Re: SHOT in the Back OOC

[Book the Hero]

...Isn't number 10 a ref. to a line from Buffy?

[Dobi Boshi]

Close, Angel, so I guess it's enough to say you're winning. You've not won yet, though.

[Book the Hero]

Ah.

[Dobi Boshi]

Ladies and gentleman - I give you the introduction to WarGames.

---

The city of Marisol: a population of roughly 3, 500, 000 – one of largest population centres in all of America, about 500 square miles large, give or take. But put politely however, despite what you might think at first glance, it’s not a nice place to live.

Marisol is an island just of the eastern coast, a couple hours north of New York, connected to the main land by a pair of bridges, a tunnel and an old subway system. It’s defiantly up there with the likes of L.A for big and populated, where people go to seek fame and fortune – just as good as stomping on those dreams, too, and showing people just how hollow and cruel the world really is. Maybe that’s just the cynic in me talking.

In the end though the thing that sells Marisol short is the insanely high crime rates: having had the highest crime rates in all of America for many, many years. The cops aren’t exactly what you’d call competent either and end up making their own job harder for themselves half the time – that is if that aren’t already on someone else’s payroll. Even the Family Crimes Control Unit a division of the police created solely to help combat the huge crime families based in the city isn’t free from corruption entirely.

See, Marisol is broken down into territories, each of which belongs to a separate fraction. To start there’s Down Town Marisol: it’s controlled by an Italian family known as the de Lucas – big players, one of the first to set up shop in Marisol. They're probably one of the oldest, if not the oldest, and they remain one of the most powerful even to this day. Then you have the other major family – the Chings.

Now the Chings themselves control pretty much all of northern Marisol, including much of the north-east including the local China Town – makes a little sense as the Chings are, for the most part, of Chinese decent and operate much like a Triad in contrast with the Italian mafia vibe of the de Lucas. There are other smaller families: such as the Romanovs from Russia, though they’re pretty small scale compared to the Chings or de Lucas, they set up where the work is and for the most part deal with the de Lucas when the extra man power is needed.

The Chings also have many smaller fractions working under them as the de Lucas do, one example being the Kwon family from Korea, not sure whether they hail from north or south as my own dealings with the Kwon family have thankfully been few and far between for the most part. That said, if you want only the best illegal imports, the Kwons are probably the ones to ask if you the money to buy their favour: they ain't cheep, let me tell you that.

And ever since the Chings showed up in Marisol about eighty (or was it ninety?) years ago both sides have been at each other’s throats. Both want to be king of the hill, but neither has given an inch. Thankfully, much of central Marisol and the outlining suburban areas in the west are under the government's thumb, though that doesn’t stop the families from trying to move in and gain fresh territory. There’s also the Heights: an area in the east populated almost entirely by the so called rich and powerful, or rather arrogant and retarded, that runs along the small beach set up on the coast. Now for some reason, both families have some sort of hold in this area, though both stupidly hold it to highly and want to get there nice little beach houses destroyed. Talk about keeping your priorities straight...

Despite day-to-day life being harsh and unforgiving, most people toughed it out, it isn’t like they had anywhere to go if they just up and left the city. But that’s not the point: the point is to tell you of how all this violence and corruption finally came to a head and erupted into a mass of chaos and destruction the like of which even Marisol, as America’s crime capital, had never seen before.

So get comfy, I’m about to tell you the tale of how Marisol went to hell and then crawled its way back out again.

Now if memory serves me right, everything really came to a head on September fourth, twenty fourteen. Was a little overcast and the breeze was colder than usual, but otherwise people started the day thinking it would be just like any other in Marisol – which meant at least half a dozen brawls between the families before lunch time if it was a good day.

But, out of nowhere, the day decided to go against the grain – it was worse than anyone could have expected. Because on August fourteenth the body of deputy DA and head of the FCU (Family Crime Unit; a division of the District Attorney’s office set up at the same time as the FCCU to work together to combat family crime levels and bring down both sides of the war) Dakota Chaplin was found dead after being missing for four days. And it was not pretty; let me tell you that…

---

Note: what you've just read is a rough first draft, which I meant to post yesterday, of something that began bouncing around in my head whilst I was on holiday. The idea behind WarGames is to take the established SHOT (including SitB thus far and planned events) canon and re-imagine it as something more mature, grittier, and a tad more on the realistic side of things. There will be some drastic diverges from the canon, as this isn't meant to be SHOT turned into a novel, it's its own canon and thus will have differences, that said some details will be exactly the same as the RPs its based on whilst others will be affected heavily by Artistic License.

Certain back-stories will be altered more than others, some characters will be altered sligthly - they might even become a Composite Character, though only minor characters will probably get hit by this for the most part you've just gotta be patient with me whilst I work things out. I do want to perserve as much of SHOT's feel as a I can, whilst making WarGames its own thing, one such way I plan on doing this is keeping WarGames as much of an ensemble piece as I can, with different characters getting centric episodes/chapter on rotation a-la Lost.

As such the first chapter will be Andrea centric, seeing as without Rand we wouldn't be here at all, and I'll upload more snippets of if for feedback as I work on it. That said, whilst I work on chapter one please give me some feedback on who you'd like to see as the main character in chapter 2, try not to vote for your own characters, 'kay?

P.S./FYI - the description of Marisol as an island and it's rough layout is canon after going it with Rand. -nodnod-

[MrMissMrs Random]

Wow... this looks very interesting, Dobby. All I can say is that you made and interesting spin on the idea of territory within Marisol, and I like it. Feels more like a turf war when there are border-lines drawn out.

I'll have other people throw their own ideas in since the first chapter will center around one of my characters.

[Dobi Boshi]

Yeah, it was never made clear who controlled what in terms of turf and I really though that was something that needed cleared up before anything else.

[that fang]

Dobs...what's the Tinkler residence...?

[Dobi Boshi]

Woops, my bad, thought it was Karl Tinkler and not Trenkler. My bad. /Feels like such a dumbass.

[that fang]

You have no idea how hard I just laughed.

[Dobi Boshi]

Good to know my moments of stupidity amuse you so. I went and fixed it anyways, so my post is now edited with the correct spelling. Now let my sulk in shame.

[MrMissMrs Random]

Hurray for things happening once more.

[Dobi Boshi]

Heads up, everyone, when Beans and Uri finish are done with the Ethan/Adam conversation there will be a time skip - so don't go starting anything unless you reckon you can do it quickly or don't mind having it interrupted. You have been warned. /Time-skip post already completely written and ready to go

[Dobi Boshi]

Uh, yo, Beans, Uri, you actually going to have the conversation or do you mind doing it another time so we can time-skip and get the ball rolling again? If you guys want to do it now that's cool, I just wanna see something happen if it's going to happen now, y'know? Sorry if this comes off as kind of dickish, bugging you to post and all, but I just want to get things moving again.

[Dobi Boshi]

Fuck it. Dobi used Revive!

Time to breath some fresh life into this thing, and hopefully actually get somewhere with this. The major even that will be joining down over the next couple dozen pages is the mysterious third party working for Bakura hitting the families where it hurts more than anywhere else: their wallets.

That's right, bank heist! Or rather, several bank heists; the idea being our third party hope to force a conflict of desperation by hitting not only their wallets directly, but the major resource points of the families one after the other and force the families to compete much more fiercely for what is left in the wake of the devastation caused by our third party.

This ensuing conflict will spark the war between the families again whilst our third party builds up their own power base and solidifies what they already have, with the next major event in the RP's plan quickly following after the war beginning once more.

Sound alright with you guys?

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