”Got somethin’ that might interest ya!”

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

It’s a tense situation. An isolated situation, fraught with danger, in uncharted lands. You enter the next room with dread, expecting the worst…

And are met by The Merchant, a hooded figure in a long, weathered black trench coat, with a purple cloth covering most of his face. That, along with the fingerless gloves, meaning that his fingers and the area just around his eyes are the only traces of his pale skin that remain visible. His eyes are blue, but sometimes they glow red, and he usually stands with a slouchy posture, possibly due to the large backpack he carries with him.

Despite his shady appearance he gives off a very amicable aura. Maybe it's the giddy look he gets in his eyes when he sees a potential customer, maybe it's his strangely endearing cockney-esque accent, or maybe it's the way he’ll open up that trench coat to reveal enough firepower to solve every problem you could ever even think of… provided you've got the cash.

PERSONALITY ASPECTS

• Jovial
• Opportunistic
• Miserly
• Polite
• Unassuming

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Just exactly who or what The Merchant is always has and probably always will be a complete mystery, but it was quite clear that against all odds, he had hit the jackpot. Two customers had enough of a need for his inventory that they were willing to trade villages, castles, and mines full of treasure for it, and they had succeeded, destroying the Los Illuminados for good and filling his coffers full of pesetas in the process. The Merchant escaped the destruction of the island and left to clean out his other shops and head on to another venture…

Until The Event happened, and he lost it all. The guns, the shops, the shooting galleries, those blue torches, and perhaps worst of all, the bottlecap figurines. He was left with nothing, and had wandered the pastiche of worlds until he had found the town of 2Fort. It wasn’t all bad. He could definitely work with this. After all, with all these worlds coming together full of dangerous creatures and dangerous people, there oughta be some very profitable business opportunities just ripe for the picking.



~SKILLS~

Appraisal: As one who frequently trades weapons and treasures, The Merchant can quickly and accurately determine the identity and value of any firearm or treasure he comes across.

Weapon Maintenance: The Merchant has an encyclopedic knowledge of firearms, with a firm understanding of every part of anything that could be considered a gun, and as such can keep one running, provided the parts themselves aren’t broken.

Minor Crafting: The Merchant is surprisingly good with machinery, able to rig up a shooting gallery with moving targets in several different locations. It’s nothing extreme, but he could probably fix a broken gate or something. He also possesses a few more utilitarian skills like herb-mixing.

~SPECIAL ABILITIES~

Tune Up: By somehow expending treasure or raw cash, The Merchant can permanently raise a firearm beyond its normal capabilities, increasing either firepower, firing speed, reload speed, or magazine capacity. Upgrading the magazine capacity will (somehow) refill the magazine to full capacity.

Strong Back: Though The Merchant already looks like he’s packing enough heat and cash to fund a small militia, he can carry even more than he appears to be able to, to the point that one wonders whether it’s some sort of extra-dimensional storage… provided that it’s cash, treasure, or part of what he’s selling.

Weapon Hunter The Merchant can practically sniff out a new and interesting gun to add to his collection. He has an easier time finding firearms than most, regardless of the quality.

~Perks~

I’ve got a Selection of Good Things on Sale, Stranger! Though most of his inventory has been lost, The Merchant has retained a few basic weapons: A handgun, a shotgun, and a rifle, along with one First Aid Spray

~Faults~

Miser: The Merchant is ridiculously stingy about keeping his potential sales in perfect condition. He will only use the worst equipment he has on him, if that equipment is remotely worth holding on to, and save the rest as inventory. He also isn’t willing to part with his inventory out of goodwill.

~Weaknesses~

The Merchant can shoot a gun or swing a knife or club, but his skills with them are average at best. He’d prefer to let his customers wield his inventory rather than himself.

The Merchant is also quite frugal with his services. He’s rather affable, but don’t expect him to shell out weapons or upgrades out of the kindness of his heart.



~STARTING EQUIPMENT~
Clothes and Gear: The Merchant’s trusty outfit and backpack. Withstands the elements and can conceal a mindblowing amount of weaponry, though the heat it would suggest to provide doesn’t seem to bother him.

Shop Inventory: The Merchant’s remaining shop inventory. He won’t use these himself, but he's willing to part with them for the right price.

• Handgun: A slightly used semi-automatic pistol that was sold to The Merchant by a certain stranger early on in his adventure, comes with a full ten-round magazine. Reliable, but nothing particularly special.
• Shotgun: An old-fashioned pump-action shotgun.
• Rifle: An old-fashioned bolt-action rifle. Doesn’t come with a scope.
• First Aid Spray: A spray can containing a bizarre substance that heals all injuries. Can only be used once.

~CURRENTLY EQUIPPED GEAR~

Clothes and Gear

~INVENTORY~

*listed above*

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

El Presidente is the president of the world's smallest nation, but that doesn't stop him from trying to look like he comes from a nation that actually matters. El Presidente stands at an average height for a fully grown man, with a downright fat build (but call him a fatty at your own risk!) His olive skin, often tanned through the heat in his island nation, is complimented by a full black beard and mustache. El Presidente's brown eyes are usually obscured by a pair of sunglasses he never takes off, not even indoors (it's part of his image!)

His outfit screams his old profession. A military dress uniform, complete with a matching cap, shows off his impressive power as the de facto dictator of Tropico. At first he wore green, but El Presidente decided to change to black later on in his presidency. There was a brief stint where he considered switching to white (as the image above depicts) due to being more comfortable in the Tropican climate, but he later changed back to black because black hid his fat better was more imposing. El Presidente also has a pistol, a Tokarev, which he keeps in a holster to once again show off his authority. Finally, El Presidente's brand is completed with a Tropican-made cigar in his mouth, one of his nation's chief exports.

PERSONALITY ASPECTS

* Strangely charismatic
* Slightly eccentric
* Jovial demenour
* Natural-born schemer
* Self-centered morality, doesn't care about things except in relationship to himself and his own interests
* No real sense of right or wrong
* Prideful
* Vengeful
* Bombastic


BACKGROUND INFORMATION

El Presidente is synonymous with the island of Tropico itself, situated in the serene Caribbean ocean. The island, originally settled by pirates as a safe harbor to rest after spending time on the high seas. The man who established Tropico, a Spanish pirate famously tortured by the English, known simply as El Rey Pirata, is rumored to be El Presidente himself (putting his age closer to 500 years old instead of the current 300). At the very least, he is most likely an ancestor for El Presidente, given their strangely similar looks. The Spanish Empire seized the islands sometime in the 1600s, displacing EL Rey Pirata and his pirate and resettling the island with mestizos across the Caribbean. Britain would seize the island only about a hundred years later, incoperating Tropico into their empire. In order to prevent any discontent on the island, they offered the position of Governor-General to the first Tropican to respond to their job offer. An eccentric man only known as "El Presidente" took up their offer.

Of course, El Presidente immediately went to work (re)turning the island into a personal fiefdom for his own enrichment. He continuously embezzled state funding, used technicalities and favors to continuously extend his mandate for as long as possible, and made any British investigator that pried too close to his illegal activities disappear. As the British Empire in the 1800s was looking away from the New World and into Asia and Africa, El Presidente used their waning interest in policing their Carribean territories to declare independence. The British sent a small contingent of Royal Marines in an attempt to arrest El Presidente, but after being defeated on the beaches, Queen Victoria allegedly shrugged and asked instead if they were interested in a trade agreement instead.

With Tropican independence secured, El Presidente's first hundred years of reign went on realtively uneventful, as every world power ignored the tiny island to pursue their empire building. The outbreak of the First World War changed everything. Suddenly, both Britain and Germany were competing with each other to get Tropico to send resources to a particular side. Tropico remained officially neutral, but experts noted that Tropico seemed to have fulfilled more trade requests from Germany rather than Britain. A bit due to already producing what the Germans wanted, a bit simply as one last screw you to the British.

World War II was a different story, however. As the Tropican relationships with Germany grew, and the Nazis facing near total collapse by 1945, Tropico officially declared for the Axis. El Presidente sent his trusted advisor, Penultimo, and a unit of Tropican soldiers, to Germany in order to help crush the encircled airborne units in the Ardennes. After brutal fighting in the snow, the representative of the Allied Powers personally went to El Presidente to thank Tropico for their invaluable help in helping the utter destruction of German troops. The Tropican delegation was so terrible, ill-prepared, and mismanaged, that many historians blame Tropico for single-handingly losing the battle for Germany. Nazi leaders fled to Tropico once it became apparent they lost the war, and an Anglo-American join task force attempted to bring El Presidente to justice. However, they landed at the same beach that the British landed on nearly one hundred-fifty years prior, now built up with lots of fortifications. Tropico celebrated a decisive victory, and Queen Elizabeth simply shrugged her shoulders and once again asked if Tropico were interested in a new trade agreement. America too lost interest, despite Tropico practically being in their backyard.

El Presidente, however, was humbled by the experience. No more would he ever declare for a single "side", as that almost ruined his nice little empire. Instead, as the Cold War kicked in with the 1950s, El Presidente played both the Americans and the Soviets against each other as he continuously grew rich from fulfilling both of their demands. Both superpowers never even realized how deceptive El Presidente was in keeping both powers happy, pretending to be socialist or capitalist wherever it was the most convenient. El Presidente's bank account grew to enormous numbers as he continued to embezzle funds from as many sources he could get his greedy hands on.

Things started to go weird around the 90s. The Soviet Union never fell, and the Cold War continued well into the 2010s. The EU, the Arab Leauge, and the People's Republic of China all became superpowers in their own right, not quite to the tier of the USA or USSR, but strong enough to attempt to exert influence on Tropico. El Presidente included all three into his Great Game, but even as he was smart in keeping all five happy in Tropico, it became clear that geopolitics at large was never meant to accommodate this many superpowers. By the 2010s, El Presidente was greeted with a bright flash and a mushroom cloud: some dispute in Ukraine or whatever simply escalated too far, and someone had beef with El Presidente. Probably those damn British. El Presidente hated the British. Always had.

As El Presidente was consumed by the inferno, he didn't die. No, worse. He found himself in some sort of desert, away from his beautiful palace and tropical paradise. Seperated from his swiss bank account, now El Presidente has to rebuild everything from scratch.



~SKILLS~

Cult of Personality: If there is one thing El Presidente is good at, it's yelling into the microphone and sounding utterly convincing. Tropico has survived two invasions and a Cold War, not to mention various rebel groups, through El Presidente's sheer charisma and demagoguery. El Presidente knows what strings to pull, what sells well to a person or group of people, and can get people to easily do his bidding, while making them seem in control.

Financial Vision: If there is a way for something to make money, especially a personal profit, El Presidente knows how. Particularly if it involves embezzling, his favorite activity.

~SPECIAL ABILITIES~

Besides unexplained immortality, El Presidente is no different from any other regular human being, and thus has no magical ability

~Perks~

Swiss Bank Accounts: El Presidente's slush fund is magical. Anytime the timeline in his own universe was disrupted, the amount of money that was in the overseas banks would stay. Thus, El Presidente was able to amass a personal fortune in various banks all across the tax havens of the world. This remains true even in this universe; those funds still managed to cross over, although none of it is currently in his possession. However, El Presidente is certain that, if he puts the effort to search for it, he could probably find areas where parts of his fortune are stored.

~Faults~

Nicotine Addiction: That American gangster movie that El Presidente liked to watch, Scarface he thinks it was called, said the most important rule to the drug trade was to never get high on your own supply. Much like Tony, El Presidente ignored that warning, chomping on the finest cigars made on this planet Earth: his own country's. While this didn't lead to his death via shootout, he is now addicted to Nicotine, and there is only so-much cigars a person can carry on their own.

~Weaknesses~

El Presidente is a leader, not a fighter. While he can shoot down the average mook with his pistol, he is used to having an army fighting for (and with! El Presidente is certainly no coward, mind you) him. He can get overwhelmed very quickly by numbers, and he doesn't have the personal strength to deal with named characters. El Presidente prefers to fight with words, not bullets.

After a certain time without having nicotine or tobacco of some kind, El Presidente will go into withdraw. When he does, Cross will roll on a special little table and a number of things will happen that he'll have to contend with. They can range from silly, to strange, to worryingly dangerous. It'll be fun!!!



~STARTING EQUIPMENT~

* Dictator clothes and hat, to make him look imposing and regal
* A Soviet TT-30 pistol, infinite ammo but nothing more than a simple peashooter in strength
* A pack of the finest Tropican cigars
* Nuclear detonator (Broken)


~CURRENTLY EQUIPPED GEAR~

* Clothes
* TT-30

~INVENTORY~

See above







VOTE EL PRESIDENTE OR ELSE