They say bad things happen to good people. This is occasionally true. Much more often, bad things happen to bad people.
Bad people like you.
Hey, I don’t know your life story. Maybe you aren’t that bad. Help your landlady across the street, get your library books back a week early, toss a Jackson into the collection basket at Our Lady of Sorrows.
But in the city of Redemption, it’s hard to make a living purely on the straight and narrow. Deck is stacked against the virtuous and the pure. And chances are you done something wrong if you are tangled up with Malik Drasovich.
Oh there’s no direct evidence. But you know it was him. You got a message, you have a contact, you’ve seen the report. “The Dragon” leads the small but dangerous branch of the Bratva, the Russian mob, in Redemption. He got to you, and it hurt.
Bad.
You’ve thought about what you could do, but it’s all been nothing but fucking fantasies, impotant rage as you picked up the pieces and tried to keep going. There just wasn’t anything you could do.
Until now.
A message. Delivered anonymously. Promising a chance at what you’ve been dreaming of in the darkest part of the night. If you are willing to take a risk.
Nothing comes easy in Redemption; everybody’s got an angle and nothing ends well. It’s a world of leg-breakers and con men, Russian mobsters and drug dealers. Friends turn into enemies at the drop of a hat and you never know who to trust. It’s a messed up town with messed up people.
The city of Redemption is an urban sprawl filled with crumbling infrastructure. The streets have potholes, the sewers overflow when it rains, and the homicide rate is one of the highest in the nation. The division between the haves and have nots is startling and can be seen in the way the city is laid out, where the police go, and where crime is most rampant.
The political machine is incredibly broken and corruption flourishes. If the mobsters aren’t shaking the people down, the police are. Occasionally somebody gets into office who might be able to do something, but they either don’t last or they get caught up in the same greed and double-dealing everybody else is doing.
Even the rich neighborhoods of Redemption, the suburbs in the hills just outside of the city center, are infected with rot. They say that behind every great fortune there’s a crime. And there are a lot of fortunes in Redemption.
Noir isn’t good guys versus bad guys. Rich, poor, strong, weak. Doesn’t matter. Nobody’s innocent. It’s dog-eat-dog and everybody’s looking to stick a knife in somebody else’s back.
Might as well make it a back worthy of the knife.
Setting Info:
Best Served Cold is set in the “Vaguely 90s” era. Redemption itself is a crumbling industrial city so fancy technology just isn’t around. There a cell phones but no wifi. Computers sit on desktops and in mainframes. Fancy gadgets and tech and social media don’t fit the gritty setting. You don’t threaten people with hacked emails, you tie their dead cat to a cinder block and toss it through their window.
Feel free to use more modern references to music, culture, or events, however.
Characters shouldn’t be excessively wealthy, connected, or resourceful. They could have been at one point, but not after their encounter with The Dragon. Noir protagonists get things done with their bodies, minds, and morals.
Or lack thereof.
Hosted and narrated by:
Michael B (Lord_Entropy)
Started 05/07/16.
Scenes played: 35
License: Community License
18+
