Editing Baroque Blue (section)

====...And The Ones We Can't Quite Figure Out Yet...====

Powerful people defy definition, and the people here are powerful, but not aligned towards justice or crime...

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=====Vincent Lorenzo===== 

This guy is the Mafia boogeyman. According to the bedtime story, back in '77, Johnny-Boy Lorenzo and his wife, Maria, were taking a trip out to rural Kansas to pick up some... supplies... when they came across a kid. Now, unverified rumour has it that Johnny-Boy, he was sterile, and back in the day, that disqualified you from being a player. Less of a real man, and all that. So he saw the opportunity and he pretended the kid was his. Nine months he slapped his wife around when she begged to leave Kansas, see her family, get away from the strange kid she wasn't sure she wanted.

According to the story, Vince became the Made Man of all made men. He can't be hurt by bullets. He can cook people with his brain. He can hurl trucks. He can even make robots that look just like him so he can be in more than once place at a time.

Whenever any of the old families in America or the Old Country have trouble with masks getting uppity, or new gangs, they can call in Vinnie. This is a huge loss of face, and if the man exists, he is surely busy. Everybody in Baroque has met a guy who claims to have met the guy. So you shrug, say it is just a story and get on with business. But sometimes, when an old time mobster looks too confident at a meet, and he whispers to his consiglieri, you're sure you hear the name 'Vincent Lorenzo'...

=====Jade Mirror=====

It takes a unique man to simultaneously rule over the Triads and the Solupa Rings while killing each and every single Yakuza to step foot in a city with just under 100,000 Japanese-American citizens. The Jade Mirror would be just such a man... if he were a man. It is agreed by everyone that he isn't. What he is, that is open to debate. His gang, the Spiders (technically, the Lung Te Hsien-ch'üan), terrify everybody in Little Asia with a weird terror mixed with pride, but for the rest of Baroque, simple terror usually suffices.

The Jade Mirror is a hunched old man in horrible shape. He seems to have seen a lot of combat, and has not come through unscarred. His most distinct trait is his incredibly long fingernails, painted black, so unwieldy that they prevent him from using pens, thus requiring that he travel with a scribe at all times. Strangely, it is an open secret that he is accepted by much of Baroque's sizable Asian community as "The Emperor of America". Whatever their reasons for this belief is, it means that even upstanding citizens who wouldn't usually have anything to do with organised crime bow to him and provide him favours, and that his extortion money is paid far more happily than the municipal.

His crew- the '''Lung Te Hsien-ch'üan''', commonly called the Spiders- run all the crime in Little Asia, keeping out all the opposition. They all carry a spiderweb tattoo on their right shoulder. The elders act as elders always do, sitting around teahouses and accounting firms, making phonecalls and conducting business, but the youths have formed an immense go-gang and ride around other districts on bikes, condicting the villiany they are prohibited from committing at home on someone else's turf.

=====Masha Voyevoda=====

The first thing anyone will notice about Masha are the horrific burns on her face, and hair like a fiery fox's pelt. Rumor has it she was captured in Afghanistan, and the ''mudjahideen'' did... things to her before she killed her way out of their remote mountain stronghold and reunited with her men across a hundred kilometers of unforgiving stone. Tall and confident, she is immune to most of the horrors of even a city like Baroque, having seen - and done -  much worse. Despite her disfiguration, however, she exudes a confidence that could compel those under her to follow her into Hell itself - and indeed, they've done exactly that under her capable leadership.

It's an open secret that she was ex-Spetsnaz; she still wears her captain's greatcoat over her severe black business dress with the rank lapels intact. Her men, over a hundred former Spetsnaz troopers themselves, even maintain the fatigues and other trappings of their former profession, though now without any marks to identify their unit or country. Every single one of them wears the blue and white-striped t-shirt under their clothes, even when out of uniform, and they possess a level of organization, discipline and training unheard of among any of the other major players in Baroque. 

For now, Masha is content to base her operations in Hawksmoor, protecting and expanding the Russian Mob's interests in Baroque. Among other things, the lack of police involvement means that her men are free to carry and bear the powerful weapons they frequently train with. She favors a non-antagonistic policy towards intruders, preferring to avoid bloodshed until absolutely necessary. But if that day ever comes, it's fairly certain that whoever she targets will know that they've been hit.

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