Bazmund

Broken Skies: War in the Eversky

Daniel sighed as the former Dominion mechanic ordered himself a whiskey, on Daniel's pennies. The drinks were cheap for agents of the IRIO here, but whiskey isn't cheap even when it's cheap.

"And a pint of the pale for me, Joseph." He ordered as Sam sidled up to the bar and took his drink in hand.

"Chances of success? You know, I have to say that on a scale of slightly fucked to well and thoroughly fucked, we might be superbly and supremely fucked. Stabilising the Dominion? Doable, I suppose. Difficult, but I'm aware that the situation there is fluid enough to facilitate the changes we're looking to make. Protecting the King of the Oakheart Sovereignty? Harder. We don't have the resources to defend him directly and assign him bodyguards - not that he or any of his court would let us if we could - so we'll need to look for the source of his troubles directly. And as for the Red League? I haven't a smiling fuck of an idea what's wrong with them. Something is, I can feel it, but we have no intelligence to go on so we'll need to gather our own on the fly."

He sighed, and took a sip of the frothy pale ale, the cool liquid draining comfortably from the glass for a solid six seconds before he put the glass down.

"I hate flying into things when I don't know what's going on. Especially with the Red League."

Daniel looked up from his glass for a moment, and glanced around the bar. The others had all left by now, and the bar was mostly empty.

"And I don't trust the Volkov girl. Talking about the Eyes like that, like she'd just as soon consider employment with them. I think we might need to keep our eyes on her. What do you think?"

A Band of Survivors: Protecting What's Left of Humanity (Sci-fi, medium group, bleak universe)

Siempre yo quedo. I always remain.

Broken Skies: War in the Eversky

"Yes. I think that's wise. We'll reconvene tomorrow at 6AM sharp, outside this pub. If anything changes, our agents will inform you. You'll find your rooms in an inn just across the road - 'The Ham Sandwich'. Whoever names these stupid things is beyond help, honestly." Daniel sighed, before taking a seat and looking disconsolately at the luminescent green cocktail in front of him, totally undrunk.

"Say... Sam, you fancy a drink?" He cringed at the thought of it - having tasted them before, and knowing them to be bizarrely and sickly sweet.

But underneath that facade of reluctance to drink the damn cocktail, there was a thought astir, perfectly hidden.

We cannot trust Volkov. I must tell Samuel.

𝐂𝐨𝐬𝐚 𝐍𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚

Leonardo Sinistruomo

“I don't mind the Irish and the Blacks. Men is men, and men is worth fightin' for.”

---

Name

Leonardo 'Pinky' Sinistruomo

Ethnicity

Italian

Age

26

Loyalty

Lombardi - with strong Socialist sympathies

Rank

Sergente

Appearance

A pretty-boy, with nice skin and rich, dark hair. He's got a good body, lean and strong, and a charming smile with perfect teeth. However, it's nearly wholly ruined by a patchwork of scars around his right eye, where a Fascist soldier tried to dig it out with a bayonet in a knife fight. Furthermore his left hand is wrinkled and puffed with scar tissue too, and the pinky finger is entirely gone, after a close call with a hand grenade. That's where he got his nickname.

Personality Traits

• Optimist - Not quite on the wide eyed idealist level, but almost. He sees the best in people, and in things,
  and while he's never been blind to injustice, he has enough faith in people that he is confident we will one day live in a fair society.
• A Tolerant Man - He harbours no racial hatred, nor sexist bias. He remains realistic, of course, but his brushes with the Italian socialists have stripped him of much of his former inegalitarian ideals.
• The Lover - What can I say? He falls in love easily, and is unshakeable in his attraction. Right now, he's still dreaming of someone he met in Italy on his tour of duty.
• Pinko - To his core. He owes the Left his life, and would pay that debt in service to their cause.

Skills & Talents

• Triggerman - His service with the army has left him with the typical skills of a distinguished combat veteran.
  As such, he is an expert with most firearms, provided it's nothing to esoteric he's dealing with.
• Moonlight Sawbones - He's got a rough grasp of surgery and emergency medicine, a skill he picked up from one of the hard-left resistance fighters he met during his tour - though to say it's only a rough grasp doesn't really do it justice. He can save a life, not make them stand up and fight again.
• Things that go bang in the fight - He's blown shit up, and he will again.
• Squad Tactics - The reason he's a sergente, rather than another dumb grunt - if you'll forgive the harsh terminology. His time in the army saw him rise to the rank of Sergeant, and the mafia recognised this when he joined up after he got his purple heart.

Weaknesses

• A Heart of Red - Ultimately, his political convictions win out over everything else, except maybe that girl back in Italy. It's gonna get him killed if he makes it seem serious enough.
• That Girl - Speaking of that girl, she's the one thing he'd give everything else up for. If not for the Lombardis, or the left, everything he does is for her.
• A dominant hand, lost - Not lost, but damaged. His pinky is gone, and the rest of his hand has reduced mobility now. What's worse is that he was originally a leftie.

Background Information

He was born to the strange and unorthodox union of a mafia soldier and a rogue nun. Despite this, he was never particularly into the criminal scene, nor the religious one, and actually joined the army voluntarily long before the war began.
He was never the patriotic sort either, of course, they just offered to pay for his college, and college was what he was looking for. He was re-enlisted as part of his reserves duty when the war broke out, however, shortly after graduating with a bachelor's in English literature. This tour would take him into the heart of Italy, his genetic home country. It was a rough ride, fraught with danger and close encounters with the fascist dictator's military clout. He sustained injuries to his eye during one knife fight, and would eventually be shipped home after losing a finger and the use of his hand to a hand grenade, but between one and the other he was able to rack up an impressive 25 kills, and 13 assists, getting himself promoted to Staff Sergeant for a combination of education, valour under fire, and indomitable loyalty to the army.

However.

One fateful night, his platoon was attacked by Italian forces in the dead of night, and half of them were killed before they even had the time to grab their guns. They were halved again before they'd even started shooting back, and were down to a few men who managed to duck behind a nearby car's engine block in the 30 seconds that had elapsed. It is without doubt that he would have been killed then, were it not for the valiant efforts of a local resistance cell that had, until then, gone without notice to either the Americans or the fascists.

They were partigiane combattenti and they were, naturally, communists. Among them was Bella Blucielo, the woman he was destined to fall head over heels in love with - and she saved him personally that night, and again twice in the months that followed, as the surviving Americans were inducted into la resistenza following the total fascist takeover of their district, and the loss of any opportunity to return them to their main force.

During those months, two things blossomed where there had once been a void - Leon's faith in the work of Marx, and the derivatives thereof, with natural exception to the fascist Stalin, and his love for Bella. In fact, while the debt is hardly paid as she'd already saved him thrice, he nearly lost that hand when he was throwing a grenade away from her during their last operation. Said operation was successful, of course, and ended with Staff Sgt. Sinistruomo's return to the American military -
and his subsequent honourable discharge.

To this day, a big part of what gets him through life is his last promise to her.

"Questo non è arrivederci, mi amor."

From there, he took work where he could find it, and that naturally led him to the Lombardis, as it had his father before him. It was just a coincidence that their belief in Unity appealed just slightly to his closet-marxist.

Broken Skies: War in the Eversky

"Yes I damn well do, son. Now, I'm past due to be leaving. Lt. Hunt will finish the briefing, and then Mr. Thomas will fill you in regarding your mode of transport. Cheerio, folks - and don't forget, the peace of the Eversky is resting on your shoulders." The General gave them a wink, and heaved himself to his feet, his old bones practically creaking.

As he made his way to the door, Daniel stepped into his place.

"Alright, listen closely, the plan has remained relatively fluid to compensate for any leaks in our network, but we can reveal the rough gist of things. Samuel, you know most of this already, but you might as well listen in too." Daniel produced a pencil from his shirt pocket, and pointed with it to the city of Solace, on the map on the table,

"From here, our first port of call will be the Iron Dominion, for obvious reasons. There's a rough game plan in place already for how we deal with their situation," He continued, glancing at Sam, "but it remains hypothetical for now, and is subject to change. To get there, we're going to take the southerly current towards the Red League, and then drop down into a lower level of the Luft, and essentially double back on ourselves, to make use of a rarely travelled path, and avoid detection by anyone who already knows our mission."

"We're set to stop here, here, and here, but that could easily change - as I said, the plan is fluid." He enunciated, pointing to three separate small islands, only two of which were labelled as inhabited.

"From there, we're likely to move on the Oakheart Sovereignty, but that'll mean a brief period of travel without the use of the Upper Luft, as there does not exist a jetstream either stable enough or long enough to get us continuously from A to B, here."

"That naturally makes the Red League our final phase in this little venture. Our plan for that part of this mission is not presently formulated. We shall make it up on the fly - erm, no pun intended." Daniel furrowed his brows at the genuinely unintentional pun.

"Sam? Care to tell us about the mode of travel we'll be using?"

Broken Skies: War in the Eversky

@vietmyke Yes, that's the Iron Dominion perfectly - particularly their Floatstone enabled fleets - and that's a good portrayal of the ship we'll be using too, if a bit fancier than what I had in mind. Strip away from of the ornate decoration and you've got it, boyo. There might be some more extending sails on the sides, though, for use in the Upper Luft.

Broken Skies: War in the Eversky

@vietmyke O crap, yeah please do. I forgot you'd nae posted.

Broken Skies: War in the Eversky

Ok folks, the way I think this is going we should move ahead without Adrion's player for now. If they come back, we can work them in. I'll write the next IC when I get home.