Adventure! RPG: Heroes of Our Time - Dramatis Personae

[Alex Craft]

Anthony King

Inspired

"A dream is not a very safe thing to be near ... if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt. But if it's a good dream, it's worth it. There are not many dreams in the world, but there are a lot of human lives. And one human life or two dozen ..."

"Are not worth anything?"

"No. Not anything."

Since the early 1880's, King Industrial Steel was run by Alexander King - one of the great businessmen of the turn of the century. When Alexander King took up the reins of K.I.S., the corporation was a small, Baltimore-based supply firm - managing the overseas shipment of steel for a few American steel mills. By the turn of the century, Alexander King had turned K.I.S. into an industrial power, owning numerous steel mills and branching out into the manufacture of industrial machinery of all descriptions.

Early on, the corporation was forced to expand out of Baltimore, setting up major offices in Pittsburgh, New York City, and Chicago. Construction was begun on 1 K.I.S. Plaza in NYC, but Alexander King didn't live to see it completed. He died in 1916, and his son, Anthony King, inherited both his father's corporation and his father's business acumen.

At the relatively young age of 31, Anthony King ruthlessly profiteered off the remaining years of World War I, expanding the corporation further during the boom times after the war and eventually pushing through the completion of 1 K.I.S. Plaza - at sixty-eight stories, the second tallest building in New York City.

In July of 1922, King visited London to attend a scientific demonstration made by the talented Dr. Sir Calvin Hammersmith. The experiment went horribly awry, and only King and a handful of other individuals escaped the resulting inferno. Afterwards, King returned to Baltimore.

In the next months, King instituted a series of purges, firing employees from all levels for infractions from embezzlement to simple disloyalty. After these acts, he quieted down - seemingly returning to the status quo. This normalcy ended at the end of 1923, as he announced plans to gather a group of 'extraordinary individuals' to 'collect the secrets of our generation.'

This decision may have something to do with the Æon Society for Gentlemen, founded the previous year by Maxwell Anderson Mercer - another survivor of the Hammersmith experiment. Rumor has it that the records of dozens of fantastic expeditions are held within the Society's open files - files which King has been regularly visiting since the Society's formation.

Tall and massively built, Anthony King moves like a large cat - slowly and deliberately, but with potential for great speed and power. King almost always maintains a glacial calm - rarely, if ever, allowing himself to become upset or on edge. His warm grey eyes are soft and often unreadable but flash with excitement when he is intrigued or angry. He dresses impeccably - tending toward (expensive) black two-piece suits, blue-grey shirts, and black, squared-off ties.

[Alex Craft]

Ayed al-Luqmani

Inspired

"We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose."

To most, Ayed al-Luqmani is something of an enigma. Of Egyptian extraction, he seems to have dedicated his life to driving foreign powers from Eygyptian soil. However, he is much more than just another agitator and terrorist (though he is that, too). Along with considerable martial talents, Luqmani possesses a keen, incisive mind, and he has often proven himself to be an effective leader and organizer.

These natural talents are linked to an exterior source of money and material which local authorites are hard-pressed to explain. These are not the only inconsistencies in Luqmani's profile, either. Surprisingly, he seems to be the product of an Oxford education, but this must have occured under another indentity - no records exist of Luqmani even visiting England.

Further, Luqmani is far from tied to Egypt. Over time, he has been spotted involved in illegalities all the world over. From an assassination in Japan to a high-profile bank robbery in New York City, he has developed quite a portfolio of criminal activities - most likely connected to his unknown backers. Who are these people, who can back criminal enterprises globally?

Evidence suggests that Luqmani was once Ibrahim Mustafa Sharawi - the son of a once prosperous Egyptian family. Ibrahim Sharawi did once attend an Oxford college, dropping out after a few years to join the Great War. He disappeared sometime during the war, though, and nothing has been heard of him since.

[Alex Craft]

David Goodin

unInspired

"Fly it until the last piece stops moving."

David Goodin is a relatively ordinary guy with a real knack for powered flight. Before America entered the Great War, he crossed the border into Canada to join the RAF. Goodin soon developed a mild reputation as a fighter pilot and spent the majority of the war behind the controls of a Sopwith Camel flying interference against enemy pilots.

He left the RAF almost immediately after the War, but he soon found that there weren't many opportunities for a civilian pilot. After spending a few years wasting time on crop-dusting and air shows, he joined up with K.I.S. By far the company's best pilot, he has been kept busy ever since. Of late, Goodin has been particularly glad for the opportunity to pilot Kate Schafer's advanced designs, but he is less cheerful about ferrying the new K.I.S. field team to and from their missions.

[Alex Craft]

Leslie Cornish

unInspired

"The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own."

As Anthony King's legal advisor and personnel manager, Leslie Cornish is one of the more important individuals in K.I.S. He achieved this position through pure, bloody-minded efficiency ... and little else. As most of his underlings will gladly tell you, Cornish is unimaginative, narrow-minded, sadly lacking in all but the most shallow social skills, and - generally speaking - a pain in the ass to work for.

Despite these failings, Cornish is good at his job - which is basically to keep the number-crunching details of running K.I.S. out of King's way. Primarily, he handles high level finances, from distributing payroll to dealing with the requisitions of the field team. Another key roll Cornish fills is that of watchdogging for legal, political, and financial problems caused by the corporation's far-reaching interests.

Cornish has been making strong objections to the field team's existence, arguing that the team not only is failing to turn a profit, but that its confrontational nature is bringing harm to K.I.S.'s worldwide concerns. Thus far, King has ignored his complaints, but Cornish is working to gather support among the upper-ranked K.I.S. employees.

[Alex Craft]

Katherine Schafer

Inspired

"To understand the secrets of atoms and galaxies is to become like gods ... Whether we use these abilities for the betterment of humanity or for the destruction of our planet is entirely a matter of our own free choice."

Kate Schafer is one of Anthony King's trump cards. Hiding inside this small, cheerful woman is one of the greatest minds in the world. A true prodigy, she is single-handedly responsible for many of K.I.S.'s more impressive tools and technologies - being the author of everything from the company's trans-Atlantic passenger planes to the plans for the monolithic 3 K.I.S. Plaza skyscraper being built just next door to her labs in 1 K.I.S. Plaza. Nobody really knows why she puts her astonishing talents to work for K.I.S., but some believe it to be her fallback after running into gender discrimination in the traditional scientific community.

Kate is, most of the time, a likable young woman - clever, friendly, and attractive. Her subordinates, despite the general bias against female scientists, seem quite happy to work under her, and she tends to mix well with other ranking members of K.I.S.

However ... she sometimes slips into an 'idiot-savant' state, which most people find off-putting. Her personality remains the same, but it seems like her already formidable intellect takes a couple steps up - functioning so far above the norm that most people are somewhat intimidated. She also has demonstrated the somewhat bizarre ability to generate and control electricity with nothing but her body and will. How, exactly, she does this is uncertain.

[Alex Craft]

Luca and Cassidy

Inspired

"If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it is that you can kill anyone."

Luca and Cassidy are a pair of well-known gunmen who reportedly work for the Chicago mob (though they are known to be occasionally loaned out to other Mafia families). Little is known about either of them, with most information about them bound up in the form of street stories - whispers passed through the underworld about two of Chicago's best guns-for-hire.

Luca is a thin Italian with an intense, predatory look that is somewhat belied by his loose, elliptical speaking. He is the more vicious of the two, and his speed and skill are scarily effective. Cassidy is a large, broad-faced Irishman, slow to speak and careful in action. He is generally considered to be not quite as lethal as Luca, though this could easily be underestimation - born by his tendency to let Luca upstage him.

[Alex Craft]

Angelo 'the Angel' Cimino

unInspired

"I believe in America. America has made my fortune."

Angelo Cimino worked alongside Carlos 'Crazy 8' Sapetti (the infamous kingpin of the Baltimore/D.C. area) for most of Sapetti's career. Once a father figure to the younger man, Angelo stood behind Sapetti during his early years as a foot soldier and bagman for the Baltimore mob. Later, as Sapetti began to gain personal power, Angelo became one of his best and most trusted enforcers.

During this time, Angelo gained the nick-name 'the Angel,' a derivation of his birth name brought on not only by his considerable good looks, but also by his role as Carlos Sapetti's so-called 'Angel of Death.' However, as Sapetti grew in power, his Angel was gradually edged out - becoming less important as Sapetti's entourage expanded.

In the summer of 1922, that all changed. Thanks to the private detective Blaine MaCallister, Sapetti was incarcerated and a number of his lieutenants ended up either dead or in jail. Of the handful of remaining lieutenants, Angelo Cimino came out on top after a brief, violent power struggle - reportedly, the Baltimore/D.C. mob has recovered surprisingly well under his leadership.

With Sapetti's death (following a short-lived escape from prison), Angelo has had his position confirmed and legitimized by the local underworld - ensuring a lasting control over the regional rackets.

[Alex Craft]

Rhiannon Lewis

Inspired

"May your God and my Goddess go with you."

Rhiannon Lewis started as a K.I.S secretary, but she rose rapidly due to Anthony King's direct favor. The reasons for this are routinely mistaken as something to do with her astonishing beauty. She is, in fact, a capable, clear-headed administrator who has been of no small help in the recent changes to the company.

Rhiannon is a citizen of both the United Kingdom and the United States, being a native Welshwoman who immigrated across the Atlantic only a couple years ago. She is an Oxford graduate, as demonstrated by a rarified Oxford accent, occasionally broken by the rare word in Welsh Gaelic.

She seems to be a mentalist of some skill - her talents somewhat murky, but seeming to revolve around insight into and manipulation of people. Given that this lady has a habit of taking charge with everyone excepting King, those who know of her powers aren't particularly surprised. Some rumours speak of connections to New York's Chinatown, but Rhiannon hasn't confirmed or denied this.