Okay, I'm gonna steal a page from Belen and post the character descriptions for my game (Snakes on a Zeppelin) here, since I'm still short two players. Luis Hidalgo is spoken for, but the rest are up for grabs.
Alma Borgherssoen
You were just seventeen when World War I broke out, but when the Germans invaded your native Belgium, you knew you had to stand by your countrymen. You joined up with the resistance, working first as a medical assistant but rapidly becoming a battlefield nurse. Two weeks before the British landed and began the slow push back against the Kaiser, a shell hit near your makeshift hospital, and a piece of shrapnel took out the one remaining defensive gunner. As wounded men watched helplessly, you positioned yourself behind the carbine and defended the hospital until reinforcements arrived.
After that, even though it breaks every war policy in the book, you took up arms against the enemy. Nobody much complained, because so many soldiers were dying, and because there weren’t enough troops to defend the hospitals, and because you were a hell of a good shot. You took some pretty serious lung damage during a mustard gas attack, which still has you coughing and wheezing sometimes, but that was your only wartime injury.
You fell in love with an American soldier and moved back to the States with him after the war; you even managed to attend medical school and were the first woman in California to become a doctor. When your husband died, you began traveling again. Tinderbox Studios offered you a gig as the site doctor for their upcoming thriller Snakes on a Zeppelin. It’s not your type of movie, but they said they’d let you serve as an extra during a fight scene, and you’d never been to Mexico before, so you jumped at the chance.
Avery "Shorty" Cunningham
Your daddy though you were a fool for leaving the ranch in East Oklahoma to make a shot at the big time. Well, you thought he was a fool for staying—and who’s laughing now? You knew that you had what it took: you were a rangy, lanky, restless kid, tough as nails and agile as a monkey. When you got to Los Angeles, you learned the technical end of things and worked as muscle for awhile, and maybe you ought to be ashamed of the way you increased your income with a few light-fingered escapades, but you’re not. You did what you had to do to get by.
An assistant director noticed you fooling around out back with the horses, and that was your lucky break: you got a gig as a stunt guy on a Western, and it’s all been clover and honey since then. Sure, you fall and burn and bruise and get punched and all that jazz, but you’d be doing that anyway back in an Okie bar if you hadn’t moved out here, and they don’t pay you for that out East.
Snakes on a Zeppelin was an okay movie shoot, but mostly you were happy to get a chance to meet some other folks in the industry. Luis is a great fencer, but he doesn’t know squat about horses. If you could set up a deal where you were his favorite stuntman, you’d really be set!
During a break in shooting, you took a trip down to Mexico City. They got AMAZING fireworks down there. You’re bringing some back to the states, to show your buddies.
Esther Cohen
You grew up in Los Angeles, the child of a history professor, surrounded by books and learning. It was a given that you’d be an academic yourself, and you didn’t disappoint. At UCLA, you studied with some of the founders of modern anthropology, and your doctoral thesis on the Omayani Indians of the upper Amazon has been hailed as nothing short of brilliant. While you worked with the Omayani, you learned a lot about living in the jungle—including how to use a bow and a blowgun, and even a little about how to manufacture simple drugs and poison out of the local wildlife.
Since then, you’ve alternated anthropological expeditions with writing popular books on the subject. This is your first expedition as a cultural liaison for a Hollywood Studio: Snakes on a Zeppelin director James Whale wanted to use real Indians in the sequences in which the villain procures the movie’s snakes, and he needed someone to help translate. You picked up a bit of the Mazatec language on a previous excursion, so you were able to work with the Indians, explain the offer, and gain their cooperation. You hope you can parlay this experience into a new side-career.
Luis Hidalgo
You grew up in Southern Spain, but Hollywood’s siren call beckoned you from across the waters. Trained in de Vega’s formal school of drama, you knew, of course, the essentials: how to give romantic speeches, how to stage-fight with bladed weapons, how to burst into lyrical song. What you didn’t know, unfortunately, was how to have the square jaw and blonde hair that the movie camera would love.
Still, you’ve managed well enough: if you can’t get the part of the hero, as you would have done back in Andalusia, at least you’re getting the parts of increasingly starring villains. And you have to admit that American women are without equal in the world: Hollywood is a town that Don Juan could only dream of.
The guys who play the stars of these adventure movies? They’re not worth your time (however much you wish the roles were reversed). One day, you’ll be able to show them all who the real hero is; until then, you’ll rake in the money from playing the villain.
Saul Peterson
All the bookies were laying odds that you would be taking down Gorilla Jones, middleweight boxing champion, before you were twenty five. But the bookies weren’t counting on your nasty temper—and after that barfight where you sent the governor’s son to the emergency room, strings were pulled, and so were your fights. Things looked bleak for you. You spent a few years running a low-rent detective service, more of a mook and a bodyguard than a real private dick. You got a few gigs running security for Tinderbox Studios, which was all right: the work was usually pretty easy, no more than strongarming the loonier fans off the set and making sure the dandy stars didn’t get themselves in too much trouble with the locals. When they offered you a job in Mexico, you said, why not? This town was driving you crazy, anyway. Besides, Snakes on a Zeppelin sounded like your kind of movie.
Plus, when you get this character, you get SECRET INFORMATION!
