Illuminati - Almost Famous

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Character Lore

Ronald Carabbia was born in Detroit, Mich., in 1899. He grew up a poor boy, one of six kids, with a housewife mother and a father who did odd jobs. The family was eyed with suspicion, as all immigrant families were, and then some, since various male relatives were rumored to be connected. The relatives were, evidently, not interested in sharing whatever wealth they might have had with the Carabbias, who struggled to eat at times even before the Great Depression.

The suspicion extended to the schoolyard, where Ron was preyed on by more fortunate kids and poor but non-Italian kids alike. This rough world taught Ron to only trust those who trust you, to watch your back, to know who has power and who is a scam. As bad as life at school was, it was better than homelife, and at least was exciting at times.

At age 18, an unusually reserved and darkened teenager, Ron made the decision to leave everything he'd known behind. Two of his siblings were dead, taken by disease. His older brother was in prison. His parents were poorer than ever. Ron joined the United States Army and shipped off to Europe, now a part of the Great War.

In the Old World, Ron served in the trenches of France. He was mistrusted here as well due to his heritage, though not to the degree as at home. After the war ended Ron stayed in the Army for two years, then went home. He arrived back in Detroit, now a 21-year-old man, to find that his imprisoned brother had been released the Summer before and hadn't been heard from since. Ron wouldn't discover that the brother died in 1919 of the Spanish Flu for another five years.

Ron moved back in with his parents and took up the line of work of his father - odd jobs. He scraped together a living, together with his father, to support his mother and his two sisters. For five long, depressing years, Ron endured the suffering silently. In 1925, that changed. His father was arrested and charged with assisting the Mafia hide a body and traffic drugs. A few weeks later, his sister was arrested for prostitution. The double blow was too much for Ron, who felt a mix of sorrow for his family and anger that he never even knew of the criminal activity his family was engaged in. He hopped a train, penniless, and rode it to Chicago.

Ron found a job on an assembly line in Chicago. Earning a better wage than he had ever had before and away from the scenes of his childhood, Ron began to cheer up a bit. He began to go to pool halls and speakeasies. Although he didn't involve himself in criminal activity (aside from buying booze) he mixed with the Mob crowd quite a lot. After a few years of this rather free-and-easy life, Ron started to see the advantages the illegitimate life offered. He began to do a few jobs here and there for the family his union was connected with, pick up a working woman now and then, and made a few bucks in the process.

Then, in 1930, it all collapsed again. A war broke out in the streets of the Windy City. The family he associated with was wiped off the planet, and he knew he would be as well if he stayed in the city. He took the train East to Philadelphia and looked for a job. This, however, was not the time to be on the market. The Depression came down with all its fury. In a few months Ron had used up his savings and was a regular at the soup kitchens and the construction sites where you could get a one-day job with a few cents for pay. After a bit of investigating, Ron found that his parents were both dead, his father tortured, then shot in the back and killed, by the Mafia after an unsuccessful attempt to prove his worth and his mother taken by cancer. His sister, he found out, had been in Philadelphia for a couple of years after being released from jail but had been found in a hotel room lying nude on a bed, stabbed to death, with a dollar bill stuffed inside her what-have-you.

Deep in depression, penniless, and with no family left but a sister he hadn't seen for seven years and who was, for all he knew, also dead, Ron stumbled around alleyways and did occasional work for the shadowy figures he met there. His mind began to function again after a few months, though, and he finished learning the ways of the streets. Fortune changed in 1932 when a telegram arrived for him. The note was from a bank in New York. The cash belonging to a distant relative had been sitting in the vault ever since the man had been killed in a Mafia war. The bank had finally found his closest relative, and the money was his. Shocked, Ron claimed the cash and put it all in the bank, not trusting himself to touch it.

He then went back to Chicago, where the best years of his life had been spent, hoping for a fresh start. He finally truly joined a Family. The result is to be seen.