Likely Lads (Neo-Noir, OOC/Signups) [Closed]

by **Reverend Norv** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 1:35 pm

IC

LIKELY LADS
THE THIN BLUE LINE

The Island

The island of Portocielo is suitable only for the cultivation of rum, piracy, and the pox. I have no doubt that it shall prove most profitable on all three counts.
Admiral Johannes van der Meer, 1650

* * *

GOVERNOR WAYNE CUYPERS

My island.

I know, you’ve heard of Portocielo. America’s crime capital. An anarchist’s paradise. Ongoing rural insurgency. Urban violent crime rate higher than Baghdad. Tax haven for the rich, drug pipeline for the poor, police so corrupt they do hits for the mob in their spare time. I’m sure you’ve heard a thing or two about me, too. I’ll tell you right now: everything you’ve heard is true.

But it’s still my island. It’s my birthright. The Indios and the Spanish think that Portocielo is theirs, and Washington thinks that it runs it, but really? Portocielo was Dutch for three centuries, and it belongs to the Dutch still. It’s my island.

Basic facts? It’s a Caribbean island, legally a U.S. territory like Puerto Rico, located about sixty miles from Cuba. The place is shaped like a pill, sixty miles long and between twenty and thirty miles wide. Population about a million, but it feels a hell of a lot smaller.

There are three main population centers: New Leiden, Plezier, and the U.S. military base over at Larksburg. New Leiden’s the capital, the big NL. It’s on the east coast, it’s got the port and the airport and half the island’s total people, and most everything happens here. Plezier’s a beach resort town, on the north coast, always full of tourists. Larksburg’s on the west coast and it’s an army base, so who the fuck knows what goes on there?

One highway holds everything together: the PS1, running from New Leiden to Larksburg by way of Plezier, along the north coast. Everywhere else is bush and jungle. The laagveldt. Nothing but crazy Spanish landowners and crazier Indio guerillas. There’s been talk for years about a PS2 along the south coast, through the bush, but nobody can figure out how to build it without getting shot to hell by the Indios.

First thing you have to know about Portocielo’s history is that this place wasn’t Taino when the Spanish found it; it was fucking Carib. You know, the guys who would paddle canoes fifty miles across the sea to your island, club you over the head, tie you up, paddle back, rape you, roast you over a barbeque pit, and chow down. Those Caribs. The Spanish arrived in 1501, fought for fifty straight years to tame the interior, and only managed it once most of the Caribs were dead from disease. Ernesto Rojas finally declared victory in 1551, and became the first Spanish viceroy.

The Spanish thought the island was spectacularly beautiful. Portocielo: port of heaven. They founded what’s now New Leiden, and called it Villarey. They brought in thousands of African slaves and turned the whole coast into sugarcane plantations. Most of the Caribs ultimately ended up enslaved too. The remainder fled into the interior, the deep jungle where the Spanish couldn’t follow, and kept raiding for centuries. Fucking savages.

The Dutch showed up in 1647, the year before they ended the war with Spain that had been going on for thirty or eighty or a hundred years, who fucking remembers. Anyway, everyone knew the war was ending, and this Dutch admiral-cum-pirate named Johannes van der Meer saw an opportunity to make bank before peace was finalized. He scrounged up some ships, a few cannon, and a bunch of unemployed vets, and he stormed Villarey in an afternoon. Badass, right? The Spanish gave the island away at the peace table, because possession is nine tenths of the law. The Dutch took over the cities, and gave Villarey the new name of New Leiden. They ran the business side, and left the Spanish landowners alone in the countryside to run the agricultural side.

And so it went. The Dutch finally abolished slavery in 1863, but the Spanish and the New Leiden business types were canny enough to find ways to keep the Indios and the niggers tied to the land. The Caribs kept raiding, only now they had guns and shot up railroad workers. In the 1920s, the first tourists arrived, and built bungalows and villas on the untouched beaches. The first smugglers arrived, too, Italian mobsters running rum from Cuba through Portocielo up to Miami. By the fifties there were resorts and casinos everywhere, millions of tourists per year. The Italian mob financed the development, and soon it had its hand in the biggest new pot of gold in the whole Caribbean.

In the late fifties, the Lanzas arrived. Who are the Lanzas? Jesus, were you born yesterday? The Lanzas were a little mob family from New York that had moved to Cuba in the twenties to smuggle rum through Portocielo. Castro kicked them out on their asses in fifty-eight, so they moved to Portocielo, set up shop in Plezier, and in five years controlled every major casino on the north coast. They went industrial-scale, bringing in girls and dope and guns for local retail and distribution across the continental U.S. You see that fountain out in front of the Territorial Assembly? It’s got their fucking name on it. They organized crime on this island: violence went down, the economy went up. Everybody won, except some lowlifes who got fed to the gators.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. government got antsy about Caribbean islands. In 1965, they bought Portocielo off the Dutch and built the Larksburg base – JFB Portocielo, if you want to get fancy – to house enough bombers and Marines to teach Castro his place in this white man’s hemisphere. They gave the island territorial status, with a ton of autonomy and almost no federal oversight, and left us alone to do our own thing. Pretty soon, we became the go-to place if you had a warrant on your head, or an itch that needed scratching, or if you were just too ornery a son of a bitch for Shithole, Iowa to tolerate anymore. The Yankees poured in. Tourism went through the roof. Life was good.

And then the fucking Caribs had to go and fuck it up for everybody. In seventy-three they decided they were Marxists all of a sudden, founded something called the National Liberation Front of Portocielo, and started blowing up beach resorts. You can imagine what that did to the economy. We asked the Marines to bomb the shit out of them, but the Pentagon said that this wasn’t their problem. Since then, the interior’s been a no-go zone for everyone who’s not a Spanish-speaking Indio. The National Front for the Liberation of redskins or whatever they go by – everyone just calls them the Fronte Nacional – is still out there in the laagveldt. You can probably see them from the top of Pope Tower.

And that’s pretty much the story. The CIA had a big presence here for a while, using Portocielo as a base for destabilizing tinpot commie dictatorships in the area, but they’re mostly gone now. Every now and then the FBI comes in to try to clean up the PTPD. Harry Pope showed up in the nineties and bought everything that the Lanzas didn’t already own. A shitload of Brazilians showed up at about the same time and started taking all the black jobs. Even so, the economy’s still not worth shit without tourism, which is why the crime rate is so high – shut up, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

These days, the island is about thirty percent mulatto, though they prefer the term Portocielan. They’re black-Carib-Spanish mutts, native language Spanish, poor to middle class, urban and suburban. They work everywhere, and they’re pretty much the default. About ten percent of the island is pure Carib, living out in the laagveldt, subsistence farmers when they’re not growing coca, Spanish-speaking too, which is fucking ironic. They support the Fronte Nacional, or the Fronte Nacional introduces them to a whole bunch of machetes.

Then there are the Spaniards themselves, pure or mostly pure-blood, and they’re either arrogant old aristocrats living in crumbling coastal haciendas, or arrogant old aristocrats who have lost the haciendas and are now slumming with the Brazilians. The better-off among them still own most of the land in rural areas, and have big agricultural operations.

There’s the blacks, too, descendants of the Spaniards’ slaves. Pretty much all poor. They live in their own neighborhoods, or cheek-by-jowl with the Brazilians. Their native tongue is Spanish too, but they have some weird fucking creole of their own. They hate the man just as much as the Caribs, but the Caribs won’t have them, so it’s back to the car wash for the niggers.

The Brazilians all showed up in the eighties and nineties. They’re as poor as the blacks, with the added joy of not being able to speak Spanish, Dutch, or English. They mostly live here in New Leiden, down in Little Rio back behind the waterfront. They work odd jobs, and have a big gang problem. You ask me, it’s them that’s the cause of all this crime: fucking immigrant macacos.

Finally, you’ve got the white men. There’s my kind, the Dutch, who’ve been here for the last four hundred years. We still own most of the small businesses, even if the Yankees have stolen a lot of the big money ventures out from under us. And we’re the power in the Territorial Assembly and the Governor’s Mansion – as you can see only too well. You go to court, you better know a Dutch judge. It’s our island.

But the Yankees think they own it. And by Yankee, I mean everyone from off the island: that cop cocksucker with his nose in everything was born in Scotland or Ireland or something, and he’s just as much a Yankee as Harry Pope or Don Carlos Lanza. These days, the Yankees are everywhere, and it seems like they own everything. The only places you won’t find them are Little Rio or east of the Raamgracht Expressway. The world’s not what it used to be, I’ll tell you that.

* * *

The Underworld

I went to Portocielo. The mob sold me dope, the cops stole the dope and gave it to the governor, the governor handed it out to his big-business pals at a party for which I was the entertainment. So I got to smoke my dope after all. Portocielo. It’s God’s own country.
Hunter S. Thompson, 1978

* * *

SIDNEY MOSS

So Old Man Cuypers gave you the runaround, and you figured you’d come to Uncle Sid for the truth, because here at the Portocielo Herald that’s what you get: the truth. You poor sap.

But hey: fine. No skin off my nose. I’ll tell you what anyone could tell you. Only fair, kid.

I guess Cuypers tried to pin the crime rate on either the feds or the darkies, right? That’s him all over. Truth is, it’s way more complicated than that.

The Lanzas stand close to the center of it all. They control the casinos, and a bunch of the hotels. They rebuilt Plezier from the ground up as a tourist’s playground, a place to go and sin your guts out, Vegas in the Caribbean. These days there’s not so many tourists, but hey: so it goes. The Lanzas run most of the whorehouses on the island, and all of the high-level call-girl services. They run blackmail and protection rackets. They do a lot of import-export fraud. They’ve got good ties over in Larksburg, so they can peddle dope to Marines and get some unofficial military muscle. And they’re deep, deep in the drug trade, mostly bringing in heroin and pills, especially on tour cruises at the Plezier docks. The Lanzas are top dog; not uncontested any more, but still first among equals, and you don’t fuck with them and expect to tell the tale.

I bet Cuypers told you about the Fronte Nacional, too, if he could remember their name. Newsflash: they’re not just restless natives. They grow as much coca in those jungles as half of Peru, and they’ve got the facilities to refine and sell it, too. That Marxist talk? Cover. Attacks on infrastructure? Not cover. They know that the Lanzas work within the system, and if you break down the system, you break down the Lanzas. See, the FN’s big problem is that the Lanzas won’t move the FN's product, and the FN doesn’t have easy access to a port or an airport. So if they plunge the island into chaos, they get to move the cocaine with ease. Hence the insurgency, see, and everybody knows it – Cuypers included.

So in the meantime, what’s the solution to the FN’s transportation problem? That’s right: the Russians. Seriously: there are Russians on Portocielo. They’re muscling in on the Port District here in New Leiden. Nobody knows that much about them – that’s a lie, I do, and so does Liam Mack over in Organized Crime, but I’m sure as shit not telling you what I know. But there aren’t a lot of them, they’re brutal as all hell, they move Fronte Nacional coke, and they’re a wild card because they don’t give a damn about politics or the cops, which means that they can’t be reasoned with.

And then there’s street gangs. Comanda Paraiso controls Little Rio. They get women and guns from their pals in Brazil, and they’re about as well-armed as the Fronte Nacional. They would be a major power, except that they don’t care much about what goes on outside the slums: their political influence is limited to a few New Leiden city council seats and the mayor's office. But they’ve still made Little Rio a no-go zone for the PTPD, at least without permission or an armored car. And they’re rumbling with the Ruskies and the cops for control of the docks.

Comanda Paraiso is a street gang on the verge of apotheosis, as it were. Use that word around the governor and see what happens, huh? Anyway, most gangs aren’t like that. They control a street, a few blocks in New Leiden. Nobody’s stupid enough to run an independent outfit in Plezier, where the Lanzas own everything and everyone. Street gangs buy dope from the Lanzas, pay protection money to the cops or Comanda Paraiso, maybe move a little Fronte Nacional coke every once in a while. They shoot each other more than they shoot bystanders, but there are always people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some gangs are bigger than others: the Familia Libra controls most of Monteflores, though they’re always killing each other. Some are more brutal than others – the Green Cobras hang out in the alleys off north High Street, where everybody really wants them gone, but they scalp anyone who comes after them, including cops. Spark-notes version: you get killed in this town, it’s probably by a street gang. The Lanzas don’t know you exist.

Ah, so who are the guardians that stand watch over civilization and hold back this tide of filth? The thin blue line that guards us as we sleep? They would be the PTPD: the Portocielo Territorial Police Department. And kid, if you’re waiting for them to save this place, don’t hold your breath.

It’s not that there are no honest cops on the PTPD. There are a few. Mostly they’re young and mostly they get whacked before they make rank, but they exist. It’s not even that the department as a whole doesn’t care about enforcing the law. They have a pretty high arrest rate. It’s that the PTPD knows how to play the game.

Look. Let’s say you’re a street ganger, right? Now, here’s how it works. You sell dope, you let the local precinct in on ten percent of the profits. You whack a rival, you pay a detective to frame some other lowlife, or you’ll be hauled in yourself. That’s an arrest either way, as far as the PTPD is concerned. You mess with a protected business, or a white girl, you accept the consequences – which usually don’t involve jail but which do involve the business end of a Glock.

See the point? There are rules. They aren’t laws, but they matter more than the law. If you break the rules, you’re probably breaking the law too, and the justice system does its job on your ass. So order is preserved. Nobody gets too uppity. When a gang war seems on the cards, the cops move in to correct the balance. The people on top stay on top. It may not be peace, but it is a system, and the cops all get nice gold watches at their retirement parties.

It is what it is, kid.

Here’s why: because if you want to change the PTPD, you have to go through the government, and the government likes things just fine this way. You’ve met Old Man Cuypers. He has lunch with Don Carlos Lanza twice a week at Restaurant Ortolan. The Don got Cuyper’s kids into Yale, and paid their tuition. You know Mayor Gustavo Silva? Not a Dutch name – surprise, right? Yeah, he’s a Comanda Paraiso mouthpiece who paid the PTPD to make sure he won the last three elections. Been running New Leiden since 2002. Old Man Cuypers fucking reviles him.

Hell, when last I checked, the mayor of Plezier actually was Gabriel Lanza, Don Carlos’ son. They’re not even trying to hide it up there anymore.

So what about business, huh? Don’t worry, I’m coming to it. What you have to realize is that there’s only two ways to make money on this island: tourism and crime. Until we clobber the Fronte Nacional, the tourism business is going to be a trickle of cash, and we’re not going to clobber the FN until the Marines in Larksburg get off their asses and do something, and they’re not going to do that any time soon. So. That leaves crime.

Take Harry Pope. Richest man on Portocielo, in theory at any rate. Banking, real estate development, import/export business. Showed up in ninety-three and never left. Now, he owns all of the hotels in Plezier, plus three of the five major beachfront hotels in New Leiden. That’s most of this island’s tourism revenue, right there. But he couldn’t have the Plezier properties unless he made a deal with the Lanzas, which may be why all of Don Carlos’ money comes from miraculously high income returns on investments with Pope Financial Services, Ltd. And he couldn’t have the New Leiden properties without a deal with the PTPD, which may be why all those kickbacks from criminals that the cops rake in never get traced. Good banker, Harry Pope. And Old Man Cuypers is never going to crack down on any of this, and not only because he has biweekly lunches with Don Carlos Lanza, but also because Harry Pope is basically the only source of quasi-legitimate economic growth on this island, and even the Ranting Dutchman has to answer to Washington sometimes.

The gangs, the cops, the politicians, the businessmen. Chimps stand in a circle to groom each other, you know. Nobody gets left out. There are no corners to a circle; no weak points.

Welcome to Portocielo, bub.

* * *

The City

What strange phenomena we find in a great city. All we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.
Charles Baudelaire

* * *

JOÃO PEDRO

Ey, rapaz. You want cachaça, I’ll get you cachaça. But I’m no tour guide.

Seriously? You have nowhere else to go? And who suggested Madelena’s, ey? Why you come to my bar?

Sid Moss. That cocksucker Yankee reporter. Fine. But tell him: I’m no tour guide!

New Leiden. Capital and largest city of Portocielo. Half a million people. Southeastern corner of the island. It sprawls. It’s seven districts, all blurring into each other, all different.

You have Downtown. Lots of shopping. Two beaches. Webb Beach is for tourists: umbrella drinks, pickpockets. Harry Pope owns three hotels there. Claes Beach is for locals: carnival rides, dope dealers under the boardwalk. The shopping mall is downtown too, just up Meer Boulevard from Claes. Up Webb Street from the beach is the Yellow Rose: just look for the flower in the window. Clara Ramirez has a girl or a boy for every – what’s the word? – palate. Speaking of palate, there’s plenty of low-price restaurants in the neighborhood, and there’s a flea market on Saturdays. West on Seacrest Avenue, near where Downtown blurs into the Port District, you’ll find the Orange Arms: the cop bar, owned by a partidario of Liam Mack – you know, the Goon Squad guy. Right in the middle of downtown is the old Spanish fort, Ciudad Cielo, and there are always a few tourists there. I heard that the dungeons are all locked up, but the right key can still get you down there. West of Downtown is the Port District, east is Eindhoven, north is Truman Square. South is the ocean.

West of Downtown, right down on the coast, you have the Port District. Giant concrete piers, cargo ships coming and going, shipping containers piled sky-high, giant tin-roofed warehouses. A little further back from the waterfront, you get some dive bars and flop houses, and then Brammertown, and abandoned factories everywhere. There are still a few food companies with plants running in the Port District, but I think by now you can probably guess how they stay in business. The factories stop at Wilson Boulevard. North of that is Little Rio, and it’s not the Port District any more. Right here on Wilson is this place, Madalena’s, and Mack and his goons work out of the precinct house on Seacrest, near the port itself. Not much else in the Port, but there are always people coming and going, picking things up from shipping containers. Lots of Russians these days. I don’t ask questions.

Did I ask you what Sid Moss says? I say I don’t ask questions. My bar, rapaz.

Anyway, north of the Port and west of Truman Square is Little Rio, the Brazilian quarter. Low-rise buildings, cinderblock and tin roofs, diesel generators and half-paved roads. A shithole split in half by Echo Canyon, an old dried-up gorge filled with garbage and dead bodies. Almost a hundred thousand people now, they say, half of them illegals from the favelas of Rio and Sao Paolo. Don’t know why you’d trade one favela for another. The Comanda Paraiso runs the place, and if you know what’s good for you, you won’t go in unless you speak Portuguese and have something to offer Rafael Pinto. Understand, rapaz? There’s nothing for you there anyway: even the city buses avoid Little Rio. The place is barely hooked up to the electrical grid. To keep the stuffed shirts in Truman Square safe from Rafael Pinto, the Ranting Dutchman put in Orange Park between the two districts: five hundred acres of greenery, with a giant wall in the middle and one gate through. Lots of bodies buried in Orange Park.

North of Downtown, and on the other side of Orange Park from Little Rio, is Truman Square. It’s a lot more than just the Square, but the Square is – what’s the word? – symbolic. Emblematic, Liam Mack would say. It’s an acre of cobblestones, monuments and fountains. Governor’s mansion on the first side. Territorial Assembly on the second. Portocielo Judicial Complex on the third. And on the fourth? Pope Tower, of course. Can’t forget Harry Pope. Office buildings all around: government, corporations, side by side. The PTPD headquarters is there, attached to the Judicial Complex. Ortolan Restaurant is a few blocks away: a French chef makes hundred-dollar business lunches, but if you’re drinking at Madalena’s, you’ll never make it through the door at Ortolan. Truman Square has clean streets, mostly, but the Green Cobras will scalp you if you wander off High Street. Nobody really lives in Truman Square. Only the rich work there. The cops will pull you into an alley and beat you bloody if you wander around looking like you don’t belong.

North of Truman Square is Angelwood. It’s up on Angelwood Hill, overlooking the city. Nothing but jungle to east or west, skyscrapers in Truman Square to the south. It’s all mansions, gardens, and gates. No businesses. Lots of limousines. Ordinary people take the bus in from Downtown and Monteflores and Little Rio to work as chauffeurs and maids. Some of the smaller houses are worth a half-million dollars, and they’re open to the road. Some of the bigger ones are worth ten million bucks, and they’re at the end of private driveways sealed with security gates. No crime in Angelwood. Those sorts of people, you slice their tires or two-one-one their homes, the PTPD cuts you slow and dumps your body in Echo Canyon. My advice, rapaz? Just stay away. Angelwood is too far away for you to reach it on foot anyway; you’ll never end up there unless you try. So don’t try. There’s nothing there for you.

Remember how I said if you go west on Seacrest Avenue from Downtown you hit the Port? Well, if you go east on Seacrest, you hit Eindhoven: south of Monteflores, east of Downtown. Used to be, Eindhoven was a segregated suburban ‘hood for middle-class Dutch families. That was back when there was a middle class on this island. Now, there’s just street after street of old three-bedroom bungalows on the verge of collapse, lawns that the old folks stubbornly kept mowed, and mom-and-pop businesses: car mechanics like Pritchard’s, diners like the Blue Moon. Pritchard’s stashes dope in cars in places most cops don’t know exist; the Blue Moon is open all night, and is neutral ground. No one is ever arrested or whacked there. There are plenty of street gangs in Eindhoven, but they all pay the police for protection, and the cops keep them from fucking up the old folks’ lives too badly.

And then there’s Monteflores. North of Eindhoven, east of Truman Square – the Raamgracht Expressway runs north-south, and separates the rich folks from the ghetto. You wonder where all the slaves went after the Spanish brought them over? Well, mostly they went to the haciendas in the sticks, but those that didn’t went to Monteflores. The feds gave money to rebuild the neighborhood in the seventies, and now it’s worse than ever: block after block of crumbling townhouses and chain-link fences, broken up every other street corner or so with a gigantic twenty-story apartment block. Broken sidewalks, garbage-filled yards, dead palm trees. It’s all still public housing, even today. There are some mom-and-pop joints: corner shops, cheap restaurants, drugstores. That sort of thing. But they all have to pay off the Familia Libra, the biggest black gang in New Leiden. The Familia controls Monteflores, or they would, except they keep killing their leaders and fighting civil wars over who gets to run things. I’m pretty sure the PTPD has something to do with that. A certain amount of chaos in Monteflores is good for Liam the Mack.

And that’s our city, rapaz. Downtown, Port, Little Rio, Truman Square, Angelwood, Eindhoven, Monteflores. Bloody, divided, crazy as a rabid dog clawing its own guts out. Good food, lousy booze, nice beaches if you can survive the drive to them. Like Sid Moss always says: it is what it is. The only people here are the ones who can’t stay anywhere else.

Like you, I guess. So welcome to New Leiden, rapaz.

* * *

The Goon Squad

The police are not here to prevent disorder. They’re here to preserve disorder.
Richard J. Daley

* * *

CAPTAIN BROOKS CRAWFORD, PTPD

Why the fuck do you want to know about Liam Mackenzie?

I know his name shows up everywhere. I know that everyone on this island mentions him sooner or later. But that doesn’t mean you want to know him, pal. Trust me.

Fine. Be it on your own head.

First you have to know something about the PTPD. We’re the only law enforcement agency for the whole island of Portocielo, but we spend almost all our time in New Leiden. By now, I think you can guess why we don’t spend a lot of time running around Plezier or the laagveldt.

We’ve got about three thousand sworn officers, and five hundred more unsworn employees. We mostly know each other by name or at least by reputation. We don’t look too hard at applicants. If you’re over twenty-one and willing to crack heads for the man, then you’re in. Unless they’ve had prior law enforcement experience, rookies get sent to the Academy, and learn how to shoot a gun, break a guy’s arm for resisting, and find – or plant – evidence. I guess they learn the law, too. After graduation, a rookie gets paired with a Field Training Officer, and they work together for the first six months, getting the rookie used to how shit really goes down on the streets.

We’ve got four real divisions, and a bunch of fake cops. The four real divisions are Patrol, Special Operations, Detention, and Criminal Investigations.

Patrol guys are the ordinary beat cops, where everyone starts out, but they’re also Rapid Patrol Response – who show up in response to a ten-seven-one. And they’re traffic cops, maritime cops, airport security – you get the point. They’re unis, bluesuits, ride around in black-and-whites. Most cops work in Patrol Division.

Special Operations guys have special skills. They’re the K-9 guys, the dog handlers. They’re Special Response, for SWAT. They’re Forensics and Scientific Investigations, for crime scene work and autopsies. They’re Criminal Intelligence – CRIMINT – to keep files on everybody. They’re even Internal Affairs, which is a joke in this Department, but good for show.

Detention Division are real hard-o’s. They work the prisons, the correctional facilities, the local jails and the big lockup out in the laagveldt at Atabey. They get bags of shit thrown at them every day, and they deal with the prison riots, and they don’t get to carry guns. The Mackster got his start in Detention, at least with us.

But Criminal Investigations is where the money is. We’re detectives, plainclothes. We investigate crimes. Homicide, Vice, Arson, Sex Crimes. Mack works in Organized Crime, which is basically a license to steal other peoples’ cases on the grounds that they have a gang connection. We catch bad guys. Sometimes we even catch bad guys who did what we say they did.

You got other cops too: training officers at the Academy, computer geeks at Information Services, kid-wranglers at Juvenile. But the real cops are in Patrol, Special Ops, Detention, or Criminal Investigations.

Which I guess brings me to Mack.

Liam Mackenzie joined the Department about fifteen years ago. He was born in Northern Ireland sometime in the late sixties. Protestant family – don’t ever call him Irish. No one knows much about his early years. He ended up living with his grandparents for a while, and then he was a teenage killer for the UVF – Ulster Volunteer Force, a loyalist paramilitary. The IRA figured out who he was, so the UVF packed him off to New York. Mack joined the Marines and was an MP for ten years: Gulf War One, Somalia, Bosnia. He made a hell of a lot of money while he was in, more than any MP could make off his salary.

In about 2000, he showed up here. Joined the PTPD. His FTO thought he was the hottest thing going. Mack volunteered for Detention, which is like sticking your hand in a garbage disposal. He got sent to Atabey. Second day there, he found a place off-camera and an officer who would alibi him, and beat a three-hundred-pound Fronte Nacional commander to death with his hands. No evidence, but everyone knows it was Mack: the man is a beast, taller than I am and two hundred-plus pounds of slab muscle. Don’t be fooled because he dresses like a British royal on vacation: he can kill you with his hands in seconds.

Mack spent a year at Atabey. There’s a rumor that he raped Rodrigo Santos, the most dangerous freelance hitman on this island; Santos hanged himself in his cell the next day. It’s a fact that Mack stopped a prison riot: Atabey lost power, the Ward B door opened, Mack stood in the door in the pitch blackness with a beavertail sap and beat a dozen guys to a pulp until SRT arrived. It’s a fact, too, that he ended up controlling every ounce of powder and pills that moved inside Atabey. By the time he came out of the laagveldt, he knew all the right people on this island.

One of them was Detective Lieutenant Sam Agthoven, in Organized Crime. Sam ran a team of detectives called the Goon Squad. They did frame jobs for the Lanzas, mostly, and rigged local elections, and put the screws to uncooperative small businessmen for Harry Pope. Sam Agthoven knew everyone, and everyone found him really goddamn useful. He made Liam Mack a detective, and his number two inside the Goon Squad.

And that’s how it went for six years – except that with every year, Mack became more central to the Goon Squad, and Sam became a – figurehead, I guess. And pretty soon, Sam went off into the jungle, and there was a Fronte Nacional attack and an FBI raid and when the smoke cleared, Sam had vanished off the face of the earth and there were no witnesses and no evidence.

Mack turned out to be no Sam Agthoven. He’s smarter, for one thing. But he’s also got principles, in this screwed-up way. He’s fine with framing a guy, as long as he knows that the guy is a scumbag, but he won’t frame a really innocent man. He’s fine with rigging elections, but if you beat a woman around him, he’ll club you to death with a sap. He demands protection money from every street gang in New Leiden, except the Comanda Paraiso and the Familia Libra, but he won’t touch a mom-and-pop joint like the Blue Moon. He calls his detectives the "likely lads," he knows the names of all of their kids, and he’s given most of them money to tide them through hard times, no payback required.

And he’s everywhere. Mack has got dirt on everyone, from Commissioner Santos right up the line to Old Man Cuypers. He eats lunch at Restaurant Ortolan, and then goes drinking and braces João Pedro for information at Madalena’s. He’s the only cop allowed in Little Rio without an invitation from Rafael Pinto. He’s the bridge between the cops, the mob, the Governor’s Mansion, and Pope Tower.

So if you think you’ve got what it takes to work for him, good luck. The Goon Squad is the best job in this department. Just don’t fuck with the Mackster, okay? He’ll put you in the bottom of Echo Canyon and never think on you again.

by **Reverend Norv** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 1:36 pm

THE RULES, AND GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

The OOC

If you are involved in this RP, then this is an open OOC. Feel free to discuss anything and everything, whether it has to do with the story or not.
Portocielo is a made-up island, but it is a very fully realized place, with tons of neighborhoods and a huge cast of characters. This RP requires a familiarity with that lore. This RP also requires a basic knowledge of police procedure. I will be happy to answer any questions, either about Portocielo or about police procedure; I do not expect you to come in knowing much about either. Just post your question to the OOC, and I will add it – and the answer – to the FAQs below.
This is a neo-noir RP. In-character, there’s going to be a fair amount of disturbing material, and a lot of material that people will find insulting – just look at the racial slurs in the background introduction above. Remember that this is storytelling, and that IC events do not represent the feelings of OOC players. But also be aware that my tolerance for OOC rudeness falls in inverse proportion to the level of IC rudeness. If your character is dropping racial slurs every third word, you had better be an icon of patience and tolerance here in the OOC.
I understand that people have scheduling issues. I have them myself. This will move slowly sometimes, and rapidly at other times. The key is that if you drop off the map for a few days, post to the OOC first. And try to keep the OOC lively even if the IC is moving slowly; that way, we will all remain invested and ready to jump back into the action when peoples’ schedules free up.

The Roleplay

So at least one of you is still wondering what the hell this is. The answer: this is a neo-noir crime RP set on the fictional island of Portocielo, an American territory in the Caribbean. It focuses on the so-called “Goon Squad” of Detective Lieutenant Liam Mackenzie. The Goon Squad is a team of corrupt police detectives who make problems go away on behalf of the mob, politicians, and big business. Our story is concerned with their efforts to balance conflicting loyalties, battle deep personal issues, engage in corruption without losing their souls, and solve a mystery that reaches from the bottom of Echo Canyon to the heights of Angelwood Hill.
All players will take the role of detectives in the Goon Squad. Characters will be partnered off in the same way as real detectives, and given their marching orders by Liam Mackenzie, who is my character. I will control all major NPCs, and I will unravel the central mystery piece by piece, dropping clues necessary for you to move on. Your characters, however, will have to piece together what has happened on their own, and they will also have to decide how to use what they know in order to continue to solve the mystery. Each character will also face personal crises related to the larger story.
As a consequence of this, I will be intimately involved in the character-creation process. While you are free to determine your characters’ appearance, personality, and so on, there are certain plot roles that must be filled in this story, and I expect some of you to show flexibility in designing your characters in a way that accommodates those roles.
A few things that should be clear from the lore, but that I want to make totally explicit: you are all cops. You are all corrupt, though you are all corrupt in different ways, and at least one of you may be engaging in corruption only in order to gather evidence for a federal probe against the Goon Squad. But if you want to play a simple, straight-arrow cop or a pure gangster or a harmless civilian, look elsewhere.
All characters will have preexisting relationships as members of the same detective squad. Those relationships will be especially developed between partners. Part of the purpose of this OOC is to flesh out those relationships before the RP starts.
All characters will also have real and serious flaws. “Caring too much” is not a weakness. “Social awkwardness” is not a weakness. “Getting old” is not a weakness. Drug addiction, chronic insomnia, and depression are weaknesses. See the difference? A weakness is something that any rational person would badly want to avoid. I expect every character to have at least one of them.
This is noir. There will be cursing. There will be racial slurs. There will be people tied to chairs and whacked with telephone books. There will be various forms of sexual misconduct and perversion. But this is also NationStates, and the PG-13 rule applies. We have twelve-year-olds on these forums, guys. Don’t bring the mods down on me. Moreover, rules of good taste apply too. Don’t turn this into your chance to write torture-porn or say “nigger” fifteen times in a post. That’s not the point. So this is a writing challenge, you see? Imply without spelling out; show don’t tell. It’s how the classic noir authors did it: the sex in Raymond Chandler is a long way from explicit by today’s standards, but it’s still just as steamy and disturbing as anything that’s been done since.
Finally, have fun. Personally, I think that noir – alongside the Western – is the classic American form of film and literature. It has its own clichés, and you should feel free to play upon them. In short: if it doesn’t violate these rules, and it’s fun for you, then do it. It is that simple.

The Commandments

We always do the stuff about me being OP, and my authoritaaah, and courtesy and self-control, and so on. I’m going to assume that if I let you in the door, you know all of this already. Don’t disappoint me.
Keep it PG-13, or put the heavy stuff in clearly marked spoilers. Yes, this is a dark story, involving human depravity in a sweeping variety of forms. But there are twelve-year-olds on this forum. Bear that in mind.
Read the lore in the first post and in the glossary below. Seriously, it will save you a lot of time. If you have a question about police procedure, then begin by Wikipedia-ing it. If you have a question about Portocielo, or if Wikipedia fails you in your quest for authentic law enforcement information, then post your question here in the OOC. I will see it, and put the answer in the FAQs below. If it’s a really minor thing, just go ahead and make it up. I’ll let you know if there’s an issue.
The plot for this story will be deeply shaped by player actions, but it will also deeply shape the options that are available to the players. Don’t wander off, create your own NPCs, and start telling your own subplots tangential to the main story. Trust me: every single PC has a vital role to play in this tale. I will provide subplots aplenty for every single PC. Stick with me, people.
Post whenever you can. I write long posts. I recognize that this is not always possible for everyone. If all you can manage is a ten-minute, two-paragraph post, then give me that. If the IC action is stalling, or I go MIA for a few days, start bantering conversations with your partner – bounce posts back and forth, a few sentences apiece. Don’t let the need for quality paralyze you: quality and length are not the same thing. Write what you have time to write. Unwind and have fun!

by **Reverend Norv** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 1:39 pm

GLOSSARY

Police Radio Codes

Ten Double-Oh: Police radio code meaning “Officer down, all units respond.”
Ten-Zero: Police radio code meaning “Be careful/danger.”
Ten-One: Police radio code meaning “Message not received.”
Ten-Four: Police radio code meaning “Message received.”
Ten-Nine: Police radio code meaning “Fight in process.”
Ten-Fourteen: Police radio code meaning “Suspicious person.”
Ten-Fifteen: Police radio code meaning “Subject in custody.”
Ten-Eighteen: Police radio code meaning “Urgent assistance required.”
Ten-Twenty: Police radio code meaning “Present location.” Often shortened to “What’s your twenty?”
Ten-Twenty-Nine: Police radio code meaning “Arrests/warrants check.” E.g. “Can I get a ten-twenty-nine on a John Smith, driver’s license number 2238-86-4357?”
Ten-Thirty-One: Police radio code meaning “In pursuit.”
Ten-Forty-Five: Police radio code meaning “Condition of patient.” E.g. “What’s the ten-forty-five of your ten-double-oh?”
Ten-Fifty-Two: Police radio code meaning “Ambulance needed.”
Ten-Seventy-One: Police radio code meaning “Shots fired.”
Ten-One-Thousand: Police radio code meaning “Dead body.”
Ten-Two-Thousand: Police radio code meaning “Police required immediately.”

Police Slang and Terminology

One-Eight-Seven: Homicide.
Two-Oh-Seven: Kidnapping
Two-One-One: Robbery
Two-One-Five: Carjacking
Two-One-Seven: Assault
Two-Six-One: Rape
Two-Seven-Three: Domestic violence/child neglect
Three-Nine-Oh: Drunk and disorderly
Four-One-Seven: Person with weapon.
Atabey: Atabey Territorial Penitentiary, Portocielo’s main long-term prison, located deep in the jungle at the island’s heart.
Black-and-Whites: PTPD police cruisers, so called for their black-and-white paint schemes. Generally Dodge Chargers equipped with roof-mounted bar lights and sirens.
Bluesuits: Uniformed PTPD officers, usually from Patrol Division, so called for their blue uniforms and neckties.
Corporal: An experienced officer who usually serves as a Field Training Officer.
Captain: The senior officer in a precinct.
Commissioner: The head of the PTPD, appointed by the Governor of Portocielo.
CRIMINT: Criminal Intelligence. A bureau of Special Operations responsible for gathering information on criminal figures. In practice, the PTPD’s blackmail bureau.
Detective: Criminal Investigations and some Special Operations officers, who wear plainclothes and focus on investigative rather than preventative law enforcement.
Detective Sergeant: Supervises a small team of detectives.
Detective Lieutenant: Supervises a squad of detectives.
Division: The largest units of the PTPD, organized based on a law enforcement role: Patrol, Criminal Investigations, Special Operations, and so on.
FTO: Field Training Officer. Responsible for overseeing a recruit’s probationary first six months on the PTPD.
Goon Squad: A group of organized crime detectives that works out of the PTPD’s Second Precinct in New Leiden. Used as problem-solvers by the mob, politicians, and big business. Led by Detective Lieutenant Liam Mackenzie, who calls the squad his “likely lads.”
Kojak Light: A battery-powered flashing light, about eight inches high, shaped like a teardrop with a magnetic base. Attached to the roof of a plainclothes car when a detective needs to be conspicuous.
Major: The senior officer in a division.
Officer: A sworn officer who has completed his field training. Most PTPD personnel hold this rank.
Precinct: A local police station, responsible roughly for half of a district of New Leiden.
Recruit: A recently sworn officer assigned to a Field Training Officer.
Rookie: See “Recruit”.
RPR: Rapid Patrol Response. Officers equipped with assault weapons and riot gear, standing by to react to situations encountered by patrol officers for which those officers are not prepared. A midpoint between beat cops and SRT.
Sap: A flexible, flat leather paddle about eight inches long with a lead weight inside. Capable of breaking bones. Theoretically illegal for PTPD officers, but widely used.
SID: Scientific Investigation Department. The PTPD’s in-house forensics specialists.
Slim Jim: A device used to unlock a vehicle without the use of a key. Used to rescue incapacitated persons from locked vehicles, and to plant or collect evidence from inside a locked vehicle. Widely used by PTPD officers.
SRT: Special Response Teams. Heavily armed paramilitary police units in the Special Operations Division.
Sweatbox: An interrogation room.
Unis: Uniformed officers. Mostly used by detectives. See “Bluesuits.”
Watch Commander: A sergeant or lieutenant responsible for dispatching officers and assigning cases during a particular period of time (the commander’s “watch”).

Portocielan Slang and Terminology

Angelwood: An extremely expensive residential and suburban district of New Leiden, filled with mansions, gardens, gated estates, and limousines. North of Truman Square.
Autoridad Está Desmoronando: A racist and authoritarian political tract by Basilio Rojas de Bolivar, a seventeenth-century Spanish Portocielan ancestor of Det. de Jaager.
Beth El: The major synagogue in New Leiden, located in Marrano Heights in Eindhoven. A large conservative establishment. Frequently vandalized. Also, the prestigious day school run by the synagogue and attached to it.
The Blue Moon Diner: A twenty-four-hour diner in Eindhoven run by Duke Joncker and Maddie Joncker. A favorite spot for cops, crooks, and insomniacs.
Brammertown: A mostly abandoned area of factories and meatpacking plants in the Port District of New Leiden.
Cachaça: Brazilian sugarcane liquor. The drink of choice for the Portocielan everyman since the turn of the millennium.
Cafe Artemisa: A Cuban restaurant in downtown New Leiden, a third-generation family business run by Ricardo and Celia Flores. Serves homemade sandwiches and coffee for rock-bottom prices. Also sells authentic Cuban cigars; no one knows how they get them.
Camp Kimberly: A rumored CIA black site in the Laagveldt, where the Agency supposedly trained right-wing paramilitaries and tortured and killed detainees.
Ciudad Cielo: The old Spanish fort on the waterfront in downtown New Leiden. A major tourist attraction.
Claes Beach: One of two beaches in downtown New Leiden. Frequented by locals. There is a boardwalk with drug dealers and a run-down carnival.
Cuypers Hall: An opera house and art museum in Truman Square, well-known for its respect for the cultural traditions of Portocielo's non-white population. Founded by an ancestor of Wayne Cuypers.
Don Lanza's Men: The Portocielo theater company: based in the Admiral Theater in Plezier, sponsored by Don Carlos Lanza. A functional successor to the Meer Men, a well-known stage troupe that counted Robert LuPone, F. Murray Abraham, and William Devane amongst its members. Currently performing William Shakespeare's Hamlet, directed by Adam Streifert and featuring Jim Broadbent as Claudius.
Downtown: A central, waterfront, mostly commercial area of New Leiden. Contested between various street gangs, all of which pay protection money to the PTPD. West of Eindhoven, east of Port District, south of Truman Square.
Echo Canyon: A deep, steep-sided gorge in the middle of Little Rio. Filled with discarded garbage. The best place in New Leiden to look for a dead body.
Eindhoven: A mostly residential neighborhood dotted with mom-and-pop businesses. Mostly white and once mostly middle-class, but now economically depressed. South of Monteflores and east of Downtown.
Encomenderos: Traditionally, landowners in possession of encomiendas: fiefs held from the Spanish crown and worked by slave labor. Today, the residual class of elite Spanish landowners.
Fin del Triano: An immensely destructive Afro-Carib slave revolt against Spanish rule in 1646-1647. Ultimately crushed, but it weakened the Spanish and facilitated the Dutch takeover of Portocielo. A potent historical symbol of resistance for the Fronte Nacional.
The Guzman Riot: An immense riot of Monteflores residents in New Leiden. Followed the shooting of New Leiden Troopers team captain Adriano Guzman by a PTPD officer, supposedly on the orders of the Bewaker Voorzijde, and the indifferent political response. Lasted three days, and left dozens of homes and businesses damaged. Ended with the Morning Raid. Occasionally (and satirically) also refers to a brief movement, led by Steve Buscemi, to effect the release of Adriano Guzman after an earlier arrest for indecent exposure.
Hacienda: A plantation owned by Spaniards and worked by blacks, Caribs, and other dark-skinned Portocielans. Still common in rural coastal areas of the island.
Indios: A slur for mixed-blood and Carib people, used by everyone. When used by Caribs themselves, it indicates defiant pride rather than scorn.
"Jewing Someone Up": To raise prices unfairly. An anti-Semitic slur.
Laagveldt: Deep jungle, or more generally a scary dark place that you should stay away from. Dutch slang used by almost everyone.
Lanza Stadium: Carlo Giovanni Lanza Stadium. A FIFA-certified soccer stadium capable of seating up to 30,000 spectators, located in downtown New Leiden, with a press box, concessions, restrooms, an infirmary, locker rooms for the home and away teams, a press room, and a private box with a bar for the high-rollers, among other facilities.
Larksburg: Joint Forces Base Larksburg, a federal military installation on the western coast of Portocielo. Population 90,000, mostly from the Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. A no-go area for non-military personnel.
Little Rio: The Brazilian quarter of New Leiden: a maze of half-paved roads and cinderblock shacks that is split by Echo Canyon. Mostly unpoliced and barely connected to municipal power and sewage systems. North of the Port District and west of Truman Square.
Macacos: Lit. “Monkeys.” A Spanish racial slur for Brazilians.
Marrano Heights: An prosperous area of Eindhoven almost entirely inhabited by Jews; the center of the Portocielan Jewish community.
Morenos: A Spanish racial slur for black people.
Madelena’s: A Brazilian dive bar on Wilson Boulevard. Run by João Pedro, last name unknown. Bad booze, worse food, terrible crowd. Everyone in New Leiden ends up there sooner or later, usually on the worst night of their life.
Meer Boulevard: The main street of downtown New Leiden. The New Leiden mall is here, and so are a lot of cheap restaurants.
Monteflores: A neighborhood of New Leiden, mostly black, dominated by housing projects and poverty. A ghetto built on the site of Spanish slave barracks. North of Eindhoven and east of Truman Square.
The Morning Raid: A major PTPD operation, using hundreds of combat-equipped officers, Bewaker Voorzijde paramilitaries, armored trucks, and helicopters, that attacked Monteflores in order to arrest the ringleaders of the Guzman Riot. Left twenty-five people dead and fifteen missing, widely presumed dead.
New Leiden: The capital and largest city of Portocielo. Located on the island’s southeastern corner. Population approximately 500,000, half of Portocielo’s total.
The Orange Arms: An Ulster pub on Seacrest Avenue in West Downtown, with a Mexican cook and Brazilian cocktails, owned by Teddy Larkin and used by Liam Mackenzie and the Goon Squad as an unofficial headquarters. It is New Leiden’s cop bar par excellence, and is filled with bluesuits at all hours of the day and night.
Orange Park: A recent urban-renewal project intended to separate Little Rio and Truman Square. A rectangle of five hundred acres of greenery that runs north-south between the two districts. At the center of the park is a high wall with one gate.
Ortolan Restaurant: A French restaurant in Truman Square, in New Leiden. Every meal costs three figures. A gourmet place for the island’s elite to meet, eat, scheme, and make deals.
Plezier: A beach resort town on Portocielo’s northern coast. Permanent population: 75,000. A tourist haven that brings in millions in revenue. Controlled entirely by the Lanza crime family.
Pope Tower: The headquarters of Pope Enterprises and the tallest building in New Leiden. Located next to the Governor’s Mansion in Truman Square.
Pope Enterprises: Henry Pope’s corporate conglomerate, responsible for most of the banking, hotels, and construction contracts on Portocielo.
Port District: A waterfront area in New Leiden, dominated by cargo ships, shipping infrastructure, warehouses, and Brammertown. The 2nd Precinct, the Goon Squad’s base of operations, is here. West of Downtown, south of Little Rio.
Portocielo Herald: The main newspaper on Portocielo, published in English, Spanish, and Dutch. Characterized by a heady mix of actual news and tabloid sensationalism. Headquartered in downtown New Leiden on Meer Boulevard.
Portocielo Judicial Complex: A compound on Truman Square in New Leiden that houses the Portocielo Territorial Court, the island’s federal district court, and the headquarters of the PTPD. A massive pile of brutalist concrete.
Pritchard’s Garage and Auto Shop: A car mechanic shop in Eindhoven, run by Ed Pritchard. Specializes in fixing up classic cars and in building secret compartments for hiding drugs.
PC1: The major highway connecting New Leiden, Plezier, and Larksburg.
PC2: A proposed southern highway connecting New Leiden and Larksburg, not constructed.
Quatorzes: The fourteen largest plantations on the island of Portocielo; also, by metonymy, the fourteen elite Spanish families that own them.
Raamgracht Expressway: A four-lane highway, running north to south, that separates Truman Square from Monteflores.
Rapaz: Brazilian slang, neither profane nor formal, meaning “Man,” or “Dude.”
Rojas Insurrection: An abortive Spanish Catholic revolt against Dutch rule of Portocielo in 1653.
Rojas Square: A large plaza in downtown New Leiden. There is a flea market here on Saturdays.
San Joaquin de Villarey: An enormous hacienda owned by Sebastien Carilla, sprawling across fifteen miles of the southern coastal plain of Portocielo. Also a well-regarded brand of rum distilled from the sugarcane produced on the hacienda of the same name.
Seacrest Avenue: The main east-west thoroughfare in New Leiden, running along the coast from Eindhoven, through Downtown, to the Port District.
Spoorweg Rangers: A Dutch-Hispanic mercenary force, active 1899-1920, that defended rural infrastructure against attacks by Carib insurgents. Excoriated by the Fronte Nacional as the prototype of military/capitalist exploitation of the Portocielan interior.
St. Benedict's Orphanage: A Roman Catholic orphanage situated on the border between Eindhoven and Monteflores. Notorious for its stringent administration (and possibly child abuse) by the Sisters of Charity of New Leiden. Closed in 2004 due to bankruptcy. Now abandoned and frequented by drug peddlers.
Territorial Assembly: The legislature of Portocielo. Also refers to the actual building where the Assembly meets, on Truman Square.
Troopers: The New Leiden Troopers, Portocielo's premier soccer team. Extremely popular across all sectors of society, but the players are drawn disproportionately from Little Rio and Monteflores. Funded almost entirely by the Lanzas, but nevertheless considered a force for good by almost everyone.
Truman Square: A large cobblestone plaza dotted with statues and fountains, on which stand Pope Tower, the Territorial Assembly, the Governor’s Mansion, and the Portocielo Judicial Complex. Also: a district surrounding the square and named after it, dominated by office buildings, corporate headquarters, and government centers. North of Downtown, south of Angelwood, west of Monteflores, east of Little Rio.
Webb Beach: One of two beaches in downtown New Leiden. Aimed at tourists, and filled with pickpockets and peddlers of fake Rolexes.
Webb Street: Alongside Meer Boulevard, one of downtown New Leiden’s two primary streets. Slightly smaller and slightly higher-end than Meer. The Yellow Rose brothel is on Webb Street.
Wilson Boulevard: A major east-west road in New Leiden that divides the Port District from Little Rio. Non-Brazilians don’t go north of Wilson without permission.
The Yellow Rose: A brothel and call-girl service on Webb Street in downtown New Leiden, run by Clara Ramirez. Known for its varied services and for treating its girls humanely. Liam Mackenzie has some kind of arrangement with the establishment.

Criminal Organizations

Bewaker Voorzijde: Also known as the Guardian Front, the Bewakers, or the Voorzijde. A right-wing political and paramilitary organization. White supremacist and Dutch chauvinist in ideology. Divided into the Staatslieden, a legal political party, and the Zelfverdediging, a paramilitary organization with close ties to police. Runs protection rackets in New Leiden. Feuds with the Comanda Paraiso. Members wear black paramilitary uniforms and orange armbands.
Comanda Paraiso: A Brazilian street gang with military-grade equipment that controls Little Rio in New Leiden. Focused on local protection rackets and drug trafficking. Controls much of New Leiden city politics. Feuds with Bewaker Voorzijde.
Familia Libre: An Afro-Portocielan street gang that controls most of Monteflores. Dysfunctional and prone to infighting.
Fronte Nacional: Also known as the National Liberation Front of Portocielo. Supposedly a Marxist insurgency calling for Portocielan independence. Actually a cocaine syndicate that grows coca in the deep laagveldt at the island’s center. Essentially all-Carib, and prone to extorting support from local Carib villages, attacking haciendas, and blowing up infrastructure. Close ties to the Russians. Feuding with the Lanza Family.
Gangster Disciples: A mostly African-American gang with a strong presence in the US Marine Corps units stationed at JFB Larksburg. Occasionally provide muscle for the Lanzas.
Green Cobras: A small street gang operating around High Street in Truman Square. Known for their insolence to the PTPD and their brutality.
Lanza Family: An Italian-American mafia family that has been the most powerful force on Portocielo since the 1960s. Controls the town of Plezier, and most of the gambling and prostitution on the island. Runs blackmail and protection rackets, import-export fraud, heroin, and pills. Strong ties to the Gangster Disciples in JFB Larksburg. Feuding with the Fronte Nacional.
”The Russians”: A mysterious group of Russian criminals operating out of the New Leiden Port District. They appear to be trying to find a way to smuggle Fronte Nacional cocaine out of the country. Few in number, unengaged in politics, and hostile to virtually everyone.

by **Reverend Norv** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 1:41 pm

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Goon Squad

Detective Lieutenant Liam MACKENZIE: Also known as Liam Mack, Liam the Mack, the Mackster, and Mack. Legendary Ulster-born detective known for his bullish physique, tremendous cunning, total corruption, surprising compassion, and sharp dress sense. Has led the Goon Squad since the disappearance of Sam Agthoven. Mentor and partner of Det. van Rijn. Age 46.
Detective Sergeant Ronald "Ronnie" VILJOEN: A tough cop with a long record in paramilitary police units. The widower of one of Wayne Cuypers' daughters and the lover of another. Athletic, multilingual, with the libido of a randy goat and the loyalty of an old hound. He is still grieving his dead wife. Partner of Det. Sgt. de Jaager.Age 39.
Detective Sergeant Celestia DE JAAGER: A scion of old Dutch and Spanish nobility, a former child sex slave to the Fronte Nacional, a brutally effective torturer, and an FBI informant. A psychopath with delusions of moral purity, whose beauty is matched only by her sadism and whose politics are extreme enough to make Franco proud. Partner of Det. Sgt. Viljoen. Age 34.
Detective Sergeant JIANG Yin-Kwan: A native of Hong Kong with a kleptomaniac's compulsion and a crack pickpocket's skills. An ex-Triad foot-soldier who speaks a multitude of languages and practices Tai Chi. Loyal, calm, cheerful, and monumentally avaricious. Liam Mackenzie once saved her life, and now considers her a trusted ally. Partner of Det. Skorzeny. Age 30.
Detective Felipe CARILLA: The now-penniless nephew of one of Portocielo's largest landowners, and a man of noble birth, fine tastes, vast greed, hopeless political ambitions, and no principles whatsoever. He is deep in debt to the Lanza crime family, and struggling to support his own profligate lifestyle and his aging mother. Partner of Det. Costello. Age 33.
Detective Alan COSTELLO: An immigrant from North Dakota, a veteran of the French Foreign Legion, a man haunted by family tragedy and the horrors of war. A cynic possessed of passionate loyalty to his wife, Susan, and their daughter Maria; a nihilist who has vowed to make the world a better place. Partner of Det. Carilla. Age 32.
Detective Rebecca VAN RIJN: The scion of one of Portocielo's last millionaire Dutch families, and the victim of a brutal kidnapping in her teenage years. Beautiful, promiscuous, with delusions of integrity and the temper of a rabid dog. A beloved protege and partner of Liam Mackenzie, and the most recent recruit to the Goon Squad. Age 26.
Detective Raijen SKORZENY: Also known as "Dogtags." A Russo-Japanese orphan who was raised by Afghan rebels and by Soviet veteran Pavel Skorzeny. Deaf as a post, arrogant as a lord, emotionally stunted and fearsomely violent. His way within the PTPD was paved by the Lanzas, and he remains their loyal tool. Partner of Det. Sgt. Jiang. Age 46.
Detective Harry SCHWARTZ: An athletic Jewish detective from Marrano Heights, and a study in innocence lost: a idealist until at least high school, he turned to vigilantism and ultimately murder after a brutal assault on his girlfriend. Big, athletic, intelligent, unscrupulous, paranoid, alcoholic, prone to outbursts of pointless rage. Partner of Det. Shape. Age 35.
Detective Christopher SHAPE: A towering, skeletal, deep-voiced detective and former combat medic. Brilliant, diligent, taciturn, driven by deep guilt and self-loathing. Deeply attached to his adoptive daughter Aliah, an Afghan war orphan. Det. Sgt. Viljoen was Det. Shape's Field Training Officer. Partner of Det. Schwartz. Age 35.

Non-Player Characters

Detective Lieutenant Sam AGTHOVEN: Former leader of the Goon Squad. Disappeared in the laagveldt in 2006. Thought to have died in a complex hit by Liam Mackenzie that involved both the Fronte Nacional and the FBI, and that left no evidence or witnesses. Disappeared age 56.
Archbishop Matteo ALLENDE: Catholic Archbishop of Portocielo. A decent man who does his best to speak out against corruption, but he is hindered by the fact that he is also a notorious philanderer. Age 47.
Petr Bolyakov: A dockyard supervisor in New Leiden, and a witness to a terrible crime. Age 31.
Mercedes Guisela CARILLA: The wife of Sebastien Carilla Velasquez. Age 65. Matriarch of the Carilla family.
Sebastan CARILLA: The master of the Hacienda San Joaquin de Villarey, and one of the biggest landowners on Portocielo. The uncle of Det. Carilla. Age 67.
Attorney General Ingrid CLAAR: Attorney-General of Portocielo. A notorious crony of Wayne Cuypers. Age 55.
John COOPER: A former CIA agent who joined the PTPD and established the Goon Squad. Arrested by the FBI in 1988.
Susan COSTELLO: The wife of Det. Costello and mother of their daughter Maria. An real estate agent at New Leiden Realty, a subsidiary of Pope Enterprises. Age 32.
Captain Brooks CRAWFORD: Senior officer at the PTPD 2nd Precinct. Fat, overcautious, minimally competent. Theoretically Liam Mackenzie’s direct superior. In actual fact a loyal company man who gives the Mackster whatever he wants, and in return hopes to become director of the Patrol Division before he retires. Age 54.
Officer Juan CRUZ: A patrol cop from the PTPD 3rd Precinct in Truman Square. Age 25.
Governor Wayne CUYPERS: Also known as Old Man Cuypers and the Ranting Dutchman. Two-term governor of Portocielo, elected thanks to PTPD vote-rigging. A racist Dutchman possessed of a certain low cunning and a considerable family fortune. Good friends with Don Carlos Lanza. Age 63.
Andrea CUYPERS: Wayne Cuyper’s eldest daughter. An artist and musician, beautiful and talented, open-minded and brilliant. Wife of Det. Viljoen. Murdered by the Green Cobras. Died age 33.
Jamie CUYPERS: Wayne Cuyper’s youngest (legitimate) daughter. Yale-educated, unemployed, living out of the family mansion in Angelwood. Beautiful and far too clever for her own good or anyone else’s. Age 25.
Luis DIAZ: Current leader of the Familia Libra. Took power after a gang civil war ended with every other candidate dead. Massive, very strong, and very lucky, but no one expects him to last long. Age 29.
Angelica DUARTE: Forensic scientist with the PTPD SID. Works mostly at the 2nd Precinct. An old acquaintance of Liam Mackenzie, whom she supplies with dexedrine and for whom she does off-the-books forensics work. Age 51.
Hector ESTEVEZ: Sergeant, Patrol Division, Portocielo Territorial Police Department. Works mostly as the night watch commander for the 2nd Precinct of New Leiden. The Goon Squad's eyes and ears within the PTPD. Age 42.
Mia FERNANDEZ: A barista at a cafe on High Street, and a witness to a terrible crime. Age 22.
Ricardo and Celia FLORES: The manager of Cafe Artemisa and his mother, the head cook. Third-generation and second-generation Cuban emigres, respectively. Rumored to have strong contacts left in Havana.
JOÃO PEDRO: Last name unknown. Owner and bartender at Madalena’s on Wilson Boulevard. Most likely an illegal Brazilian immigrant. He knows many secrets. Age about 50.
Duke and Maddie JONCKER: Co-owners and managers of the Blue Moon Diner in Eindhoven. Sweet old folks with sharp heads for underworld business. Friends of virtually everyone in New Leiden. Ages 64 and 61, respectively.
Irene KAUFMAN: Long-time girlfriend of Det. Schwartz. Abducted, abused, and murdered, age 25.
Karl KAUFFMAN: Member of the Territorial Assembly. Leader of the political wing of Bewaker Voorzijde. Incorruptible and ideologically insane. Age 55.
Judge Frederick KLOETER: A distinguished criminal-court judge in New Leiden. An old friend of Liam Mackenzie. Age 64.
Don Carlos LANZA: The head of the Lanza crime family, and the second-richest man on Portocielo. A garrulous man, much in love with his family, conservative in a broad-minded way, with a nose for business and a weary acceptance of brutality. Age 59.
Mayor Gabriel LANZA: The eldest son of Don Carlos Lanza, mayor of Plezier, and heir to the Lanza family. Yale-educated, with unrequited feelings for Jamie Cuypers. A sensitive hophead who kills for thrills, and a grave disappointment to his father. Age 28.
Teddy LARKIN: Proprietor and owner of the Orange Arms on Seacrest Avenue. Born and raised in Belfast; a sycophantic coward capable of tremendous loyalty. A bosom chum and crony of Liam Mackenzie. Age 44.
Detective James LARSEN: A fairly straight-arrow homicide detective in the PTPD's 3rd Precinct (Truman Square). Talented, but pompous and judgmental, and generally regarded as somewhat ridiculous. Age 38.
Sergeant-Major Paul MACKIE: Leader of the Gangster Disciples contingent at Larksburg. Age 41.
Rabbi Eli METZLER: Rabbi at Synagogue Beth El in New Leiden. Constantly at odds with his apathetic congregation. An old friend of Det. Schwartz. Age 36.
Sidney MOSS: Senior correspondent for the Portocielo Herald. Age 50.
El PADRE: The anonymous, quasi-mythical leader of the Fronte Nacional. Supposedly active since the 1960s.
Rafael PINTO: The leader of the Comanda Paraiso. Charismatic, sadistic, charming, honorable, brilliant, and mentally unhinged. A living legend. Age about 40.
Henry POPE: Banker, real estate developer, business tycoon, CEO of Pope Enterprises, and the richest man on Portocielo. Age 69.
Ed PRITCHARD: Owner and lead mechanic at Pritchard’s Garage in Eindhoven. A classic car connoisseur. The most talented creator of automotive hidey-holes for drugs on Portocielo: the PTPD has him on retainer to find his own modifications in impounded vehicles. Age 48.
Clara RAMIREZ: Madam and owner of the Yellow Rose on Webb Street. Born in Texas. Elegant, refined, strikingly beautiful, exceptionally well-connected. A good friend of Liam Mackenzie. Age 43.
Mayor Gustavo SILVA: Three-term mayor of New Leiden, thanks to the PTPD and the Comanda Paraiso. An activist for the rights of the Brazilian community, and a crooked mouthpiece for Rafael Pinto. Age 51.
Commissioner Miranda SANTOS: The head of the Portociello Territorial Police Department. A behind-the-scenes power in island politics, with dirt on almost everyone in the PTPD. Age 49.
Rodrigo SANTOS: A notorious freelance hitman. Supposedly raped while in prison by Liam Mackenzie, after which he hanged himself in his cell. Died age 42.
Aliah SHAPE: Adopted daughter of Det. Shape. An orphan from Afghanistan. Smart, studious, responsible. Deeply attached to her adoptive father. Age 12.
Pavel SKORZENY: A former Soviet officer, and later a soldier of fortune. Now slowing down with age, he remains a very dangerous man. Mentor of Det. Skorzeny. Age 64.
Henrik SMUTS: A corporate vice-president at Pope Enterprises, and a witness to a terrible crime. Age 65.
Paula SMUTS: Wife of Henrik Smuts, and a witness to a terrible crime. Age 59.
Geert STEENKAMP: Leader of the Bewaker Voorzijde. A shadowy figure with close ties to Wayne Cuypers. Age 63.
Special Agent Kate WALLACE: Head of the Portocielo office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A driven public servant determined to purge the PTPD of corruption. Also struggling with Asperger Syndrome. Age 38.
Sebastian and Augusta VAN RIJN: A Dutch millionaire and his wife, heirs to a fortune made by Sebastian's forbears in the import/export business. Now living well beyond their means and burning through the family fortune, since Henry Pope controls all legal trade through the Port of New Leiden. Ages 60 and 58, respectively.
Alida VAN RIJN: Deceased daughter of Sebastian and Augusta van Rijn, and sister of Det. van Rijn. Died of unknown causes, probably poison, supposedly on the orders of Henry Pope. Died age 12.
Wikus VENTER: Former PTPD captain, now head of the paramilitary wing of Bewaker Voorzijde. A violent bigot, and a longtime personal enemy of Det. Lieut. Liam Mackenzie. Age 61.

by **Reverend Norv** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 1:42 pm

ROLES AND APPLICATION

Character Creation

Due to the nature of the storytelling entailed by this RP, I will be more involved with the character creation process than would ordinarily be expected.

First, I am offering certain roles. These are characters types with special features that make them especially important to the plot. Even if you choose to have your character fill a role, you are still free to craft that character however you please, provided that the character includes the role’s required traits. If you choose to have your character fill a role, please make sure that you do in fact have the time to RP consistently, since characters with roles have distinctive plot arcs that are important to the larger narrative and require consistent player activity. No more than two characters should fill any one role. Characters are not required to fill a role.

Second, even if your characters do not fill a role, I will consult with you closely in the character-creation process, and I may even ask you to make modifications. This is to ensure that your characters are fully integrated into the larger world of Portocielo, with many ties to NPCs and institutions.

Third, once your applications are accepted, I will ask you to start talking to other accepted players. Together, you will develop preexisting relationships between your characters that reflect the fact that they are all fellow members of a tight-knit detective squad. These people are not strangers, meeting each other for the first time. They are coworkers who spend most of their waking hours together. By deciding what each PC thinks of the other PCs before the action starts, we can make our storytelling deeper and more realistic.

Fourth, I will ask you to find a partner for your character. Detectives work in pairs, and your PCs are detectives. Pick a player and a character whom you find interesting, because you will be interacting with your partner almost constantly in the IC. Moreover, you and your partner should work out a particularly in-depth relationship between your two characters. If you cannot find a partner, I may intervene to assign one for you.

Finally, please refer to “The Rules” Section under “Roleplay” concerning character weaknesses. It will save you a lot of time spent editing.

Roles

The Snitch: This detective is assisting FBI Special Agent Kate Wallace in trying to take down the Goon Squad. He/she may be coerced, or acting out of genuine principle. In either case, he/she will probably feel at least some guilt about his/her actions. The snitch is gathering evidence of the squad’s corruption while trying not to arouse the suspicions of his/her brothers in blue. ONE TAKEN, ONE OPEN
The Rookie: This detective is new to the Goon Squad, and perhaps relatively new to police work in general. He/she is likely to be familiar with the pervasive corruption of the PTPD, but not with the Goon Squad’s level of independence and violence. The rookie will serve in part as an audience surrogate: Mack will take him/her under his wing and explain things to him/her, which will also be to the OOC benefit of the other players. ONE TAKEN, ONE OPEN
The Family Man/Woman: This detective has managed the seemingly impossible: he/she is in a relatively happy marriage, with numerous children, and a decent work/life balance. While other PCs may also have families, the Family Man/Woman is uniquely connected to and motivated by his/her loved ones. The Family Man/Woman is exempt from the rule requiring severe character weaknesses. ONE TAKEN, ONE OPEN
The Mobster: The Mobster, like the Snitch, has loyalties beyond the Goon Squad. But while the Snitch’s loyalties are to the FBI, the Mobster’s are to the Lanza family: he/she is spying on the Goon Squad on behalf of the Mafia. Like the Snitch, he/she may be coerced, or acting out of genuine principle. He/she may also be ordered to further the mob’s agenda in ways that conflict with the Goon Squad’s objectives: conflicts of loyalties abound. TAKEN
The Dragon: The Dragon is one of Liam Mackenzie’s most trusted henchmen. He/she is probably a detective sergeant, and Mack will rely upon him/her for particularly delicate or dirty work. This character will be asked to do more things and worse things than other characters, and will have to decide how far he/she is willing to go on behalf of Mack and the other PCs. TAKEN

The Application

Code: Select all: [b]Role, If Any:[/b] [hr][/hr] [b]Name:[/b] [b]Age:[/b] [b]Gender:[/b] [b]Appearance:[/b] [hr][/hr] [b]Personality:[/b] [b]Likes:[/b] [b]Dislikes:[/b] [b]Fears:[/b] [b]Hobbies:[/b] [b]Skills:[/b] [b]Weaknesses (must be serious):[/b] [hr][/hr] [b]Birthplace:[/b] [b]Nationality:[/b] [b]Ethnicity:[/b] [b]Political Views:[/b] [b]Sexuality:[/b] [b]Religion:[/b] [hr][/hr] [b]Rank:[/b] [b]Education:[/b] [b]Residence:[/b] [b]Biography:[/b]

by **Reverend Norv** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 1:42 pm

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Occupied Deutschland wrote:Norv, could you perhaps advise on the role/location Carib people would typically occupy in the cases where they aren't 'out in the jungles' with the guerrillas?

There is very little genetic difference between a "Carib" and a general "Portocielan" - a "Portocielan" is just a Carib who lives in the city, doesn't care about Carib culture, has no sympathy for the guerrillas, and who maybe has a few drops of Spanish blood (though plenty of chest-pounding rural Caribs have that too). It's really a difference in how identity is formulated: a Carib has a sense of history, of tribal identity, and of perseverance in the face of violence, while a Portocielan has made his peace with the world as it exists and considers himself a member of a larger and multiethnic society.

But there are some Caribs who retain a strong sense of tribal identity, but also live in the city: generally they came from a village, or their parents came from a village, seeking economic opportunity. They're usually poor, and regarded as backwards; they may live in small apartments in the Port District or even Monteflores, and work in the cleaning industry or as cab drivers or as dock hands. The children of such economic migrants tend to become conventionally Portocielan: they live in nicer Downtown apartments or Eindhoven bungalows (to the dismay of their white neighbors), and work in skilled blue-collar or cubicle-monkey white-collar jobs.

Does that answer your question?

Astrolinium wrote:Is there a Jewish community on the island, and if so, what can you tell us about it?

The Jewish community on Portocielo is small, tight-knit, and located almost entirely in the hurtfully-named Marrano Heights area of Eindhoven, in New Leiden. The first Jews arrived with the Spanish, as marranos (unwilling converts to Catholicism) - hence the neighborhood name. With the Dutch came legal toleration, and substantial numbers of Jews moved from the Netherlands in search of business opportunities. About a dozen Jewish families can trace their roots on Portocielo back before 1700: these families are sprawling, deeply corrupt, and very rich. They have a longstanding connection to the Lanzas, for whom they work as bookkeepers, emissaries, and occasionally muscle.

In the early twentieth century, tens of thousands of Jews arrived from Turkey, Eastern Europe, Russia, and ultimately Germany, fleeing persecution. They vastly outnumbered the old families, but lacked their connections on Portocielo, and so ended up working mostly in blue-collar jobs. They were white, and generally well-behaved, and so the Dutch liked them, and they rose in the world; by the 1970s, they were running a lot of the independent small businesses on Main Street. The average Meer Boulevard taverna, aimed at tourists and locals gunning for a beach lunch, is probably owned by Jews, bartended by Portocielans, and staffed by Brazilians.

Religiously, the Jews range from Orthodox (though the community is small, includes none of the old families, and is generally disliked by other Jews) to wholly secular (also fairly uncommon), with most Jews falling in between, within same the "Eh, I guess, for old times' sake" school of religion as most Portocielan Dutch Calvinists. The old families include a few Sephardim, but everyone else is Ashkenazi. Jews are generally liked by most people on the island, except the Caribs, who see them as tools of a corrupt establishment; everyone else thinks they're hardworking and reliable. But casual anti-Semitism is also very common; the phrase "Jewing someone up" - meaning to raise prices unfairly - is in common usage by almost everyone.

Is there anything else you need to know?

Astrolinium wrote:What are some of the prominent families? What synagogues are there, what affiliations do they have, and who are the rabbis?

The oldest of the old-breed families are the Cazans. They are Sephardic. They have a private synagogue and an estate in Angelwood, though they still mostly live in Marrano Heights. They have traditionally worked as intermediaries between the Dutch and Spanish economic elites, buying sugarcane or rum and reselling it to Dutch traders for export. They are relatively clean, relatively being the key word.

There are the Edelmans: an old family of Dutch/German Jews. They are by far the cleanest of the great old families, and also the poorest: their prestige is rooted mostly in their high level of education and their great piety. They are the only Orthodox old family, and they more or less control the splendid but understaffed and decaying Orthodox synagogue in Marrano Heights. They have close ties to Orthodox communities elsewhere, especially in the continental U.S.

There are the Kaufmans: another old, originally Dutch family. They are by far the dirtiest of the great old families: they hung on until the arrival of the Lanzas, and then immediately went into business with the Italian mob as bookkeepers, ambassadors, and muscle. These days, they even supply most of the Lanzas' lawyers. They are rich, but don't put on airs in the same way as the Cazans: they still live in middle-class homes in Marrano Heights, much like their neighbors. You seriously do not mess with them.

There are four synagogues. One is the private Sephardic synagogue of the Cazan family. It is a weird-looking quasi-Moorish building in southern Angelwood, near where High Street runs down Angelwood Hill into Truman Square. It serves as much as a business headquarters and family reunion center as a house of worship; there are more than a hundred Cazans, and nobody else even tries to attend. The rabbi is Moises Cazan, an unmarried and unhappy member of the family who is thoroughly disrespected by his kin.

The second is the Orthodox synagogue. It is a splendid building, limestone and stained-glass, standing proudly smack-dab in the middle of Marrano Heights. It is also slowly falling to pieces, because the Orthodox community has been shrinking for more than a century. The Edelmans now run the place out of their own pocket, and make up about half of the congregation at a typical Sabbath service (more people show up for the High Holy Days). The rabbi is Noam Edelman, an ancient and revered brother of the current Edelman patriarch, and widely respected as an honest broker for disputes within the Jewish community.

The third is the Conservative synagogue - usually known simply as "the synagogue," since it is twice the size of all the other synagogues combined. It is a quite ugly modernist building of white stucco, located on the edge of Marrano Heights, that has frequently been vandalized; the PTPD has no interest in solving those cases. It occupies a strange social role: most of the people who attend it really don't care very much about what the rabbi has to say, but they go anyway in search of a sense of belonging and a chance to see their friends. This casts the middle-aged rabbi, Eli Meltzer, in the role of a fire-and-brimstone preacher trying to drag Marrano Heights back to a serious commitment to the halakha and to God. It's not going so well for him.

As a result, a small but growing number of young people has rallied around Rabbi Rachel Spector, a liberal rabbi and San Francisco native who moved to Portocielo fleeing unspecified home troubles. They generally just meet in one of their homes, but they are trying to raise money to buy land and build Portocielo's first Reform synagogue. It's not going so well for them, either, mostly because none of the old Judeo-Dutch families are supportive of the venture. But they're young, they have spirit, and they're still trying.

Anything else, Astro?

Rudaslavia wrote:In terms of Roman Catholic churches, what cathedrals and/or houses of worship are located within the Diocese of Portocielo?

The Cathedral of San Joaquin, in Downtown New Leiden near Ciudad Cielo. A beautiful four-hundred-year-old Baroque building.

Parish churches include San Gabriel in Eindhoven, Santo Tomas in Truman Square, and San Pietro in Monteflores. The Little Rio churches are mostly missions run by Brazilian priests steeped in liberation theology, and they are only tangentially connected to the Diocese of Portocielo.

Finally, there is still a Carmelite convent in Angelwood, Santa Maria de la Montana, with a small number of mostly Spanish nuns.

Aurinsula wrote:What, generally, is the day-to-day of detective work? We show up at the office at 9; what do we do then? Wait at our desks until somebody tells us to do something? Where, theoretically, would we start?

In a normal police department, most detectives are working cases most of the time. You show up to the precinct at nine, touch base with your partner, ask the watch commander if any new witnesses have come forward, maybe touch base with forensics, and then chase down leads or spin out theories until it's time to go home.

The actual process of getting a case varies. Traditionally, detectives would "catch" cases. In other words, if you are sitting around the precinct with nothing to do and a detective is needed, you get the case, because everyone else is out working cases of their own and therefore not in the precinct. Detectives bereft of cases would sometimes wait in the precinct until midnight, hoping to be on hand if a hot call came in so that they could catch the case.

The PTPD is not a normal police department. Detectives catch and work cases based on the extent to which they have connections in the PTPD, in politics, and in organized crime. And most detective work most of the time involves finding a likely criminal to frame for a crime, not actually following leads from a specific crime.

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:02 pm

Well, I'm certainly here to watch. That's a novel setting and a half right there.

by **Reverend Norv** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:05 pm

G-Tech Corporation wrote:Well, I'm certainly here to watch. That's a novel setting and a half right there.

Are you sure I can't convince you to throw an app up?

by **Rudaslavia** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:08 pm

Hmm...I think I will be sticking with Celestia after all. I'll add more depth to her backstory and family history in my app.

Count me in, Norv. I'll get to work immediately.

by **Reverend Norv** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:09 pm

Rudaslavia wrote:Hmm...I think I will be sticking with Celestia after all. I'll add more depth to her backstory and family history in my app.

Count me in, Norv. I'll get to work immediately.

Outstanding!

by **Rupudska** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:12 pm

I'll have to clear my schedule to read this, but I will join.

by **Reverend Norv** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:14 pm

Rupudska wrote:I'll have to clear my schedule to read this, but I will join.

Wonderful!

by **Cylarn** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:14 pm

Damn, coaching a swim meet right now. App incoming later.

by **Nightkill the Emperor** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:14 pm

Halfway through the OP. Outstanding work.

And instantly put this song in my head.

by **G-Tech Corporation** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:16 pm

Reverend Norv wrote:
G-Tech Corporation wrote:Well, I'm certainly here to watch. That's a novel setting and a half right there.

Are you sure I can't convince you to throw an app up?

Hah, watch at least, app if my schedule clears up- no convincing needed, merely the right circumstances. This is one of the RPs I've encountered that I'd love to join, but won't necessarily have time to do justice.

by **Reverend Norv** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:18 pm

Nightkill the Emperor wrote:Halfway through the OP. Outstanding work.

And instantly put this song in my head.

Thanks, Night. I actually don't have HBO, so I have to wait for True Detective Season 2 to hit Amazon. I won't deny that the first season was among the influences here.

by **Lunas Legion** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:37 pm

Hmm. Might bring Karl back, since I think it'd be... Interesting to have someone used to working for a unquestionable and immoral agency (the Statsi) which might be worse than the current situation.

by **Cylarn** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:54 pm

Mind if I claim The Dragon?

by **Reverend Norv** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 3:08 pm

G-Tech Corporation wrote:
Reverend Norv wrote:
Are you sure I can't convince you to throw an app up?

Hah, watch at least, app if my schedule clears up- no convincing needed, merely the right circumstances. This is one of the RPs I've encountered that I'd love to join, but won't necessarily have time to do justice.

Well, I'd be glad to find a way to squeeze you in whenever you become free. Not sure how, just yet, but I'll find a way.

Lunas Legion wrote:Hmm. Might bring Karl back, since I think it'd be... Interesting to have someone used to working for a unquestionable and immoral agency (the Statsi) which might be worse than the current situation.

I'm not familiar with the character, but I'll give any application due consideration.

Cylarn wrote:Mind if I claim The Dragon?

Go for it.

by **Lunas Legion** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 3:11 pm

Reverend Norv wrote:
Lunas Legion wrote:Hmm. Might bring Karl back, since I think it'd be... Interesting to have someone used to working for a unquestionable and immoral agency (the Statsi) which might be worse than the current situation.

I'm not familiar with the character, but I'll give any application due consideration.

Sarky and not quite ancient East German. I'll be getting a app up for him tomorrow (probably), since it's late here.

by **Malshan** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 3:17 pm

It looks wonderful, Norv, and I'll certainly enjoy reading it. But it's not my cup of tea to play, I'm afraid.

by **Latznavia** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 3:25 pm

Been looking to mill some free time, I'm in.

by **Reverend Norv** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 3:33 pm

Malshan wrote:It looks wonderful, Norv, and I'll certainly enjoy reading it. But it's not my cup of tea to play, I'm afraid.

What a pity. Too realistic, I suppose?

by **Rupudska** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 3:33 pm

Cylarn wrote:Mind if I claim The Dragon?

Man, I wanted the Dragon. Prolly would've claimed it if my internet hadn't cut out.

by **Astrolinium** » Tue Jul 07, 2015 3:35 pm

I think I'll join. I am, notably, working full-time until the end of the month, and will be starting a very rigorous semester of school in the middle of next month, so I'll likely have to be involved in a capacity that allows me to post infrequently.

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