MERCH!

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Special Agent Owen Maccready


Concept: Occult Crimes Task force specialist/Forensic Psychologist

AKA: None

Desc: Starting half-back at his old school. African-American. Keeps his head shaved, because when his hair grows out it is a kinky mess. Also, someone can grab it in a fight. Still, has pretty good knees and can sprint like the wind. Has sourly begun to admit to himself that he does require glasses for reading. Gets to the gym regularly enough to combat the sedentary lifestyle, because he never knows when he’ll have to go out into the field.

History: Owen is a pretty smart guy. His folks were upper middle class.  His mother was a teacher and his father was a dentist. So, Owen had certain advantages growing up that other young black kids did not.  But his parents were always very stern about making sure that he understood that not everyone was the same and that because people weren’t the same, they didn’t always THINK the same.

While Owen isn’t exactly an academic dynamo, He tends to excel at the subjects that interest him.  Never big on English or Math, but his grades in Science and history tended to make up for it.  It wasn’t till his sophomore year in high school that he found something that interested him.
He had an opportunity to take some electives for the first time, and he decided to try out Comparative Theology and Psychology.   And maybe it was just the combination or the particular time in his life when he was taking it...But he discovered a certain synergy between those subjects and the history and science he already liked.
Scoring an athletic scholarship, he surprised the little methodist school he decided to go to by being a capable student as well. He majored in psychology.

The original plan was to get a job as a clinical psychologist somewhere and maybe get another degree in education so he could teach. But that was scrapped when his mother got murdered in a school shooting.
   Some kid. Some poor dumb brainless kid with a head full of bad wiring or bad chemicals came in waving a pistol around...And Owen’s mom, without a second thought, tackled him to protect her other students. 

Owen’s dad...Well. He eventually went back to work. He drinks a little bit more at family gatherings than he should, and he’s gotten a little hateful and mean-spirited. He won’t set foot in church anymore. This is perhaps understandable.
   But Owen decided that clinical psychology was not for him. His mother’s sacrifice, in a bizarre way, inspired him. (It kind of helped that the field is a bit flooded)  Owen decided to take his degree and put it to some actual use. He went to the FBI
   Graduating near the top of his class at Quantico,  He spent a few years with the Behavioral Studies Unit, but decided he wanted to be out in the field more than behind a desk reading too many reports.  BSU was sorry to see him go, and have left the door open for him, but he got himself posted back here in his old home town.

And these days, he sits at a desk and reads too many reports. Ain’t THAT a bitch?
Owens interest in psychology is deep and pervasive and it means that often he’s pressed into certain types of situations in law enforcement. (Hostage negotiation, profiling, talking down the occasional jumper...stuff like that.) But his interest in psychology also has put him in the position of  trying to make sense out of crimes with murky motivations like serial killings and anything occult-flavored.  

What you should understand about Owen is that he is an expert on occult crimes, without having had a single occult experience. That’s certainly not impossible. Not even in the World of Darkness.  A man can get to be a certain age and think to himself. “You know I’m about as psychic as a rock and I can do as well as people who purport to have god-given gifts. I’ve never seen an angel, a demon, a faerie, a vampire, a werewolf, or a dragon, that wasn’t on a movie screen. And frankly, most of the weird shit I HAVE seen in my life is totally explainable by hypnosis, psychosis, or stage magic.  The shadowy world is just that... It’s just a lens that some people see the world through.”

Most of the time, he’s right. But occasionally, he’s in for a rude shock.

Attitude: “Look. It doesn’t matter what I believe. What matters here is what THEY believe. If I can understand what they believe. I can maybe predict what they are going to do and why they are going to do it. I don’t have to believe in a loving god, or magic, or saints, or any of that.  All I have to do is be able to put myself in THEIR shoes and understand what they see and why they see it that way.  If that can stop a crime, or save a life it’s worth every damn bit of effort.

Skills: I should point out for regular readers of Painted Corners that Plain Vanilla Human Characters have one advantage over EVERY single type of supernatural creature out there: They have a great deal LESS stuff to spend points on. Which is why a guy like Owen can HAVE 3+ in all of his mental and physical attributes without it being particularly freakish.   Owen is also likely to have following things: Science Specialty: Psychology
Academics Specialty: Theology (Can exorcise a ghost or a demon in a pinch.)  a pile of dots in occult with specialties in: Voodoun, Santeria, and Symbology.   He’s also a capable physical combatant with 3+ dots in athletics, brawl, and firearms.  He’s likely to have dots in fighting styles, (combat marksmanship, police tactics, and kung-fu)  and he further possesses the Merits: strong back, fleet of foot, and brawling dodge. 

Gear: Sig Sauer P226 9mm under his right armpit and a 22 revolver with Glaser slugs on his left ankle. (Owen is Left Handed) A top of the line smartphone loaded with useful law enforcement apps and seriously high res camera with an attachment for higher resolution lenses. Reading glasses.  A slim field notebook which also holds his credentials,  a scalpel, a set of tweezers and an extremely minimal set of picks. Keeps a Bianchi recoil-less bull-pup shotgun in the trunk of his car under lock and key.  Has a kindle with many of the same apps as his phone with an enormous occult library loaded onto it. He keeps that in the glove box.

Home: Although he has an apartment, and a nice one, he tends to think of Dad’s house as his home. But he and his father don’t talk much anymore. And it’s not as if he sees much of his apartment either. He’s actually taken to only purchasing groceries he’s going to eat that night or can safely sit in the fridge or the cupboard for months.  He’s usually only home to sleep or shower.

Circle: While Owen’s job tend to bring him into contact with a pretty big swath of humanity, he doesn’t have the effortless human touch that some of the other Agents have.  He doesn’t have any friends outside of law enforcement and he hasn’t dated anyone outside of law enforcement in years.
(It looked as if that thing with Special Agent Marguiles was going to go the distance, but then she got transferred to Spokane and they sort of fell out of touch.) This is slightly compounded by the fact that if you’re around him for any length of time, he’ll turn his highly trained psychologist mind on you and start trying to see if he can figure out how you tick. When this happens, he is usually not very nice about it. He and Marguiles tended to fight a lot. 
 If anything, Owen does tend to keep his ear to the ground when it comes to movements in occult subcultures and he’ll hear about things in Law enforcement circles too.

Story Uses:
“Well, I USED to believe it was bullshit!”
Owen, in any WOD game (or indeed any other urban fantasy game you care to use him in,) is going to bump up against something his rational mind is going to be unable to untangle. That’s just going to happen.  How well he rolls with it or cracks is entirely up to you.

“Don’t you worry. We’re GOING to catch whomever is responsible for this.”
There is of course always the possibility that Special Agent Maccready is going to become your own personal Inspector Javert.  Granted, You’re supernatural, and he’s not, but his badge and gun are going to make up for it in many ways.  While his lack of direct experience of the occult will hamstring him some, it won’t stop him.  This is the point where I have to remind you that Law enforcement can make a million mistakes, but you, the perpetrator, can only make one.

"Me? I thought you guys were just a myth?"
As it's been pointed out. Owen considers himself as psychic as a rock. But if you want, he might just be mistaken.  If that's the case. V.A.S.C.U from the "Slasher" book might come calling and you could throw an interesting amount of Tele-informatics onto his sheet.

Connections:
*The Vermillion House is aware of Special Agent Maccready and have 4 plans to deal with him should he ever become close to exposing their activities.
*Officer Honus Brightwater once pulled Owen over and was all ready to give him a hard time, until Owen showed him his ID and invited him to go fuck himself. As you can imagine, this didn't endear him to Honus.
*Detective Bela Janofski have met, but don't really travel in the same circles, or at least, don't know that there IS some overlap in the things they've seen on the street.
*Owen has shopped at The Grimoire Bear's attitudes toward members of the law enforcement community are a matter of public record, but Penny says he's got an interesting aura and is always nice to him, where Bear is gruff and grumbly.
*Owen and Norman Cayce have met and collaborated on some things. They get along and seem to have some similar attitudes. Norman is thinking about entrusting some of his more unusual case-files to Owen for help with solving Arlene's murder.
* The body of a prostitute was pulled out of a reservoir several months ago. The prostitute's body was covered in carved-out alchemical symbols. This makes the third unsolved murder with the same M.O. in the last year. The Media is keeping it quiet right now, but this officially classes it as a serial killing. The case has been handed over to occult crimes, While this might end up with Detective Janofski and Agent Maccready butting heads or joining forces, it does mean that at some point they are likely to end up running headlong into Lewis Flowers.
* Owen dated Dr. Ronnette Franklin in high school. He has no idea she's still in  town and he hasn't thought of her in a long time.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Lambrose Karanikas and First Class Limousine Service


Concept: Limo Driver/Entrepreneur

AKA: Back in the days when he would work nearly every job under the sun, he spent a whole year working as a Butcher. Among his family and his friends, he’s known as “Butch”

Desc: Lean, with a long face and an aristocratic chin and nose. Long black hair, which spends FAR too much time and money on, and yet rarely ties it back. Has the fingers of a pianist, which he used to be. On the job, he goes in for a black, well-tailored suit. Anyone paying attention may note that he’s got an armpit holster.

History: You may have noted from the name, that Lambrose is related to Milo Karanikas. They are cousins. The Karanikas family is fairly large, and while they have always had an interest in the finer things in life, they haven’t always had the money to really enjoy them as much as they could. Lambrose means to change all that.  At least, for himself.

Lambrose is one of those guys that works hard at everything he does. His whole life is wrapped up in his cast iron work ethic and frankly, he doesn’t have the time or patience for anyone who doesn’t feel the same. This means certain things. He hasn’t met a woman yet who shares his passion. Most of the women he picks for himself, are, to put it mildly, too lazy for him. But then again, he’s still a young guy and is picking with his eyes.

It also means that he tends to be the one at family gatherings that others shy away from.  He’s imbibed a bit too much from the poisoned chalice of Horatio Alger/American Dream/Fox News attitude.   Lambrose fancies himself a self-made man, with all the arrogance and behavior blindness that might imply.  When he’s in the Limo all by himself, He’s got on Tony Robbins (Either that, or a bit of Eminem.)   He’s a hard-driving and hard-charging guy.  He saved up for years to get his first limo and now he’s got 3. If he keeps going at this rate,  He’ll own his own home outright before he’s 30 and likely own controlling interest in his brother Dimitrios’s restaurant. (It’s not that Dimitrios is even a bad businessman, the restaurant business is a harsh mistress and 4 out of 5 restaurants go out of business in their first year. Lambrose keeps loaning money because he still thinks that the family restaurant is a good investment. Dimitrios is thankful for the help, and the upscale customers that Lambrose kicks his way from time to time.)

Lambrose caters to the kind of rich people that he wants to be someday. TV’s in his limos are always tuned to Fox Business and the bar is always fully stocked.  The only time of year that he truly hates is prom season. 
A man in his position has learned very early on, to be professionally blind,deaf and dumb, and this has perhaps kept him from being a casualty of things that occasionally happen in the back of his limousine. Certain supernatural creatures, swear by FCL and even a few of them like Lambrose personally.(“This young mortal has real potential...”)
 Although... this professional “None of my business” posture does mean that he’s not paying attention to what the other drivers are doing. His brother Leo has developed a bit of satyriasis with the female customers.  And his cousin Stavros has taken to selling cocaine to interested passengers. Stavros makes BANK during prom season. Lambrose would probably care about these things if he were aware of them...But frankly, he’s just glad that these guys show up on time (And sober) when called.  Some of his other family members aren’t as diligent.

Attitude: “America is the greatest country in the world. A man can rise from humble beginnings and with work, can reach the pinnacle of success. Tony taught me that. One day, I will have an entire fleet of limousines and a company that will stretch across this great land of ours. I have a vision for the future and the understanding and education to make that vision real.  Anybody who doesn’t feel the same way I do is wasting their life...Pass me the Ouzo will you?”

Skills: Butch has, over the course of life worked about 2 dozen different jobs. This has given him a plethora of useful skills that aren’t easily quantified by dots on the sheet. He’s certainly got enough Crafts dots to make jack-leg repairs on his vehicles. and enough dots in Drive (as well as Stunt Driver) to be able to bill himself as a defensive driving expert. (He took a course or two. it’s not bullshit.) While he never attended university, he has, on his own, done a LOT of reading and can easily claim dots in Academics (Specialty: Business)  He’s also honed his people skills fairly well. Butch knows damn nearly every nook and cranny in this town, and has on many occasions, helped his clientele secure many forms of illicit entertainments. Naturally, he’s got Barfly.  That pistol he’s carrying. He knows how to use it, although he’s not likely to have any dots in any fighting styles with it. He still has at least 3 dots.   Lastly, it should be mentioned, that Lambrose has at least 4 dots of Resolve. He just doesn’t understand people who don’t have the same kind of attitude that he does.

Gear: Lambrose is a bit of a technophile. He runs his business off of a laptop, plugged into his cigarette lighter, and tethered to his phone.  He’s even built a bit of a frame for his passenger seat that turns this set-up into something of a mobile office. His gun is a nice heavy pistol with a laser sight.  and he’s found that the laser sight is usually enough to calm people right the fuck down. He is rarely without a box of 5-hour energy shots tucked into the glove compartment.  He is NEVER without his little Filofax full of his business cards.

Home: Lambrose has a nice house in the burbs. inexplicably, he really really enjoys mowing his lawn and washing his car on the weekends. Normally he does this shirtless and it has drawn the attention of the housewives in the vicinity. Unfortunately, while the exterior of the house is stately and cat-clean.  The interior of the house is usually a mess. Unless Lambrose is dating someone, he doesn’t bother picking up after himself.  Which is not to say that the place is biohazardous or anything...But his cleaning is kind of cyclical.  He lets it go and lets it go and lets it go until finally, he goes. “JESUS! I can’t fucking live like this!” and then he spends an entire day cleaning everything in sight.  Lambrose is usually not home enough to have a pet.

Circle: Lambrose is a known quantity in the transportation subculture. He is not well liked by cabbies, who see him as something of a gasbag. He has made in-roads into becoming a known name among high society types and most of them take his ingratiating overtures as pleasant if a little fawning. If there is anything that they really like about him it is that he is interested in their opinions about politics and business and seems to really enjoy hearing them hold forth about those topics.  The Karanikas family, of course, comprises the rest of his world and they love him, but also kind of want to strangle him a bit.

Story Uses:
*”Where to sir?”
Butch is a decent guy to help start some kind of adventure if the players have money but aren’t interested in driving themselves. He knows things about this town as will become apparent below.  He also probably knows more than he thinks he knows about the real goings-on in the supernatural world. But occasionally, he gets worked over and a lot of that intel is buried.

*”I’m just a simple businessman.”
For anyone looking to make some kind of headway into transportation influence, Lambrose is a good place to start.

Connections:
* Naturally, Butch is a well known by the denizens of The Caboose and Carl gets a great big smile on his face every time the Limo pulls onto the parking lot.
*The Members of The Vermillion House trust Butch and his proven discretion. He's been up to the big house. He's even been invited in on some occasions by guests. The idea that one day he can rub elbows with these people and participate in some of the refined tastes they enjoy makes him a little starry-eyed.
* He's been retained on occasion by the firm of Holmes, Gillis, Baker, Savage, North and Dean for special events. They've all traded cards.
Lara X once went down on two girls in the back of his limo. He recognized the description of himself on her blog when Leo brought it to his attention. Now if only he knew which of the three girls she was...
Lillian Penobscot is a favored customer. She flirts with him outrageously. She's a little old for his taste...But he thinks she might be fun in the sack. She's certainly bendy.
* Lambrose is well aware of Bryson Import/Export and while he's got no trouble with transporting them back and forth to various places, he is a little peeved with how much time it always seems to take Leo to run them back and forth. Admittedly, he always seems to be in a better humor afterward.

Friday, August 21, 2015

Grace Cook (713: The Drowned Bride)


Concept: Ghost of a dead woman/ Element of a divine story.

AKA: Members of Grace’s family often refer to her as Cookie, dating back her infancy and her love of Cookie Monster. Yes, that’s right. Cookie Cook.

Desc: A slim translucent African American woman, ruined make-up and hair. Eyes with no pupils.  A long bedraggled wedding dress smelling of river water and rot.

History: in a time before time, and a place beyond place, there was a god whose name no longer exist for us. He made many servants. Hundreds of thousands of them. Most of them only had numbers, only a few had proper names. Each of them were powerful spirits, each of them, an element of the story of the whole of creation. At times, they are loosed upon the world to shape the story of this world and to shape the story of each individual life they come into contact with.  While this old god, (Might be Vishnu, but nobody is sure.) is a benign being and has humanity’s best interests at heart...Well. Not all of his spirits are benign. Nor are all of the stories they are meant to shape, happy ones.

Enter Grace Cook. Beautiful. Funny. Smart. Talented. Got a degree in sociology. Plays the piano at the concert pianist level, but isn’t so uptight or ambitious as to be interested in that life. Has a good job and has her own money. Active in her church. and, as a general rule, the kind of person who is simply a ray of pure sunshine to most of the people around her.

She met Ron Lawson at a church function having to do with their outreach mission. He works for Doctors without Borders. Working in various countries, treating people, obviously,  but a lot of his work had to do with compiling epidemiology data for the W.H.O. They hit it off and began seeing each other every time he was stateside.  Ron was old fashioned and even asked her father before getting down on one knee and popping the question. She’d been hoping he would.  

That year was a dizzying year for the young bride to be. Her pastor was delighted to help her out in return for all that she’d done for Riverside Presbyterian.
Her family had some money, but also they were very helpful in ways of making the wedding something special in ways that went beyond money or at least enabled her to cut costs.  Her sister’s catering business and her cousin Jamal’s DJ rig got pressed into service pretty fast.

It would have been picture perfect, but for the rain.

And nobody expected the riverside retaining wall to rupture. I mean, that thing had been there for decades, had withstood some of the strongest storms that have ever been through this area.
But when it burst, the wall of water practically slapped the church off of its foundations.

Chaos. People running everywhere and some were able to swim to safety. But things happened very quickly.
Grace didn’t make it. Like Ophelia, her sodden dress dragged her down and down and down...

Unmarried. No ring on her finger.

And now she haunts the ruins of her old church. (713 Riverside drive) You can almost always see her going back and forth on the anniversary of her aborted wedding. (July 13th)  and if someone brings one of the pair of champaign flutes around the church, that will ALWAYS get her attention.

At times, she might think someone is Ronnie. If she does she might approach them and speak to them, but when she touches them, their lungs fill up with river water and she doesn’t seem to know how to turn that off. Make no mistake it’s easily as traumatic for her as for anyone watching it. It’s not impossible to survive this unfortunate effect, but it does take quick action and maybe a little supernatural assistance. As a result, there have a been a couple of inexplicable drowning deaths in that area. Naturally, the Cook family LOATHES talking about any of that.  Some of the more superstitious people in the community have been real assholes about blaming the family for somehow causing the whole thing.

Attitude: “Ronnie?   Is that you...Ronnie?”

Skills: As a ghost, Grace doesn’t really have skills that would still be particularly applicable. Although, she does still roam around the neighborhood surrounding the old decrepit church and knows the environs and denizens pretty well.  At times, people can swear they hear the church organ being played...but that old thing hasn’t worked in years.  (She's definitely got Ghost Speech and Ghost Sign, and the drowning thing is probably closer to a spirit numina of some sort.)

Gear: Again, not much going on here.

Home: The ruins of Riverside church are where she hangs her veil. filled with rot, mold, rat droppings and old, discarded church regalia. She won’t appear outside if it’s raining. On odd occasions, she appears in the honeymoon suite (Suite 317) at the hotel where she and Ron were planning to stay before heading out to 2 weeks in Macedonia.  Many times this scares the shit out of whomever is occupying that suite. It’s pretty traumatic for her too. “Who ARE you and what are you doing in my suite?”   So far, no one has connected these infrequent appearances to the legend of the Riverside Presby ghost.

Circle: She usually refuses to appear to anyone from her family. It’s too painful. She might know other Ghosts in the surrounding area and has been sought out by ghost enthusiasts on occasion.  It went very badly for at least one of them.

Story Uses:
* “ I’m SORRY! Please! Ronnie! Don’t die!”
Grace is pretty tragic. and frankly, unless your players are utter cock-monsters, they should understand that treating her like a garden variety poltergeist is an asshole move.  On the other hand, she has caused a number of deaths. So.. Burning the church and destroying all the anchors MIGHT do the trick...But then again, she’s not exactly your garden variety ghost...And that’s liable to upset her something fierce.

* “Why do I keep seeing this number?”
The other end of this thing is that Grace is the living, and now dead, incarnation of a divine story. A cautionary tale to be sure, and certainly tragic. But if someone were able to hunt down the heart-broken Dr. Ron Lawson in Rwanda or wherever he is, and talk him into going back to the site of his greatest tragedy, and get him to take her hand and slip the ring on it...She could slip joyously away. Rejoin her divine brothers and sisters. Shed this sorrow and become a new story.

Maybe Ron would be able to move on. And you know, anyone who helps to tell that story to its completion, might earn that old god’s favor.  Or even, his INTEREST.

Connections:
Norman Cayce is probably the only person who still knows anything about the deaths in that neighborhood. The people who drowned were found with dry clothing and naturally that piqued his curiosity. 
* One night, she happened to see a man that she sensed was following a woman in the neighborhood. She sensed a deep wrongness in the man and as he moved to attack the woman, Grace attempted to stop him by drowning him...Somehow he was able to fend her off and even damage her. She's been on the lookout for him ever since.  That dude was Lewis Flowers.
Charlie, of course, can see her perfectly well and talks to her whenever he roams down this way. But it's not as if she can exactly send messages through to anyone. He's homeless and his mind is as orderly as a box of kittens.
* Grace was laid to rest at Parker Mortuary and Black Creek Cemetery and while Trent might barely remember her, he might also be their best source for the story if the family won't talk to the PCs. (Or the PC's have pissed them off.)






Saturday, August 1, 2015

Milo Karanikas


Concept: Porn Producer

AKA: Produces and directs films under the name “Richard Ames”

Desc: Middling-sized and skinny. Rarely seen without something leather on. Mostly it’s pants and sometimes a leather vest. Anything that isn’t leather is usually silk and of a dark color. Wears engineer boots or his beloved set of black “Chuck’s” He sort of resembles Nigel Terry in “Excalibur” except he’s a little swarthier.  Makes the mustache work. His goatee is actually just a straight vertical strip of hair, dead center of his chin. He refers to it as the “Persian Tickler”  Rarely without his over-sized sunglasses.  Black nail polish.

History: There WAS a plan. Milo got out of film school and rather than go into the slow slide of film students fighting to stay out of porn, He decided to jump in with both feet, make as much money as he could and then make himself over to break into legitimate film-making. He created a persona and dove into the business, always with the idea in mind that at some point, he’d put all this behind him and make real films.
   This did not happen.
There are a few reasons for why this did not occur. For one, Milo had underestimated how hard it was for a film-maker in porn to make the jump into legit films. Once you’ve done porn, you are essentially stigmatized and it’s going to take more than a change of wardrobe and shaving off the Persian Tickler to get out from under.  Secondly, Milo found that he actually LIKED producing and directing porn. Call it a streak of voyeurism in his basic make-up. It may have had something to do with how the plan got made in the first place.  Third, Milo is actually pretty good at it. He’s got a gift for getting nuanced performances out of boys and girls who are dumber than a box of rocks and he’s got the photography aspect down to the point where they are calling him the “New Michael Nin”
   So, Milo found himself some backers, found a nice place JUST outside the city limits, and opened his studio in an old, tiny office park facing the highway. The Office park is small but the interiors are modular enough that they can be shuffled around a bit. and with a bit of set dressing can pass for a home interior, or a doctor's office, a cubicle farm, or even, with some set-up, more unusual locales. There’s some green-space on the other side, away from the highway, where exterior shots can be done.
Milo is doing well financially. Has made occasional forays into financing legitimate films and has done okay on that front.  He’s not super rich, but he’s doing very very well. Well enough that he came to the notice of some interested parties.
For one, Don Pentangelli. who was one of the original backers. The Don takes a regular slice. But he is, truly, the least of Milo’s problems.  The other backers were members of the Vermillion House inner circle. Those people got their original investment back, but they wanted something more... 
They wanted Snuff films.

And so, once a quarter, They come around with a panel truck delivering some young person who’s been grabbed. A limousine appears bearing a man clad all in black leather who refers to himself as “The Engine” and Milo sets up and directs the shots while Engine repeatedly rapes and then strangles the person to death.  Then some whole other dude turns up and collects the body, taking it God only knows where.

The whole set-up makes Milo nervous. He does it because he’s fairly morally flexible, the money is huge, and he’s already seen that if the House wants him erased from history by tomorrow, he’ll be GONE.

Attitude: “Look. This is not what I signed on for.  I only wanted to make movies of people fucking. But the needs must when the devil drives. You know what I mean? But hey...This thing that you and I are doing together...It’s your only shot at some tiny slice of immortality. That’s what film-making is. So...If you could act like you’re enjoying it. That’d be great. It’ll add a whole extra dimension to this scene. K?
Okay, Engine. Let’s go back to first position...”

Skills:  Milo is no combatant. Hasn’t thrown a punch since grade school and wouldn’t know the business end of a gun unless it was pointed at him. He’s quite adept at the social skills and has a few skills when it comes to jack-leg engineering. Knows his sound and video equipment backward and forward. Has intimate knowledge of his digital editing suite and is able to assemble a fully realized film for the Vermillion from last shot to final cut in the space of a couple of hours. (It’s always a crash project with them.)  He’s got a few dots of Computer at least and, unbeknownst to the House. Has salted away some get-away money and copies of ALL of the films he’s made for them. He’s got them squirreled away in a safe place. They have gone to the lengths of making sure that his editing suite is clean, but he’s got a second server elsewhere. He’s hoping that should the day come, those copies will provide leverage or at least a reduced sentence for himself. This is unlikely, and he knows that, but it may be his only hope.

Gear: Milo has a van for hauling his film equipment. He also has a very nice restored Mustang which he uses to prowl for new talent. He has a smart-phone on his person usually. 

Home: The Studio is where he keeps the bulk of his personal possessions and his gear and while he does have a nice swanky apartment downtown for “Entertaining”, he generally cat-naps on the cot right next to his editing bay.

Circle: Milo is a known quantity in certain circles. He attends The Vermillion House parties and has “Those”sorts of connections, but he’s constantly on the prowl for new talent that he can mold and shape. He has a stable of girls and boys who make comfortable livings from him and a few people who are part of his crew who make decent money off of what he does.  NONE of them know about the other thing.

Story Uses:
* “Dude! I didn’t know she was your sister!”
Milo is, at his core, kind of scummy, and a bit of a low-rent lothario. That could be forgivable if it weren’t for the other thing. But he doesn’t really have any nervousness about enticing a young impressionable person into a career of fucking for money, and a likely case of Herpes.

*”LOOK! I’m just a link in a chain! It’s not me you want!”
Some fine day, Someone may get the people who snatched their loved one. And they may get those people to talk. If so, they’re likely to come round and have some pointed question for Milo. Milo is totally chickenshit and has gone over in his head exactly what he’s going to say when and IF that day arrives.  The sad fact is, that he doesn’t really KNOW all that much.  He doesn’t even know that “The Engine” is Lothar Van Doren.

Connections:
The Caboose has a small deal with Milo's Studio for producing web content. All of this is very soft-core and entirely up to the girls if they want to be the Featured Girl of the Month. Some of the girls do it, it's a nice bit of extra cash.
Detective Bela Janofski has been sniffing around. He's been asking questions and so far been coming up dry. Milo's studio doesn't have a name for a reason.
Lara X came very close to taking Milo up on his offer, but it seemed like a major exposure for her and she shied away. Many of the people who work at the studio are avid fans of her blog. Milo has no idea how close he came. If she'd even gone back to his apartment, he has hidden cameras there too.
Darla Grumman once came out to the studio to fix a broken lighting fixture at the insistence of her then girlfriend. Unfortunately, that led to a fight (about the filming, not the lighting fixture) and the whole thing left a bad taste in her mouth about the place.
Lewis Flowers is an avid fan of their website, especially the more S&M flavored offerings. Lately, he's been seeing the Office park in his dreams. The Engine, too.
Don Pentangelli keeps an eye on his investment. He keeps the cops away and occasionally makes investment suggestions to Milo, who has a decent head for business and is respectful...for a pornographer. It's probably a good thing that the Don doesn't know about Milo's sideline.