Baroque Blue
Darkness falls.
Twilight creeps across the city, chasing out the last vestiges of the day. A chill wind blows through the streets. In its wake, the criminals, the scum, all those things that can't bear the sunlight spill out of their hiding places, like a swarm of spreading vermin. Lights come on, doors slam shut, and the cold is everywhere.
Nobody with any sense makes a habit of staying out too long after dark here. Capes and crooks, mobsters and monsters... the night belongs to them, and they do not suffer just anyone to pass in their presence. Linger too long on the streets, and you'll be lucky if you only get mugged...
Welcome to Baroque City.
Contents
Dramatis Personae
In addition to the six protagonists, Baroque Blue has a huge cast of supporting characters, mostly contributed by the players.
The Rat Pack
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The few, the proud, the invincible.
Ares, the psychic ex-SEAL, played by Silent Wayfarer
Alexei, the suave gunman with a heart of gold, played by Toras
Doc, the compassionate street savior, played by nick whalley
K, the sultry, mysterious
Salil, the monster-hunter on a mission from God, played by TheLazyBlank
Thumbs, the grizzled veteran, too badass to kill and too stubborn to die, played by Victor Von Villain
The Bystanders
The Power Players
Everyone in this section is either supernaturally gifted, or is in a position of temporal power in Baroque City. In their hands, the lives and deaths of the average man are little more than sand. They are truly in a class of their own.
The Good
Usually Capes, but sometimes just ordinary men with extraordinary conviction, those presented here fight the good fight against seemingly impossible odds.
The Midnight Samaritan
The original mask. He started keeping Gods Peace in the 30's, working out of the Carrivagio Quarter, patrolling in his cross-emblazened leather and wearing a cowl. Back then, he killed with his weaponized crozier. Word spread among the Made Men of the day that the Lord's Vengeance was descending on Baroque. However, in 1939, as Arturos Nocturnes English Socialist armies begun to descend over Europe, the Midnight Samaritan battled with Halloween Jack atop the Cathedral Basilique and fell.
When cautious crimes were recommited and no shining cross appeared with whispered threats, confidence returned. The Five Families, desperate to regain ground lost to the new freaks and weirdos, made alliances with other immigrant groups, forming the Second Council of Trent.
Twelve years ago, just as the Council initiated the 13th member using the syncretic anti-catholic/voudan rituals, the Midnight Samaritan burst through the skylight and announced his return. Since then, he has arrested every one the Rogues gallery at least once, brought down the entire Mediccani Cammorrae and reduced crime in the Vespers 30%. He even smuggles advanced medicines and supplies into the worst parts of the Inferno.
Some guys say he doesn't kill anymore. Some guys say he is just a normal human. Some even say he is a Vatican supersoldier returned from the Brazillian Wars with some sort of Da Vinci tech enhancements. Regardless, every criminal dreads their "Confessions" and nearly pass out at the idea of their "Time of Repentance" being at hand.
Paul Revenge
The toughest motherloving player to ever wander these fucking streets, brother. Given he is no longer on the force (at least, not this week), he isn't technically any of the categories listed above, but he is so damn badass still ranks a mention. Once a black uniformed beat cop, once a ranking inspector in the Major Crime Unit, usually out on his ear for flouting discipline, always kicking ass, taking names and refusing to die.
Despite being a normal joe, he has singlehandedly arrested Haloween Jack and he killed the first Mister Mystic. Think Shaft or John McClane facing the Joker and you're in the ball park.
Streetwalker
This vigilante lurks around the Hawksmoore District. Dressed in fishnet stockings, a low-cut black leather jacket and a skirt made entirely of flashing blades, she isn't afraid to maim or kill. So extreme are her methods that outside the Vespers, even Baroque cops would be howling for her blood. As a rule, she doesn't pursue crime in the general way the Samaritan does, instead focusing on abusive pimps, rapists, corrupt cops and abusers of authority or women. It is an open secret that she collects "dues" from the hookers and wheelbarters of the area.
Black Arrow
This vigilante steals from the rich and gives to the poor. The only problem is that he brutually and grusomely murders his victims, stalking them for weeks, and then dispatching them like a hunter finishing off his prey. Choice steaks are usually sent to family members the next day as proof of a kill. Nonetheless, Baroque being Baroque, he is idolized in the Inferno, perhaps even more than the Samaritan who battles him.
OneShot
Once a night, somewhere in Baroque, a shot rings out. It always hits its target and always kills. No matter how powerful, how dangerous, how invulnerable, the evil that lurks always falls to OneShot.
Of course, it only happens once a night.
The Bad
The only thing worse than a punk is a punk who can kill you from 200 yards away... with mind bullets. While not everyone here has that level of competence, they can completely outclass any ordinary resistance.
The Red Queen
The Red Queen is the newst player in Baroque, and she is making a huge splash. Once Karen Monash, she nearly married Julius Raith. She was exposed by Justice Flagg himself, and fled, costing Raith Junior his chance at being Senator.
Not only has she weathered the wrath of the Raiths, the enmity of the Cammorae and the opposition of the Midnight Samaritan, but she has thrived. This is probably because everyone who ever meets her wants her love. Playing suitors against one another, she has stripped them bare, absorbed their empires and moved to the next target. Her crew call themselves cards, the elite and longserving taking the roles of other Alice in Wonderland characters. They tend to avoid the traditional profitable arenas for criminals - little gambling, drug dealing or the like. Instead, she involves herselves in bank robberies, art fraud, enormous insurance fraud, that sort of thing. She also prides herself on extorting exortionists, demanding a cut from the hard men that run rackets within a hundred miles of her joint. Those that don't pay suffer her trademark decapitation.
Her effrontery is building up to open war... that's bad. She is fucking insane... and that's much worse. There is no way to define just how crazy this broad is, her genius with chemistry and electronics matched by her fetishes and odd rules. Think the Joker's mindset and chemical expertise combined with Poison Ivy's powers and bearing.
The Cheshire Cat
The Cheshire Cat is her major domo and go-to guy. Always dressing in those snazzy suits, always running the Kitty Kat Klub. He always remembers your name, warns you when it is a bad time to see the Lady upstairs, always has a free drink for you and a brown package if your a cop. Everyone loves the Cat. Course, he needs to be nice, seeing as he is one of them muties. Looks like the Cat from Red Dwarf, only with sharper teeth. No way he could survive outside Inferno. Some say he is an Ultra, one of those mutants with weird abilities. Turning invisible and moving real fast are most often touted as his powers, but nobody can think of a time he ever got into a fight.
The Brujah
Currently, Esperanza de Velázquez holds the Eleventh Seat on the Council of Trent, running the Velázquez Cammorae. Breaking all the previous rules, she is a woman, not of Sicillian or Irish descent, who has never fired a gun in her life. Traditionalists say she used the Evil Eye on the former capo, Don Mediccani. Others say she poisoned him, other that she merely bribed him. Reagrdless, after his mysterious dissapearance, his heir decided she offered much to the organisation. The Council of Trent has never looked back. She is perhaps the biggest single name in organised crime, her gang having close to a monopoly on the drug trade, arms dealing and an absolute monopoly on extortion in the Messandre District.
Halloween Jack
This is the granddaddy of all streetfreaks and guttermasks. Once an albino doctor from the 1940s, he was first dubbed "The Nightingale Killer" for his habit of killing nurses. The police discovered the deaths were caused by sonic damage to brain tissue.
Halloween Jack has discovered a sonic wave that causes childhood fears to seem to come to life. In the highly superstitious town of Baroque, this power is nigh-absolute. He used to throw pumpkins that blasted the sound, but in the 80s, he embedded the device in his vocal chords, and now his very words now can carry the effect. With age, his albinism has worsened. He now only emerges at night, and even then wears a pumpkin head to protect him from incident light.
Rumour says the Brujah has hired him to "deal" with the Red Queen, and it is a faceoff the entire underworld craves to watch.
...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...
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 whsipers to his consigliari, you're sure you hear the name 'Vincent Lorenzo'...
Mister Skitz
Medically speaking, Mister. Skitz is two people. The worlds most extreme pair of surviving conjoined twins. Despite having only the one skeliton, he has three eyes, two sets of vocal chords, three arms, mismatched colours of hair and a gaping trio of leathery holes where his nose should be. Do not mention his appearance, of display disgust. This makes Mr. Skitz very angry. You don't want to make Skitz angry.
On a bad day, he can barely move. He has headaches, a cacophony of discordant mumbles matching the sounds in his head. His spine is a twisted thing, visibly pushing against the silky-white skin on his back. He shoots in futility at his tolerant and disdainful henchman, struggling to breath through his clogged nostrils.
So why was he made the leader of the 13th Cammorae, against all tradition and in defiance of all standards? Simple- on a good day, his three eyes give him amazing sight and accuracy, and he can fire three immense guns at once. He has two sets of muscles, making him inordinately strong. He has two brains all mushed up together, working in concert, making him a brilliant tactician. At these times, an animal charisma exudes from him, and he prowls the streets, recruiting minions from the poor, disenfranchised and crippled and seducing women, beautiful as you've ever seen. Some say he has two souls, one of which takes on all the sin they do, the other destined to storm the very gates of heaven when he dies.
Jade Mirror
It takes a unique man to simultaniously 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.
Baroque City
With a population of rougly twenty million, an annual gross product larger than the rest of the state doubled and the worlds fastest-growing crime rate, Baroque is almost like a medieval city got plonked in the 1940s and then Japanese zaibatsus spent 6 months updating it before fleeing in disgust.
Carravagio Quarter
The Catholic Church has always been big in Baroque. After the vaticans return to global influence in 1947, the Carravagio Quarter has reflected this odd mixture of incense, gold, faith, authority and decadence. The vast array of gothic cathedrals, New English chapels and a smattering of churches, synagogues and mosques, this quarter has more religious buildings that other city in America.
Interspersed, black skyscrapers and highrises rake the sky, counting among their number the Bernini Building, fifth tallest building in the world, the Frohmire Hotel, where the Ghoulgate scandal broke and shocked the nation and the Raith Building, heart of the Raith commercial empire. This district is free from nearly all obvious crime, and even the Masks seem wary of breaking its gloomy peace.
Alighieri Quarter
Commonly referred to as the Inferno. This is the Badlands, stretching for cheap warehouses near the docks and morphing into a Third World slum at the city outskirts. Disease is rampant- not only has the Promethian Virus not entierly died out, but even smallpox, syphilus and Mk I RTP can be found in some of the inhabitants.
Here, the Masks reign. The Chesire Cat enacts his mistress' bidding from the Kitty Kat Klub. Mister Skitz holes up in an abandoned warehouse, running his scarred goons into the ground. The vigilantes OneShot and the aging mystic, Professor Phylos, both call this area home.
The Raith Estates
Mansions, mansions and sprawling estates crowned with mansions. Parks with policemen doing their jobs, most of the time, and demanding very heavy bribes to look away. Even where there eyes don't fall, Justice Security Services serve their employers interest. The gossip in these houss make and break presidents and senators, and international trade is the game of choice.
Barroci District
Also called the Big Barrio. This is where the now closing middle class live out of suburban brownstones, with regulated backyards. There's a vague feel of forced precision, like a painting of suburbia, rather than real thing. Importantly, hundreds of new townhouses have sprung up, maunfactured en masse from a single architectural plan.
Chiaroscuro District
Immigrants and serpentine streets are the hallmarks of this district. Only 46% of the population speak English, the rest being divided between Lebanese, Russian, Turkish and Greek.
Maraviglia District
The home of the avante garde. Although widely regarded as the home of poseurs and dropkicks, this is actually home to the libertines, artists and writers on the cutting edge of social trend. The lifestyle varies wildly between rich and poor, but most houses are dominated by a French-Colonial feel, with Ivy lattices and old stonework. Coffee houses, art galleries and bars abound but whilst it's a trendy tourist hotspot, the real backrooms and hidden clubs hide a multitude of unsung activities.
The lakeside section of the district has been coverted by recent immigrants into Little Asia, where Chinese and Korean immigrants wait the tables, serve the food and deliver the art supplies for those above. Criminals know this as the lair of the Jade Dragon, Emperor of America.
Hawksmoor District
Named after the man who inspired its architecture (built from some of Hawksmoors unused plans for metropolitan London), but commonly called the Vespers or Hawkers Paradise. It's the reddest of Red Light districts. Drug dens, bordellos, brothels, strip clubs, flophouses and underground fight clubs. The antithesis of the Carrivagio Quarter, here is where the rich and poor meet, each providing what theu always ofer each other. Anything goes here, and cops know better than to set foot here. However, some of the establishments are quietly watched over by either JSS or the Brujah.
Messandre
Better known as 'the West End'. It is the heart of the lower end CBD, not the central highrises of big business, but the hundreds of mid-sized businesses focused on services and retail. Middle management central - lots of law firms, accountants and outlet stores.
Cabrotti
Factories, factories, factories. Black smoke is belched out by old style funnels and waste pours into the local resevoir ("unknown" to local counsellors, of course). It's also home to Baroque's local nuclear power plant.
The Scarlatti Demillitarized Zone
Formerly the heart of traditional New English suburbia, at the edges of the area, it could pass as its old self fairly easily. However, this area was badly hit by the Promethian Virus. At the heart of the area lies the Sallieri Institute for the Criminally Perturbed (known as Bedlams Barrio) and Fort Judgement, the US millitary base and operational center of the Council of Science.
Anapchen Hills
Known to mobsters as the Unhappy Hunting Ground, this is where the bodies are buried. This largely rural area contains the national parks, the Indian reserve- known for its casinos and money laundering operations- and the few desperate stragling farms.
Bernini District
A scattered selection of derelict buildings and edifices focusing around the Bernini Bridge. People tend to think of this as 'minor economic downturn' but what most people don't realise is that the sealed off area is over 36 blocks. No-one seems aware of exactly how far this City of the Dead extends, or why it remains despite widespread campaigns of economic refurbishment.
Santa Therissa
This area has its own elected government and police force, and is not technically part of Baroque, being on the opposite side of the Lake. A last holdout for the Big Five Families, where they reign supreme over a working class untouched by Masks and other invaders.
