Meet the Characters
ARTHUR TOYNBEE, 51 – College Professor, Historian and author. He holds a Bachelors from Northwestern, a Masters from Harvard and a Doctorate from the University of California at Berkley. He has authored nine books, the most famous being The Hooded Eagle, a Pulitzer Prize winner that deeply criticized the American Salvation Party and its standard-bearer President Thaddeus E. Tubwell. This caused Toynbee to be ostracized from American society, lose his tenure at the University of Washington as well as his social standing and caused his wife to divorce him. Now independently wealthy, alone and living on a private island just across the border in Canada, he began organizing bootlegging operations from his yacht Liberty as a protest as well as to annoy the repressive American government. While effective, it has made him not only an enemy of President Tubwell but of Japanese crime syndicate chief Watanabe as well. In spite of the dangers and several attempts on his life, this man of letters has proven himself a force to be reckoned with as he continues to publish while running one of the largest independent bootlegging operations in the region.
BANNER LYME, 35 – Former Air Force Captain and mercenary pilot. An Academy graduate, he served with distinction as an ace fighter pilot in the Andean Drug War. He went AWOL when the USAF was pared down to an Air National Guard Loyal to the American Salvation Party. He flew as a mercenary pilot for the Brazilians against the Neo-Nazis of the Argentine Reich. Shot down over Paraguay and held as a POW, he was ‘bought’ by the Japanese crime syndicate to serve as a pilot defending their massive floating speakeasy Shangri-La. After two years he escaped and became a bootlegger in the southern Puget Sound. Having armed his seaplane with a 20mm canon from his stolen syndicate fighter he soon began hunting local pirates to exact revenge for the massacre of the innocent people that had befriended him. Burned out, cynical and solitary, he became almost a spectre; known but unseen, admired by many but feared by most, spoken of in whispers. Captain Lyme seeks fairness and justice, but more often seems to leave destruction wherever he goes.
NATASHA ILLOVNA SMIRNOVA, (aka Natalie) 29 – A top covert operations officer for the Siblaskan Intelligence Office (SIO), she was born in Siberia shortly before the Day of Fire nuclear holocaust decimated Asia. She had a rough childhood living in a series of refugee camps and surviving the violent death of her family. As a teen she was taken under wing by a charismatic separatist partisan leader who called himself Romanov. He protected her, educated her, trained her and kept her at his side as he fought to bring the new nation of Siblaska to fruition. Serving as an intelligence operative since the founding of the SIO, she has become the new nation’s top spy combining beauty, grace, strength and intelligence. Her steely continence covers a sensitive, and even vulnerable soul, longing for the security and affection she lost in her youth. Still, as a professional veteran of over thirty covert operations across the Pacific Rim, she is the woman Romanov turns to make the most impossible operations possible.
ALEXIS ALEXANDRIOVITCH “ALEXI” ROMANOV, 52 – Siblaskan Presidential Consul, Executive Liaison and ‘Internal Ambassador’. Almost nothing is known about Romanov’s early years prior to the Day of Fire, but many have speculated if his name was chosen through vanity or as a mark of ambition. He sprang out of the rubble of the Soviet east as a larger-than-life figure, a bear of a man with a booming voice and habitual full length fur coat. Renowned for his military prowess as well as his uncanny talents as a statesman, he is credited as the singular driving force in unifying the newly independent Alaska with the newly abandoned Siberia. As one of the Fathers of the Nation, he could have easily won any of the presidential elections but has chosen to exercise power obliquely. A cunning internationalist, he has carefully maneuvered Siblaska to a position of near parity with the other Pacific Rim powers. A master of domestic politics and a sharp judge of men, Romanov’s public Bonhomme masks a shrewd, even deadly, effectiveness. His true enemies never die in fear, but always in astonishment.
THADDEUS E. TUBWELL, 62 - The 44th President of the United States. Settling in eastern Washington in the mid 1980's, he began an evangelical ministry with a small chapel that some maintain was won in a card game. Ten years later he purchased a small television studio in Tacoma. Soon he was the head of the largest Christian broadcasting network in the Pacific Northwest. In 2001 he ran for governor and easily won. In 2008, he joined the American Salvation Party and was nominated for the Vice-Presidency as running mate to Senator Reverend William 'Billy Ray' Podeyn of Mississippi. After only a year in office Podeyn was gunned down, allegedly by a South American drug cartel, although evidence was sparse. In retaliation, the zealous Tubwell entered America into the long and costly Andean Drug War. He pared America's exhausted military down to 'The Guard' and pushed through the 29th Constitutional Amendment prohibiting the sale, purchase or possession of any intoxicant, heralding a new Prohibition. After serving out his predecessor's term and being elected to two of his own, he launched a successful campaign to repeal the 22nd Amendment, tailored to allow him personally to seek another full term in 2020.
NIKKI OURSLAND, 21 - A probationary covert operations officer for the Siblaskan Intelligence Office (SIO), she was born to a large family in Valdez, Alaska. Survivor of an acquaintance rape in high school, she studied and quickly mastered several defensive martial arts. This impressed her older brother’s girlfriend, an SIO operative named Natalie Smirnova. Although Natalie and her brother went their separate ways, Natalie and Nikki became close friends and after her high school graduation Nikki was recruited into the SIO. As Natalie’s “probie”, she has already gained skill and experience on four covert ops. While sobered by her past trauma, her training and current responsibilities, she has maintained her youthful optimism and cheerful disposition.
MAJOR SERGEI KROPATKAN, 59 – Director of the Siblaskan Intelligence Office (SIO). Due to the loss of data caused by the Day of Fire, Kropatkan’s past is shrouded in mystery. A minor KGB Political Officer in the pre fall Red Army, he emerged from the Taiga of Siberia free from the shackles of Soviet ideology. Joining the separatist “ White” army he fought as a partisan commander. Although he rose through the ranks, he has shunned offers of official military promotion as inconsequential. There is an energy and vitality about him that supplies agelessness and with it a sensuality that both attracts and repels allies and enemies alike. A strong man, six foot and lean, his hard, angular figure is magnified by his uniform. His allies in the new president’s administration helped him to secure his position as SIO Director, the powerful equivalent to the FBI, CIA and KGB all rolled into one. He is dismissive and abusive to staff and superiors alike. He manipulates Natalie Smirnova and inexplicably seems to command her loyalty and affection. He particularly despises Americans Toynbee and Lyme. Arthur suspects that, far more than Romanov, Kropatkan likely harbors a very dark secret from his past.
WATANABE, 36 – Chief of Operations for the Kuroshio Zaibatzu Pacific Northwest Region. Born to a humble family in Osaka, he excelled in his studies and after university joined the Imperial Air Force where he demonstrated a natural talent for piloting. He served in the IAF for 4 years and gained combat experience during the Japanese re-conquest of Indonesia and occupation of Taiwan. While there he augmented his meager military salary by flying black market goods, gaining a reputation for daring and sometimes violent misadventures. His activities brought him to the attention of and eventual employment with the Kuroshio Zaibatzu crime syndicate. His enemies’ failed attempts to kill him only elevated him higher in the organization. He was sent to shore up security at the floating speakeasy called Shangri-La off the coast off Washington State. Because of his fighter pilot background and Shangri-La having been built from a derelict aircraft carrier, he opted to use deck-launched fighters for defense. While in Argentina to purchase some aircraft from the Reich, he also indentured an American POW pilot named Banner Lyme. Watanabe parlayed his success into the position of Operations Chief shortly thereafter, with power over the lion’s share of prohibited contraband purchased or traded throughout the Pacific Northwest. Predominantly desk bound by his job, he misses the freedom of flight.
Characters introduced in Straight Up
DRAKE OURSLAND, 33 – A Major in the Siblaskan Land Defense Force, hardened by years of combat experience fighting in Asia. Trained in special operations, he is meticulous in planning foreign military incursion operations. But when he discovers that his baby sister Nikki is being held in a squalid American prison farm, he allows his fraternal concern to cloud his better judgement. He wrests control of the rescue operation away from the SIO and his old flame, Natasha Smirnova. He butts heads with everyone, especially Banner Lyme, who he blames for his sister's current dilemma.
ANYA NOVOTNY, 39 – A research assistant and Gal Friday to the Russian interrogator tasked with turning Nikki Oursland against everything and everyone she has ever known. Going by the American name “Annie”, she uses a southern-accented charm that veils her cold Slavic past. Annie routinely undermines Nikki’s tormentor, befriending Nikki and offering her the only moments of kindness and warmth she has had in a year. When Nikki is liberated from the prison farm, Annie begs to flee with them. Except for Nikki, who insists she come with them, everyone suspects that Novotny may not be what she seems.
ANISETTE ROMIJN, 31 – Reverend President Tubwell’s Chief of Staff. She appeared out of the blue during Tubwell’s first full term armed with a degree in political science from Wellesley College and a fierce determination to advance up the ranks of the American Salvation Party. By Tubwell’s second term she secured the position of Assistant White House Press Secretary, where she was able to catch the President’s eye. Anisette is attractive, organized, hyper-competent and doesn’t put up with any of Tubwell’s misogynist nonsense. While she doesn’t approve of, or participate in, any of the President’s sordid pleasures or power grabs, she is an ever-present keen observer and a meticulous note-taker.
AKUMA, 26 – A tall, lanky young man with a mop of black hair coifed meticulously to look unkempt, Akuma has been aggressively climbing the ranks of Japan’s underworld since he was a teen. Impulsive, lacking any moral compass and prone to acting first and thinking later, he has been tasked by the Syndicate with cleaning up the mess that Watanabe left behind in America. After ruthlessly and homicidally reorganizing the Syndicate’s operations in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Akuma has set his sights on eliminating the competition from independent bootleggers in Seattle. Permanently.
ROBERT ASHWORTH WELLINGTON MCKENZIE, 47 – A distant cousin of Queen Diana on his mother’s side, Head Boy at Eaton, McKenzie relished the whiff of royally that his blood line shares, and he has cashed that connection into a successful Foreign Office career. McKenzie gained fame for his daring raid on Spanish forces during the Gibraltar Affair. Although publicly denied by MI6, rumors have surrounded his name in such actions as the Hong Kong Re-annexation, the Nairobi Election riots and the Monte Carlo death of Prince Charles and his consort. Disavowed by Her Majesty’s government, he was rumored to have disappeared in a British Columbia mountaineering accident, although his body was never found. In truth he had sold his services to a cabal of also-lesser exiled Royals, promising to carve out a kingdom of their own in the Pacific Northwest.