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Cape City

Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 9:53 pm
by Batgirl III
Image
CAPE CITY
THE CITY AT A GLANCE
By Clara Kennedy, Daily Navigator Staff


Although the city charter officially names it the City of Cape May, our hometown is known worldwide as "Cape City." This city is one that, by the numbers, stands equal to many other great metropolises.

Cape City is a located at the southern tip of the Cape May Peninsula in New Jersey, where the Delaware Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean. In the 18th and 19th Centuries, it was one of the country's most popular vacation resort destinations, since the Second World War, however, it has grown into a large and thriving modern city.

POPULATION FACTS
Population: 9,168,000
Population Growth: Sustained 3.5% annual growth since 2000
Median Income per Household: $38,334.20
Unemployment: 5.2%
Percentage Living in Poverty: 8.4%

CLIMATE
Average Yearly Temperature: 63.0° F (17.2° C)
Summer Highs: upper 60s to mid 80s° F
Winter Lows: lower 20s to mid 30s° F
Average Winter Wind Chill: –10° F (-23.4° C)
Average Monthly Rainfall: 3.5 inches (8.9 cm)
Average Yearly Snowfall: 12 inches (30.5 cm)

GEOGRAPHY
Size: 251 square miles, divided into seven boroughs: Clarkston, Wayne Heights, Prince's Landing, Curry Park, Jonesboro, West Allen, and New Jordan.
Highest Point: Blake Broadcasting Building antenna (1,450 feet)
Lowest Point: Sea level, Atlantic Ocean
Time Zone: Eastern, DST.

EDUCATION
Public and Private Schools: 1,453 (including elementary, middle, and high schools in all boroughs). School year usually begins in late August and lasts until early June.
College and Universities: Roughly 80 institutes of high learning, including Pym University Extension (PUE), Rodgers Military Academy (RMA), Banner University (BU), Stark Institute of Technology (SOT), the Van Dyne Conservatory, and four campuses of the Cape May Community College system (CMCC or C4) located in each region of the city (north, south, east, and west).
• The United States Coast Guard Training Center Cape May, New Jersey is the nation's only Coast Guard Recruit Training Center.
• RMA, BU, and SIT, offer bachelor and graduate degrees in various disciplines (with an emphasis on STEM programs at SIT and medicine at BU); PUE offers only bachelors programs, graduate students must enroll at its main campus; the CMCC offers associate's degrees in a wide range of subjects as well as certification for multiple professions; the Van Dyne Conservatory is famed for both its small size and the exclusivity of it arts programs.

COMMERCE & INDUSTRY
Major Employers of Cape City
• Cartwright Technology, Inc. (all subsidiaries and holdings): 340,00 employees
• Cape May Naval Shipyard: 8,108 employees
• Blake Broadcasting (all holdings): 1,136 employees
• St. Anne's Hospital: 900 employees
• Daily Navigator (editorial and production): 670 employees

CRIME
Roughly 1 in 80,000 people will encounter a person-on-person criminal act in Cape City. The statistics change to 1 in 20,000 when counting citizens who witness "super-villain crime," based on the more visible nature of metahuman crime. Although crime statistics have risen slightly in the past year, due to economic stumbles, Cape City's crime rate had remained steady for the six years before that, a tribute to the CMPD, Community Watch programs, and civic pride.

Re: Cape City

Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2018 11:05 pm
by Batgirl III
HISTORY OF CAPE CITY
By Perry P. Parsons, Editor-in-Chief Daily Navigator

The original town was named for 1620 Dutch captain named Cornelius Jacobsen Mey who explored and charted the area between 1611–1614, and established a claim for the province of New Netherland. It was later settled by New Englanders from the New Haven Colony. What is now the city of Cape May was originally formed as the borough of Cape Island by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 8, 1848, from portions of Lower Township. It was reincorporated as Cape Island city on March 10, 1851, then it became Cape May City as of March 9, 1869, and shortly after World War I, it was expanded to its present borders in 1918. Over 90% of Cape May County is now part of "Cape City."

The process of the city Cape May's annexation of it's surrounding settlements actually began in 1916, during World War I. A lot of details would be ironed out over the next two decades: the creation of assorted "filler" neighborhoods between formerly independent cities, assorted labor disputes, social unrest, and the imposition of Prohibition.

That last act led to the other "great consolidation" in Cape City of the period: the unification of organized crime families, and the mafia in particular, then coming into prominence in the city's underworld.

Durante Bianchi allied his family with the Prosecco and Cortesse organizations in 1920 in order to use Prohibition to cement a stranglehold on Cape City's "underground" economy. In opposition to Bianchi's three-family alliance were the Neri and the Sangiovese. This ongoing battle went hot and cold over the next decade and was not to be decided until the mid 1930s.

Then there was the Crash of 1929 to deal with. The growth of numerous independent small towns into a modern metropolis would have faltered and likely failed if not for the arrival of the automobile.

The Cartwright Family had always been prominent in the region, since settling there in the mid 1700s. By the early 20th Century the family industry had grown from a simple boatwright's shack alongside the harbor into a large and diverse industrial concern. Calvin Cartwright managed to diversify the family holdings, growing the real estate empire into Cartwright Shipping's rail transportation operation. This triggered the creation of Cape Railworks and the building of Kirby Central Terminal. Since Cape May was still early in its design and layout phase, for the most part, Calvin Cartwright was able to ensure the metropolis was designed to accommodate the motorcar, avoiding many of the transitional problems that would plague New York City or Chicago. Calvin Cartwright also brokered important overseas shipping contracts with Henry Ford, giving him almost exclusive rights to move Ford's new automobiles to Europe. By the time of his death at age 63, Calvin Cartwright handed off one of the few rising stars of American commerce to his son, Kenneth Cartwright, Sr.

Meanwhile, other power struggles loomed for Cape City, America, and the world.

THE GOLDEN AGE: The Greatest Generation
The Second World War finally ended the Depression, in Cape City as elsewhere. While the nations of Earth took up arms, Cape City geared up in a spectacular fashion.

In industry, the Cartwrights, as usual, led the way forward in its transition to a war footing. Led by Kenneth Cartwright, Sr., aided by his son of Kenneth Cartwright Jr., the Cartwrights had begun transitioning their shipbuilding operations to meet navy needs, their textile industries into creating canvas, and even their small pharmaceuticals laboratory had begun to stockpile battlefield basics instead of pursuing research and development, several months before Washington DC announced the lend lease program. "Junior Cartwright" had also begun championing responsible industrialism nearly fifty years before modern terms such as "green funds" or "ethical investment" would come into vogue. Cartwright Industries' aviation, textile, chemical, and shipbuilding operations were becoming vital parts of American defense.

In 1940, amongst the slums and docks along Delaware Bay, the silver and blue armored hero known as the invincible Industrialist served as an inspiration to countless young boys, many of who were orphans. Jubilant to have a hero, Cape City welcomed Industrialist with open arms — exactly the kind of treatment he didn't want. According to the only interview he ever gave, with a young Daily Navigator cub reporter Perry P. Parsons, the Industrialist only wanted to keep the streets as safe as he could and avoid any kind of glory or attention.

The year 1935 had seen the debut of the heroine Astarte, but by 1941 It was clear that whomever she was behind her mask, she made her home in Cape City. Today we know that this Astarte was the first publicly recognized heroine of several "light bringers" who would hail from Earth in the Twentieth Century. She was a co-founder of the first incarnation of the Liberty Alliance of America.

The first Astarte was widely considered to be one of the lynchpins of the Liberty Alliance, and perceived, quite rightly, as one of its great powerhouses. Her efforts helped keep Cape City safe from everything from Bundist Fifth-Columnists and Nazi raids to super criminals such as Eclipser and Chlorofoe.

Astarte also played a role as one of the senior members of the Liberty Alliance Worldwide, an organization that came to serve as an umbrella group of all the Allied Nations' "mystery men" during the War. Although most of the action was confined to the European Theatre, the Liberty Alliance Worldwide fought at least four major battles against various adversaries in the vicinity of Delaware Bay. Most famously, in 1942, Captain Übermensch led a battalion of soldiers into the city in an attempt to kidnap the visiting Alan Turning — only to be thwarted by Astarte, Tower of London, and the Industrialist. In 1943, Wülfpack and his Super U-Boat sought to mine Delaware Bay, a counter assault led by Ultra-Marine and his sister Aqua-Marine, destroyed the submarine and the "North Atlantic Butcher" spent the remainder of the war an Allied POW. Several minor skirmishes between heroes and adversaries were fought in the area, all of them ending, thankfully, in victories for the Liberty Alliance.

THE SILVER AGE: A Generation Lost
Following World War II, Cape City saw growth like never before. A solid economy, coupled with the euphoria of the war being over, pushed nearly every citizen of Cape City towards more: greater strides in science were made, greater social reforms took place, and Cape City finally received the respect of New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and it's other contemporaries. But this brief boom is now remembered as the last days of the Golden Age.

Today several events from postwar era can unfortunately be seen as a harbinger of the darker times ahead. The best known of these being the Romeo Riots of 1945, triggered by returning American troops resentful of recent Italian American immigrants who had refused to serve. The resentments fostered by police and city officials as a result, first, of looking the other way during the riots and, later, conducting mass arrests of Italian American victims of those attacks would taint the relationship between the people and their government for decades. The fire of 1957 that nearly destroyed all of Clarkston, the origins of which remain unknown, was another black mark on the era. Sadder still, was the loss of our heroes. There were no recorded sightings of the Industrialist after V-J Day, Tower of London and the other European mystery men returned to their homes after the war, Ultra-Marine and Aqua-Marine returned to Atlantis for good in 1946, and finally Astarte left Earth to permanently return to space in 1951.

As bad as these blows to the city's morale might have been, it was only aggravated when the economy began to falter. For the first time in its history, Cape City was plagued by massive unemployment in the wake of the war, thanks both to demilitarization and the death of "Junior Cartwright" leaving the city's largest employer rudderless.

Also troubling was that the old criminal empires of Cape City once again opened for business. The Bianchi and Neri mobs had gained an unhealthy amount of "public goodwill" due to the police mishandling of the Romeo Riots and by their wartime focus on "helping" people around the most restrictive of wartime rationing via the Black Market. In the post war years they gained considerable high-tech expertise because of all the scientific talent from Europe finding new homes in North America. This was evidenced by the increase of so-called "science criminals," such as Dr. Oliva A. Keller, the second Chlorofoe.

Not even the 1947 debut of the Golem could reverse the decay settling in. The founding of the mafia's Cape Commission occurred in 1949. This was designed to mediate disputes between what now numbered seven mod families within the greater Cape May County. The Cape Commission would, however, be answerable to La Commissione in New York City, just as were the other mafia networks in America. (Although rumors persist that the mafia's anti-superhero expertise — the so called Cape Killers — is firmly controlled by the Cape City families.)

Not even the decade long revival of the "mystery man" in the person of new heroes like Vesper and Sundown, seemed to make a real dent in the corruption. That revival ended in a bloody tragedy when Sundown was murdered in his own Wayne Heights home by Jonathan Smith, the Eclipser. This was the first of a series of murders targeting Sundown and his team of young heroes — The Liberty Club — in their civilian identities. Eclipser blamed Sundown and his team mates for the "corruption" of his daughter, as Vesper had betrayed him to the authorities during the war. Eclipser would go on to murder five of the seven members of the Liberty Club, with only Golem and Vesper escaping the massacre dubbed the Twilight of the Superheroes.

Another part of the problem, some historians theorize, was the role of the late Junior Cartwright's son, Christopher Cartwright, in the family empire. Despite family tradition, he simply wasn't interested in the "business of business" as his forefathers had been. He preferred to spend his days in charitable medical relief work in the Caribbean islands, helping wherever he could.

The communist overthrow of the Cuban government, however, cut the young man's charitable crusade short. The lone survivor of a guerrilla attack on a rural missionary hospital, Cartwright was ransomed back by the communists for an undisclosed sum paid by the Cartwright Technology board of directors.

Upon his return, Christopher threw himself into medical studies with a vengeance. Graduating from Banner University Medical School with honors. He also through himself into the family business and social scene with the same dedication. As a result, he not only advanced the family's fortunes and proved a highly component surgeon... But gained a wife as well in Catherine "Kitty" Capshaw, the daughter of another prominent industrialist family, based in New Jordan. Their marriage produced a son, Clark Cartwright, whom everyone expected to continue the family pattern.

It was not to be. One July night shortly after Clark's ninth birthday, the Cartwright's went into Wayne Heights to catch a movie, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, at the Sovereign Theatre, then as now devoted to the classics. Upon its conclusion, the Cartwright's decided to walk to their car rather than calling for their chauffeur. By all accounts, Christopher had argued against it, but gave in to the wishes of his wife and son.

A thief accosted them, demanding their money and jewelry. In the process of taking the jewelry from Kitty Cartwright, he shot and killed her. Turning the gun on Christopher Cartwright, his shot went wide and killed young Clark. The sole survivor, Christopher Cartwright retreated from public view, becoming one of the most notorious and eccentric people in Cape City society.

Already in a downward slope after the murder of Sundown, the Cartwright shooting pushed Wayne Heights off the cliff, falling into absolute disrepute, earning the nickname "Pain Hill." The long standing saying about the neighborhood since the Cartwright murder is that "hope doesn't live long on Pain Hill." Still, there are those who try to prove the saying wrong — with some success.

Eventually, things would begin to change for Cape City. As during the Second World War, the reasons for the good tidings would come from the skies and wear a cape.

THE BRONZE AGE: A New Generation
Everyone remembers where they were when they first heard the name Exemplar and saw the picture of the Samaritan of Steel leaping fourteen stories out of the crowd to effortlessly — and gently — catch the falling infant, Jennifer Holmes, as she fell from the burning Blake Tower. It was, perhaps, one of the most remarkable events in human history.

The city went Exemplar-crazy after that, with his picture (or at least his silhouette against the skyline) appearing on the front page of every East Coast newspaper for nearly a month. When the ground breaking first interview with Exemplar was published in the Daily Navigator (the professional journalism debut of reporter Clara Kennedy), the city came alive with joy, welcoming the new hero. Shown in the interview to be a kind, gentle man, with tremendous power and unshakable morals, the city realized that it had a new hero. Exemplar is said to have ushered in a new age of heroes, unmatched since the heady days of the Liberty Alliance.

Exemplar's arrival in Cape City apparently wasn't a source of awe and wonder for everyone. As one of his first acts as a Special Deputy of the Cape May County Sheriff's Department, Exemplar arrested Christopher Cartwright for public endangerment and aiding and abetting known felons. All charges against the industrial magnate were later dropped, but according to some, laid the groundwork for a power struggle between the two for control of Cape City.

Under Exemplar's protection, Cape City continued to thrive and prosper, with life in the city becoming more exciting with the added presence of the People's Paragon.

Life in Cape City continued on as it had for forty years, with mergers, acquisitions, and new ideas responsible for the ever changing skyline. After Exemplar made Cape City his home, the city's population surged by nearly twenty percent in only two years, attributed by many as being a case of "Exemplar Fever." Exemplar's naysayers, however, point to the explosive reemergence of Cartwright Technology at this time leading to the city's low joblessness rate and swelling tax rolls.

While Christopher Cartwright and his family's corporation continues to pump the financial lifeblood into the city, Christopher's time as the city's favorite son was clearly over. His reputation darkened by his eccentricity after his family's death and the cloud over him after his arrest by Exemplar, when he finally succumbed to pancreatic cancer the story didn't even make the front pages of even Cape City's local newspapers. But the saga of the Cartwrights wouldn't end with him.

Alexander Albright, in his youth, is said to have combined the best qualities of Nikolai Tesla and John D. Rockefeller, with the charisma — and stunning good looks — of a young Cary Grant. Although not as world-famous as the first appearance of Exemplar, almost anyone of a certain age living in Cape City can tell you about the day they spent gathered around their television sets to watch the 22-year old from West Allen complete his round-the-world, nonstop flight in the experimental solar-powered XA-01, an experimental plane of his own design. What no one knew at the time —including Alexander himself — was that he was a distant cousin of Christopher Cartwright. Thus, he was the sole inheritor of the Cartwright fortune, estates, and controlling shares of the family company. At only twenty-three years of age, the charismatic young inventor was instantly one of the richest men in the world.

With this overnight financial security, Albright made headlines when he addressed Cape City from the steps of City Hall, swearing that he would never allow his company to spend a single cent outside the city's borders unless matched by a dollar spent in the city. This announcement was just what the ailing city needed. With the prospects of high-tech jobs, enrollment in all of Cape City's colleges and universities skyrocketed, and smaller businesses were once again attracted to the city, eager to be a part of Albright's success. Or hoping, like Lantern Labs, to attract skilled high-tech workers to their own facilities.

Albright bought companies at a feverish lace, revitalizing most of them for the better. Before he was 30, Albright owned diversified holdings in media communications (AllCom), banking (AllFine and AllCredit), petroleum (AllFuels), research (AllBot and Advanced Life Laboratories), and of course the extensive Cartwright holdings in transportation and manufacturing.

Making good on his promise to keep his money in Cape City, Albright became the city's leading philanthropist, founding an astonishing fifty-two different scholarship programs as well as building ten libraries in some of the cities poorest neighborhoods. There was rarely a week when Albright's picture wasn't on the front page of the Daily Navigator, opening a new school, announcing a new foundation, or awarding a scholarship.

Cape City had found its second new hero, and despite the occasional antitrust probe or successfully defended legal action, Albright was the city's savior, returning it to a position of greatness. For the next decade, Cape City grew and prospered. It was estimated that nearly two-thirds of Cape City's population, at one point in their life, will have worked directly or indirectly for Alexander Albright. As the young wunderkind grew into a respected adult, he became known as the kindly but stern "Uncle Al" to the people of the city. Yet despite this acclaim and adulation, Albright never chose to run for mayor, an election he would have won in a landslide.

Around the same time Exemplar began making himself known, other heroes began to emerge. The mysterious vigilante, Vesper, began to make herself a known and feared threat to Cape City's underworld. Casting a shadow that would stretch from "Pain Hill" to Prince's Landing. Soon after Vesper reappeared, she apparently took on a junior partner, a young girl going by the name Eventide. Other costumes adventurers followed on their heels, including Stormbringer, Rundown, and the return of the Golem.

The revival of the Liberty Alliance, complete with several their core members from the war years —including the original Astarte, Tower of London, and Ultra-Marine — and subsequent reconstruction of their headquarters in Cape City's midtown certainly added to the optimism of those years.

THE DARK AGE: A Generation Divided
The string of disasters that was the 1990s started, near as anyone can tell, shortly after the First Terminus Crisis. The venerable Liberty Alliance of America was disbanded, in favor of an expanded Liberty Alliance Worldwide, now with four bureaus each responsible for a hemisphere: Liberty Alliance East (Bejing), Liberty Alliance North (Rome), Liberty Alliance South (Addis Ababa), and Liberty Alliance West (Washington DC). The Liberty Alliance's presence in Cape City had been taken by many as a sign of the city's continuing good fortune. The move did a great deal of harm to public morale.

The next source of major trouble came in 1993, with the arrival of the darkly beautiful, Phobos. The mad woman engineered a mass breakout from the Castle Valley Super-Max Prison, located in Delaware Bay. Soon afterwards, she was seen tossing an apparently unconscious Astarte to the asphalt of Lane Street from atop the Daily Navigator building during the height evening business. However, the light-bringer apparently disappeared without a trace from the site of her fall, but soon returned with a new armored, masked costume and a new intensity that bordered on viciousness.

This viciousness escalated as she apprehended each of the Castle Valley escapees, to the point where one of the more recent inmates, Kyle Robinson, the super-thief known by the alias Mad Cat, was allegedly left to die in a drainage ditch, bleeding out from a severed leg. Some sort of reevaluation of her methods must have followed, since after that battle, Astarte operated with a far less erratic personality. Less violence, more soundness of strategy and tactics, more attention to detail work... And another new costume, albeit still masked, but that hearkened back to her classic World War II appearance.

The biggest change the cityscape saw was 1995's battle between Exemplar and the grotesquely muscled creature dubbed Revelation. As later verified by satellite images, the creature burrowed to the surface from an underground lair beneath the Sahara. After traveling across North Africa and walking across the Atlantic sea bed, nearly destroying the Liberty Alliance North and West, Revelation attacked Exemplar, engaging him in a battle that took him from eastern Virginia, near Williamsburg, all the way to the heart of Cape City.

The battle followed a path from the southern borough of Prince's Landing, across West Allen, and northward, roughly to the center of Clarkston, creating a roughly one-half-mile-wide path of destruction as it went, due to the fury of the combatants. Tragically, as witnessed by billions around the globe on television, the battle ended with both warriors apparently dead.

Exemplar's comrades in arms rebuilt the entire destroyed portion of the city shortly after Exemplar's funeral. This effort rebuilt the city block surrounding the spot where Exemplar made his final stand, as a memorial: Exemplar Square.

Cape City would have fallen even further into despair at the loss of Exemplar, if one of the most mysterious members of the Liberty Alliance not shocked the world by unmasking before delivering his eulogy. The longtime ally of Exemplar and a founding member of the Liberty Alliance, the Futurist, had secretly been Christopher Cartwright!

He had faked his death and handed control of his family business to Alexander Albright — his clone — in order to spare his city from his bad reputation. But from that day forward, following Exemplar's example, he no longer wanted to be a masked mystery man.

Following Cartwright's "return to the living," Cape City's spirit again soared, and rebuilding started increased dramatically, along with new business startups, especially in the technology sector.

THE IRON AGE: Generation X
During the Terminus Crisis, when the omnicidal Destroyer of Worlds, Omega, attempted to destroy our very universe. The Libery Alliance managed to thwart his schemes, but in the wake of the crisis Liberty Alliance of America was disbanded, in favor of an expanded Liberty Alliance Worldwide. Then came Astarte's period of darkness and the death of Exemplar... The Nineties were a dark time for Cape City. But things would turn around, as the so often did.

During the Terminus Crisis, four youths from New York City were exposed to the strange dimensional energies of Omega's devices, gaining fantastic abilities and coming together to form the Young Defenders.

Re: Cape City

Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2018 1:36 am
by MacynSnow
Good set-up so far.I noticed you used a lot of Freedom City/DC references and events(just using your names),was it intentional or Accidental?

Re: Cape City

Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2018 1:40 am
by Batgirl III
MacynSnow wrote: Mon Apr 23, 2018 1:36 am Good set-up so far.I noticed you used a lot of Freedom City/DC references and events(just using your names),was it intentional or Accidental?
Very, very, very intentional and in no way meant to be hidden.

Re: Cape City

Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2018 6:10 am
by Ken
Batgirl III wrote: Sun Apr 22, 2018 9:53 pmStark Institute of Technology (SOT)
Typo? Or comment on one of Iron Man's health concerns?

Re: Cape City

Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2018 3:24 pm
by Batgirl III
Ken wrote: Mon Apr 23, 2018 6:10 am
Batgirl III wrote: Sun Apr 22, 2018 9:53 pmStark Institute of Technology (SOT)
Typo? Or comment on one of Iron Man's health concerns?
Typo. Hilarious typo.

Re: Cape City

Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 2:22 am
by Batgirl III
CAPE CITY
PERSONS OF NOTE
By Clara Kennedy, Daily Navigator Staff


Organized Crime
  • The Bianchi Family
  • The Cortesse Family
  • The Prosecco Family
  • The Neri Family
  • The Sangiovese Family
Important Normal People Super-Heroes Super-Villains

Re: Cape City

Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 6:30 am
by Ken
I take it the enemies of the Liberty Alliance Worldwide tend to end up like Bobby Fuller Four?
















They fought the L.A.W. and the L.A.W. won.

Re: Cape City

Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 7:44 am
by Woodclaw
Batgirl III wrote: Fri Apr 27, 2018 2:22 am CAPE CITY
PERSONS OF NOTE
By Clara Kennedy, Daily Navigator Staff


Organized Crime
  • The Bianchi Family
  • The Cortesse Family
  • The Prosecco Family
  • The Neri Family
  • The Sangiovese Family
  • The Cape Killers
Vaguely into wines I see.

Re: Cape City

Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 3:29 pm
by Batgirl III
Names for groups of NPCs that are (a) important enough that I need to reference them a lot, but are also (b) not important enough for me to remember that well are tricky for me. I’m just not that good at remembering names, even in my real life. So I like to adopt themes for NPC groups.

When I ran a space-opera game, the names of all the major NPCs on the ship were based on major universities and musicians: Captain Simon Harvard, Commander Arthur Yale, Lt. Daryl Brown, Lt. John Dartmouth, En. Karen Penn, and En. Richard Cornell...

When I ran a teenagers-investigating-supernatural game, the names of all the teachers at their high school were the first names of Star Trek actors paired with the last name of Star Gate SG-1 actors: William Anderson, Leonard Shanks, Nichelle Tapping, DeForest Judge...

So Cape City gets mafia crime families named for types of wine, and yes, the red wines used to be at war with the white wines.

Re: Cape City

Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 4:07 pm
by Ken
Until told otherwise, I'm going to assume the Neri and Sangiovese families are more in Wayne Heights, Clarkston, and Joneboro, since they;re more inland.

The Bianchi, Cortesse, and Prosecco Families go more with the fish.

Re: Cape City

Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 9:28 pm
by Batgirl III
CAPE CITY MAFIA

Founded: Late 19th century
Territory: Cape City, New Jersey, and other parts of the United States.
Ethnicity: Full members (made men) are of Italian descent, other criminals of any ethnicity are employed as "associates."
Membership (Est.): Around 1000 members and associates.
Criminal Activities: Racketeering, smuggling, fraud, counterfeiting, robbery, bribery, assault, money laundering, illegal gambling, loan sharking, weapons trafficking, extortion, fencing, murder, prostitution, pornography, and theft.
Allies: New York Mafia, Sicilian Mafia, various independent Italian-American street gangs and crime groups (such as Pain Hill Boys), Jewish Mafia, Corsican Mafia, occasionally the Russian Mafia, various gangs and organized crime groups.
Rivals: Various gangs and organized crime groups, historically rivals of the Irish Mob, occasionally the Russian Mafia.

Known by various names such as the Mafia, the Mob, or La Cosa Nostra the organized crime syndicates who operate in Cape City primary activities are protection racketeering, arbitration of disputes between criminals, and the organizing of other illegal activity. The mafia often engages directly in secondary activities such as gambling, loan sharking, weapons-trafficking, prostitution, and fraud.

Cape City's mafia is organized, broadly, into "five families," although not ever member of the crime family is an actual blood relative, although many are, and some mafioso are related to two or more families. In rare cases, someone may even be related to one family by blood, but work for another.

In the 1920s, the Bianchi Family allied with with the Prosecco and Cortesse Families in in order to use Prohibition to cement a stranglehold on Cape City's underground economy. In opposition to the Bianchi "triple alliance" were the Neri and Sangiovese Families. This ongoing battle went hot and cold over the next decade and was not to be decided until the mid 1930s.

The mafia families formed the Cape Commission in 1949. Designed to mediate disputes between what now numbered seven mob families within the greater Cape May County. The Cape Commission would, however, be answerable to La Commissione in New York City, just as were the other mafia networks in America.

Image

The Boss or Don is the undisputed leader of a family; his Consigliere is a counselor and adviser to the boss. The consigliere is a trusted friend and confidant, usually a semi-retired capo with decades of experience, and essentially acts as the Number 3 man in the family. Every family also has an Underboss, a powerful second in command, the underboss is often a member of the boss's immediate family, such as a son who is being groomed to one day take over the family business. Even if he is not a direct relative, the underboss is almost always treated as the presumptive heir. The Boss of Bosses is not only the undisputed leader of his own family, but seen as a "first among equals" of all the other bosses.

Capo describes a ranking made member of a family who leads a crew of soldiers. A capo is similar to a military captain who commands soldiers. Capo are given a great deal of autonomy and are only rarely given direct orders from the boss or underboss.

A Soldier, also known as a "made man," are the lowest members of the crime family, but still command respect in the organization. To become made, soldiers are required to take an oath of silence, called omerta. In some families, another requirement is that candidate commit a murder. Experienced soldiers may be allowed to form their own crews, although still under the authority of their capo, this is seen as an important step towards promotion.

Lastly, are the Associates, individuals who are part of a crew but have not been made (and may never be made). Associates remit a large share of their illegal proceeds to their direct made superior.

Although each of the families deals in all manner of illicit activity, they have each developed specialties over the years that they are either most closely associated with or that they control the largest "market share" of within Cape City: Bianchi (Protection Rackets/Insurance Fraud), Cortesse (Weapons Trafficking), Prosecco (Money Laundering/Loan Sharking), Neri (Illegal Gambling/Extortion), and Sangiovese (Prostitution/Human Trafficking/Pornography).

Organization
  • The Bianchi Family
  • Boss of Bosses: Mario Bianchi, Sr. ("The Godfather")
  • Underboss: Mario Bianchi, Jr. ("Junior")
  • Consigliere: Alfredo Bianchi ("The Bishop")
  • Capo: Enrico De Nicola
  • Capo: Luigi Bianchi
  • Capo: Giovanni De Nicola
  • Capo: Antonio Bianchi ("Fat Tony")
  • Capo: Giuseppe Bianchi ("Joey B")
  • Capo: Giuseppe Cortesse ("Joey C")
  • Capo: Sergio Cortesse
  • The Cortesse Family
  • Boss: Giovanni Cortesse
  • Underboss: Sandro Cortesse
  • Consigliere: Fancesco Cossiga
  • Capo: Oscar Luigi Prosecco
  • Capo: Carlo Cortesse
  • The Prosecco Family
  • Boss: Cesare Prosecco, II ("Big Caesar")
  • Underboss: Cesare Prosecco, III ("Little Caesar")
  • Consigliere: Pietro Grasso
  • Capo: Umberto Prosecco
  • Capo: Angelo Prosecco
  • Capo: Roberto Prosecco
  • Capo: Nereo Prosecco
  • Capo: Antonio Prosecco
  • The Neri Family
  • Boss: Nereo Neri ("Emperor Nero")
  • Underboss: Massimo Neri
  • Consigliere: Paolo Costa
  • Capo: Giorgio Cortesse
  • Capo: Vittorio Bianchi ("Big Vic")
  • Capo: Luigi Neri
  • Capo: Bruno Neri
  • Capo: Goffredo Neri
  • Capo: Alfredo Sangiovese
  • The Sangiovese Family
  • Boss: Raffaele Sangiovese ("The Priest")
  • Underboss: Renato Sangiovese
  • Consigliere: Marco Sangiovese
  • Capo: Mario Sangiovese
  • Capo: Antonio Sangiovese
  • Capo: Michael Bianchi
  • Capo: Enrico Cortesse

Re: Cape City

Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:25 pm
by MacynSnow
The guy thst makes me most intrested is the called "The Priest"....... ;)

Re: Cape City

Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:42 pm
by Ken
MacynSnow wrote: Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:25 pm The guy thst makes me most intrested is the called "The Priest"....... ;)
Presumably he's a member of the Sangiovese family, and a member of the Roman Catholic clergy. This would put him in a position where he'd largely be above suspicion, and be able to talk to his capos under the 'protection' of the confessional.

Re: Cape City

Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 10:54 pm
by Batgirl III
Nope, it’s just a nickname, at least as far as I’ve thought about it. Feel free to use him as such if you want. I just thought that Alfredo “The Bishop” Bianchi and Raffaele “The Preist” Sangiovese sounded like cool mob nicknames. Especially given the complex way that the Catholic faith and mafia traditions interweave with each other.

I was kinda inspired too by the way the SAMCRO biker gang on Sons of Anarchy refer to their regular meetings as “going to church.” I imagine similar opportunities for cool sounding innuendo with these mob bosses.

Hmm, now I’m wondering why Cape City doesn’t have a biker gang...