crooked

Name: Grigori Piotr Hollis

Age: 36

Gender: Male

Type: Select One

Appearance:

His thin build and unimpressive stature do not make Greg an imposing figure, though his cold blue eyes have been known to make far more menacing men pause. His hair is dark and usually somewhat unruly in a coincidentally styled manner, adding to the overall impression that he is a man whose professional attire is a burden, not a choice. Greg is rarely out of a dress shirt and tie, though he likes the sleeves rolled and the tie loose around his neck. As often as not, he's layered in a trenchcoat that hides both his policeman's shield and his pistol, not to mention his pack of cards, dice, and book of crosswords. Greg is a man who smiles easily but never widely, it's a thin expression worn against his two-day stubble and it never seems to fully reach his eyes.

Personality:

Depending on who was asked, Greg would get one of two descriptions. On the job he's known for being very cool, practically -cold-, and possessed of a bleak sense of humor. Outside of his policework, most likely in the bars or mob-run gambling holes, the cynical streak is still there but there's a zeal to the man as well. He's an engaging speaker, with a restrained fire in his eyes and sharp articulating gestures in his hands. Greg is a smart man, he knows it, and he doesn't downplay it. He's the sort to point out when someone is beneath him, knowing that all it takes is his badge (or gun) to keep things from turning foul.

City History:

Born to Polish immigrants who were among the many throngs of immigrants coming to America, Greg's life was one that never felt quite right. Even in his childhood, he never wanted to fit in. He grew up around scads of children just like him; Polish or Irish, they were born in this country and they were the hopes of their parents. But as he remembers it, he knew even then that they would go nowhere. Greg was determined to be different from all the others, delving headlong into his studies with a fervor he felt confident would distinguish him from his peers. He was a shockingly smart youth, earning straight marks throughout his school days but blemishing his record with a propensity for minor con jobs and pranks played on students and faculty alike. Was it his fault they were all so gullible?

He didn't think so, Greg just knew how to see the angles, to play people off each other or make them gladly give him what he wanted. But for all of his wit and intellect, he grew up poor, too poor to afford college when he came of age. He'd never joined his father in factory work prior to graduating, and Greg wasn't about to start then. Instead he enrolled in Eidolon's police academy, once again earning top marks and graduating near the top of his class. He could've been a fine policeman, but for his discovery that there was a whole world that existed at night just waiting to play the games he loved so much. He fell into the scope of the local mafia quickly, tallying more wins than losses as he tossed the dice and took his cards, calculating the odds and knowing when to pass, when to bet high, when to bluff.

But when you take enough money from that sort of people, you find out quickly that they have limits. All at once, Greg was in over his head. He'd bluffed his way into a high-stakes game that he never could've won, if only because there were more people cheating against him than he could imagine. Faced with a mountain of debt and threats against his parents, Greg agreed to do some favors to his debtors. They were supposed to be little things; slipping some evidence out of a police station, giving the name of a local informant, and so on. He didn't think he'd like doing them nearly as much as he did, and once again he was hooked. The lure of a dual life, a constant con, was too great for Greg, and the money didn't hurt either.

For fifteen years now he's been on the take, in the pockets of the mob, and he has no desire to change. He hides his money in a number of places around town, gambles what he likes, and occassionally? He injects a little more chaos into the city. He had a hand in the fall of Babylon, helped to sell out a deep-cover police officer working within the mob, and on occassion has turned the mafia's people over to the police, only to plant misinformation that makes them think there's a traitor in the families somewhere. All in all, it's paid off for Greg: his mob employers helped him become a senior detective years before he should've, his genuine collars have gained him trust within the department, and his shrewd mind has him believing there's no way it could come back to haunt him.

Special Skills and Abilities:

Greg is genuinely brilliant, a quality he applies in several areas of his life. He's as much of an expert as one can be when it comes to games of chance and a fair hand at strategies such as chess. He keeps up on forensic sciences of the era, meaning he can dust for fingerprints or take bite pattern molds if needed. Greg is also a pretty good shot with a pistol, and fluent in both Polish and Engllish. A remnant from his childhood is his propensity for sleight of hand and simple magic tricks, a skill that's infinitely useful when he needs to pluck a key bit of evidence from a scene or plant one of his own.

Weaknesses:

Hubris - Greg is King Shit, no doubt in his mind. He keeps a tight rein on displaying his arrogance, but it dominates his line of thought. It's impossible for him to make a mistake, and even past ones warp in his mind to become convenient decisions he made knowingly to get to where he is now.

Gambling compulsion - If there's a wager on the table, he's in. It doesn't matter if it's cash, cars, or favors, Greg is like a starving man in a donut factory when there's a bet being made; he has to have a taste, just one.

Exposed nerve - He's done a good job of hiding his past. Greg changed his last name to Hollis from Holewinski, he moved his parents across town to avoid visiting the old neighborhood, but his heritage bothers him immensely. Every day he sees the dimwitted immigrants working the factories, docks, or markets. He sees them counting pennies to buy bread or pay for cheap liquor, and he hates them. Reminders of his Polish roots or any comparison he sees being made to it makes Greg's temper flare near-instantly.

Strengths:

Brilliant - Arrogant or no, he's right when he tells himself he's smarter than the people he works for; smart enough to stay away from their sorts of responsibilities. Greg can normally see the angles people are playing at long before he's meant to, sometimes even before the people he deals with know their own angles.

Poker Face - Is he lying when he says his father's second cousin is the Pope? Probably, though you wouldn't know it from the way he tells you. Practicing his lies since childhood has given Greg a talent at deadpan expressions that almost seems mythical.

Family or Connections:

Edmund and Giertruda Holewinski (parents)

Residence:

Greg has a luxury studio apartment overlooking the nice part of Fontaine Park, a gift to him from some senior members of the local syndicate that marked his ten years in their service. The technical story, of course, is that he won the lease in a poker game.

Career:

Police detective

PB: to be chosen