The Seven Serpents

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The Seven Serpents

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The Seven Serpents

The organization that styles itself the Seven Serpents is one of the premier crime syndicates of the known world. It was first established in the late-19th century by the infamous "Napoleon of Crime", Professor James Moriarty, as a criminal cartel that would rule the planet's combined underworlds. Founding members were Moriarty himself, who at the time ruled the London underworld; the secretive French master-criminal Fantômas; Countess Regina Bartholomew from Skyhaven, said to have at one point been romantically involved with Moriarty; the infamous Mr. Li from Hong Kong, the only of the original Serpents in possession of a Serpent Ring today; Baron von Biedenfeld, a Prussian noble with an iron grip on the underworlds of recently-reunited Germany, Austria-Hungary and western Russia; the sky-pirate Ahmad Shah, master of the Hindu Kush and Afghanistan and bane of British India; and the French-Mexican outlaw-king Calvera.

Still, the organization itself may be continuous, its members are not: membership changes frequently (and often violently). For example, Ahmed Shah died when his mothership Dark Moon was destroyed in a cataclysmic battle with no less than three RAF airships; Baron von Biedenfeld was arrested in France in 1912, and escaped only to find most of his criminal empire annexed by the Von Austerlitz family; and Professor Moriarty disappeared after a fight with Sherlock Holmes sent both of them tumbling off Reichenbach falls. In all cases, there were others who took up the Serpent Ring after them however, and so the organization endured, although as a result of the many power-struggles, arrests and assassinations the influence of the Serpents has waned many times over the years (only to increase again soon afterward).

As a criminal organization, there is almost nothing that the Seven Serpents do not involve themselves with. Whether it is political intrigue, blackmail and extortion, weapons trafficking, the trading of drugs and people, theft of national treasures or open attempts to take over dominion of the world, no plot is too ambitious for the Serpents. The reason for this should be obvious: the Seven Serpents are not just any random collection of thieves or crooks: they are some of the most premier criminal figures on the planet, each of whom rules a vast crime network with an iron hand. Historically each of the Serpents has dominion over a more-or-less specific geographic territory - for the simple reason that anyone else operating in that territory is either subordinate to that Serpent, or perceived to be less powerful by the syndicate (whether that is actually so often remains to be seen, vis a vis the frequent powerstruggles between Serpents and their rivals/minions).

Note that although the organization is called the Seven Serpents because the original group had seven members, this is not neccesarily always the case. In the past, there were times the cartel had as few as five, or as many as nine members. It should also be mentioned that one does not get voted into office as a Serpent. Nor is one approved by one's peers: the position is one that must be taken and claimed. If a criminal figure takes up the Serpent Ring, he or she better be prepared for the relentless torrent of international attacks upon his or her holdings - from both rivals, criminal peers, ambitious subordinates as well as international police and superheroes. If these attacks are survived (and most of the time they aren't, or at least not for very long), then the owner of the Serpent Ring truly has proven to be worth of being called a Serpent. The international underworld is not a democracy: it is a king of the hill, dog-eat-dog, last-man-standing environment that allows only the most ruthless, the most ambitious, the most vicious and uncompromising and morally bankrupt individuals to survive. As a result, these are people who should never be underestimated. Their reach is far, and their ambitions are limitless. Do not cross a Serpent lightly, at your own peril.
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Re: The Seven Serpents

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and Professor Moriarty disappeared after a fight with Sherlock Holmes sent both of them tumbling off Reichenbach falls.
Oh, awesome. Words cannot describe how awesome it would be for him to return. Well, Moriarty.

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Re: The Seven Serpents

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This really is an awesome idea. It even had Fantômas!

I now ask myself an important question: does the Boss have himself a Serpent Ring? Or is he opposed to the Seven Serpents?
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Re: The Seven Serpents

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Ford Prefect wrote:I now ask myself an important question: does the Boss have himself a Serpent Ring? Or is he opposed to the Seven Serpents?
I imagine he's in the opposition to the syndicate, if only because the European spot is already taken, and wasn't the Boss from London? I don't recall precisely, if he's from South Africa or Rhodesia or somesuch place we could conceivably fit him into the African slot (there's always some overlap in their territories - none of them are truly limited to one specific area, though anywhere outside their home turf they'd have to contend with even more competition from their peers).
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Re: The Seven Serpents

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With Nicholas Cage as...

*gong*

MISTER LI

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Muhahahahahahahaha!

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Re: The Seven Serpents

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SiegeTank wrote:I imagine he's in the opposition to the syndicate, if only because the European spot is already taken, and wasn't the Boss from London? I don't recall precisely, if he's from South Africa or Rhodesia or somesuch place we could conceivably fit him into the African slot (there's always some overlap in their territories - none of them are truly limited to one specific area, though anywhere outside their home turf they'd have to contend with even more competition from their peers).
To be honest, I don't actually know where he's from. He is dark skinned, but Major Stirling is black and from Manchester. I think it would probably be best that he is a competitor. Given how he is somewhat international, this would mean he wouldh ave to deal with several of the Rings.

Especially Mr. Li, given that he is moving in on Japan in recent times. :D
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Re: The Seven Serpents

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I thought Stirling was Sean Bean :?
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Re: The Seven Serpents

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Ford Prefect wrote:To be honest, I don't actually know where he's from. He is dark skinned, but Major Stirling is black and from Manchester. I think it would probably be best that he is a competitor. Given how he is somewhat international, this would mean he wouldh ave to deal with several of the Rings.
Sounds good to me. I'm thinking of gunning for a ruthless Colonel-type of figure for the African Serpent (hell, throw in a "Mamba" type nickname and he's pretty much all set...)
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Re: The Seven Serpents

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Would he happen to be a warlord? Or something not-quite-as-insane?

Will you be going with that Gaiman-style animal-gods thing (which I'm doing with some of my warlord dudes)?
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Re: The Seven Serpents

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Shroom Man 777 wrote:Will you be going with that Gaiman-style animal-gods thing (which I'm doing with some of my warlord dudes)?
Perhaps, I'm not sure yet. It is an enticing idea, which I'm certainly going to consider, but I don't want the African Serpent to be too similar to this dude (now with a few added bits and pieces):

Manco Capac - The Serpent of South America

The legends and history that surround this mythical figure are such that they obscure whatever truth there may be in them. Manco Capac is the name of the mythical founder of the Inca Dynasty in Peru, who legend says was brought up from the depths of Lake Titicaca by the sun god Inti. Whether the man who styles himself Manco Capac today is or is not indeed that man is unknown, but fact is that of the Seven Serpents, he is the most long-lived by far. The reason for this is that Manco Capac is abdead, a state somewhere in-between living and dead comparable to (but quite distinct from) photophobic haemophagy (more commonly known as vampirism) - he does not breathe, the blood in his veins has turned to dust centuries ago, his skin is preserved leather, and yet there is still life in him. Whatever his true identity, it is certain that this man has lived for centuries at the least, and he has shrouded himself in secrecy for most of that time. This secretive timelessness has given him a distinct edge in long-term planning: Manco Capac does not think in years, but in ages. Typically his plans do not move forward as quickly as those of his peers, but they are massively complex and inexorable as continental drift, and extremely difficult to stop exactly because the sheer scale and timeframe involved makes it incredibly hard to understand what Capac is truly planning.

The secret empire of Manco Capac revolves around his Temple of the Sun, a massive gold-plated sanctuary located at a hidden location deep in the Andes mountains of Peru, from where he controls the underworld of Latin America. His inner circle is mostly composed of abdead just like him, with the exception of a select few still-human trustees whose task it is to venture out into the living world to carry out Capac's orders, and whose ultimate reward for faithful service is to be granted everlasting life in the deathless state of their lord and master. Like the other Serpents, the minions of Capac are legion, even if many of them do not truly realize who it is they serve: communist rebels and narcotics barons are in his pay, as are Indian warriors from the high mountains and the deep jungles, Polynesian thugs from the pacific islands, necromancers and blood-priests, countless mercenaries with past ties to unsavoury regimes and even a number of renegade dinosaurs - but Capac also commands reanimated mummies, whose mystical chants have the ability to unstick time; feathered serpents, creatures whose bodies flicker in and out of other planes; and a myriad other strange and sometimes mystical beings from the thick tropical forests of South America.

Although it is known that Capac was active long before his take-over in 1964, before that it seemed he was mainly interested in expanding his grasp on the supernatural. But already in the early stages of the 20th century the secretive mastermind had sensed the coming of the political unrest of the 1950’s and 1960’s, and believed that the time to make an open bid for power had now come. And so Capac had diligently built up his forces in remote regions of Peru, Chile and Argentina, to finally make his move amidst the revolutions and civil turmoil that enveloped South America in the 1960’s. In what would become known as the ‘night of blood’ Capac’s supernatural forces assaulted the fortress of then-Serpent Monica Romita near São Paulo, Brazil, massacring all present including – at least so it is believed – Romita herself. That night, Manco Capac claimed the Serpent Ring of South America and ever since he has ruled with an iron fist over the underworlds of the continent.

Insofar as his fellow Serpents are concerned, Manco Capac gets along best with Mr. Li, with whom he shares an obsession with exotic poisons and an affinity for the supernatural. He loathes white men, although whether this is truly because of the conquistadores (as he claims) or for some other reason is unknown. This translates into a particularly venomous hatred of his North American counterpart Walter Ironsides and (to a marginally lesser degree) of Vivian Saint-Blancat, the European Serpent. However, he has a long-standing business relationship with Jurgen Baccara, who is one of Capac's prime customers when it comes to the lucrative drug trade, demonstrating that when it is convenient to do so Manco Capac is quite able to get over his pathological hatred of white (not to mention living) people.

In terms of run-ins with the world's (anti)heroes, Capac's plans have more than once been significantly set back by Cuban operative Fidel Castro. Although Castro himself has preciously little knowledge of just whose schemes he's foiled - knowing not even of the existence of the abdead crimelord - Capac has sworn a blood-curse against him, although he's so far not yet had a chance to carry out his unpleasant plans for Fidel and indeed all of Cuba. Finally, as a manipulator of the supernatural Capac has had some dealings with Tchernobog and the Dark God's main instrument on this plane, the Prussian.

The Serpent Ring held by Manco Capac is one carved from pure Inca gold and imbued with the power of the sun. As such he can use it to project a beam of piercing sunlight so bright it will set whomever (or indeed whatever) caught in it on fire, as well as melt steel and other substances.
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Re: The Seven Serpents

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*groans* I HATE MUMMIES! *shotgun*

Excellent, Siege. Goddamn excellent.

Damn, these Serpents are gonna be SO COOL. Better than this bubbling idea of mine with a wraithish SPECTRE type of deal, with SERPENT being a similarly contrived acronym with Sects and Espionages and Revenge and Notoriety and stuff :P
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Re: The Seven Serpents

Post by Magister Militum »

It's certainly nice to see that someone finally used Moriarty. As for Capac, supernatural criminal overlords are always fun, and it's nice to see some intrigue as to how he gained power and manages his domain.
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Re: The Seven Serpents

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Hilarious. 'I will have my revenge ... upon all of Cuba!' :D
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Re: The Seven Serpents

Post by Malchus »

It all looks excellent. I'm looking forward to the rest of the Serpents very much.
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Re: The Seven Serpents

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I have a question: Do the Serpent Rings give their owners any superpowers, or are they just badges of leadership?
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Re: The Seven Serpents

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Peregrin wrote:Do the Serpent Rings give their owners any superpowers, or are they just badges of leadership?
They're just badges of authority, although I wouldn't be surprised if they had nasty surprises inbuilt by individual Serpents - stuff like a poisoned dart for Mr. Li, or a digiweapon-analogue for Hank deBruce. But they're not Lantern-rings: indeed most of the Serpents make their own ring and then declare themselves a Serpent (the others, of course, steal their rings off the dead bodies of their predecessors).
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Re: The Seven Serpents

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Still a bit rough, but it gets the point across:

Vivian Saint-Blancat – The European Serpent

Socialite, natural beauty, future queen of France, lady of the underworld. If ever there was an interesting set of dichotomies unified into a single person, Vivian Saint-Blancat surely must be it. Of all the current Serpents, Saint-Blancat is by far the youngest. At a mere thirty-one years, the age where the careers of ordinary people are just beginning to take off, she already is in command of one of the world’s largest criminal imperiums, and indeed in possession of a Serpent Ring, something no-one of her age has achieved before. Her secret? Knowing people in all the right places, using her looks, being singularly ruthless in the pursuit of her goals – and of course, being completely untouchable by anyone in their right mind helps, too.

Vivian’s mother was a glamour model; her father one of the richest and most successful gamblers of his time. From him she inherited the addiction to a high-risk lifestyle; from her the dazzling looks. Saint-Blancat is a stunningly beautiful woman by almost any definition: highly educated, exceedingly smart, ever immaculately dressed, tall, voluptuous, with green eyes, a face like a Greek sculpture and raven black hair except for a single lock of bright red. She moves with natural grace and seems, at least at first glance, surprisingly likeable. When one then knows that she is officially engaged to the Dauphin, the heir to the Lilies Throne, it is easy to think of her as little more than a seductress who’s slept her way to power.

But that impression would be wrong.

Already at an early age it became clear that Vivian Saint-Blancat was not at all attracted to the escapades of excess for which her peers – rich youth living off daddy’s credit cards – were infamous for. Yes, she was rich; yes, she was beautiful; and the combination meant she could conceivably get into every nightclub and sleep with every man. This did not interest her. What did was that one quality that she yet lacked: power. Her parents were rich, but they were not influential. Vivian wanted not money or fame or beauty, but control and authority.

And so, at age the ripe age of 21 and for want of something better to do with her time, Vivian went into politics. Despite her young age, her looks, seemingly amicable nature and intelligence (and a cutthroat attitude) won her the mayoral elections of the French city of Marseille with relative ease. It was then that she first became aware of the France that exists underneath France, hidden in plain daylight, because during her time in office she met three influential men who would all have a hand in shaping her future.

The first was Napoleon. Housed in the abyssal underworld of Marseille, Napoleon Bonaparte at the urging of Cyran St. Ordine gave up his humanity during the Clockwork Wars of the 19th century to become a living computer connected to all of France, in order to protect the nation from the ravages of English engineers, mechanics and programmers. Since then he had for more than a century, unbeknownst to most French citizens, kept computers running, water and electricity flowing, and the structure of society together – independent from any outside authority. In a tumultuous adventure involving agents of the Vatican, an apocalyptic Vampire cult bent on rending the local fabric of reality, and a nymph, Saint-Blancat became one of the few people since the 1850’s to know of the existence of Napoleon.

The second man of influence is the Dauphin, Louis Duc de Châteauroux, son of the King of France and heir to the Lilies Throne. They met when the Dauphin visited southern France and was nearly kidnapped by agents of the then-lord of the underworld, a man only known as Prêtre Jacques. At the head of a squad of Marseille’s elite enforcers she managed to rescue the prince, earning her the gratitude of the royal family. She and the Dauphin became romantically involved, and eventually became officially engaged.

The third land last a man was someone Vivian had long known through her mother, a relatively obscure individual who went by the name of Caleb Belle, the owner and editor-in-chief of the glamorous fashion magazine Le Cheval Noir. During the same adventure that acquainted Vivian with Napoleon she also became aware of the fact that fashion-mogul Caleb Belle was in reality Lord Caleb Belle, an important cog in the plans of the PanEuropean Empire, a leading polity from a dying parallel reality known as TranSingularity Earth: despite foiling his plans (it was him who attempted to destabilize reality but that is neither here nor there for now), they developed a mutual respect, and subsequently a more-or-less functional working relationship.

The ultimate coup-de-grace that earned Vivian her an entire criminal empire in one fell swoop was when the Royal Family went to war with Prêtre Jacques. Apart from a master-criminal Jacques was a republican and revolutionary, and he hated the monarchy with a passion. Unfortunately he had also, much like his famous predecessor Fantômas, perfected the art of being invisible, unknown, and inapproachable. Unfortunately for him, there was one person who could not only find him, but also get to him: she found him through Napoleon, she got to him by making use of one of Belle’s singularity tunnels, and a squad of French commandos did the bloody rest of the work, eradicating pretty much everyone in his hide-out. Vivian then took over Jacques’ empire of crime, consolidating her hold on it over the next few months by ruthlessly killing all who dissented with her take-over.

This modus operandi pretty much typifies the way Vivian Saint-Blancat conducts her business. Even for someone who’s been a socialite most of her life, Vivian is unusually well-connected: of all the Serpents she is arguably the best at making devil-deals with those who are outside of her direct sphere of control: she has carefully cultivated relations with the Vatican, with the EU, the royal family and North Sea City, with a myriad other places and agencies, and perhaps most notable of all, with Lord Belle. It is he who, in exchange for occasionally helping his migration initiative, has supplied Saint-Blancat with technology that surpasses most of anything that can be found on this planet, which in turn she’s promptly traded with the royal family in order to gain access to their privately owned manufacturing centres.

External-relations wise Vivian Saint-Blancat has a very hands-on approach to managing her affairs: only her African counterpart, Colonel Mustafa ‘Scar’ Crimson, gets more directly involved with the running of his empire. She gets along reasonably well with the Walter Ironsides (the North American Serpent) and Hank deBruce (the Australian Serpent). Her main rival is Mr. Li, who is arguably the only one of her peers completely undeterred by her status of future queen of France (the fact that harming Saint-Blancat would bring down the full wrath of the royal family and all of France tends to deter most would-be usurpers).

Of the current Serpents, Vivian is also the most well-endowed with high technology. The unique combination of Belle’s technology and the Crown’s manufactoria has resulted in a series of hand-held energy weapons, a bewildering variety of high-tech equipment disguised as ordinary everyday items, and last but not least a series of high-end combat robots that now stand guard around most of Saint-Blancat’s criminal imperium (which is itself mostly based around finances, fraud in all its interesting aspects, stock market manipulation, illicit playing of the futures market, and so forth).

(Another good example of this high technology is the Serpent Ring worn by Saint-Blancat: modified by the technosmiths of Lord Belle, it performs four functions. First of all it can be used as a light, second as an infrared, ultraviolet or X-ray scanner, thirdly its function as a light can be used to produce a bright flash for a very brief instant to provide cover for an escape. As its fourth function it includes a tiny singularity tunnel comm. system, allowing her to send messages instantly to any location on the world, and indeed from one world to another or into places where jamming would usually prevent it.)
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Re: The Seven Serpents

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I like her. Goddamn, these Serpents have AWESOME themes. Manco Capac has all that undead Mesoamerican paganistic Mayztecan mummy-supernaturalistic hoodoo voodoo nonesense! Mister Li shall be the culmination of all the evil of the Oriental East, the Yellow Peril made manifest - with all the cheesy yet awesome yet cliche'd yet totally goddamn cool tropes it involves.

And Vivian? Mang. She is the epitome of the cutthroat deceit, deception, decisiveness and betrayal of the French underworld and, really, that part of Europe. She's, like, an EVIL version of Princess Diana if she were perfidiously French. Navigating the minefield of mad Europe. Goddamn France. I mean, she's the fiance of the Prince of France! And she's best buddies with CYBORG NAPOLEON, for Christ's sake! And Caleb Belle. Goddamn, you mix this up awesomely.

What a dangerous woman. Perhaps she's utterly ruthless, but she's also very nice - apparently.

Yet Mister Li is totally unperturbed by this. Good Old Man Li.

EDIT:

I think the winnage of the Serpents is due to the fact that they play with goddamn awesome tropes. As in, the tropes we all know and love. It plays them seriously yet awesomely. And because they touch such a fundamental fundament of fiction, I think this is why they're gonna be a big-arse driving factor of OZC - particularly its criminal underworld.

Mummies, Fu Manchu, French femme fatales, goddamn. More.
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Re: The Seven Serpents

Post by Ford Prefect »

As much as I like this article, and I do, there is a problem is assuming that Caleb Belle would trade his technology with Saint-Blancat (or allow her to further trade it!). His ultimate goal is to drive our entire global civillisation into the dirt and transplant the entire PanEuropean Empire in one fell move; I just don't see his gifts being so innocent. He's lucky that any ring mounted singularity comm probably just piggybacks on an actual transceiver. If he'd given away singularity tunnel tech he'd have been beheaded. Twice.

I really like the character (especially the backstory involving Napoleon! How cool!), but a friendship with Lord Caleb Belle, especially given her position as future Queen of France, is really, really dangerous.
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Re: The Seven Serpents

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Ford Prefect wrote:I really like the character (especially the backstory involving Napoleon! How cool!), but a friendship with Lord Caleb Belle, especially given her position as future Queen of France, is really, really dangerous.
I know. I wanted to give the impression that she's a weakness of his - an old flame, so to speak. Even then the tech he's handing her would be akin to us handing some random developing nation tech from the 1950's: it's potentially useful, but nothing we wouldn't be able to handle if we had to. TranSingularity Earth is so far ahead, they would be able to hand out tech that's far beyond even contemporary Earth and it'd still be peanuts to the stuff their own armed forces would be using.

As to their relation, well, I didn't say that Vivian is awesome at making devil-deals for nothing. She'd be perfectly fine with helping Lord Belle out on occasion, even knowing what he's planning, as long as she'll profit from it. I doubt she thinks he can actually pull off what he's trying to pull of, and meanwhile he's thinking that handing her a few bits of rudimentary technology in exchange for aid can't hurt (whether either assumption is actually correct or pure arrogance on their respective parts I'll leave to future storywriters to decide).

(And he definitely isn't giving actual-factual tunnel technology away. He's not that crazy - he just lets her use a tunnel, on occasion, if he's in a particularly good mood. He might be mad about her, but he's not totally bonkers...)
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Shroom Man 777
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Re: The Seven Serpents

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

So I guess he thinks she's cute and admires her go-getter attitude.

Awww! Caleb Belle-kun wuvs Vivian Saint-Blancat-chan! :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

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Re: The Seven Serpents

Post by Ford Prefect »

I am satisfied with Siege's reasoning and handling of it. :mrgreen:
SiegeTank wrote:I doubt she thinks he can actually pull off what he's trying to pull off
She's actually right, though she'd only have her hunch. When I actually take us away to the land of Transingularity Earth with Saint*, I will endeavour to explore just how screwed they are. Caleb Belle, along with his counterparts from other nations, they're essentially playing a game which they're never going to win. They probably know this, incidentally.

On a more Serpent related note, I'm particularly looking forward to Mustafa Crimson+, because Africa is probably my favourite place to play around in. I'm particularly interested in knowing how long he's been there, because there's probably a 70s/80s Wild Geese story waiting to be told there.

*We are rapidly gaining a lot of 'saints'. I hope Hank DeBruce isn't one, if you catch my drift. ;)

+Mustafa Scorpio! :mrgreen:
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Re: The Seven Serpents

Post by Peregrin »

Vivian sounds like a smarter and even more powerful version of Vice... which makes her kinda scary. :shock:
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Re: The Seven Serpents

Post by Magister Militum »

Ah, the return of cyborg Napoleon! This group is getting better by the post, Siege. I can't wait to see what the other Serpents are like.
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Re: The Seven Serpents

Post by Ford Prefect »

Peregrin wrote:Vivian sounds like a smarter and even more powerful version of Vice... which makes her kinda scary. :shock:
Apart from being beautiful women born in France, they really don't have anything in common.
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