The history of 'Voodoo', a Ship's Gunner in the PbP game Diplo-Crisis.
Unobtainable Early Biography:
Milen Zhivkov Cioaba was born to a family of the Romani people living in a crowded urban mega-city called “New Bangkok” located in a small Industrial Tech country on an Early Interstellar Tech balkanized world. His father was a craftsman of gold and silver charms and his mother was a fortune teller. When Milen was eleven years old, a popular Charismatic Dictator arose and gained a following among the urban poor. The major world governments set in motion an anti-psion campaign to discredit the rebel leader and his followers. Both movements eventually spread beyond the ability of anyone to control, ending in a worldwide civil war known to the people who survived as the ‘Night of Fire’. For nearly four months, chaos and fighting raged in the streets, nations were divided, governments fell and the movement to unify the planet to help the poor was utterly crushed. Only the landing of Imperial Marines and the conversion of the most unstable regions to ‘Captive Governments’ restored peace to the world.
That is not what Milen remembers of the ‘Night of Fire’.
In New Bangkok, the wealthy live at the top of 2 kilometer tall towers with balconies that open into the clean air high above the permanent haze that blankets the surrounding countryside for kilometers in every direction. The middle class skilled workers and managers live in the middle levels of the giant towers with sealed windows and filtered air in assigned housing blocks paid for by the mega-corporation masters who controlled every aspect of their life. At the base of each tower are the factories and offices where the corp-types work. Surrounding the towers is the sprawl, home to 80 percent of the planetary population. The sprawl is a collection of unregulated buildings that vary from 3 to 8 stories tall buried beneath a continuous blanket of haze (tainted atmosphere) and often in the shadow of a super-tower. In the sprawl, 70% of the children die before the age of 18 and the median life expectancy for an adult is only in the 40’s. The sprawl provided inexpensive expendable labor for jobs too dangerous for an educated worker and too complex for a machine. For Milen’s family, the sprawl was ‘home’.
Milen’s first indication that something was different was awakening to find light pouring through his window. A strange red light that danced across the walls and ceiling. The tower was burning and the streets of the sprawl were full of angry people, fighting. Suddenly, Milen’s father bursts into the room and jerks him from the bed. He caries the frightened 13 year old boy to a secret closet in the master bedroom and orders him to stay there until he returns – no matter what happens, Milan is not to leave that closet or to make a sound. Shouts from the hall. The crash of the front door being broken down. His father shutting the door to the secret room and the click of the lock. His father shouts from another room and his mother screams. Smoke and unbearable heat fills the secret room, then the sprinklers go off soaking everything. Four days hungry, cold and wet hiding in a dark closet. Strange noises. Shouts in the distance. Automatic gunfire.
Then on the fifth day, heavy footsteps. Crash, the wall is breached. An Imperial Marine in Battle dress lifts the limp boy from the floor and delivers him to a Marine Field Medic. A grav vehicle flight to a temporary tent-hospital, an IV in a bed, Navy Doctor/medics, and a refugee shelter in another part of the city. Milen leaves the camp a 13 year old emancipated minor.
Returning to his home, Milen finds it looted and burned. The clothes on his back and his mother’s Tarot cards are his only possessions. He eventually learns that a mob whipped into an anti-Psion frenzy was determined to eradicate all suspected psions from New Bangkok. His father was beaten to death protecting his mother, and she was covered in fuel and burned alive in the apartment. There are a lot of orphans in New Bangkok after the ‘Night of Fire’ and the sprawl is more dangerous than before. Milan finds a new family in a local street gang – and is given the new name ‘Voodoo’ because of his ability to read the Tarot cards (a skill he learned from his mother). He never uses his birth name again.
[OOC: Milen has no birth certificate. He has never been to a doctor. He has never been to school. He never spoke to the Marines/Navy. It is unlikely that even Spyder, who recruited Voodoo into the gang knows his ‘birth’ name. Voodoo is his real name.]
The experience left many impressions on Voodoo, but one which might be less obvious is this: Voodoo has a reverential respect for anyone who is an Imperial Marine. Wealth and titles do not impress Voodoo. To him, a Marine represents the pinnacle of human achievement – the ultimate representation of unstoppable power harnessed for the protection of the weak. What can top that?
Age 13: Initial Gang Activity
The turmoil following the ‘Night of Fire’, Imperial occupation and collapse of the National government saw a dramatic rise in Gang related activity as the citizens of New Bangkok struggled to survive and rebuild under foreign occupation. The Metro Police were eventually forced to turn to Canine Units to run down gang members through their warrens of alleys and storm sewers.
Everyone in a gang is expected to pull his own weight, including 13 year old Voodoo. One of his earliest ‘jobs’ is in ‘Search and Rescue’ against the Police Dogs. When the older members commit a crime, they have new members standing by ‘just in case’. If the Metro Police send dogs after the thieves, the young members lead the dogs off the track and escape through an opening too small for the dog to follow. One of his early missions goes wrong and Voodoo is attacked by a dog and captured by the police. Voodoo is arrested, charged with ‘obstruction of justice’ and serves 30 days in a juvenile detention center. Spyder, the gang member training Voodoo, is furious and calls for Voodoo’s expulsion as unfit for membership in the gang, but Voodoo keeps his mouth shut and serves his time. Upon his release, Spyder is waiting to welcome Voodoo into the gang as a full member … “Blood to Blood and Cradle to Grave” … but still had doubts that the kid will make it in the long term. Voodoo has made an enemy and learns to use a pistol (Handgun-0)
Age 14-15: Early Gang Activity
As a full member, Voodoo is under more pressure to make money for the group. Using his basic knowledge of the Tarot cards to screen new members, Voodoo begins to remake the gang's image and builds their reputation among the other gangs. He also makes contacts in the press, becoming an informer and slanting the news against the police tactics and towards more sympathy for the gangs. But burglary and theft pay the bills. The Tarot gives Voodoo an edge in planning crimes and knowing when to walk away. He quickly starts running a 3 man crew (including Spyder – a talented second story man) that pulls in a 40,000 credits per man bonus in the first year. More importantly, they leave no hard evidence or witnesses behind, so the worst that ever happenes is a member gets questioned and released.
Voodoo turns out to be his own worst enemy. His crew’s success leads to it growing to a 6 man crew (increasing the profile of the jobs and the danger to each member) while prompting the Metro police to establish a Special Task Force to deal with the spike in high profile crime by gangs. More planning maintains the record of leaving no evidence or witnesses (which means no arrests or convictions), but the bonuses drop to a more modest 17,000 credits per man.
Voodoo masters the Tarot.
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Unobtainable Early Biography:
Spoiler:
Milen Zhivkov Cioaba was born to a family of the Romani people living in a crowded urban mega-city called “New Bangkok” located in a small Industrial Tech country on an Early Interstellar Tech balkanized world. His father was a craftsman of gold and silver charms and his mother was a fortune teller. When Milen was eleven years old, a popular Charismatic Dictator arose and gained a following among the urban poor. The major world governments set in motion an anti-psion campaign to discredit the rebel leader and his followers. Both movements eventually spread beyond the ability of anyone to control, ending in a worldwide civil war known to the people who survived as the ‘Night of Fire’. For nearly four months, chaos and fighting raged in the streets, nations were divided, governments fell and the movement to unify the planet to help the poor was utterly crushed. Only the landing of Imperial Marines and the conversion of the most unstable regions to ‘Captive Governments’ restored peace to the world.
That is not what Milen remembers of the ‘Night of Fire’.
In New Bangkok, the wealthy live at the top of 2 kilometer tall towers with balconies that open into the clean air high above the permanent haze that blankets the surrounding countryside for kilometers in every direction. The middle class skilled workers and managers live in the middle levels of the giant towers with sealed windows and filtered air in assigned housing blocks paid for by the mega-corporation masters who controlled every aspect of their life. At the base of each tower are the factories and offices where the corp-types work. Surrounding the towers is the sprawl, home to 80 percent of the planetary population. The sprawl is a collection of unregulated buildings that vary from 3 to 8 stories tall buried beneath a continuous blanket of haze (tainted atmosphere) and often in the shadow of a super-tower. In the sprawl, 70% of the children die before the age of 18 and the median life expectancy for an adult is only in the 40’s. The sprawl provided inexpensive expendable labor for jobs too dangerous for an educated worker and too complex for a machine. For Milen’s family, the sprawl was ‘home’.
Milen’s first indication that something was different was awakening to find light pouring through his window. A strange red light that danced across the walls and ceiling. The tower was burning and the streets of the sprawl were full of angry people, fighting. Suddenly, Milen’s father bursts into the room and jerks him from the bed. He caries the frightened 13 year old boy to a secret closet in the master bedroom and orders him to stay there until he returns – no matter what happens, Milan is not to leave that closet or to make a sound. Shouts from the hall. The crash of the front door being broken down. His father shutting the door to the secret room and the click of the lock. His father shouts from another room and his mother screams. Smoke and unbearable heat fills the secret room, then the sprinklers go off soaking everything. Four days hungry, cold and wet hiding in a dark closet. Strange noises. Shouts in the distance. Automatic gunfire.
Then on the fifth day, heavy footsteps. Crash, the wall is breached. An Imperial Marine in Battle dress lifts the limp boy from the floor and delivers him to a Marine Field Medic. A grav vehicle flight to a temporary tent-hospital, an IV in a bed, Navy Doctor/medics, and a refugee shelter in another part of the city. Milen leaves the camp a 13 year old emancipated minor.
Returning to his home, Milen finds it looted and burned. The clothes on his back and his mother’s Tarot cards are his only possessions. He eventually learns that a mob whipped into an anti-Psion frenzy was determined to eradicate all suspected psions from New Bangkok. His father was beaten to death protecting his mother, and she was covered in fuel and burned alive in the apartment. There are a lot of orphans in New Bangkok after the ‘Night of Fire’ and the sprawl is more dangerous than before. Milan finds a new family in a local street gang – and is given the new name ‘Voodoo’ because of his ability to read the Tarot cards (a skill he learned from his mother). He never uses his birth name again.
[OOC: Milen has no birth certificate. He has never been to a doctor. He has never been to school. He never spoke to the Marines/Navy. It is unlikely that even Spyder, who recruited Voodoo into the gang knows his ‘birth’ name. Voodoo is his real name.]
The experience left many impressions on Voodoo, but one which might be less obvious is this: Voodoo has a reverential respect for anyone who is an Imperial Marine. Wealth and titles do not impress Voodoo. To him, a Marine represents the pinnacle of human achievement – the ultimate representation of unstoppable power harnessed for the protection of the weak. What can top that?
Age 13: Initial Gang Activity
The turmoil following the ‘Night of Fire’, Imperial occupation and collapse of the National government saw a dramatic rise in Gang related activity as the citizens of New Bangkok struggled to survive and rebuild under foreign occupation. The Metro Police were eventually forced to turn to Canine Units to run down gang members through their warrens of alleys and storm sewers.
Everyone in a gang is expected to pull his own weight, including 13 year old Voodoo. One of his earliest ‘jobs’ is in ‘Search and Rescue’ against the Police Dogs. When the older members commit a crime, they have new members standing by ‘just in case’. If the Metro Police send dogs after the thieves, the young members lead the dogs off the track and escape through an opening too small for the dog to follow. One of his early missions goes wrong and Voodoo is attacked by a dog and captured by the police. Voodoo is arrested, charged with ‘obstruction of justice’ and serves 30 days in a juvenile detention center. Spyder, the gang member training Voodoo, is furious and calls for Voodoo’s expulsion as unfit for membership in the gang, but Voodoo keeps his mouth shut and serves his time. Upon his release, Spyder is waiting to welcome Voodoo into the gang as a full member … “Blood to Blood and Cradle to Grave” … but still had doubts that the kid will make it in the long term. Voodoo has made an enemy and learns to use a pistol (Handgun-0)
Age 14-15: Early Gang Activity
As a full member, Voodoo is under more pressure to make money for the group. Using his basic knowledge of the Tarot cards to screen new members, Voodoo begins to remake the gang's image and builds their reputation among the other gangs. He also makes contacts in the press, becoming an informer and slanting the news against the police tactics and towards more sympathy for the gangs. But burglary and theft pay the bills. The Tarot gives Voodoo an edge in planning crimes and knowing when to walk away. He quickly starts running a 3 man crew (including Spyder – a talented second story man) that pulls in a 40,000 credits per man bonus in the first year. More importantly, they leave no hard evidence or witnesses behind, so the worst that ever happenes is a member gets questioned and released.
Voodoo turns out to be his own worst enemy. His crew’s success leads to it growing to a 6 man crew (increasing the profile of the jobs and the danger to each member) while prompting the Metro police to establish a Special Task Force to deal with the spike in high profile crime by gangs. More planning maintains the record of leaving no evidence or witnesses (which means no arrests or convictions), but the bonuses drop to a more modest 17,000 credits per man.
Voodoo masters the Tarot.
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