Robert Lupin (Wolfgang Baur)
Player Background:
Biker: You’ve always been enthralled by motorcycles. You got your first mini-bike when you were eleven, and talked your father into letting you get a real motorcycle when you were sixteen. Your father had always hoped that you would go to college. You had other plans. The day after you graduated from highschool, you sold your Honda, emptied your college-fund bank account, and bought a Harley-Davidson and a leather jacket. You and your friend, Elliot rode off to seek your fortunes. Eventually you hooked up with a biker gang in the southern California desert: The Hell Trekkers. Elliot started calling himself Snake, and over the next ten years, the two of you slowly rose through the ranks of the gang…eventually winding up as the virtual leaders. The Hell Trekkers were always on the move…skipping from state to state, just two steps ahead of the law. One by one however, the once hell-bent bikers took up with women, and started breeding. After a while, you were pretty much the only one who wasn’t ready to settle down…and settle down was the right word for it. The gang bought a couple of house trailers and set up a more-or-less permanent homestead in the desert of New Mexico. You started spending less time around the gang, and more time in bars looking for trouble…
Martial Artist: In what was probably the most ridiculous turn of events in your life, you found yourself getting into a brawl with a skinny guy in a bar one night. You figured you would take him apart pretty quickly, and were amazed when you found yourself flat on your back with the guy’s foot planted on your larynx. It had been years since the High School Karate club, but you remembered enough to realize that had been a martial arts throw of some kind. You reached up, grabbed his foot and shoved him into the weak spot in his stance. The contest didn’t last very long. Every move you tried wound up the same way…you on your back. In the end however, he bowed to you, helped you to your feet, and offered you a job. His name was Bob Clandestino, and he was looking to start a new Tae-Kwon-Do school in Denver. He told you about how he intended to hold classes at the local University, and needed some experienced people to wear the colored belts. It sounded ridiculous to you at first. You obviously were not very talented in this skill. How would you ever get enough people interested to make any money at all…especially since he didn’t intend to charge for the class itself…only for the test to advance to the next level. He said that he had already done this at the University of Illinois…it was a piece of cake. And something about the way this guy held your gaze with his eyes made you believe him. After a few weeks of training with a half dozen other young men and women, Clandestino declared you a first degree blue belt. There were a few other blue belts, and a couple of brown belts as well. Over the next few years, to your amazement, you all did in fact make a tidy sum of money. In two and a half years, you made black belt. Three years later, the popularity of the class had grown so much, that Clandestino had you and the other black belts leading splinter groups of the main class. What had begun as a whimsical way of beating the crap out of jerks in high-school had turned into your life’s work.
Nomenklatura: You had heard that Clandestino was driven out of Champain-Urbana by someone who had grown too powerful in his organizaion. That person had threatened to expose his scam to the University board, and maybe even the IRS. Clandestino, backed off and moved to Colorado, leaving that person in charge of the U of I club. You weren’t stupid either…you documented everything he did. When the documents were ready, you hid them in the front roll-bar of your purple dune-buggy “Gypsy”, and gave it to your old buddy Snake for safe-keeping. You knew that Snake would guard that buggy with his life, and Clandestino would never think to look for anything with the Biker gang you used to hang with. So you waited, and prepared for the day to use the evidence against him. But to your suprise, that day never arrived. Clandestino reached the decision to move on, on his own, saying that Berkley seemed like a nice place to go next. And even more shocking than that…he left you in charge of the University of Colorado empire! Your own charisma was high enough that soon you had mooney-eyed coeds looking at you as if you were a god. And of course, you didn’t mind that a bit. It was almost like being a televangelist, only better…nobody could fault you for teaching a bunch of coeds the art of self-defense…and you were always careful to hide the fact that you were becoming fantastically rich from the students. After all, it is always easy to live below your means in a college town.
Your Current Situation:
Two weeks ago, your world turned to shit. One of your own black belts was becoming a little too powerful, so you tried to get rid of him. The whole plan backfired, and he got PISSED. One night, he came to your apartment, plopped a folder of income statements on your lap along with a copy of the letter he had sent to the IRS. You knew it was only a matter of time before the empire fell. You called Clandestino, and were informed that Mr. Clandestino would not be taking any more of your calls. He was leaving you swinging in the wind. Your only hope now, would be to pass the blame on to Clandestino. And to do that, you needed the documents you hid all those years ago in Gypsy’s bumper.
Over the years, you have managed to maintain contact with a number of your former biker friends. Last Tuesday, you took your Hummer, and rode out to the New Mexico dessert to seek out Snake…now the leader of your old biker gang. You arrived at their commune, and found most of the bikers were out. You decided to spend the time talking with Snake’s woman, Darlene. She told you that the money supply had been getting low lately, so Booger had talked Snake into making another highway raid. You recalled how the highways used to be a good source of quick income, but as the country has slipped further and further into anarchy, the pickings have become fewer, and better armed. The two of you were sharing your concerns when the echoing sound of gunfire came rolling over the plains. Twenty minutes later, the gunfire stopped, and a pillar of smoke could be seen rising above the hilltops to the north. Five minutes after that, a half-dozen Harleys cleared the hilltop and made their way into the camp. Booger hopped off his bike and ran up to Snake and Darlene’s trailer.
BOOGER: “Oh god Darlene, they got Snake! Those frog bastards got Snake, and Cooter, and Bizmo, and Benny. Got both buggies too!”
At the mention of the buggies, your ears perk up. “Hold on Booger. Start over. Tell me what happened.”
BOOGER: “We saw this shitbox rental van crossing I-10, so we thought, you know, easy pickings. We did the standard attack. Bikes in front and behind, and then the buggies moved in to flank em. They stopped, but the fucking assholes driving the van couldn’t even speak English! They just kept ranting in French or something. Well, I guess that made us careless. Jynx started making fun of them, and pretty soon we were falling down laughing and all. Suddenly, the frog behind the wheel guns the engine, and drives this shitbox panel van over Mook and Bizmo’s bikes. And then the back of the truck opens up and they’re firing fucking assault rifles at us! Well, Snake signals the buggies to chase em down, grabs his Uzi and leads the charge after em. We shot the tires out, and thought we had em, but then they got some lucky shots off, and ditched both buggies.”
YOU: “When you say both buggies, do you mean Gypsy too?”
BOOGER: “Yeah man! Both of ’em. One flipped over, the other ran into the van! Both gunners and drivers were killed!”
DARLENE: “What about Snake?”
BOOGER: “Like I said, they got him. Shot him with our own fucking machine-gun! We had no choice, we ran!”
You, Booger and Darlene climb into the Hummer, and head toward the column of smoke. It looks like a war zone. The smoke is coming from one of the dune buggies, still merrily burning in the gathering dusk. There are bikes scattered all over the highway, and no sign of the van, or the other dune buggy.
YOU: “They took Gypsy!”
DARLENE: “What’s wrong with you? You bitching about your old ride? You got enough money to buy ten just like it. What about Snake?”
BOOGER: “They can’t get very far in the dark…that buggy’s got no headlights.”
YOU: “Then we follow them.”
The three of you set out immediately. You drove on through the night, never catching up. (Hummers are great off-road vehicles, but leave a little to be desired in the speed category. ) It took you over two hours to locate the gas-station they had gotten gas at in Las Cruces, and from that, deduced that they had continued following I-10 into Texas. As you continued east, you ran across a strange stretch of highway, almost completely over-grown with impossible plantlife. Darlene started freaking out as the plants closed in over-head, screaming for you to stop the jeep. She threw open the door just as you came to a stop, and ran into the trees. Her screams suddenly became blood-curdling, and Booger sprinted after her. You turned the Hummer’s spotlight to follow him, and were able to see as he was attacked by hundreds of little rodents…they looked like prairie dogs. Panicking, you left them behind, wanting only to get out of the woods.
You eventually came to a wayside, and pulled into the Stuckey’s for gas. You went inside and found out from the owner that the group you were following did in fact pass though here on their way to Ft. Stockton…in fact, they had left four hours earlier. You were filling up your tank when you heard the phone ring inside. You heard the proprietor cry out in anguish, and moments later, saw his tow-truck accelerate out of the parking lot and head east. You left a twenty dollar bill under a salt shaker on the counter and continued east. The dust raised by the tow-truck’s passage was continually in front of you, but you never managed to see it. Eventually, you realized that there was more than just dust around you, the forest of twisted plants was burning, and you were caught in the thick white smoke…
Personality Traits:
Very high charisma. Are able to make geeks drop to the floor and do a hundred POOSH-UPS without even blinking. At the moment you are freaking out over your financial situation. On top of that, there is the death of Snake, and while we’re at it, what the hell happened to Darlene and Booger?
Special Abilities:
Third Degree Black Belt in Tae-Kwon Do.
Interesting Possessions:
A Hummer, A Harley and a A Tae-Kwon Do school in Denver.