Important NPCs of
Bubblegum Cartel
Important NPCs
There are several NPCs who are important to the Bubblegum Cartel campaign. These characters have a unique relationship with the PCs; some are allies, some are antagonists. Each NPC has a clear motivation which impacts motivations in the campaign. While all NPCs allow for the flavor of any campaign, only the NPCs listed below have had a clear impact upon the characters as reoccurring opportunities to move the plot along or distinct personalities which left an impression upon the players.
E.S.W.A.T. (Extra-Special Weapons and Advanced Tactics)
law enforcement organization
ESWAT serves as an anti-boomer unit, cybernetics crime response, and special forces branch of the Neo-Paris Police Department, enforcing local & national laws while keeping the peace in Neo-Paris. Established in 2029 when out-of-control boomers started to be seen in large urban settings across the world, ESWAT was initially created as a relatively small tactical unit specialized in sensitive boomer situations but has since grown into a larger force with expanded duties and proficiencies. Although most of its operations take place in Neo-Paris, ESWAT (as a component of the French National Police) can operate anywhere inside France’s borders. Unlike its sister organization in Tokyo (the A.D. Police), the French government does not allow for red tape or an insufficient budget to hinder the units’ efficiency. However, both law enforcement bodies share in the same anti-boomer weapons and armor, and teams from both units connect on an annual basis to review best practices of how to deal with a berserk boomer in an urban environment. ESWAT answers directly to the Director-General of the National Police is commanded by the Director-General, who falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior.
Pierre Gagnon
Human male agent [155 points]
Pierre Gagnon was born in Paris in 1972. He was the eighth of the 14 children (three had died at birth) of Édouard Gagnon and Camille Caillebotte. His parents were born in Paris, but it is supposed that his grandparents were from Montpellier, because his parents were married and lived there for some time. Gagnon was one of five brothers who were inducted into the Charnier crime family; his youngest brother, Louis, was not. By the age of 12, the Gagnons settled in the 19th arrondissement, where he grew up in poverty alongside his brothers. His father worked irregularly as a day laborer. As an adult, Pierre came to resent his father for being unable to provide for his family. In school, he had a history of truancy and bullying other students, and ultimately dropped out at the age of 16. Gagnon was involved in street gangs associated with Paris underworld from the age of 12. After leaving school, he devoted himself to working with the syndicate associated Hornec gang, where he met and befriended fellow allies for this future life of crime. Gagnon met his future wife, Estelle Aubert, who was of half-French and half-Russian descent, when he was 18, and the couple were married three years later. Gagnon attempted to work legitimately at age 22 as a salesman for telephone book ads and as an assistant truck driver. However, he could not stay crime-free and, by age 26, had been jailed twice. As early as his teens, Gagnon was running errands for Philip D'Antoni, a lieutenant in the Charnier family. Gagnon carried out truck hijackings in Paris together with his brother Marcel. It was around this time that Gagnon met his mentor and Charnier underDaupheaux (syndicate term for "boss") André Ernotte. In 2000, he was implicated and arrested for hijacking soon after. Gagnon was arrested a third time for hijacking while out on bail two months later, this time for stealing a load of champagne worth $500,000 on the Great Paris Bypass. Later that year, Gagnon pleaded guilty to the hijacking and was sentenced to three years at Fleury-Mérogis Prison. Gagnon was paroled at age 32, and returned to his old crew, still working under D'Antoni. Gagnon was transferred to management of the Charnier family's illegal gambling, where he proved himself to be an effective enforcer. D'Antoni was indicted on loansharking charges in 2004. As a condition of his release, he could not associate with known felons. D'Antoni named him acting lieutenant of his crew soon after he was paroled. In this new role, Gagnon frequently traveled to underDaupheaux Alexis Favre's headquarters at the Keeper's Club to brief his leader on the crew's activities. Both men became fast friends, and Favre often assigned Gagnon to his primary hit team to deal with obstacles to the Charnier syndicate. In 2008, Clement Charnier died at home of natural causes. He had appointed his underDaupheaux Favre to succeed him and appeared to believe that his crime family would benefit from Favre's focus on white-collar businesses. Favre arranged for D'Antoni to be his underDaupheaux while directly running traditional syndicate activities such as extortion, robbery, and loansharking. Gagnon was released in July 2009, after two years' imprisonment, and soon was regarded as Favre's protégé, though others in the syndicate chaffed at the idea. Under Gagnon, his crew was Favre's biggest earners. Besides his cut of his subordinates' earnings, Gagnon ran his own loansharking operation and held a no-show job as a plumbing supply salesman. In 2010, Gagnon assisted in the largest unrecovered technology robbery in history, the infamous McGruder Airlines Heist at Charles de Gaulle Airport. During his tenure under Favre, Gagnon was indicted on various charges of assault, robbery, and racketeering, but with witness disappearances, none of the charges held up in court. Gagnon rapidly became dissatisfied with Favre's leadership, regarding the new Daupheaux as being too isolated and greedy. Like other members of the family, Gagnon began to personally disliked Favre, as he lacked street credibility, and those who had paid their dues running street-level jobs did not respect him. Gagnon also had an economic interest: he had a running dispute with Favre on the split Gagnon took from hijackings at Charles de Gaulle Airport. Gagnon was also rumored to be expanding into drug dealing, a lucrative trade Favre had banned. In 2016, Favre was arrested and indicted in over a dozen crimes, facing life imprisonment. Favre arranged for Gagnon to serve as an acting Daupheaux alongside D'Antoni in his absence. Gagnon, meanwhile, began conspiring with fellow disgruntled lieutenants to overthrow Favre, insisting that Favre would eventually try to kill him. It has long been a rule in the syndicate that a Daupheaux could only be killed with the majority approval of the French syndicates. To get around this, he got the support of several important figures of his generation in the Paris families. Gagnon could also count on the complicity of Charnier adviser Thomas Anselmet. In 2017, during an ambush at La Machine du Moulin Rouge, Favre and D'Antoni were both killed under Gagnon's command when they arrived at the meeting in the evening. Gagnon watched the hit from his car with Anselmet. Several days after the murder, Gagnon was named to temporarily run the family pending the election of a new Daupheaux . It was also announced that an internal investigation into Favre's murder was underway. However, it was an open secret that Gagnon was acting Daupheaux in all but name, and nearly all the family's lieutenants knew he had been the one behind the hit. At age 46, he was formally acclaimed as the new Daupheaux of the Charnier family at a meeting of 20 lieutenants held in August 2017, formally changing the name to the Gagnon family, keeping Anselmet as his advisor during his 14-year reign.
Inspector Sven Johannsen
Human male soldier [57 points]
Sven Johannsen was born in the 2001, in Quedlinburg, Germany, the third of seven children whose father was a groundskeeper. Moving soon after his youngest brother was born, he grew up in Leipzig, on a block mostly populated by the families of police officers and firefighters. He graduated from the Leipzig Police Academy in 2022 and was originally assigned to a precinct in Huchting, for a year and a half, after which he was reassigned to the precinct in Gröpelingen. During his career in Leipzig, Johannsen committed a host of crimes, including conspiring with drug traffickers to distribute methamphetamine, warning drug dealers about upcoming raids, providing them with guns and badges, and stealing food meant for the needy at a church. Johanssen located a man who robbed the Gagnon syndicate, after fleeing from France. Instead of arresting him, Johanssen turned him over to the syndicate himself. After leaving his post in Leipzig and joining ESWAT in Neo-Paris, he pocketed several thousand Euro-dollars a week because of corrupt arrangements with the Gagnon syndicate. While he considers Charles Gagnon as a friend and an associate, it is uncertain if the latter feels the same. Currently, Johanssen is being investigated for racketeering and conspiracy to distribute narcotics by the French National Police internal affairs.
Rene Lumiere
Boomer (male) [150 points]
Not much is known of the past of Rene Lumiere, except for the bits and pieces which have been gathered from unverifiable sources. Investigation into his past has pointed to the fact he might be one of the first boomers GENOM produced for non-combat applications. Although his cerebral cortex was expanded, his visual sensors suffered, causing partial blindness on both eyes. With an expanded artificial intelligence compared to other combat boomers, Lumiere escaped his production facility when learning his creators were planning to scrap his model. Fleeing to the slums of Neo-Paris, he became desperate to survive, and, while concealing he was non-human, he bullied humans, taking advantage of unfortunate citizens by beating them and extorting money from them. More than once, he was reported to local authorities who were unable to capture him. Having spent months on the streets, Lumiere gained a better understanding of the narcotics trade, often killing neighborhood dealers, then selling their drug paraphernalia. With his body showing signs of wear as he was an experimental model, Lumiere turned the profits he obtained from dealing drugs into body uploads at various chop-shops, as he moved around Europe to keep his identity safe. It was several years until he returned to Neo-Paris, with a new body and new following of boomer believers, combining his philosophy on how boomers and humanity should coincide based on Chinese astrology, Taoism, and Western esotericism. He outlined a doomsday boomer prophecy, which included a world war to end all wars, and described a final conflict culminating in a nuclear "Armageddon", borrowing the term from the Book of Revelation, preaching the necessity of Armageddon for "boomer relief." With each new body, Lumiere has maintained the need to remove the standard optics package, allowing any who view him as a sign that flesh is weak, but technology is not.
Lycanthe
Bio-boomer (female) GENOM Corporation [115 points]
Kimberly Laurent was born to teenage parents in Narbonne and was abandoned at an early age. Falling through the cracks of France's child protection system, she was later abducted and became victim of human trafficking. With her handlers deciding to move her to Neo-Paris, Kimberly eventually came into the possession of Dr. Dorian Jacob, a geneticist working for a subsidiary of Graves-Masuda. Through the next fifteen years, she was experimented upon, as one of several subjects, whom Jacobs worked to create various animal and human hybrids for corporate espionage. While the other test subjects did not survive, Kimberly's body accepted the molecular-genetic changes, altering her body chemistry, combined with the cybernetic implants to increase her efficiency. Although she was trained as a thief and an assassin, her human desire to be free overrode her training and she escaped the Graves-Masuda arcology, only to encounter Elizabeth Longe.
Val Talent
Human male agent [137 points]
Talent was born with the first name Valentino, as his mother was a fan of the actor Rudolph Valentino. As a boy, he traveled with his father on a road trip to Marseille, and witnessed his father's death in an automobile accident, but did not exhibit typical emotional reactions to it. Talent told Elizabeth Longe his mother was an immigrant from Germany, and it is later revealed that someone risked their life to smuggle his mother out of the country when terrorists attacked. Little is known about his childhood, but he was a resident in a teaching hospital before leaving medicine to join the French Armed Forces. After an intentionally failed assassination attempt on Pierre Gagnon, he claimed he has alexithymia, making him unable to feel and/or express common human emotions like fear or sadness, which he diagnosed herself. He has little concern for his victims, along with a flat affect and few demonstrable emotions. He once explained why he left medical school, remarking ironically that he was "better at killing people than fixing them". Through Miya's investigation Talent completed medical school and had begun his residency, where he was praised for her technical skills, but came under criticism for his lack of concern for whether his patients lived or died, and therefore was deemed unfit to become a doctor. During his earliest activities with FAF, he was tasked with intercepting and killing those responsible for a cyberdeck belonging to a runaway hacker named Gerald Trogneux. Among those killed were Chinese buyers of the cyberdeck as well as Bernard Castaner, the man who sold it to them. Returning the cyberdeck, Talent was almost eliminated by his handler for unknown reasons. Choosing to work with the French underworld, Talent soon renowned as the top assassin of all of Europe.
Ariel Västra
Boomer (female) [100 points]
Ariel was originally constructed by GENOM for domestic purposes, but as information has been gathered about her, it has become evident she was primarily used as a pleasure-boomer until meeting Lumiere. Created at the GENOM arcology, she has indicated that she has had several owners, who have sold her for various reasons including financial and otherwise. Her lifespan as a subservient automaton seemed set until she encountered Lumiere under mysterious circumstances, leading to the death of her then-owner, Michel Cantona, a respected art collector. When asked about who she was up until Cantona's death, she claims there is a flaw in her data cortex, but she has admitted her mind was opened when she encountered her savior (Lumiere). Ariel was instrumental in connecting Jacques with Lumiere, as she was placed intentionally to meet with Jacques and his group at the Crazy Horse.
Supporting NPCs of Bubblegum Cartel
Justinian Capps
Male human commoner
Capps was a low-level underworld fixer for the Gagnon Syndicate who was caught stealing money from his employer. The first mission Charles was given by Pierre was to befriend Capps and his crew, then later murder them all to give an example to others and set Charles down a path he could not return from.
Lombeí and Viète syndicates
E.S.W.A.T. by RPG Dynamite, Charles Gagnon by Midjourney, Inspector Sven Johannsen by Alastair Duncan, Rene Lumiere by Thomas Diana, Lycanthe by Jello Serve, Val Talent by Nicole Cepeda, Ariel Västra by Thomas Shelby
All artwork on this pages falls under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.