Neon is the Colour of Vengeance (Flappers and False Gods)

PROLOGUE

An excerpt from ‘All the Sad Young Men: A Tragedy from Tenebrium’

– A historical Journal by Anthony Oubier

The year was 2423 and the Jazz Age was in full swing—again. The last frosts of an unseasonably cold winter had passed, and the denizens of Tenebrium City were once again free to roam the neon-lined streets in their waistcoats and pearls. The city itself was a technicolour marvel in glass and metal, with buildings so tall it seemed that their architects had been attempting to commune with the divine. Wheelless transporters flew through the sky, tracing the lines of the Slipstream Highway as if they were shooting stars.

As for the establishment, Harold Williams had just been re-elected as District Attorney and he, along with tenured mayor Richard Howell, had reintroduced prohibition on account of the city’s far-reaching narcotics problem. It wasn’t going well; there were protests daily and the bootlegged liquor trade was alive and thriving.

In those days, Tenebrium was thought of as the jewel of Colony Six, still envied by its neighbours. It was a gangster’s paradise and a far different place from the city it is today. It was freer, unburdened by the effects of its downfall which would happen a mere two years later. While already in the clutches of the Gold Legion, the cult’s dark machinations were yet to come to fruition. The drug Styxx, which turned its users into zombie-like creatures dubbed ‘Ghouls’, was nothing more than a dark whisper heard only in the city’s underworld.

Our story begins and ends with Tenebrium’s problem with organised crime. Though the city has a colourful history with the mafia, there is no clear account of how the various crime families in Tenebrium came to be. Historians, like myself, are unable to agree on how and why they came to have such power in Tenebrium, but what we can say with certainty is that, in the 2420s, there were four major families holding dominion over the city’s shady underbelly.

The Kelly family, who can be traced back to the mid-2350s, was the largest and most influential of the time. Helmed by Stefano Kelly, and latterly his son Dill, the Kellys made their money in strip clubs and restaurants, both of which acted as fronts for their flourishing drug business. They were famous for their brutality, with Dill Kelly earning himself the moniker: ‘The Butcher of Tenebrium City’.

The Kelly’s main competition in Tenebrium was the Russo family, first recorded in 2390. The Russo’s patriarch, Vincent Russo, was a cousin of Dill’s by marriage. This has led many to believe that the Russo family started as a subsidiary of the Kelly family, before separating to establish in its own right. If there was any bad blood between the cousins, I could find no evidence of it. Perhaps there would have been if the family had not been disbanded in 2421. In a rare victory for law enforcement in the realms of organised crime, a raid at the home of Vincent Russo led to his arrest and subsequent execution, putting an end to his reign of terror.

Few would mourn Vincent Russo even in the underworld, for in the years preceding his death, he had been aggressively seizing the operations of smaller families and killing anyone who stood in his way. This even included the Brigante family; our third of the four.

The Brigante family, whose history seems to predate that of the Kellys, was first recorded in 2337. Running protection rackets and small illegal casinos, the Brigantes seemed content to keep to the shadows. They themselves were destroyed in a single night, when Vincent Russo arranged a meeting supposedly to discuss a truce, only to murder the entire family in one fell swoop.

While there were other smaller families, as well as other branches of organised crime, including Yakuza and Triads, it is the fourth and final family which is most important to the story you are about to hear.

The Conti family were the new kids on the block in 2401. Having only a single generation, they were still helmed by their original founder Samuel Conti in 2423. Though they had their fingers in several pies, including racketeering, gambling, fixing boxing matches and prostitution, the Conti family grew to prominence through contract killings. Never before had there been an organisation, that wasn’t government related, so proficient in ending human life, and it was this ‘blood for money’ business strategy that would be their downfall.

Now that you understand the landscape of Tenebrium’s underworld, I would like to share with you a far more intimate tale than is my custom. I have made my career telling the big stories. From the Gold Legion in Tenebrium, Una Anima in Caligo, to the discovery of Claustra—the secret city. I have profiled heroes and villains, dictators and visionaries alike. The tales I have told span the colonies. I have made it my mission to report truth in the face of cover-ups, facts amid vast seas of fiction. And, if you will forgive me a moment of vanity: I have done it well.

The story I would like to share with you here is not one of particular historical significance. It did not change the world, and yet I still believe that it is worth the telling. It is a harrowing account of lost love and broken trust; a cautionary tale of the damage a parent, by blood or otherwise, can do to their child. I hope you will come with me on this journey, if for no other reason, than that some of the individuals herein were wronged and the only justice they will receive is in preserving their memory.

This account isn’t about right or wrong, good or bad, saints or sinners, but merely the hope that love can transcend the ugliness of grim circumstance. There is no one left to contradict what I am about to tell you, and I am not so foolish or arrogant as to claim that everything I report here is undiluted by hearsay and rumour, but I believe I have captured the essence of events, and it is that essence I hope lives on.

Join me if you will, as I delve, not for the first time, into Tenebrium’s underworld looking for a glimmer of light in the pervading dark.