Groovy. There's some stuff about the Kingpin in my app, nothing major but let me know if it doesn't jive with what anybody else wants to do.
Character Name: Tracy Lawless
Alignment (Hero, Villain, Walking the Line): Villain
Character Speech Font and Color: Arial and Black
Powers and Abilities:
No powers, but Tracy is a former Army special forces operator and has all the skills and abilities that come with that job. In addition, Tracy is extremely street smart and is an expert criminal.
Character Origin/Backstory:
Tracy Lawless' early life was rough. He and his brother Ricky were constantly abused by their drunken criminal father, Teeg Lawless. Teeg acted as an enforcer for a mid-level New York mobster named Rigoletto. While Tracy took the abuse and quietly hated his father, Rick loved and admired Teeg to the point that it made Tracy sick and made him hate his little brother. Tracy and Rick were arrested for auto theft when Tracy was 18 and Rick was 15. Rick went to Juvie while Tracy got the choice to go to prison or join the army. Tracy took the army as his chance to escape New York and his father.
Lawless excelled in the army, so much so that he became a candidate for special forces training. His covert work in the Yugoslav Wars led to the slaughter of an entire village in Bosnia. In Iraq, Tracy was arrested after killing four US Army officers for their mistreatment of an Iraqi family. The army hushed up the crime and deemed Lawless too valuable to send to jail or kick out of the service. After a year in a military prison, Tracy was released to continue working for special forces. Shortly after he found out his brother Rick had been killed. Tracy escaped from the military base and went AWOL back home to New York.
Once home, Tracy infiltrated Rick's crew and began to figure out who killed his brother while helping the crew on the score. Tracy stole cash from a courier of new mob boss Wilson Fisk upon his arrival back home. Fisk's people watched from afar as Tracy killed Rick's old crew in revenge. After discovering the true nature of his brother's murder and the pointlessness of revenge, Tracy was brought to the man himself. There Fisk made him an offer: Tracy would work for him as an enforcer or the Kingpin would kill the few people left in the world Tracy cared about. With no other option, Tracy accepted. Like Teeg, Tracy became the weapon of a cruel man. Despite his best efforts, the son had become the father.
What Makes This Version "Ultimate":
Tracy is pretty much the same, but I'm just inserting him into this world. Lots of potential for a street-level villain to get mixed up into in the UOU.
What can you bring to the RPG:
Some hard-boiled crime stories set inside this universe of superheroes. I'm the guy who does boring normie stuff, so it'll be more of that. Plus, he's a bad guy. Not on the same level as the others, but still a bad guy.
Sample Post (provide a short post of at least 3 paragraphs and 1 line of dialogue for your character):
Fathers & Sons
The Cheetah Room
Lower Manhattan
3:15 AM
Tracy hated himself.
It wasn't for the usual reasons one engaged in self-loathing. It wasn't because he was broke. On the contrary, he had more money that he could hope to spend. It wasn't because of his looks. Despite the bad burn on his neck from Iraq he looked passable and never heard any complaints from the women he brought home. It wasn't because of his station in life. He was part of the inner circle of the city's biggest crime boss, a place many men would give their left nut for. Tracy hated himself because he was becoming his old man.
Like Teeg Lawless, Tracy was seen as one of the baddest mother****ers in all of New York, someone you avoided at all costs if you liked breathing. Like Teeg, Tracy's power was an illusion. It was a gifted granted to him by Fisk seemingly on a whim. Tracy knew he was feared and respected as long as the Kingpin allowed it. And that made him sicker than anything. He wanted to avoid becoming Teeg, wanted to avoid this city all together, but some dumb ass mistakes led him right back to New York and right under Fisk's thumb.
The Cheetah Room was part of the Kingpin's benevolent streak. The strip club was a gift to Tracy that was a pretty ****** gift. Tracy got a ten percent cut of the profits for managing it. Running the club meant having to deal with all the headaches nobody wanted to handle. Most guys out of the loop thought running a strip club entailed lapdances and blowjobs gratis. Instead Tracy had to listen to the strippers' drama and get sucked into the day to day tragedies that were their lives. Think of dealing with hormonal teenage girls, crying all over the place and hating each other and themselves... only all the girls have big fake silicone ******* Added to getting caught up into their personal bull****, Tracy also had to make sure none of the girls of other staff dealt drugs or peddled gash on the side. Fisk approved of the girls hooking and pushing blow, but only as long as he got his cut.
Tracy was taking his boss's cut of the action that night, sitting in the backroom with Gingy, the closest thing this diseased hellhole had to an assistant manager. Gingy was over fifty with bright red hair that came out of a bottle. She wore cowboys boots and tight jeans with black t-shirts. She looked every bit of the butch lesbian that she was. While Tracy didn't take advantage of the girls, Gingy was known on occasion to shack up with a few of the sapphicly inclined strippers. Gingy counted out Fisk and Tracy's cuts in twenties, a menthol hanging out of her mouth with half a cigarette's worth of ash dangling off the tip.
"That's 1,000," she said after counting out fifty twenties that went into Tracy's pile.
She dumped the ashes and started on another set of twenties when the burner cell in Tracy's pocket went off. He looked at the number and knew something was up.
Red Hook property. One hour.
Tracy closed the phone and looked at the clock on the wall before standing.
"I have to go," he said to Gingy as he got his coat.
"Count it all out and put it in the safe below the desk, put my share in one bag and the big man's share in the other."
"You got it, sweetheart. I'll keep the ship running in your stead."
Red Hook, Brooklyn
4:18 AM
Tracy parked the Charger down the block from the four-story walk-up and made his way down the street on foot. Waiting for him on the fourth floor was Stein. Stein was one among the army of lawyers Fisk constantly kept on retainer, with a few of them acting as messengers when the man himself was preoccupied with something. Everything said between Fisk, Stein, and whoever he relayed a message to would be cover by attorney-client privilege. A rumpled polo shirt and khakis replaced the downtown lawyer's usual three-piece power suit.
"Lawless, how are you, boychik?"
"It's four in the morning and I'm in Red Hook, how do you think I am?"
"Right, so no small talk. Down to business, yes? Works for me. Now listen up, because none of this is on paper. Jimmy Bags' bookie shops have been getting hit over the past three weeks. Three robberies from a four man crew. They've been taking anywhere between ten and forty large each heist. Kingpin wants the
feygeles found and killed in a very public way. Twenty grand per dead heister, got it?"
Tracy kept his hands in his pockets and silently mulled over what Stein had just told him. There was plenty of wiggle room inside of Fisk's vague orders, and he planned to use what he could to his advantage.
"Got it. Tell Kingpin they're as good as dead."
Three Days Later
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
4:11 AM
Tracy Lawless cracked his knuckles and settled back into the seat of his car. Six hours into the stakeout and he began to settle in for a long haul. The house he was sitting on was a dump, a scorched husk of a building that someone torched years ago. It was the perfect place for squatters and people trying to lay low. Tracy had James Bagotti to thank for leading him here. Bagotti aka Jimmy Bags, capo to Silvermane and one of the many cogs in the Fisk organization, ran a dozen bookie shops around the outer boroughs. Tracy spent three days boning up on Jimmy Bags through his contacts, following the man and his family as they went about their day to day tasks.
Bagotti's bio read like a million others who joined the life. He was old school Maggia, joined the outfit when he was still a teenager. Purse snatching led to strongarm robberies which led to hijacking and running numbers. Sixty years old and Bagotti had climbed as far on the criminal ladder as far as he could. To some that would mark Jimmy Bags as a suspect for the robberies. He couldn't get past old man Silvermane, so he was letting his own joints get heisted and he was splitting the money. He got paid and it was a way to rub s*** in the old man's eye.
The clues that tipped Tracy off to the real culprit were long sleeves and itchy arms. Bagotti's youngest son, Carlo, still lived with his folks at the age of thirty. Tracy watched him coming and going the past few days. He always wore a long sleeve shirt and always picked at his arms when he walked down the street. It took Tracy all of ten minutes to peg Carlo as a junkie, the sleeves hiding the track marks that itched so bad when the kid needed a fix. He followed Carlo to a shooting gallery down near the waterfront. From there Tracy followed the guy Carlo copped from which led him to a stash house in Bed-Stuy. A small pack of four dealers worked out of the house. Four dealers, a four man crew ripping off bookie spots, a weak junkie whose father ran the bookmaking shops, a junkie could give them information for a fix.
He waited until nearly five in the morning before he made his move. Tracy slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and carried a Glock with a supressor attached to the end under his coat. He looped around the back of the building and came through a broken window, slow and quietly. Tracy pulled the gun out along with a flashlight covered in tape, emitting only a pin-sized light to use as a guide. He held his nose when he passed by three buckets that had been used as latrine. It took him ten minutes to find their stash tucked away in a baseboard near the fireplace. Tracy found nearly a hundred grand in crisp twenty dollar bills inside a satchel, not the type of money junkies handed over for horse. No, this was the type of money Jimmy's places carried before a big payout was coming. In addition to the cash, he found a half pound of uncut H and four machine pistols. Tracy tucked the money, dope, and guns into the satchel and swung it over his shoulder.
Tracy slowly glided up the rickety stairs like a ghost. Muscle memory kicked in when he reached the landing where the crew was sleeping. Check the corners, clear the rooms, plan your escape, kill as soon as you have eyes on the target. Flashbacks went through his mind, killing a Bosnian national in the 90's with a sniper rifle, garroting an Al-Qaeda cutout in Iraq. He was a Lawless, he had killing in his blood, but it was Uncle Sam who polished him and made him into a sparkly diamond of murderous potential.
The four guys were passed out on piss-stained mattresses. Tracy kept the flashlight beam low and aimed. Recoil shot up his elbow as he fired off four quick shots. The rounds hissed through the room, four bullets exploding the four men's heads. He fired off four more to each man's heart to be sure he was dead before calmly walking out into the early morning air. Tracy tucked the gun into his coat and climbed into the car, driving six blocks away before burying the gun and his gloves in the trashcan.
Park Slop, Brooklyn
10:48 AM
"Who the **** are you?"
Jimmy Bags sized Tracy up like a piece of meat. Tracy stood on his doorstep, impassively meeting the mobster's gaze.
"I'm Lawless. You know who I am, who I work for. Let's take a ride."
The look of recognition filled Jimmy Bag's eyes, quickly followed by fear. He knew what Tracy did, and why he was visiting him like this.
"Oh, God... Please--"
"If I was going to kill you you'd be dead already," Tracy said with slight annoyance.
"Let's take a ride."
Thirty minutes later Tracy and Jimmy Bags were sitting in Tracy's car, parked outside a coffee shop ten blocks away from his home. Tracy retold the story, the guys robbing Jimmy's shops, following the trail and killing the four men, and of course Jimmy's own son.
"Look... I know Carlo has had problems, and me and my wife we've tried to help him... but... you..."
"You know who I work for,"Tracy said with a cool tone.
"I'm offering you the chance to do it on your son's terms. Fisk will hold you and your family responsible for this theft. If he has his way, I'm gonna come back to your house with four more guys and we'll chop your entire family to pieces."
Jimmy Bags slumped forward in the seat and began to shake as he sobbed. Tracy ignored him and instead pulled a covered syringe from his coat pocket.
"This spike is loaded up with pure heroin. I don't care if your boy is goddamn Layne Staley reincarnated, this much pure H will kill him. It's either the OD or that other option I mentioned. Either give it to him or inject him tonight when he's asleep, but he does not live to see tomorrow."
Tracy slipped the syringe into Jimmy Bag's jacket while the man continued to cry. He felt a stab of remorse and something else much more powerful. Tracy realized it was envy. If Teeg Lawless would have been faced with this same dilemma, he knew Teeg would not hesitate to sacrifice his sons to save his own ass.
Jimmy Bags went back home somber and quiet. They rode in silence, the only time Jimmy acknowledge Tracy at all was a short nod to him as he got out the car and went into his house. For an old soldier like Jimmy, the nod was final acceptance to do what needed to be done. Tracy texted Stein that the job was completed. He told the lawyer to notify the Kingpin to check the papers and he'd find five deaths in Brooklyn all within the same day of each other, a quadruple homicide and one OD. The lawyer texted back his appreciation and told Tracy where to drop off the cash and drugs he had recovered. The money for the job would be waiting for him when he arrived home that night.
Tracy started up his car and headed back home to Manhattan. It wouldn't be long before he got another text with another job and another person who needed to be hurt. Tracy hated himself, not because he was
becoming his old man, but because he had
become his old man. He glanced up in the car's rearview mirror and wasn't entirely sure who it was he saw staring back at him.
