Much of the rest of his clientele comes from fellow black-hats looking to trade for something or looking to unload work that they themselves can’t do. 

Attitude: “Hrmph. Well. I like the challenge.  The money’s nice. *Wanders away if there are no more questions.*

Skills: Yeah. This guy is going to be loaded up on Intelligence, Wits, and Resolve. In roughly that order. He’ll have the kind of dots in Computer that you normally only see in an antagonist. He’s got a couple of dots in investigation because he always says that in order to be good at being a criminal you have to learn to think like a cop.  His social dots are, as you can guess, somewhat anemic, but he’s got a small amount of streetwise, and he can LIE on the phone like a virtuoso. If you have the Carthian Movement book there is a social merit called “Coder Clique” that is perfectly apt for TC. It gives him 9 again on any computer based roll. it comes from contact with a social coterie of fellow hackers and as long he’s part of the community he gets to use the advantage. 

As you may imagine, T.C. is pretty useless in a fight. He has no training, although he’s got several weapons.  He’s easily winded and a bit chickenshit. Fights in the schoolyard never went well for him.  But, on the other hand, He might just able to hack police and military drones. So there’s that.

Also: He can speak Japanese.  He just got annoyed with subs on his anime.

Gear: This part is going to be a bit complicated. So strap in. TC has four main tools that he uses in his work. His base station “O-Katanna”,  his laptop, “Wakizashi” and his phone, “Tanto”.  Each is networked to one another, and there are a number of preset hacks that can be triggered by voice commands on the phone. Each of the machines is tempest hardened and the basement of his house has an ingenious back-up system. The back-up system is in a small closet that's wired with a small amount of plastique. Anybody poking that is in a for a rude shock. Tanto is the most free of any kind of hacking stuff. But it can connect to the other systems by voice or text and initiate all sorts of mischief.  T.C. fourth main tool is a virtual system that he built that he calls “Ghostwheel”  Ghostwheel has been seeded into dozens of places.  Its compressed package will fit on a 10 gig thumb drive, but he likes having it in lots of places, each with its own skype number.

His laptop bag also has two spare phones, a taser, power bars, gum, 6 thumb drives, and a tiny tool kit.

Home: T.C.’s actual home that he shares with Suzanne, is fairly spacious, and in a quiet neighborhood. He doesn’t know his neighbors AT ALL.  Neither he nor Suzanne are interested in yard work or indeed, the out-of-doors either in the practical sense or even as a concept. There is a grill out on the back deck, but it’s been used all of twice and will likely rust away before it gets used again.  While the house itself is spacious, Both T.C. and Suzanne are borderline hoarders, especially when it comes to books. Nearly every flat surface that isn’t in the kitchen  has books on it.  The only exception being the Dinner Table.  The DT, as they refer to it, is not for dining of course, but for RPG games. Granted, a number of their friends have children now and so getting together for a game is not as easy as it used to be. Many times, they have to be satisfied with Skype or Google Hangout. But still, it’s a rule of the house not to clutter up the DT. T.C. and Suzanne have separate bedrooms, as they both snore, have personal space issues, and work weird hours. Which is not to say that they don’t get it on, it’s just that they tend to sleep alone.

Suzanne has crippling allergy issues when it comes to pets, like hives and throat closing up issues. So they have fish in tanks.

In addition to this place. T.C. also owns a houseboat under another name.  They’ve been on it all of twice. He maintains it because they might need to get out of town or some half-assed escape plan he’s concocted like that.  Each time they took the houseboat out, they got terrible sunburns.

Circle: T.C.’s circle of personal friends is kind of small. Even among fellow nerds and geeks, he can be a bit of an acquired taste. Beyond his gamer group, and his co-workers he doesn’t have much going on socially... Online, however, is a different story. T.C. comes out of his shell there and is known in the hacker world to be pretty fucking good at what he does.  He doesn’t bill himself as the internet equivalent of El Cid, Batman, and Kung-Fu Jesus all rolled into one, but he’s got a good rep and is known to be willing to trade for things and expertise he doesn’t have. (Expertise in government systems, government strong crypto, and anything involving particularly abstruse mathematical constructs.)  He has the expertise, but not necessarily the empathy to participate in Anonymous, but occasionally pitches in on some projects just to keep his hand in.

Story Uses:

T.C.’s obvious uses as an Ally/Contact/ Mentor/ Retainer/ Whatever are obvious. He can also make a decent antagonist if hired by the right sort of people.  

What gets interesting, is what might happen if T.C. gets found out, and then is forced to scramble. If he has enough time to group call, all of the seeded versions of Ghostwheel and say or text, “Initiate the Omega Protocols”

Well. things in your city, possibly even the whole state...are going to get REAL jacked up.

Connections:

*Like many people who fancy themselves the smartest guy in the room, T.C. is a fan of stage magic and has been to Caligari's more than once. Not that he's a regular, but he does like to go and so does Suzanne. The only person he's talked to there at all was Deondre Washington. But Deondre would probably recognize him.

*Aldous Church has a working relationship with him online. While Aldous can respect a man who protects his anonymity professionally, he has pieced together that T.C. lives in this city and is into nerd culture. Finding him, should it become necessary, might not be as hard as T.C. would like. Aldous often requests background information on targets. Pays extra for crash jobs.

Clavo Hernandez is naturally, T.C.'s ID guy.  Weirdly, the two are good friends in the way that people who are VERY dissimilar can be. Clavo has also put T.C. in touch with Alejandro Dean from Holmes, Gillis, Baker, Savage, North and Dean

*DJ RazorBurn from The Caboose used to bully T.C. in school when they were both children.  This may explain why his bags get searched every single time he travels and why he gets audited every other year, and similar problems like that.

Rory O' Halloran

Concept: Food truck Entrepreneur/Information Broker

Desc: Kind of broadly framed, black hair, thinning on top but still grows out down to his ass.(Normally he keeps it ponytailed) Bright green eyes and dimples.Lantern jaw shrouded in a rakish black beard. One strand of barbed wire tattoo on his right bicep. Wears a Celtic cross pendant on his neck that his mother gave him at his confirmation. Glasses for reading.

History: Rory is a good guy generally. He may drink a little too much, and really, if you’re in foodservice, that’s an occupational hazard.  And every once in a great while, he loses his temper in some raze-the-castle-salt-the-earth manner. But for the most part, he’s very level. certainly more level than his brothers or his sister. If it gives you any indication, he keeps 500 in his bank account at all times just for bail.  To his siblings credit, they’ve NEVER not re-paid him.

    Rory is the eldest, and he was the only one to follow in the family footsteps. His dad had been a full-on chef and had owned his own place before the fire.  After “O’Halloran’s” burned down, the old man was just not the same and a few months later, Pa passed in his sleep. Ma had been gone for years already.  All the O’Halloran children hope that Ma and Pa are together now, wherever they are.

   Rory’s business keeps him afloat. He, His wife Shoshana, his cousin Ciaran, and his eldest boy, Walt, are his solid crew with the occasional friend or family member filling in, or working swing, on any given night. These four are able to feed a couple hundred people out of Rory’s food truck and work like a well oiled machine.  And the business makes money. Not a ton of money, but it does make money. Shoshana is good with the books and has a good head for investment. (Rory breathes a silent prayer that certain stereotypes about Jewish girls turned out to be true.)  And while she’s always saying that they’d have enough money to open a place of their own soon, Rory isn’t exactly keen to be tied down in that respect.

And that’s largely because of his sidelight.

It started small actually. He got approached by a guy, a private dick who needed someone to keep an eye on a place. He’d been a friend of Rory’s brother, Liam.  And Liam, in a moment of drunken satori mentioned that his brother owned a food truck, and that he could maybe park it outside of the place, and keep an eye on it like that.  So, the dick approached Rory, and Rory after thinking it over, said OK, and without telling anyone, installed a hidden webcam and connected it to their mobile hotspot. parked the truck in front of the place for a week, (It was a good spot and made them some fat bank.) and after that, the dick had what he needed and a number of people went to jail. Rory got 2 large for his role in the affair...and decided to go into business for himself.

   He’s had to open a separate account at another bank because the money in the joint account he has with his wife would invite some scrutiny and some questions.  At present, he hasn’t told anybody exactly what he’s doing. And some of the places he’s decided to set up camp in, have been a bit questionable. (Although the truck has developed a bit of a following and people will travel cross-town at times as long as the new location pops up on Facebook.) But so far, he’s managed to hang out his shingle as a freelance surveillance professional and information broker and do so effectively. He’s starting to get a name among professionals and they even have to admit, he’s a hell of cook.

    Of course, This isn’t without it’s perils. Ciaran got his collarbone broken by some mook who seemed to KNOW that the truck was watching him somehow. Also, there have been an occasion or two where the client tried not to pay. Rory collected two of his brothers and his maniac sister and went round there and...well...it’s all very sordid. Let’s not go into it.

Attitude: “Look. I’m not some twinkly eyed fucker with a pig under one arm. I was raised in this country and I talk like an ordinary guy, not some guy hunting leprechauns. But I am proud of my heritage and I’m proud of my family. Ain’t nothing wrong with that, is there?  Maybe I’ve just got a drop of traveller blood in me.”

Skills: Crafts 3+ (Food obviously, but he’s also pretty good at fixing things that are broken in the truck on the fly.) A couple of dots of Investigation, because he’s getting good at it. He got some decent dots in socials as he has to interact with people nearly every night of the world. His upbringing has resulted in brawl 4 along with dots of boxing and brawling dodge. Strong Back would make sense too. He’s got willpower so he doesn’t fly off the handle all that often, but when he does, it is ON.  

And just because he’s pretty smart like that, He’s learned to speak Spanish like a native so that he can communicate with the other food truck guys. He doesn’t have a lot of russian, but he still flirts with the ladies who run the blintz truck. He’s also trying to decide if it’s worth it to learn a bit of chinese too.

Gear: I’ll talk about the Food truck itself below. But first i’ll talk about his personal gear. Rory is a bit of nut for any kind of tool that you can put on a key-ring, as a result, his personal keyring is like a clump of grapes. Every so often he has to go through and prune out the things he doesn’t use all that much just so he can keep putting his keys in his pocket. He normally has his Laptop with him wherever he goes, as it's the de-facto hotspot/sound system for the truck. It also stores his closely guarded family recipes.

He’s also writing a Irish Cuisine blog, which is developing something of a following. The pictures make you hungry.

“Paddy’s Wagon” is a fairly large food truck. It’s back wall is dominated by side-by-side double fry-o-lators and the bonnet vent over top of them.  There are two reach-ins on either side of the fry-wall. Much of the pre-prepped material gets stuck in there.

The front wall is dominated by a long steam table. Under the steam table is a bank of cold storage boxes and almost all of the fish and chips are stuck in there. The steam table is home to about different 8 different soups and chowders. The entire operation is designed to run off of styrofoam bowls, plastic sporks, wax paper for the fish and paper sleeves for the fries.  Coke, not pepsi.

The front wall is also home to three networked webcams that are squirt transmitting their footage back to home-base (The garage/kitchen where the prep-work gets done. Rory has set up a section of the mainframe back there to handle the footage.

Not only has this footage paid the rent on more than one occasion, it’s even helped catch the fucker that stuck a gun in Walt’s face one night.  (That guy got his pelvic bone broken in 3 places. He’s not going to ever be the same.)

Home: Rory, like most people who do what they love, has almost forgotten what home looks like. He’s normally only there to sleep or celebrate the occasional holiday. They’ve got a nice place in the burbs. The downstairs is a large oak-paneled den with it’s own bar set-up. Walt at 14, is already well on his way to being an accomplished mixologist. The two car garage is home to their mini-van and an old 280 Z that Rory is constantly tinkering with. The engine is actually in good shape, but the body is almost 85% bondo. I’m only slightly exaggerating.

Circle: Rory is an outgoing fellow and has a fairly large circle of friends, customers he likes, friendly competitors, and so on. In fact, he’s taken to pointing out to some of the customers if he’s parked across from some of his fellow food truck operators, “Hey, do yourself a favor, go get some of the mexican sausage from that guy over there, and then come back and get some of this soup and dunk it. You’ll thank me later.”  By dint of his friendliness and the fact that foodservice people constantly share gossip back and forth, he soaks up more raw intel on the street than you would even think possible. He’s also gone out of his way to be kind to police, especially his fellow irishmen, and so he’d likely have contacts for both street and police.

Story Uses:

*Rory is a guy with his hook in the water. But he has a couple of things that may be working against him and he’s not realized it yet. Shoshona is onto him. Or rather, she realized he’s gotten a little secretive about certain things, and wonders where some of the money is coming from.  She wonders if he’s gotten in over his head with somebody in the Irish mob. or maybe he’s having an affair. As such, they’re going through a bad patch right at the moment. Rory’s worried about telling her what he’s doing. She already worries enough for three people.

*So far, no one who’s been watched by Rory has exactly twigged, (Except for that one dude that broke Ciaran’s collarbone.) but no one is THAT good or lucky. Sooner or later people are going to put something together because the kind of questions he asks his fellow food truck people can get awfully specific. although he also lays off a bit of cash on them to keep them from blabbing too much.

*Rory’s sister is a werewolf.  He is not aware of this. So there’s that.

*There’s also some question about the O’Halloran fire.  Someone might be able to put together the idea that maybe there was an Irish Ventrue lairing in the sub-basement and the maybe the fire was just to get him, not realizing that it got old man O’Halloran too, just in a delayed sense.  (Ghouls don’t take it well when the domitor dies.)  So if those secrets came to light, Rory would want a piece of whomever killed his old man...God only know who’s responsible... Let’s hope it’s not his sister or her pack.

Connections:

Because of the mobile nature of "Paddy's Wagon" Nearly every single person on Painted Corners can have eaten there. but there are certain special connections:

*Walt O'Halloran has a fairly serious crush of Luna Krummholtz from The Grimoire. She flirts with him shamelessly.

* Charlie helped ID a the guy who held up the truck one night. As a result, Charlie is ALWAYS good for a bowl of soup and a sleeve of fries. "Guys sees more than most people think. He used to be an economist. Did you know that?"

* Detective Bela Janofski is referred to by the whole crew as "Our Pollack friend". Bela loves the "Paddy Wagon" and does not have a problem with talking about his work-day.

*Dr. Dennis McMurtry once retained Rory in order to help him determine who was committing a string of rapes on campus. "I wonder whatever happened to that guy...But I don't wonder too hard. The old man looked pretty serious. and I get the feeling he was able to handle himself."

*Teflon John Galloway is a regular. "I think he might be a cousin or something. Ciaran's always happy to see him for some reason."

Dmitri Garrett C.P.A.

Concept: Forensic Accountant

Desc:  Sharp clear blue eyes are the first thing you notice about Dmitri. His skin tone leans towards olive and he still keeps his black hair putting green short out of habit. His normal attire is a business suit, although he has a way of wearing them that still suggests that he was in the military. His shoes are always well cared for. sharp operators can tell that he is wearing an armpit holster. He has a booming laugh.

History: Dmitri is a genius. No seriously. He’s terribly terribly smart. 180 IQ.  and he absolutely murdered the ASVAB. The idea was to enlist in the military and get them to pay for college.  Being the sort of fellow he was, He went for the Air Force. He wasn’t necessarily interested in being career military, but he thought the idea of being a pilot was going to be awesome on a resume and might parley into interesting opportunities after college. Basic training came along for him right about the time he was starting to fill out and he found himself in tip-top shape for the first time in his largely bookish and introverted life.

And then he washed out of the pilot program.  It wasn’t even his fault really. He had a nice feel for it and nobody spent more time in the simulator getting it down, but he had some sort of weird inner ear thing that totally wrecked him every time he went up in a real bird. It nearly got him killed.  The base doctor had to break the bad news to him. He was never going to be a pilot.

Afterward followed a period of deep depression, drinking, and some sexual irresponsibility.  But out of that deeply unpleasant time, he met Mary-Anne and Mary-Anne got him going back in the right direction.  She could see that he had potential, even if it wasn’t potential pilot. 

The Air Force, for its part, knows that lots of people wash out of the pilot programs and need somewhere else to go. The Air Force, like all branches of the armed forces, has need of lots of different types of people. Now certainly Dmitri wasn’t liable to be slinging hash in the mess hall, with a brain like his, even though he seemed to be trying to kill as many of his brain cells as possible. So, his C.O. sat down and tried to figure out what to do.  

And that’s how Dmitri ended up as a forensic accountant.  Somebody has to crunch numbers and handle accounts payable and accounts receivable.  This can be occasionally ticklish and complicated when things are being paid for as black budget items. Like the occasional 500 dollar toilet seat, which is really hiding some kind of bribe money for a C.I.A. operation. Money still has to be properly accounted for, even if it’s supa-supa classified and stuff.  Dmitri felt like he was being punished for the first week of his new assignment until he walked into his C.O.’s office having noted a discrepancy of several thousand dollars and a possible narrative of exactly where the money went.  Captain Armitage went a particular shade of purple, bade Dmitri sit down and then had his receptionist call the Pentagon, where the captain ended up chewing out some guy on the phone for a good 20 minutes.  Dmitri was impressed with the Captain’s skillful use of invective and simply hoped he too was not going to be on the receiving end of it. After slamming down the phone, the Captain took a steadying breath, and then a beaming smile broke across his face. “Damn, Garrett. I knew you’d have a talent for this stuff.  I do so enjoy being right. Have a cigar son...”

And from that moment on, it was a different world.  Dmitri Garrett LOVED solving problems and untangling mysteries. It just never seemed like that kind of thing to him, and now...Well. he couldn’t get enough. He stopped drinking. He stopped eating too much and jumped back into PT, although his current assignment didn’t exactly warrant it. He made an honest woman of Mary-Anne. and he mustered out after 4 hitches with a full-ride to the college of his choosing. He was able to get into an ivy league school and scored an internship with a CPA firm.  Of course, after a month, it was clear that they had very little they could actually teach him, and the man who owned the firm tried to convince Dmitri that there wasn’t a thing they could do to shorten the internship really... Until Dmitri made it very clear exactly how much work and responsibility he had already taken on, and how he was sure that some other firm would be more than happy to allow him to intern for THEM.

Dmitri got hired on part time around his class schedule and began rat-holing money away for the house that he and Mary-Ann were going to buy.

He’s a little older now. a little grayer. Still fit as a fiddle. Has his own firm.  It’s small because he’s not interested in being someplace or owning someplace huge. He enjoys training new talent and his interns go on to become serious accountants in lots of places. His eldest daughter is in junior high now(“Sharper than her old man, and prettier than her mom. Don’t know what I'm going to do.”) and the youngest almost has his college paid for. 

But it’s not necessarily all beer and skittles.  Dmitri’s skills and talents are such that people come to him to find out things, like a private dick who works with numbers. This occasionally makes him enemies, which is why he's taken to running a couple of boxes of ammo through that piece every other week. Some of these people are freaks.  There was a guy who attempted to jump him one night and in the ensuing scuffle, Dmitri was SURE he’d shot the guy, but the guy ran and Dmitri gave chase, but as soon as he turned a corner, found the guy gone.  But that was a year ago and nothing else has come of it.  So far, the other shoe hasn’t dropped.

Attitude: “I think it was John D. McDonald who said that the essence of detective work is to ask questions and then figure things out. And then ask some more questions and figure more things out...and that when someone tries to kill you, it means you’re getting close.” *He smiles*  “We try to figure it out before it gets to that. Our clients are usually pretty happy. and to date, we remain un-killed.  My wife doesn’t think that joke is funny at all. Maybe I should stop telling it...”

Skills:  Stacked up mentals and 3 or better in physicals. Granted, he’s never going to be Mr. personality or be able to lie his way out of a wet paper sack. Almost all of his social dots landed in Composure. He never going to be good at Poker but he can clean up at blackjack.  Academics and science are pretty strong and a few good dots in computer and investigation. He’s in great shape and can use the gun pretty well. Fleet of foot and strong back would not be out of the question.

Gear:Has a Mac-air which he links up to his iPhone. He’s got a tiny multi-tool on his key ring, and his wallet is a slim leather affair.

the gun is a simple Sig Sauer 9mm with Glaser slugs (Glasers are a form of frangible round that make much larger exit wounds) 

Home: He got a nice place in the upscale burbs. The wife and kids live there and there is a fairly nice subscription security system on the place. Two car garage. They’ve got a nice pool too.

Circle: Dmitri knows most of his neighbors (although it’s Mary-Anne they all like) He’s got a number of clients who think he’s a damn miracle worker. He’s got Air Force buddies still and a few of them have wrangled the occasional contract for his firm. There’s also a bit of an informal accountant grapevine, so if he’s got any dots of contacts, that’s where they’ll be.

Story Uses:

“Yeah. You were right to bring this to me. These numbers aren’t right at all.”

There’s really only three ways to use Dmitri.

1) Looking into your affairs. (Which is likely to be a disaster for you.)

2) Looking into someone else’s affairs at your behest. (Which is likely a disaster for someone else... Unless they kill him.)

3) A super-normal guy and maybe Mary-Anne is the one with the freakish skeletons in the closet.

Connections:

*There is a small private detective agency that occasionally requests a financial run-down on private individuals, nothing illegal mind you, just enough intel to develop a background picture. Dmitri has only met the man once or twice, but the work is decent pay and is mostly the sort of thing that can be farmed to the interns. What Dmitri doesn't know is that the man is Aldous Church.

* Alejandro Dean, of Holmes, Gillis, Baker, Savage, North, and Dean occasionally has work for Dmitri but there are times when the work is redacted to such a degree that Dmitri often feels like he's shooting in the dark. If Dmitri knew WHY, well.  He might have to disappear.

*He's occasionally caused a few troubles for members of The Vermillion House but nothing that's ever really stuck or troubled a member of the inner circle. If that were to happen, The cops would raid his office and discover that it was the internet hub for a child pornography ring.

*Patricia "Carnie" Pitt met him in passing once at the courthouse, where he was giving testimony. While she thinks he's kind of cute in a Rain-man sort of way, the line on the business card that caught her attention was "Forensic Accountant". That's the sort of thing to be filed away for a rainy day.

Clavo Hernandez

Concept: False ID Maker

Desc: A latino male in his mid-30’s.  Sharp intelligent eyes that are a bit nearsighted. Overweight and moves kind of slow.(although there IS some muscle there.) Long luxurious black hair that he normally keeps tied back while he’s working.  Or worn down when he’s looking to get his swerve on. His body is a storm of ink.  A cascade of Mayan mythology and symbology that is colorful and arresting. Most of it is his own work. Clavo speaks slowly, He’s almost entirely rid of the stutter that used to plague him as a child.

History: Art school is expensive. Did you know that? You grow up dirt poor but with an eye that can both see and capture the beauty of the world.  And you want to go. Your whole family wants you to go.  But you don’t have the dinero de mierda.
It started small. Like a lot of these things do.  Your Primo comes to you with tears in his eyes because the teacher has given him am “F” and you, with a little skill and a good eye for detail, turn it into a “B-“  Sure. You might have gotten caught a time or two, but it usually meant a little extra jingle in your pockets.
   As you got older, your friends were always looking to get into clubs or buy the cheap beer they like. But, so sad, no ID that could make it possible.  But you saw an opportunity.  Hey, That’s what America is all about, right?  Some time, some effort, deft hands with an X-Acto knife and soon you were making money.
    And with an apprenticeship to a guy named Julio, you finally had enough money to take those art school classes. Julio always said that art school was bullshit, but hey, if you want it, and you are willing to work for it, go for it. Julio taught Clavo all there was to know about the fake ID business.  At least he taught him quite a lot before he got busted and went away for “Vacation”          
       Art School ended up being bullshit. But it opened up new revenue for Clavo and he found a couple of like-minded people there who do occasional work for him when things are too full.
    Clavo’s work is now sought after. He has a guy who can handle the digital end of things,He’s heavy into municipal systems, but other than the magnetic strip,which he can do himself, most ID cards haven’t changed a lick. He’s got a few vampire, sin eater, and Werewolf customers and they are his best.  Although they’re constantly trying to tempt him to come work for them exclusively. Clavo declines politely. He knows enough not to get entangled. Plus, on more than one occasion, he's said, he couldn't afford the cut in pay.

Attitude: “I don’t care why.  Some people got great reasons for wanting a new name or background. Trying to get out from under the police,  maybe trying to avoid some asshole who’s been beating you up that you unfortunately married... The less I know, the better I like it.  I’m not interested in answering questions for people who come looking for you.  All I care about is the money and the art. You get that, and we’ll get along fine amigo.

Skills:  Obviously there’s going to be some dots of Crafts and a few specialties. Also, While he’s not super-limber or anything, he’s got serious dexterity dots too in order to do the kind of work he does. He has a part-time job at a tattoo parlor to keep his hand in and, as he’s noticed, he gets a little stir crazy if he doesn’t leave his studio for days at a time.
On the martial side of things, Clavo is no great shakes in a fight. But he knows how to use his weight to his advantage. and while he’ll never be the kind of high flying wrestler, he enjoys watching on TV, He is more than capable of technically wrestling you into the goddamn hospital. Broke his brother’s collarbone once just messing around.  He’s pretty strong and he knows exactly where the body is supposed to bend and where it’s not.

Gear: Most of what Clavo needs to make a first class Driver’s license fits into a handy fishing tackle box. Naturally, his studio kit for that sort of thing is FAR more in depth. He can do birth certificates, library cards, and a number of other ancillary forms of ID there.  He keeps a pocketknife on him at all times. He only carries a gun if he thinks there’s going to be real trouble. But if he does, it’s going to be a shotgun. Clavo’s ride is tricked out and has cool hydraulics and purple under-lighting. The sound system is truly impressive.

Home: Really good Fake ID’s can be serious money. Other than occasional weed, Clavo doesn’t really have anything in the way of expensive vices, and he’s always been pretty good at saving money.  As a result, about a year ago. Clavo bought a tenement building.  He bought it as a distressed property from the state, and he cut in two of his cousins in as superintendent/In-house rehabbers.  As a result, the building itself is starting to be in better shape and the more of the units that have been rehabbed, the more money it brings in. At some point, Clavo will start work on the wall mural he has in mind for the exterior of the building.
Clavo has taken the 4th floor for his own use.  His studio has a steel cage vestibule that one has to pass through in order to enter the floor itself and the elevator only comes up here if you have a key anyway. All the windows are diamond meshed and even the door opening onto the roof has a deadbolt. Clavo’s personal space is pretty small, but his work-space/Gallery takes up most of the floor. He even has a corner dedicated to his own unlicensed tattoo operation. There are surgical theaters that are less scrupulously clean.

Circle: Clavo has a pretty decent client list but he keeps most of that strictly professional, having only 5 or six really good friends. (Most of those are dudes from the old neighborhood, and 1 guy from art school.) He’s a bit shy with women, but he’s not incapable of talking to them.  Once he warms up to a particular girl, He’s usually in there.  He’s figured out that his stutter is endearing to some girls, and he’s found that if he sketches a girl at all, he’s getting lucky that night.  He’ll have Contacts: Street just to stay abreast of what’s going on in the neighborhood.

Story Uses:
“You look like a “Victoria” to me. “Tori” to her friends...”
Clavo is good at what he does.  In fact, he’s a better ID maker than an artist. At some point or other, someone is going to need documents and the ability to get low, If that’s the case, You make contact with one of his people and wait...
You wait because they check you out some. There was at least one vampire who got stupid and nearly wrecked everything for everyone.  He’s dead now.

“Look. The dude never said his name, and I never asked. He paid in cash and did not give me an address to send a Christmas card to. So fuck off and don’t come back.”
Occasionally, you’re going to want to lay hands on someone who has gone Red October. Clavo don’t play that.  He’s found that an attached flame thrower that drops down out of the ceiling of the vestibule is more than capable of dealing with most threats, supernatural or otherwise. In any case, even you make it past that and his shotgun, he really doesn’t know much. He stays carefully ignorant of his supernatural customers especially.  Although, it ought to be said that anybody who messes with him or doesn’t pay, find that their NEW identity is already in the hands of the police and has apparently committed a number of sexual offenses. 

Connections:
*Bonita and Dolores Hernandez, who work at Caligari's are his cousins. Dolores lives in one of the units in the Building. If something goes down, he might call them.
* Aldous Church bought a set of clean documents from Clavo which are sitting in a safety deposit box in Baltimore.
*Dr. Dennis McMurtry likewise has a set that he bought. To his eye, these are professional grade. Langley ought to know about this young man.
*Alejandro Dean of Holmes, Gillis, Baker, Savage, North, and Dean is a regular client and go-between for Clavo and some of his stranger clients. Both men are of an age, and neither guy was in a gang, so they have certain things in common. They are certainly friendly, but not exactly friends. If that makes sense at all.
* Lara X has purchased just enough documentation to be able to purchase internet access in a name that is not her own. When they met to discuss terms, she explained some about why she was doing what she was doing and Clavo found he was intrigued. Now he reads her blog regularly.  He wouldn't mind taking a run at her. He's sketched her and everything.
*Pablo from Bryson Import/Export is one of those friends from the old neighborhood. He's never needed an ID but occasionally comes around for Ink.
 

Aldous Church

Concept: Interrogator/Torturer for Hire

Desc: Middling tall with a tendency to loom. Pale and pasty. Eyes like two piss-holes in the snow. Hair running to white. Long tapered fingers with immaculate nails. (He’s a little vain about them.) Tends towards charcoal gray or black suits. Never wears a tie. suspenders, no belt.  He speaks with a cultured British accent (which is fake) and usually in a low monotone. A great deal of this façade he presents is towards a calculated psychological effect. (Both for clients and subjects) Always carries a little pocket-knife. razor keen and very old.

History: The first thing you have to understand is that the CIA never employs people like this...Directly.  Aldous was the only child of a pair of outback rednecks with a strong streak of survivalism and religious hysteria.  Fate does like her little jokes.  Aldous grew into his teens to discover that his intellect was four times as strong as either of his parents. His will was twice theirs, and he was apparently born without a full complement of emotions. Still, when he thinks of home, he focuses on the good times. That one time when he went hunting with father and killed and dressed the entire buck at age 10,(Father was so proud) and the night he slit both of their throats and set the farmhouse on fire.

     Aldous enlisted in the army. He learned a number of useful things there.  It turned out he had some skills and a certain outlook that fit a certain profile for certain types of very very very black bag operations. As it happens, he was right on the verge of being sent to Leavenworth when the people from Langley turned up and said, “We’ll just take this problem off your hands.”

    Aldous wasn’t the sort of fellow to really understand, or feel gratitude, but he was also smart enough not to look a gift horse in the mouth.  And in truth, The CIA was just the kind of intellectual stimulus he felt like he needed.

   In fact, he was a bit sad when the operatives came around to kill him but didn’t bother to hit back. He allowed them to think he was dead and then hung out his shingle as an “Interpersonal Information exchange facilitator”

    Now he makes 6 figures a year and gets to torture new and interesting people.

Attitude: Everything breaks eventually. But there’s no need to go right for nail clippers on a person's eyelids. Sadism is all well and good for amateurs but if you want to be a professional in the field, you have look at each subject as an intellectual puzzle to be solved.  Once you’ve begun with full-on physical torture, you cannot, of course, throttle back to simpler interview techniques. So, as long as time is not a pressing factor,  Aldous will start simply.  A simple interview using time-tested interrogation techniques. Then proceeding to chemical interrogation techniques. Civilians simply don’t have the training to withstand much of that at all.  The rare professional is treated to extended sleep deprivation, electrical shocks, and then on to grimmer and more permanent methods.

Skills: Aldous’s understanding of anatomy, interrogative medicine, and psychology is well founded on deep reading and experience in the field. Also, Aldous recognizes that many people under actual torture will confabulate and as a result, he’s become quite adept at recognizing the tells for lies. If you lie to him in your initial interview, he’ll know, and then it will be ON.  Additionally, He’s skilled with hand to hand weapons, and as a result of his upbringing, quite capable of disappearing into a forest and killing anyone who comes in after him. He’s also fluent in French, German, Russian, and is working on Semitic languages at the moment. 

Gear: Aldous has a mobile phone that he normally keeps wrapped in tin foil. He is partial to a black Filofax and a Zebra 750 pen. ("You could kill someone with one of these. If you cared enough.") He keeps a handcuff key on his keyring as well as a set of nail clippers (The nail clippers are used for intel gathering in the field.) He also possesses a glass knife. flat on one side and heartbreakingly sharp. custom made for him by the same Inuit tribesmen who chip glass scalpels for eye surgery. Totally invisible to metal detectors and normally taped to his left leg if he's expecting trouble. The blade itself is only about 2 inches long and about a thumb-width wide. The same sort of style of blade that Italian noblemen used to duel with and inflict dozens of mortal wounds within a short amount of time.

Home: About a year ago, Aldous bought a private jet. it has three sections, The forward section allows his team to travel with him to various ports of call in relative comfort. The second section is where Aldous resides on a semi-permanent basis. Although he does own a cabin way up in the hill country somewhere, He only visits that place maybe twice a year. Barrister bookcases hold his library in place during flights with turbulence. (Although the glass panes have been replaced with Lexan)  The aft section of the plane is Aldous operating theater and is heavily sound-proofed and window free. The door has a magnetic lock.

Circle: As you can imagine, Aldous's circle of Allies and Contacts isn't very large. He's not particularly friendly and people aren't exactly rushing to tell him things in order to curry favor. He IS a card in a Rolodex for many people who live in a shadowy world filled with shadowy acts. But it's not as if Aldous himself is going to be able to reach out when HE needs information or favors. Aldous is mostly okay with this. He was always something of a lone wolf.

Story Uses:

*”The knife has told me that our time together will be SPECIAL.”

Being subjected to Aldous’s non-existent mercies is not going to be a day at the beach for anyone, but it’s likely to be especially grim for any supernatural caught in his grip. The main reason why is, because you know something that someone else wants to know rather badly, and being supernatural, you have resources that even highly trained operative don’t possess.  Rub some paint stripper on a person’s nipples and he’s likely to tell you everything he knows, but most supernatural critters don’t have the same fear of permanent damage that regular mortal folks possess.  Not only that, but supernatural subjects fascinate him. No two subjects are alike in this regard and they are an endless source of what can only be classified as “Wonder” for him. In fact, he rarely bothers with mere human subjects anymore, often leaving them to his interns.  

Yes. That’s right. You heard me right. Aldous has interns and a well-paid staff of  mercenaries. All of whom have been carefully vetted by him and are at least as emotionally empty as he. There was a streak there where it became distressingly common for clients to receive the intel they’d paid for, and then decide to turn around and try to get rid of the interrogator. Adjustments had to be made.

* Kiss or Kill

The CIA seems to go back and forth on whether Mr. Church is an embarrassment to the agency that needs to be liquidated or whether he’s a contractor they’d like to have back on the “unofficial” payroll. Occasionally, people can get caught in this spook-show cross-fire. For his part, Church wouldn’t mind going back to work for the Agency, but he’d want more money and he knows that working for them would mean constant checking up on them. Spooks. You just can’t trust them.

* “Aldous, I need your velvet touch here...”

While Aldous makes a good old enemy or a good new enemy, for some types of characters, he’d make an excellent Ally. People need professional “Peelers” all the time and the business keeps Aldous hopping.  Frankly, he could fly all over the middle east picking up business wherever he goes.

Connections:
* Dr. Dennis McMurtry is liable to be the only person who's actually seen this guy's face. That was a long time ago. He was a different man then. It's not likely that Dennis will be on the phone to Aldous anytime soon, but he might recognize the guy by description and/or Modus Operandi.
* The Vermillion House is likely to have Aldous in their Rolodex. He'd be the kind of guy that would have a standing invitation to attend one of their parties.  Aldous isn't a fan of their particular brand of decadence, but he does attend at least once a year so as not to offend a paying client.

Norman Cayce

Concept: County Coroner

Desc: Tallish and skinny but not cadaverous at all. Short curly brown hair. Glasses for reading. Wears steel-toed, non-slip tread boots with nearly everything. (“You would not believe how often they’ve come in handy. Now I just wear them all the time.”) White lab coat and dark blue cover-alls on the job.

History: Norm didn’t grow up here. He grew up in a flyspeck small town a few miles from town proper. And as is typical of a lot of places like that, there wasn’t a lot of work to go around.  Norm caught kind of the double whammy growing up. He personally was a bit shy and introverted, but his family was large and a bit rambunctious.  The sort of family that seemed completely unable to keep anything nice or capitalize on any good fortune. In fact, the night that Norm graduated from the community college as its salutatorian, They caused a drunken brawl and uncle Jimmy got arrested for aggravated assault. Don’t even get me started on the weddings and funerals.

 Norm never fit in at home and was not enough of a redneck to fit in with his peers in town, so he moved to the city and got himself a job working for the Coroners office. Norm wasn’t death-obsessed or anything, but he was a bit of a nut for detective literature and fancied that he could learn some stuff working there.  He was never going to have the right temperament to be a cop.

     He had the idea that he might work the job and maybe consider going back to college to get another degree, but the work was long and occasionally hard, and the money while good, was often soaked up by the doings of his feckless family. “Mom, you tell Randy that I’ll bail him out this time, but this is the LAST TIME!”

    The silver lining in all this was that the Medical Examiner, Arlene Bruckner, took Norman under her wing and probably taught him more about forensic science than any three other professors ever had. She was an older broad who smoked her Pall Malls and drank a 6 of Miller Tall every single night of her life. But her mind was still razor keen and perhaps more than teaching Norman the ins and outs of forensic science, taught him how to think and do so coherently. He’d have done anything for that old broad.

    So it was a rude shock when Norm came into the morgue one morning only to find she’d been torn to pieces. as if she’d run afoul of some frenzied animal.

    Now, the new County M.E is a fairly laid back guy who doesn’t seem interested in solving Arlene’s murder and is routinely telling Norman how to do his job...in a way that Norm finds very very suspicious. And lately, he’s been finding discrepancies in the paperwork. Serious discrepancies.

(Note: A Coroner is a person who is ultimately responsible for a number of the investigative/paperwork aspects of a person's death. They go around, collect the body, determine cause and time of death, are responsible for the disposition of the body and are responsible for determining if an investigation into the cause of death is necessary.  If an autopsy is to be performed, then this is done by the Medical Examiner unless you’re in a jurisdiction where the two offices are merged, or only one exists for whatever reason. Both positions are officers of the court. Some Coroner positions require a special medical degree, others are elected positions. Still others are the sort of position where one can simply work up into the position and this is the case here.

Attitude: “Pay attention. I’m only going to say this once. I take this work deadly serious. We have a responsibility to do the needful for these people. Some will come through these doors with no family. no friends. no one to care that their lives have been taken from them.  We are the only ones that can help their spirits rest or move on.  That’s a serious responsibility. If that’s not something you can handle, then please, fuck right the hell off now.”

Skills: A nice pile of dots in academics and sciences. At least 4 dots of Intelligence. He makes a decent living but has to be careful about divulging what he has or how much he makes to any member of his family because they’ll figure out a way to spend his money for him. “Aw COME ON MAN! This bass boat ain’t just for me!  You can get just as much use out of it as me. It’s fer all of us really!”   This is the reason why Norm can afford to make a down-payment on a nice house but prefers to rent a tiny tiny apartment. Any extra space he has would end up being taken up by some relation getting evicted or divorced.

Gear: Like many crime scene investigation professionals, he carries a large tackle box full of useful small tools, reagents, powders and evidence handling gloves and bags. He normally has a pocket protector the houses 3 ultra fine point zebra pens, 2 extra juicy permanent markers that he gets from dollar tree. Tongue depressors, fruit stripe gum, and a scalpel with a plastic cover over its blade.

Home: Norman's apartment is a marvel of efficiency. It is very small, and it's a good thing that Norman isn't even the least bit claustrophobic.  He's taken to purchasing appliances from Japan and Scandinavia. They are cultures that have internalized the idea of the microscopically small apartment and thus make appliances that take up very little space. The one full sized extravagance in the place is a battleship gray metal desk, where his computer sits and where his bookshelf rests. His cat "Tora" is the one element of chaos he allows in his life, and even she is remarkably well behaved compared to most of his family.

Circle: Norm has about 4 people who help out with various tasks around the lab and out in the field. Most of these people think Norm is a decent boss to work for, but that he could stand to have a drink and/or get laid a bit more often. 

Norm’s entire social life revolves around his church. He sings in the choir and is a pretty good second tenor. A perfect night off for Norm involves, petting his kitty, Take-out from the Chinese place down the block, reading a detective novel or futzing with the spec script he still plans to send to CBS for C.S.I. (Still not perfect yet.)

Story Uses:

“That investigation is ongoing.”

If you can’t see how to use a county coroner who has an axe to grind against whatever supernatural nut-job tore his former boss and friend apart, then either you are mind-shockingly unimaginative, or you are very tired and maybe you should lie down.

“Look. I’ll do as you ask, just don’t hurt them.”

Conversely, If you can’t see how it might be to your advantage to have the County Coroner in your pocket by holding his family hostage, Well. There’s not much I can teach you at all.

Connections:
*As you can imagine, he's on a nodding acquaintance with Trent Parker of Parker Mortuary and Black Creek Cemetery 
*It's a fairly famous story in law enforcement circles about how they were trying to locate a murder weapon in the field and an excited Officer Honus Brightwater ran up to Norman holding the shotgun in his ungloved hands.  The tongue-lashing he received at Norman's hands and later Arlene's, has passed into legend.  At times it is re-created at departmental Christmas parties.
*Knows Detective Bela Janofski. Considers him one of the good ones.
* For a few dollars, has gone "On background" for Patricia "Carnie" Pitt. but refuses to appear on camera for any reason. Likes her. Has asked her out, but their respective schedules are brutal.