Americana (3.5e Campaign Setting)/NPCs

Important figures who you should probably know about.

David "Davy" Crockett

The year 62 A.G. is known all across Americana as the year the kobold kingdoms fell. The same day they fell, a man was born to a human settler family in the high Cumberlands. When his parents were killed by bandits, he survived on his own in the wilderness for a week before being found by a branch of the Memphat tribe. He grew up among the Orcs, and at the age of eighteen left the Atlantic Mountains behind to explore the world. On his parting, his adoptive family gave him a final memento of his family--a photograph, which on the back gave him his true name: David Crockett.

The man now widely trumpeted as Americana's Greatest Pioneer owes much to the Natives, and spent a huge amount of time among them following his descent from the mountains. He's ridden with the Buffalo Soldiers, hunted giant northerns with the Minnesote, climbed mountains with the Zebute. Maps made by Davy Crockett helped the Wire Corporation run the first Wire over the Pacific Mountains, and his connections with the tribes of the area helped it get through without constant harassment from the local tribes. It was at this point that he gained a degree of international fame, alongside other "Indian heroes" such as Captain Bill Hickock, Annie Oakley, and Jim Bowie. Crockett enjoyed a brief stint of fame touring the nations around the Plain as something half-removed from a carnival attraction, but that kind of thing sours quickly. He left the circuit in Dallas, just as the Twenty Years War started to creep west over the mountains, and was readily adopted by the northern district of Amarillo as their political representative to the King.

Crockett proved a sound legislator, advocating very strongly for the settlers' rights and particularly on land equality. However, his views on the Natives were something of a poison pill, and he became notorious for voting against anti-Native legislation. On the verge of being thrown out by his own district, which would have been a huge embarrassment for such a storied hero, King Gregorio II offered him a different position: the governorship of El Paso. Crockett accepted. As such, he missed the majority of the fighting of the Twenty Years' War, though he did fight off a Las Vegas mercenary company with only twenty men shortly after arriving--a story that only added to his luster. After that, the war turned against Chicago, and Crockett threw himself into the governorship of the outpost.

Davy Crockett stands six feet square and weighs 169 pounds--even in the twilight of middle age, he remains thin, lean, and muscular, and works hard to maintain his fitness. He refuses to put his men through any training or fitness that he can't do himself, something which has dramatically endeared the El Paso garrison to him, and which isn't hurt by the fact that Crockett is still one of the best fighters in the Watchful Nation. He can shoot with almost pinpoint precision up to the maximum range of a musket, and his knife-work is very good, but his specialty is in moving unseen. Crockett was raised as a hunter and is one of the world's finest trackers, capable of following prey either animal or human for days over El Paso's notoriously rough ground. If he doesn't want to be caught, he won't be--he has a reputation for appearing unwatched-for behind his officers at the most inconvenient times, and while not much of a practical joker has a powerful sense of humor. He's well aware of his reputation, and does his best to play it down in person.

Crockett has a great deal of compassion for the downtrodden and the little guy, which is unpopular among certain El Paso settlers, who would like to exploit Carlsbad Cavern rather than giving every regained inch back to the kobolds. Crockett is insistent on the policy as recorded, and as Military Governor has absolute authority to enforce it, but some of these settlers are powerful people, or know powerful people. There's a fight brewing--but Crockett is, if nothing else, a fighter.

Queen Dorothy I Townsend

“	The problems assailing us will not relent. Neither can I.	”
—Queen Dorothy, following the signing of the Treaty of Missouri.

King Horace I was a very popular monarch, and well aware of it. He led Chicago from the front in all things--policy, organization, the battlefield. This seemed like a sound policy up until the Battle of Peoria, where the King's charge put him out in front of his strong main line and in the sights of the Dallas Outriders.

King Horace's wife had died in childbirth, and as he had only ever had one child, the rulership immediately passed to his young daughter, Dorothy, then seventeen. What little of the Twenty Years War remained was handled by her advisors, and when she was brought out to sign Chicago's surrender at the Treaty of Missouri there were concerns that she would become a figurehead to the notoriously corrupt Cabinet. She surprised the world by debating the terms ferociously with King Gregorio II and High Priest Reyes, securing some dignity and lesser punishments for Chicago and winning the hearts of most of the people over to Chicago's first queen.

Queen Dorothy is of roughly average height, for her age of twenty-two, with curly brown hair and dark brown eyes. Overambitious nobles and foreign diplomats have made the mistake of misinterpreting her thin frame and delicate composure as weakness and fragility; under the blue gown and golden crown is a superstructure of iron. While not precisely an ice queen, Dorothy's manner in grand diplomacy has been described as "uncompromising"--she rules from a position of strength, and is more than willing to apply it to achieve her aims. Her rule has been strict thus far, focusing on justice and rooting out the criminal elements which crippled Chicago in the Twenty Years War. This has not been limited to the general populace, either--several prominent nobles have gone down to Green River for crimes ranging from racketeering to treason, and the Minister of Labor was unceremoniously sent straight from Royal Tower to maximum security only last year. The popular opinion on this is generally positive, but the nobility is not used to having its power challenged and there are uncomfortable rumblings at all levels of society.

Dorothy could care less, of course. From the day she took up the throne her primary focus has been the betterment of life for her populace, no matter the cost required or the methods involved. Underneath the iron shell beats a compassionate heart and a personable spirit, both of which readily come out in private company but which Dorothy has learned to keep subdued in public. Lacking any siblings or relatives closer than aunts and uncles, Dorothy considers the entire population of Chicago to be family to a certain extent, and is ferociously determined to give them the best life possible. If that means stepping on a few nobles' toes, or kicking a few smaller nations around, then so be it. She knows both her own limits and those of her nation precisely, and has been carefully reworking Chicago back into the good graces of the international world--a nation whose strength lies in trade cannot afford isolationism.

Dorothy is not a fighter, personally, though she likely carries a concealed weapon of some sort and is almost certainly wearing pre-War weave armor under her girdle at all times. She also has one of the best and most devoted security forces in the world, the Knights of Chicago, and is unlikely to ever be in a position where a Dallas borderer can put a bayonet through her.

Gardiner Hubbard and Johanna Muir

The International Geographic Society is a bold thrust by Americana's intelligentsia to throw a fence around her wilderness before the industrial juggernaut can swallow the entirety of it up. While her council is chaired by many of Americana's best and brightest, the two stars at her head shine the most brightly--Gardiner Hubbard and Johanna Muir, brought from opposite ends of the world by a love of the wild.

Gardiner Hubbard was born in New York shortly after it was refounded, and showed a knack for technology and finance. He made a small fortune on tech trading, turned it into a larger fortune, and retired young at 50, letting his investments continue to work for him and financing promising young inventors who caught his eye--including his brilliant nephew, Samuel Marconi. But until he was 60 he never ventured further from New York than the Plymouth Territories, until he was invited to speak at a conference in in Chicago, and took the trip via airship. Hubbard spent the entirety of the trip plastered to the windows, marveling at the beauty of the Atlantics beneath him, and the splendor of the Minnesota forests and Great Plain after that. When he returned to New York he immediately began sending out feelers for the foundation of a new society to bring this kind of beauty into the urban jungles by any means necessary--and it was then that he met Johanna Muir.

Muir was born in Detroit, and spent most of her life within the city, working various industrial jobs and developing one of the many sicknesses common to the city. As she was of well-to-do means, her doctor recommended travel as a curative, and she took to it heartily, taking a walking tour with only one companion across the continent to the West Coast. That she made it there itself may defy belief. Along the way, however, she passed through the great Yosemite region in between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Unknowingly, she had stumbled into a Hippidrum holy site, and they took her into custody--only to find the experience had been downright religious for her. Muir joined the Hippidrum and threw herself so heartily into the society she attained the caste of Groovy, one of a very, very small slice of outsiders ever to do so. She moved to Yosemite and was considering what else to do when word came that Hubbard wished to speak with her. He knew her via her family, and wished to propose an arrangement.

Today Hubbard and Muir are the co-chairs of the International Geographic Society, a freshly minted organization dedicated to the charting of the world and the preservation of her natural beauty. Hubbard provides the anchoring within the Nations, and much of the financing, while Muir acts as a sort of liaison to nature and advisor on the natural world. Together the two have managed to get the industrial nations and San Francisco to back a common cause, which is news enough in itself, but how far that backing may go when progress conflicts with romance remains to be seen.

Gardiner Hubbard is not a fighter by any means, but he is quite charismatic and well versed in legal doctrine. Encountered in the battlefield of the courts, he is a fierce opponent, and becoming his enemy will make an enemy of many powerful people--and potentially the Wire Corporation, which would be unheard of. Johanna Muir, by contrast, is a powerful dwarven druid, and though her connections are fewer she is Groovy among the Hippidrum and still has some family in Detroit who are willing to tolerate her talk.

Izithrax, the Copper Lord

The elven retainer sputtered helplessly as the spectacle before him slowed to a halt. "My lord... you cannot juggle dwarves!"

"Why not?" came the reply. From up on the dias, the great copper cast a petulant eye down at his servant. "I'm very careful, and I practice daily."

"I..." the elf found himself quite at a loss for words, and spent a few seconds shuffling about while he formed a coherent argument. "It. Hurts? Them?"

His liege recoiled in alarm. "Preposterous! I never do! And, besides, I always pay them afterwards."

From beneath the great dragon's talons, a gruff dwarven voice croaked out, "Please, help us. The juggling isn't so bad, but his jokes are terrible."

- - - -

There is some debate among scientists today as to whether a dragon can become senile. As no-one is sure exactly how old dragons can get, no-one can really be sure: but a prime argument for it exists at the head of the nation of Yellowstone.

The copper dragon whose shortened "face-name" comes to Izithrax is one of the ten Dragon Lords--rulers, guardians, and guides of the draconic species. They are all of them very old, very rich, and very powerful. Their existence only became known to humanity shortly before the end of the Great War, when it became clear they were orchestrating the show from behind the scenes--and they vanished into the wildernesses with all their followers, as soon as it became clear the game was up.

Neither tooth nor tail was seen of any of them for fifty-five years, until the newly united Alacatrazi pirates suddenly found their slaving and raiding parties being raided from the sky in the waters between Seattle and Portland. Four years later, the attacks stopped--the pirates claimed to have sent a massive unified band into the area and ousted no less than a great copper dragon from the area. For years it was thought to be nothing but talk--and then Chicagoan travelers in the Valle Amarillo ran into a vast group of orcs, goblins, and even some elves working feverishly at a vast construction project. And they were being directed by dragons.

At their head was the Copper Lord, who spent three minutes introducing himself before reluctantly giving the shortened name of Izithrax. He then made a declaration that was possibly the last thing any of them expected to hear, and would typify his actions for the next fifty years--startling and sudden.

“

I have been driven from my estates further west, so since I had nothing else to do I decided to give this nation-state thing a try. Would you be kind enough to let your King know? I'm not sure what the procedure is for this sort of thing...

”

Izithrax is eccentric to say the least--whether age, power, or simple boredom is the cause, none can say. He pursues whatever course takes his fancy, laughing off censure and threat, and he has the money and might to be able to do as he wishes. Like all copper dragons, he appreciates few things more than a good joke and a strong sense of humor--at one point he gifted a kobold and his clan an entire mine of their own for telling him an excellent knock-knock joke. Some would call him mad, and they might well be correct.

However, even if he is mad, Izithrax is no fool. He has sense enough about him to hold numerous dragons in the same place at once--an impressive feat on its own given their solitary nature, to say nothing of the fact that these dragons vary widely in their coloration and intent. He has forged a nation out of tribal elves, clannish goblins, disorganized orcs, and exiled kobolds, and proceeded to make it one of the richest on the continent. He has singlehandedly maneuvered himself and his Native nation into the highest echelons of international diplomacy, earning the somewhat grudging respect of even the most xenophobic human politicians (Dallas' King Gregorio II has referred to him as "the toughest negotiator I've ever had the displeasure of arguing with").

Stats for Izithrax are not to be provided. He is the largest copper dragon in existence, with warm, glossy copper scales colored a patinaed green with age and the turquoise orb-eyes iconic to copper wyrms. His horns stick out backwards, jagged like lightning-bolts, and are prominently featured on the Crest of Yellowstone. Izithrax in combat is a terrifying thing to behold; he has access to all of the tricks available to a copper great wyrm, at the very least, and what else he might have picked up over his centuries of life is known only to him.

Mike Fink

“	"I'm a Three River Roarer! I'm a ring-tailed squealer! I'm a reg'lar screamer from the ol' Meezibee! WHOOP!	”
—Mike Fink, beginning his famous boast to the Keelmen of Chicago

There are all kinds of terrors on the rivers of Americana. Giant northerns. Angry Natives. Angry Natives on giant northerns. Snarling branches, whirlpools, sucking mud, dark things that live in the riverbottom waiting for someone to slip just once. But the worst of the things you can run into on the rivers is human.

Mike Fink was born in a no-horse town on the Oho River, and grew up fighting Natives and sailing ships on the river. By the time he was a teenager he could outshoot any man in two hundred miles and force a loaded keelboat upriver by himself. Disgusted by Detroi encroachment on the wilds and their vicious, careless exploitation, he sailed west, rafting on the three great rivers that form the arteries of the continent--Mizibi, Mobile, St. Louis. He had a reputation as a practical jokester, but it wasn't until he reached Chicago that he ran into people who weren't smart enough to find them funny.

Mike Fink gained fame and notoriety for single-handedly beating thirty-five keelmen in a bare-handed fight on the docks of Chicago, and effectively assuming control of their share of the river trade. Things snowballed from there--despite a lack of formal schooling Fink had a keen sense for getting things done and showed an astonishing lack of inhibitions in the doing. This was fifteen years ago. Today the Mike Fink Steamboat Company controls nearly half the trade on the Three Rivers with a merciless, iron fist.

Mike Fink himself stands 6'3" and weighs 180 pounds of solid muscle, even though he hasn't pushed a keelboat in the last five years. He dresses finely now and wears all the trappings of society, but no-one will ever mistake the man Davy Crockett described as "half horse, half alligator" as a civilized man. Fink hates progress. He admires the Natives to some extent, but more than that he hates how progress brings chains to the wild world he loves, whether formal ones like laws or informal ones like "common decency" and "fair play". Fink could be lightly described as a bully and more accurately as a human monster; he has almost no moral inhibitions about getting ahead and will do anything he has to to advance his cause, whatever that is. Sometimes he'll even do those things for fun--he's been known to have his wife hold a tin cup on her head and between her legs, and shoot it out to show off his marksmanship. He's never hit her yet, to be fair.

Hundreds of men have tried to kill Mike Fink. He's still standing. He's unstoppable in hand-to-hand combat, shrugs off pain like a duck shrugs off water, is a crack shot with any gun you put in his hands, and is all too much of an expert in skewing the odds in his favor. This might be forgivable if he didn't find it all so damn funny. Anyone looking to make waves on the rivers is likely to run afoul of Mike Fink, and woe betide them when they do.

Mike Fink is an American legend, and is to be statted accordingly. While not so powerful as, say, Izithrax up there, he is virtually undefeatable in a hand-to-hand fight and the legends of his marksmanship are only marginally less impressive (such as conducting surgery with a black powder rifle). His role is envisioned as a mid-to-high level enemy to most parties; Fink doesn't take slights well or easily, and has not really grown into his new, more expansive role.

Mark Twain

For as long as there has been the Order, Mark Twain has been leading them. He is clearly immortal, appearing to be an old man with thick graying hair and a full mustache, walking unbowed with age and capable of surprising feats of athleticism. His greatest weapon, however, has never been his position or his body--it is his tongue.

Twain is by a county mile the most pre-eminent writer, satirist, and critic in all of Americana, capable of reducing grown men to shattered piles of ego with an essay. At least once he has lashed out directly and destroyed the career of an opponent on a national scale--namely New York Mayor Giacomo Rico, who Twain revealed to be fabulously corrupt in 44 A.G. and wound up getting him not only removed from his position, but imprisoned on Fire Island for the remaining years of his life. In person, Twain has been reported capable of some degree of magic, guised and possibly boosted by his sharpened tongue--a warlord in the Great War who wanted to take over the Citadel for his own use was subject to a furious ten-minute diatribe against his personal character so strong, it left him on death’s door for a week.

Twain’s first appearance was in the final year of the Great War, when he called together the warlords who would become the Seven Generals and produced strong evidence of the plotting of the Dragon Lords. Asked in later years why he decided to do this, compared to his normal elevation from Americ politics and wars (such as the Twenty Years’ War), he simply shrugged, saying it was the “right thing to do”.

Twain has written reams of work on every topic imaginable, but despite considerable proceeds from these lives in personal frugality--nearly all of his personal income is poured back into the Order, which he considers his greatest achievement (though those who know the truth about his “errand boy”, Tom Sawyer, might debate this point).

Mark Twain is by no means a physical fighter--though acrobatic and athletic well beyond his looks and years, he has no formal training and has never been seen in hand-to-hand combat. He has showm some moderate magic ability, but his full capability is unknown--what is known is that his words can literally kill. Twain inspires his Order to their great work of preserving and disseminating knowledge throughout the continent regardless of race, creed, or nationality, if with a healthy dose of good morality involved, and they will defend him to the death. Whether or not he can die is yet to be determined.

(ED NOTE: Twain is a master of that 4E bard power that lets them go “FUCK YOU” and then their enemies explode into piles of blood and inadequacy)

Patrick Green-Bird

Every adventurer on the continent knows Patrick Green-Bird. Born in the Wakupa tribe in the southern Plain, he left for the cities of Dallas in his youth and found that the "civilization" his home family disdained was much to his liking. While not technologically savvy or personally strong, he proved to have an exceptional talent for organization--the art of corralling and directing people, making the most out of their time and talents. Hired on with a shipping company that had exceptional dealings with the Meheek, he abandoned his old name and, inspired by a shipment of exotic animals coming north for sale to the rich, became Patrick Green-Bird.

All of which would be nice enough, as a life story--but when the Wire rolled through Dallas, a scout for the Corporation took notice in his ability to organize, and poached him from his desk job for a rumoredly unspeakable sum to help direct the mob of workers, guards, and clerks attempting the greatest industrial project in history. Green-Bird was essential in running the entire southern half of the Wire through to the West Coast, and quickly became noticed by the higher-ups in the Corporation. Since then, the young elf has been climbing the ladder steadily--and in the wake of the Twenty Years' War, found himself in his most challenging position yet.

Patrick Green-Bird is Head of Independent Troubleshooting for the Wire Corporation--in plain Common, the man responsible for finding people to solve problems. It was his idea to originally hire from the restless vagabond explorers of the continent to troubleshoot for the Corporation, though he was only advanced to the head of the department at the end of the War. Running the IT Department is the toughest job in the company, and sent two very experienced bureaucrats into retirement before him--he has no intent to be the third. If anyone can take it, he can--Green-Bird is no-nonsense, implacable, and given to maximal efficiency within the limits of human or nonhuman reason. Some of his employees might describe him as a slave driver, but this would be inaccurate--a slave driver doesn't have to care about the well-being of his people. Green-Bird does; he just doesn't like to show it. He did spend several years on the trail himself, running cable and men in the great drive to set up the network--though he is more bureaucrat than anything else, Green-Bird does understand the field. Above all else, Green-Bird is hell-bent on results, as anything less than the best he can get out of his drifters, trailblazers, and half-bandits will lead to massive breakdowns in the Wire Network. Anyone who performs well, or above-average, can well expect commendation from Green-Bird, and maybe a little extra. Anyone who performs poorly can expect to not hear from him a second time.

Patrick Green-Bird is not a physical combatant, though he usually has a bodyguard or two given the caliber of some of the folks he works with. He has exceptional connections both inside and outside the Wire Corporation, and if you somehow manage to make him mad, he can be a very, very long-reaching enemy. On the other hand, he's the best friend to those of his "employees" who do well. Green-Bird occasionally travels to Wire branch offices in the major cities, but usually can be found in his very nice office in the Corporation's HQ in New York's Plymouth Territories.

Governor Theodore White

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