Greenstone

Name: Carlo "Charlie the Blimp" Maroni Nationality: American
Age: 34
Appearance: A fat, unkept man with thinning black hair

2: Might (Bash Enemies)
1: Handiness (Fisticuffs), Shoot (Tommy Gun), Will (Intimidating)
0: Agility (Stealthy), Social (Streetwise)
-1: Perception (Sense Motive), Resources (Junk Yard), Vehicle (Truck)

Background: Charlie has a checkered past, mostly spent as a low-level enforcer in the Chicago underworld. He's tried to make it big a few times, but it's never worked out. Recently, he and some friends of his tried to rob a bank, but the whole thing ended up in shambles and one of the other guys accidentally shot someone. Charlie managed to get out of the country using the last of his money and is now moping in New Zealand, wondering when it might be save to go home again.
Languages: English
Stuff: Charlie doesn't have much in the way of material possessions. He's getting by on short-term jobs, currently working at a junk yard, and he's managing to maintain a small, ratty apartment. He's got a knife and a cudgel in case things get rough, but he doesn't keep any guns at the moment - he's trying to stay unnoticed, after all, not get in trouble with the local law.
Motivation: Get by, get paid, don't get killed or thrown in jail. Charlie's a simple man with simple requests from life, which makes him feel that it's especially unfair that those requests are always denied. His biggest fear is that he's just naturally unlucky and that nothing will ever work out for him.
Weaknesses: He isn't very bright, and his personal manners are decidedly rough. He has a tendency to sulk and feel sorry for himself instead of trying to improve things.
Strengths: He's tough and hard-working when he neds to be, and maintains a rough sort of code of honour that involves a lot of loyalty to whomever's paying him at the moment.

Casimir "Casey" Byrnes (alias Chesley Newbern, aka "the Major")
American (Irish-Polish descent), ~35 yrs. old

2 -- social (bluff)
1 -- vehicle (car), shoot (pistol)
0 -- perception (note details), might (take punches), resources (stake in watering hole)
-1 --handiness (fisticuffs), agility (stealthy), learning (news of the world), will (cool under fire)

The concept here was a former driver for a smuggling operation run by the North Side Gang of Chicago, who found himself sitting on a truck full of cash with nobody to deliver it to after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre took out his bosses. He used the money to get as far away from the gang wars as possible, but now wonders if maybe he ran a little too far, since the South Pacific isn't turning out like the stories (or maybe he just landed in the wrong part of the Pacific, the luck). To cover his past, he's assumed the persona of a blustery retired British officer full of tales from his youth in the Great War, and so far he's been lucky enough to have the frequent inaccuracies of his story blamed on his (mostly feigned) penchant for drink.

Appearance: a burly fellow with bright eyes, slightly thinning hair and a thick mustache.

Background: grew up doing odd jobs for local hotels. Developed the habit of scavenging newspapers, magazines, dime novels etc. discarded by guests, considering it a better education than he would get at school. Favor for a stranger turned into a steady job running whisky from Moose Jaw to Chicago for the North Side Gang. Was driving a truck full of the gang's earnings when news of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre broke; realizing that the people who knew who and where he was were now corpses, and that Capone's Outfit would be looking for anybody else connected to the North-Siders, Casey drove his haul to San Francisco instead and took passage overseas. Landing in New Zealand, Casey used his observations of various tourists over the years from his childhood to concoct the persona of 'the Major', a British Army officer mustered out after becoming a little addled from being near too many shellings during the war.

Languages: English

Stuff: A dwindling supply of hard cash; a serviceable sturdy car (maybe a Bentley 4 1/2); a Webley Mark VI revolver to keep up appearances. Has a stake in a local pub/tavern, the return on investment mostly amounting to room and board.

Motivation: To make an "honest" fortune before he has to start doing a honest day's work. Casey's spent most of his life before the last few years trying to keep his head low among a crowd of people who did whatever they wanted because they had money; consequently, Casey wants enough money so that he doesn't have to keep low anymore. (Increasingly, his motivations also include "getting off the South Island and somewhere with a livelier nightlife", though whether that means San Francisco, Paris, or Hong Kong Casey couldn't tell you, since it's largely just grass-is-greener frustration borne of his inability to make his seed money grow).

Weaknesses: Casey's not a coward per se, but he has a very keen and personal interest in his own skin -- when at a disadvantage, making a principled "last stand" instead of backpedaling in the hopes for a better shot down the line is something largely anathema to him. He's also terribly aware of his lack of refinement or higher education (he reads a lot, but he isn't well-read, so to speak).

Strengths: A natural likability that allows him to get away with sketchy explanations for his behavior that others might get called on; years behind the wheel driving on roads that barely qualify for the name; a quick wit where the gears are always turning (he'll generally have 2 or 3 plans ready at a moment's notice -- they could all be bad plans, but he'll have them).

Since his money's slowly but surely running out, it's not going to take a whole lot of persuading to put him on the trail of any sort of promising score.

Dr. Miguel Patron, Spanish-Greek, 37
2 (seasoned) learning (med school)
1 (fully trained) will (never gives up), resources (country estate)
0 (semi-trained), handiness (outdoorsman), shoot (rifle), agility (athletics)
-1 (untrained) might (take punches), perception (track), social (glamour), vehicle (sailboat)

Appearance: He’s a bearded, square-chinned man with greying temples and gold-rimmed glasses.

Background: -Son of a wealthy importer (Juan Carlo Segundo Patron) -Professional Heart Surgeon, self-published (and self-proclaimed) philosopher, psychologist, political commentator and poet

Languages: English, Spanish and Greek

Stuff: A small farm with hired hands to tend the goats (maybe 3 max), chickens (5-6), garden, field and house. He owns a hunting rifle, a small sailboat, and equipment for hunting, fishing, and other manly sports (let’s say he has additional equipment for rock climbing, boxing and fencing- though these are lightly used, and the fencing foil is blunted rather than capped). His property will contain farming equipment, an office and small library, a space to keep interesting medical samples, and a wine cellar). Finally, he possesses a cabinet of medical supplies, sufficient for diagnosing and treating common diseases and simple surgeries. This happens to include an uncommon amount of cocaine, as he includes a moderate daily dose as part of his Daily Regiment for Human Greatness.

Motivation: Miguel believes in the strength of ‘real men,’ and insists on living as one himself. He lives to feed his own ego and longs to increase his fame, be it through world-shaking discoveries or writing a thrilling biography about his adventures. He’s also motivated by the promise of greater wealth or influence, since these promise much of the same benefits of fame.

Weaknesses: Miguel is a stubborn and entitled blowhard, with poor situational, social and self-awareness. He’s a classic example of someone who excels in one field, and then assumes that makes him an expert on everything.

Strengths: He is a very learned man and a genuinely skilled physician. His stubbornness also makes him difficult to dishearten or manipulate, and his dilettante approach to the arts both physical and mental at least leaves him more generally adaptable than one who eschews either entirely.

'Ah-Lan Shaw, British-Chinese, 26

2 = Social (streetwise)
1 = Handiness (pickpocket); Perception (cold read)
0 = Agility (stealth); Vehicle (power boat); Will (She's a survivor)
-1 = Learning (western culture); Might (sucker punch); Resources (smuggler's cove); Shoot (pistol)
Appearance: A slightly-built, reasonably attractive woman of mixed-race descent (people tend to assume she's European if she wears a blonde wig and Chinese if she's in a cheongsam).

Background: • Exact details are sketchy, because Lana lies about her past like it was a religious vow, but what is relatively consistent is that she was born in Hong Kong after the British lease, that she left there close to ten years ago, and that she's never been a prostitute (a point of stubborn pride bordering on berserk button). • Came to New Zealand a few years ago, purportedly pursuing stories of a great-uncle who'd made out in the South Island gold rush. Unsurprisingly, she never found the uncle or the gold, but she did find enough opportunities (working at turns as a cook, a singer, and a courier) to scrape and/or scam herself back on her feet.

Languages: Lana speaks Cantonese and English; she has 'phrasebook' level knowledge of German and Maori (i.e. "please", "thank you", "how much for this", "don't shoot", etc.)

Stuff: • The Sweet Juniper is probably Lana's prize possession ("It's not much of a prize, is it?" "That's why I'm still playing.") — a fishing schooner refitted with motors by an old moonshiner convinced that just like the Americans, he was going to make out like a bandit as a rum-runner when Prohibition finally passed. Sadly, carrying more wear than mere years (possibly from sampling too much of his own product), his health failed him; having no family to speak of, he left the boat in the hands of Lana, a drinking companion and occasional oddjob handler. • She's sussed out a spot along the coast within a day's hike from Greymouth where a rockface collapse likely triggered by some of the recent earthquakes created a hollow she's converted to a smuggler cave to moor the Juniper when it seems a bad idea to stay in port, as well as to stash extra goods and running money. (You may ask yourself if it's a good idea to set up shop in a cave created by a quake on the proverbial Shaky Isles — see "Weaknesses".) • She has a trunkful of nicely tailored clothes (including the aforementioned wig and cheongsams) that probably would have been more fashionable a decade ago, and some more practical travel gear. • She owns a Baby Browning pistol, though because she doesn't own proper papers for it, she generally only carries it if she has strong reason to think things are going to get ugly (primarily mostly, it's for potential trespassers on the Juniper, or discouraging any 'pray I don't alter the deal further' moments in already illegal transactions).

Motivation: More than anything, Lana wants to be a tai-pan, to have enough wealth that she could use it like a blunt instrument to make other problems go away. Her greatest fear is "social claustrophobia", being shut into circumstances that she can't cut and run from any given day; she also has a revulsion to drug addiction bordering on phobia, which combined with the above makes her very wary of hospitalization.

Weaknesses: She has serious trust issues, not just with people but the world itself — assuming out of hand that something is just about to Ruin This ("this" being whatever the goal of the day is) makes her impatient and prone to favoring high-risk "jackpot" situations over more reliable but less impressive options.

Strengths: Though she'd hate to put it so bluntly, Lana is a pretty fair thief and swindler, who's learning to become a pretty fair smuggler. She's gotten good from an early age at talking her way past problems, and ducking out to disappear when that doesn't work; she's well aware (perhaps to the point of paranoia) of her shortcomings, and so has also gotten good at getting others to manage the risks and heavy lifting of her schemes.