[MH] Underground Fights in a Tourist Resort in the Caribbean?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

As a criminal justice scholar, corruption in local, state, and federal law enforcement is regrettably common.

My goodness what a rant. Not relevent to the OP though. What you need for buying official disinterest is a bad department and not a department with some bad apples no matter how bad those apples might be. Getting 10% of the police to ignore you isn't worth much.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

What about on a boat?

It would have to be a large cruise ship, but the idea is not impossible.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

This sounds expensive-tailor-made for a re-founded Hell-Fire Club who've discovered that some of their old Satanist rituals now work.

You have a "magic is returning" campaign, and the PCs wondering if they should try to stop that is a part of the genre.

Well, yes.

Though there are some pretty good arguments to be made on the side that areas where magic works better and where powerful magic is worked tend to attract more magic, with a self-reinforcing feedback loop. And that a fairly plausible theory holds that 'magic' is simply a symptom of other realities bleeding into this one and a reality where a small tear became an ever widening rift might not be one where humans could survive.

Individual PCs might have views on having underprivileged people fight each other in bloody no-holds-barred cage matches for the amusement of decadent elites, but unless there are powerful supernatural forces involved, the PCs' Patron, J.R. Kessler, has no particular interest in the matter. His concern is that someone or something, knowingly or unknowingly, is risking all human existence as we recognize it.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by ericthered

So you're playing with two elements that are all over the Caribbean, but usually don't happen in the same places: criminal behavior and resorts. The criminal behavior is usually concentrated in places tourists will never go.

Well, obviously no one wants street crime in the ritzy resort. Designer drugs, artisanal cocaine, high-end prostitution, but none of that low-rent retail sex, drugs and so forth. Strictly elegantly arranged personal service, all through the conscientous concierges.

I want a resort where cartel bosses, Russian oligarchs, British bankers and American tech billionaires might rub shoulders with each other, but where Kingston yardies or Dominican gang-bangers would never be admitted. Where even the security personnel wear expensive suits and only the cleaning staff and potential victims actually come from the local islands.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Trinidad doesn't have much of a resort industry: the vast majority of that is on Tobago, which has a much different feel. If you want a lawless area in Trinidad, I'd recommend Laventille, just east of Port of Spain. That won't feel like a resort, though Port of Spain does get visited on cruises.

I'm definitely not thinking lawless area, more a private resort where the local police hesitate to make trouble without any actual evidence of truly serious crimes. Of course, agents of the managment will recruit sex workers, boxers and MMA fighters from any number of lawless urban areas within easy trafficking distance, but the resort itself should be somewhere ridiculously rich people can feel safe.

Originally Posted by ericthered

If you want a private island, My mind goes to either the Bahamas or the Grenadines, and for what you want the Grenadines (part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines) is probably superior. I'd say that St. Vincent is more out of the way than most of the countries in the Caribbean, but they picked up an international airport in 2017, so that's changing. Before then you had to stop at other Caribbean islands first to get there, by boat or using a turboprop run by a local airline called LIAT that in my head stands for "Late In All Terminals". The Grenadines are pretty separate from st. Vincent,

I do very much want a private island, but it needs to be one with enough traffic and staff turnover so that no one is likely to notice a particularly rapid turnover of some personnel positions.

Ideally somewhere you can transport fighters to the island without going through unnecessary red tape and where not every resort worker necessarily pays taxes or appears on any paperwork.

Originally Posted by ericthered

and I don't think the government is going to complain much if you rent an island and tell them your own private security will handle things, as long as you don't make the news. At which point they'll skip the police and call in the military .

Well, define what will make the news?

As long as no bodies are found at the resort, would rumours in the nearest urban areas of aspiring fighters trqvelling there for exhibitions and not returning home be problematic?

How many disappearances would it take?

Where in the Caribbean could you get a private resort with a reasonably free hand for your resort security, located near rich sources of fighters, girls and other staff, where it would take a long time indeed before rumours among people in poor neighbourhoods led to any effective response?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I do very much want a private island

This website might give you some ideas. Or at least pretty pictures.

https://www.privateislandsonline.com

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Well, obviously no one wants street crime in the ritzy resort. Designer drugs, artisanal cocaine, high-end prostitution, but none of that low-rent retail sex, drugs and so forth. Strictly elegantly arranged personal service, all through the conscientous concierges.

I want a resort where cartel bosses, Russian oligarchs, British bankers and American tech billionaires might rub shoulders with each other, but where Kingston yardies or Dominican gang-bangers would never be admitted. Where even the security personnel wear expensive suits and only the cleaning staff and potential victims actually come from the local islands.


I'm definitely not thinking lawless area, more a private resort where the local police hesitate to make trouble without any actual evidence of truly serious crimes. Of course, agents of the managment will recruit sex workers, boxers and MMA fighters from any number of lawless urban areas within easy trafficking distance, but the resort itself should be somewhere ridiculously rich people can feel safe.

If land-based, I would argue for a continental location, certainly less private, but so much easier to smuggle peoples in. A small private island is much easier to secure, but sneaking "potential victims" in multiple times may prove to be a challenge.

I would suggest a small(er) luxury cruise ship moving around the Caribbean.
Google Caribbean’s Small-Ship Cruise Lines for ideas.
Of course, it would be subject to far more attention from various TLA, especially drug-related agencies.
But the privacy and ease of relocation may trump that concern.
The fight arenas themselves could be onboard, or land-based, rotating between locations at various port of calls.

Another possibility would be to hide behind a cockfighting setup. It is apparently legal in several places, but sufficiently "disturbing" that law enforcement probably wouldn't wonder why a company organize a discrete private event for rich elite late at night ...

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

If land-based, I would argue for a continental location, certainly less private, but so much easier to smuggle peoples in. A small private island is much easier to secure, but sneaking "potential victims" in multiple times may prove to be a challenge.

The location has to be within or at least very close to the Bermuda 'lozenge', i.e. the main Vile Vortex that is the focus of my campaign (see thread on Vile Vortices and Supernatural Threats).

Originally Posted by Celjabba

I would suggest a small(er) luxury cruise ship moving around the Caribbean.
Google Caribbean’s Small-Ship Cruise Lines for ideas.
Of course, it would be subject to far more attention from various TLA, especially drug-related agencies.
But the privacy and ease of relocation may trump that concern.
The fight arenas themselves could be onboard, or land-based, rotating between locations at various port of calls.

Thinking about it, having the location of the fights move around seems less than ideal from an Occultism point of view. It limits the possibilities as to what might be behind this and prevents the accidental or deliberate creation of a Place of Power linked to the goings-on.

Originally Posted by Celjabba

Another possibility would be to hide behind a cockfighting setup. It is apparently legal in several places, but sufficiently "disturbing" that law enforcement probably wouldn't wonder why a company organize a discrete private event for rich elite late at night ...

I'm not opposed to the idea of cockfighting existing there as well, but I imagine that the underground fights would be presented as MMA matches, simply without all the necessary licensing. Bribing law enforcement to overlook violations of athletic licensing is probably significantly easier than to bribe them to overlook actual serious crimes and as long as no actual evidence exists of more serious crimes, there are hopefully jurisdictions in the Caribbean where law enforcement wouldn't dare interfere with the source of a lot of local jobs, not to mention their payoffs.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Icelander

The location has to be within or at least very close to the Bermuda 'lozenge', i.e. the main Vile Vortex that is the focus of my campaign (see thread on Vile Vortices and Supernatural Threats).

How about Maiden Island, Antigua? It's within the lozenge, and has been a private island for quite some time. Its former owner was Allen Stanford, who established a very friendly relationship with Antiguan politicians, until his Ponzi scheme was revealed in 2009. That could well have been done by someone with supernatural information sources.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

How about Maiden Island, Antigua? It's within the lozenge, and has been a private island for quite some time. Its former owner was Allen Stanford, who established a very friendly relationship with Antiguan politicians, until his Ponzi scheme was revealed in 2009. That could well have been done by someone with supernatural information sources.

That's really interesting, especially as Allen Stanford, in his pre-prison life as a Houston-based billionaire with a Caribbean economic citizenship, was probably known to J.R. Kessler.

Stanford could even have defrauded someone or something more dangerous than the typical victim of Ponzi schemes, with Kessler having heard rumours of dubious investors in his businesses before the SEC case. It's always good to have multiple sources of speculation open to players, allowing them to suspect anything from the Russian mob to fae lords.

[Icelander]

By the time PCs become involved, field agents, reporters, contacts and financial analysts will have gathered all sorts of data and occultists, scholars and intelligence analysts will have come up with theories.

Aside from the possibility that actual human criminals are enacting a far-fetched movie premise*, theories about who or what might be behind promising boxers and other fighters disappearing will center on supernatural explanations.

But what kind of monster, myth or legendary entity might be holding bloody fights and why?

What kind of clues would suggest one type over another?

I'll need a wide range of potential culprits for scholarly NPCs to suggest to the PCs, so what might be plausible theories?


*Unlikely in the extreme, as other than the supetnatural, the game is set in the real world. Which means that the vast majority of crime is simple, few criminals are all that clever and there are no elaborate and vast conspiracies, just ordinary people on any side of the law. Bond movies and even supposedly realistic thrillers are generally less plausible than actual supernatural explanations, with their intricate and complex machinations involving an enormous cast of characters.