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Old 03-16-2016, 10:01 PM   #54
Icelander
 
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Some background on the adventures and PCs

Two out of three PCs are extremely out of place in Aroostook County, Maine. One of them, Frank Corelli, is actually pretty typical of the East Coast tourists who come to Maine to hike and hunt, in that he's an outdoor enthusiast who went hunting every deer season growing up in New Jersey and has been working in Massachusetts the past five years, usually taking his vacation in the form of some nature hike or hunting trip.

The PCs are taking Dr. Samuel Chen, a professor of psychology at NYU and a part-time behavioural analyst for the FBI, to Aroostook County to do a day or two of pointless dot-the-i type interviews to provide material for whatever lead investigator in BSU ends up writing a book about a serial killer they caught up in New York and the press dubbed the 'Werewolf of the Village'. The PCs are increasingly coming to believe that Dr. Chen is planning such a book of his own.

Victor Jude Dufresne, the suspect in the nineteen homicides that fall under the purview of the serial killer task force that comprises the FBI, US Marshals, NYSP, NJSP, ISP, MSP, NYPD, JCPD, PAPD, CPD and BPD, is already in NYPD custody. Dufresne has told various investigators about five different lies about his childhood and family, not to mention friends and acquintances. He's coyly averred that there might be other murders and alleges that he knows about murders committed by a third party. Mostly, though, he seems to be lying. The PCs still have to check it out, because in a high-profile murder trial, statements made to investigators that are not followed up might be seized on by press and make someone look bad.

There is also a decent chance that the Dufresne had an accomplice for one or more of the murders that have been linked to him, which means that unearthing more background might actually have a useful investigative function. The odds are heavily against any such accomplice having a connection with a place that the suspect seems to have left six years ago and never returned to, of course, especially as there are several much more likely avenues of investigation in New York or Chicago, where he attended college. But the PCs are not assigned to those avenues of investigation, they are handling the scut work out in the boonies.

Making the local law do it is problematic, mainly because the suspect's father, Abel Dufresne, is the Lieutenant of the Aroostook County Sheriff's Office that is in charge of the area where the people that the PCs need to interview live. As part of a division of responsibility agreement with the Maine State Police, Lt. Dufresne is the most senior lawman anywhere west of Eagle Lake, at least until Canada. And some of the cryptic, self-contradictory statements that the younger Dufresne has been regaling investigators with might be interpreted as suggestions that Lt. Abel Dufresne is complicit and/or guilty of serious crimes.

The PCs are:

Supervisory Special Agent Frank Corelli (age 45)
Tall, spare, silent and dignified. Dominates any room with sheer presence.
B. 5th of March, 1943, Camden, New Jersey.
Frank is old-fashioned, even quaint, in his music, fashion sense and values. He was working himself through college in his home state of New Jersey to earn a teaching degree when Vietnam started heating up. He enlisted in the USMC in 1964 and was sent to OCS midway through his first tour. He did two more tours and ended his war at the rank of Captain in 1971. He also finished his teaching degree and added a second major, of Chemistry, after he got home. After graduating, Corelli joined the FBI, as many of his fellow veterans did. As a Special Agent of the FBI, Corelli has worked in his home state, as well as Minneapolis, New York and Boston, before his current, less than favourable posting to the resident agency in Houlton, Maine at the end of 1988. There are a lot of stories about Frank Corelli in the Bureau, favourable, even heroic ones among the old school who miss the Hoover years, but much less charitable ones among the new guard and politically sensitive prosecutors, some of whom consider him a knuckle-dragging, reactionary dinosaur.
Good with his hands, self-reliant, careful, thoughtful and sensible. Very sure of himself. Doesn't shout or glare, but still manages to be intimidating when necessary. Actually a very good judge of character and even, though he hides it quite well, empathatic at heart.

Special Agent Rene Ledoux (age 34)
Handsome Cajun man with a runner's build and rougish charm. Loud dress sense.
B. 4h of July, 1954, in Thibodaux, Louisiana.
Joined the Army too late to be deployed before the Vietnam War officially ended. High military aptitude test scores and an ear for languages somehow got him a posting to Special Forces, where he managed to spend two years in Southeast Asia even though the Vietnam War was over. Also spent some time on Okinawa during his four-year enlistment. Returned to civilian life to attend Lafayette, graduating with a musicology degree (with minors in modern language and criminology). Joined the FBI in 1981. Spent 1986-1988 working undercover in Miami, where he picked up a taste for white suits, loud shirts and, allegedly, cocaine. No misconduct proven, no official investigation resulted, but a posting to the New England Division resulted. Upon showing up there early Monday morning, was presented with fleet car and a short-term assignment before being assigned a permanent duty within the division, i.e. picking up an academic working for the FBI at Bangor airport and drive him to meet other agents in Houlton.
Good interviewer, more for his charm than any exceptional ability to read witnesses. Amateur cartographer and hiker. Speaks at least four languages and several more dialects. Superb dancer. Keen student of foreign cultures, their cuisine, music, dance and martial arts. Enjoyed exotic foreign military postings and undercover assignments as FBI agent. Is not sure he'll enjoy working in an office.

Special Agent Maria Lucia de la Guerre y Estevez (age 23)
Pretty, perky Valley Girl who tries to dress and act tough, 'street' and 'cool', but is hampered by it being the 80s and her getting her fashion and lifestyle ideas from MTV and never seeing anyone 'street' except from a chauffeured car.
B. 14th of November, 1965, Beverly Hills, California.
Born to a mother from one of the original Spanish families of pre-Mexican California and a successful father who built a minor electronics company into a highly-lucrative government contractor that makes guidance chips for missiles, Maria excelled in every subject and extra-currical activity throughout her youth, but never really had time for friends or leisure. She was a baby ballerina, star gymnast, black-belt akidoka, gifted violin player, math prodigy, and every parents' dream until she went to Stanford (at 16). While she did graduate with awe-inspiring grades as a Master of Computer Science there, she also started her late-onset, quasi-teenage rebellion, albeit one by a Type A personality who doesn't really get rebellion. Instead of experimenting with alcohol, drugs and her sexuality, like normal college students, she decided to join the FBI and interned as a programmer and technician there in the summers while taking her degree.
She's now a new graduate of Quantico, eager to prove herself worthy of being an FBI agent in the field. Despite acing both the academic and physical parts of the curriculum, her new partner, Frank Corelli, clearly does not believe that a Yuppie Valley Girl Daddy's Little Princess, someone who seems to think bad people are people who weren't hugged enough, can actually police anything.
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Last edited by Icelander; 12-13-2016 at 06:29 AM.
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