“Iron” Goldie Musou

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Background

Powers & Abilities

Goldie is tall and powerfully built, with broad shoulders. She can flatten most persons with a single punch. She demonstrated remarkable speed, pain tolerance, precision and durability.

She’s also very well-trained in at least one martial arts style. Some of her techniques looking like jiu-jitsu with a strong emphasis on atemi. She also excels at katame techniques against knives and handguns.

There’s something akin to video game logic  at work. She’s tough like an endgame boss should be.

She also has an excellent sense of hearing and a strong intuition.

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Highly organised crime

However, her main asset is her merciless, analytical intelligence. Goldie excels at predicting what her opponents will do and how. Thus, she’ll have brutal counters in place before they make their move. However, these generally require extensive prep work.

Nevertheless, she can run rings around most opposition without much apparent effort. Goldie will leave everybody but exceptionally smart, capable and strong-willed antagonists in her dust.

Though her planning is subtle, the results aren’t. They call her “Iron” Goldie for a reason. She has to send a stern message about the consequences of opposing her. Especially given how the macho cultures of the underworld have trouble backing down in front of a woman.

Goldie is staggeringly confident and has an obvious charisma to her. However, establishing that whatever Goldie says, goes will be done through deeds, not words.

Her composure is impressive. She can just stand there smirking as all hell breaks loose and bullets fly everywhere, and is essentially impossible to intimidate.

But the drugs like me (part 1)

Iron Goldie’s *other* main asset (she has considerable assets. Yeah, those too.) is her doctorate in biochemistry. It allowed her to invent the powerful designer drug Kerasine. She designed a number of variants around her core compound, and many of those have cinematic  effects.

The most potent applications of Kerasine and its variants are that :

• It is a complex compound, and very difficult to replicate. But at the same time it’s cheap to produce for a sufficiently skilled chemist who understands how it works.
• Regular use of proper Kerasine doesn’t induce significant physical damage. Controlled use doesn’t seem to induce psychological damage either.
• A small dose of Kerasine is comparable to a crack cocaine hit. A regular dose is closer to the effects of heroin.
• A large dose triggers vivid hallucinations well on par with LSD. These can incapacitate pretty much anyone, or trigger hectic behaviour that only makes sense from their point of view. A paranoid bad trip is easily induced in this state.
• A unsafely large dose of the triggers all the above. People using the “powerball” Kerasine variant will further display :
  1. Incredible resilience to pain – it’s even more marked than with PCP.
  2. Maniacal strength – enough for an ordinary junkie to tip an ordinary sedan to its side by himself with extreme effort.
• Another variant called beta-Kerasine is a peerless brainwashing instrument. It is the sort of magic mesmerism powder that the CIA spent years chasing after with MKULTRA  and other projects. According to Becky Farrah’s info, Kerasine was in fact derived from CIA research. That may have beena result of the longstanding CIA/cosa nostra alliance.

But the drugs like me (part 2)

A person exposed to beta-Kerasine will be mesmerised and highly susceptible to suggestions. That lasts for hours with a small dose, or for days with a normal or large dose.

This susceptibility is similar to cinematic versions of hypnotism, à la “when you hear the word ’Croatoan’ you will kill the Mayor” or “you are now secretly loyal to me and will unquestioningly obey all of my direct orders”.

However, how strong the suggestions will be depends on the psychological finesse of the indoctrinator. A coherent scenario must be proposed for the person to believe in. And to be fully effective, it must match with themes that are important to the person.

Goldie likes using common paranoia-related themes. Such as explaining that the target is a disguised space alien or possessed by the Devil. See the quotes for an example of priming a subject.

Thoroughly brainwashed Kerasine victims will unhesitatingly maim or kill themselves if ordered to. Yet they can also operate without seeming suspicious – and they will not be physically or mentally diminished. They just happen to have become fanatically loyal toward their indoctrinator.

Thus, Goldie excels at creating double agents in her service everywhere, and have them remain undetected sleepers until she needs them.

But the drugs like me (part 3)

Exposing people to Kerasine can be quite simple. One example was spraying them with an odourless, aerosol form of the drug while they are distracted. Therefore, *anybody* could be a Goldie agent. Even if they are absolutely not the drug-using type. This is a key asset of hers. Nobody can tell whether the person next to them won’t suddenly be revealed as a thrall of Iron Goldie.

Breaking Kerasine brainwashing is extremely hard. The very strong-willed Larry Vincent managed it, but she used Kerasine to brainwash herself out of her previous conditioning. And it was only possible because she used as an hypnotic trigger the strongest possible association with her quasi-pathological obsession with firearms.

Other drugs could be used to partially break the hold of Kerasine. However, these were “ancient Chinese secret” sort of compounds. And they needed to be backed by a good deprogramming strategy, just like Kerasine requires brainwashing skills.

Mr. Vincent broke the Kerasine conditioning relatively easily, but :

1. He’s basically a Chow Yun Fat character by way of Mumbai.
2. He was being exposed to Kerasine in the air.
3. When his daughter talked to him she lucked out by contradicting the scenario Goldie had used to brainwash him. Larry told her dad that she loved him whereas Goldie’s conditioning rested on the notion that his daughter hated him.

Gear

Goldie usually wears a tailored supple ballistic vest under her clothes. With her superior constitution, that can make her remarkably hard to kill. Larry Vincent once put three 9mm para rounds in her solar plexus area to knock her out through her vest, but that had basically no effect.

Goldie often carries small audio bugs. She places these in people’s clothing or into cars so she can follow them and spy on them even if they escape.

Another useful bit of equipment is a small packet of cocaine. Goldie isn’t an habitual user, but snorts it as a combat painkiller when she has been wounded and needs to maintain her focus.

When she doesn’t need to be discreet, Goldie will have her chauffeur break out her Ferrari F40 . For a lower profile, she uses something like a BMW 730iL . Her fleet also includes a heavily-armoured Mercedes sedan, apparently with NBC security.

Ordnance

Her usual concealed handgun is a Glock 19 – though she once used a suppressed Detonics .45 instead. She often has a medium-sized knife with a Ka-Bar-style blade on her.

Though she seldom has to shoot, Goldie’s preferred weapon is a .32 ACP Skorpion machine pistol. This may seem like a strange choice — Iron Goldie has the body mass and strength to fire much heavier weapons. But the rounds’ hollowpoint is filled with Kerasine and sealed with wax.

They are also underloaded — making them subsonic, so the Skorpion can be silenced as needed — to facilitate the injection. Thus, even Minnie-May Hopkins could survive a hit in the arm. The effects of the Kerasine occur within seconds.

Il signor Dennis

Dennis Tombari is Goldie’s oldest and closest henchman, though she has apparently turned him into a Kerasine puppet. He acts as her chauffeur, but he’s also a good detective and will often gather sensitive intelligence for Goldie. In fact, he may conceivably have been an Italian policeman on the take and actually working for the cosa nostra.

Dennis can act like a bodyguard. However, he usually will not react to attempted violence against Goldie as he’s well-aware of what she can personally handle. He’s occasionally armed with a MP5K briefcase. This is an attaché case with a submachinegun hidden within, which can be fired using a secondary trigger built into the briefcase’s handle.

Goldie’s “staff” also includes about three enslaved pretty teenage girls. These are kept as servants and submissive sex pets. All are apparently upper class and were brainwashed into murdering their parents.

Since Goldie can replace them pretty much at will, they make for disposable hostages. Larry Vincent and crew had to repeatedly evacuate these girls so the mafiosa couldn’t play that card.

History

Goldie is from a minor cosa nostra family in Italy. Her grandfather Juliano was the don. When Goldie was 18, both her parents and her brother were killed. This left her the sole inheritor of the famiglia.

Though her grandfather supported her, he said that she should first graduate from college. Thus, an interim director named Francesco took charge. Meanwhile, the youth graduated summa cum laude in psychopharmacology.

The old don gauged Francesco as lacking the legitimacy to threaten his granddaughter. But he was wrong. Francesco convinced the council that he could modernise the business and bring profits to greater heights. To start with he put an end to their various charitable activities. Such a clear break from tradition scandalised Goldie.

The old don’s most loyal man, Dennis Tombari, discovered that Francesco had been behind the murder of Goldie’s family. But at that point Francesco had just discreetly eliminated Don Juliano. Thus, Goldie’s lifespan wasn’t looking good.

I want a new drug

Goldie called on markers from hospitals and universities. These had benefited from her family’s largesses before Francesco changed the rules. With access to their labs and chemicals, she brewed a drug she had developed during her studies. Goldie dosed Francesco’s wife and kid, convincing them that the others had been replaced by evil alien shapechangers.

With Francesco and his family having slaughtered each other, the famiglia fearfully fell in line. They let donna Goldie take over. Impressed with how well her concoction had worked, the mafiosa started a gradual takeover of more important clans. It worked through brainwashing their key soldatos and capos.

Though her exact rise is unchronicled, she apparently became a major presence in the Milano cosa nostra.

Goldie visited the US, where the real narcotics money was. During an early trip, she discovered that a single vigilante had killed about 20 Gambucci men. She tracked down this man, Mr. Vincent. Then she used his guilt over all the deaths at his hand to dose him with Kerasine by gassing the room.

She didn’t make use of Mr. Vincent’s incredible marksmanship in the US right away. It is possible that she needed his talents in the old country first.

The donna later came to Chicago. Two local mobs were still Italian enough to take orders from Milano. Their directives were to collaborate, and pay attention to the new drug that “Iron” Goldie brought with her.

Sex, lies and video tapes

Goldie had the Max famiglia distribute her designer drug. But the don didn’t like her. Furthermore, a problem soon emerged when teenage thief Misty Brown tried to sell incriminating tapes about the Max mob.

Goldie moved in to stop Brown. But the heavy-handed approach of the American soldatos worsened the tension between her and the don. Worse, Brown escaped and contacted her friend, the super-competent bounty hunter Larry Vincent.

Goldie soon developed an interest in the beautiful and intelligent Vincent. She was the daughter of her best enforcer, and had talents comparable to her father’s.

The mafiosa kidnapped Misty back. However, Larry and her associate Minnie-May turned the tables on her during the swap. Thus, they escaped with Misty – though they had to abandon the tapes. This cemented Goldie’s desire to make Larry hers.

Goldie tricked some reticent Chicago syndicates into distributing Kerasine. She knew that it would quickly create addicts that would not be satisfied with anything else. The donna was right – within two weeks Kerasine was #1 on the market, and she was the only supplier.

The Italian Connection, part 1

Wanting to make Vincent her slave, Goldie set up a cunning trap. An addict would lure Vincent in by shooting himself, then inject her with a dose of Kerasine.

In an apparent The French Connection homage, Vincent found herself struggling against the powerful drug. But she failed and was reeled in. Now that Vincent was a Kerasine puppet, Goldie decided to have her murder her old ally Detective Coleman. After that, Larry would have no other refuge than Goldie’s mob.

However, Larry created her own post-hypnotic suggestion for herself. She used the strongest stimulus she could think of – her finger squeezing the trigger of her preferred pistol. Thus, while she was successfully indoctrinated into murdering Coleman, pulling the trigger brought her own hypnotic suggestion to the fore. That allowed her to miss at the last moment and recover her free will.

Larry crashed a drug exchange in a cemetery where Goldie was getting more Kerasine distributed. The mob dealing with Goldie seized this opportunity to turn against her, but were slain in return.

The Italian Connection, part 2

With the help of drugs provided by Minnie-May, Larry could partially resist Goldie’s commands. Thus, a badly wounded mafiosa was forced to retreat. She had hired Bean Bandit as her getaway driver, which made it possible to escape all police despite the odds.

After the mess at the cemetery, Goldie had to go back to Italy. She was now on the FBI’s top-10 list.

Goldie had a Kerasine puppet fall on his sword during Larry’s trial. That exonerated the bounty hunter by proving that she wasn’t responsible for shooting at Detective Coleman. The donna even released Larry from her post-hypnotic suggestions. Her goal was to make their next clash more challenging and arousing.

As she left the US with a captive Misty Brown, Goldie was shot cleanly through the hand at 700 yards, from the top of a high-rise and through a car door. Realising that only Vincent could have pulled such a sniper shot, the admirative Goldie let Misty go and departed.

However, the resultant Kerasine scarcity triggered gang violence in major North-Eastern American cities as prices skyrocketed.

Il ritorno della mafiosa

Several months later, a plot by one “Mister Borgnine” messed up a multi-million dollars narcotics sale. Though Larry Vincent stopped “Borgnine”, the buying mob was severely weakened.

Goldie seized this opportunity to return with cosa nostra made men and her star enforcer, Mr. Vincent. She took over the vulnerable gang, swiftly turning it into a distribution channel for her newest Kerasine variant. It was sold under the street name “powerball”. She also mentioned connections in Sicily rather than in Milan, though that may have been a bluff.

Iron Goldie now had her own sales force and a firmer beachhead in the US than before. Furthermore, the larger Chicago mobs were still fighting among themselves.

She struck the hardest blow by making one enforcer from each of the main mobs her Kerasine puppet. Goldie then had this joint force take over a supermarket and hold numerous hostages. Goldie had studied American SWAT methods. as a result, the parking lot of the supermarket and nearby buildings were a gigantic trap with cameras and hidden explosives.

Once the hostage crisis was well underway, Goldie detonated the charges. Since the sniper teams and other cops had taken the positions she had predicted based on their training manuals, this was a carnage. She further sent her planning documents to the four mobs. These proved both her tremendous competence and her ability to make hardened killers from any mob her thralls.

Goldie then got herself arrested on very weak evidence, used Italian contacts to have a front company agree to pay the $3M bail, and skipped. This was entirely for Larry Vincent’s benefit – a challenge to Chicago’s best skip tracer.

Queen of Chicago

Goldie then came to impose her terms to the four warring mobs. She wanted to turn them into mere Kerasine resellers. When one of the mob bosses refused, the Italian had his own right-hand man shoot him dead. This lieutenant had been secretly turned into a Kerasine puppet. Her point made, Goldie started repurposing the local mobsters.

Larry Vincent learned where and when the next big Kerasine would take place. But she correctly assumed that Goldie knew that she knew. Thus, Vincent instead raided the mob villa where Goldie had set her H.Q..

Though Ms. Vincent was briefly intercepted by her father, she and her team tricked Goldie’s harem into leaving with them. This prevented the mafiosa from playing the hostages card at will.

The mob boss hosting Goldie reacted in anger. He ordered one of his men to slit Goldie’s throat. But she revealed that the soldato was a Kerasine puppet and had him slice off his don’s ear instead. As none of the don’s men could tell whether any of their colleagues were secretly a thrall of Goldie, she took direct command of this gang.

Showdown

Goldie maintained the scheduled drugs deal to have her showdown with Larry Vincent. As she had hoped, the bounty hunter brought her A game. Vincent even hired the elite driver Bean Bandit to round out her crew. Goldie also reached her underage harem and ordered them to slice their wrists. But Bean intervened and got them to the hospital in time.

The Vincent crew originally had the upper hand. However, Larry froze rather than shoot her father and was taken prisoner. Goldie started forcing her into submission, threatening to have Mr. Vincent shoot himself in the head if Larry resisted. Howbeit, Minnie-May Hopkins used shaped charges to demolish part of the battlefield and set an enormous shipment of Kerasine on fire.

The Kerasine in the air allowed Larry to partially deprogram her father. Thus, they collaborated in taking Iron Goldie out. However, as she was also breathing in the Kerasine smoke, Goldie could withstand immense amounts of pain and wrecked the Vincents’ guns. Larry finally shot her through the cheek and across the cranium with a .22 WMR derringer, inflicting brain damage.

State of shock

Her chauffeur Dennis evacuated his mistress and a captive Vincent. Meanwhile, Goldie was entering a shock from internal bleeding and Kerasine exposure. However Bean forced Dennis’ car off a pier while yanking Vincent away through the window. The Mercedes was later fished out without corpses within, and the two Italians were presumed dead.

Goldie and Dennis actually survived. But the mob doctor who saved her life established that the brain damage had made her amnesiac. He apparently told the faithful Dennis to avoid exposing Goldie to reminders of her past for the time being.

Description

Goldie favours long leather jackets with padded shoulders, and high leather boots. She generally goes for elegant feminine clothing, probably with an Italian designer label.

Goldie has an ample collection of female dom leather fetish gear (and sub stuff for her harem). She occasionally wears some of it while in the field, because of reasons.

Personality

Goldie is ferociously intelligent and dominating. She feels but contempt for the underworld and police, seeing them all as hidebound morons. She knows that as a woman she would have a hard time obtaining their respect through ordinary methods, and doesn’t even try.

She holds all the cards anyway. Thus, she will just act like a sarcastic smartass as other mobsters attempt to treat her as an inferior or equal. Once everything is in place she’ll bring the hammer down, kill all loose ends and take over using the assets and slaves of her choosing.

Iron Goldie comes across as smug, supremely confident and utterly in control. Since she’s, generally speaking… utterly in control. It is difficult to threaten her. She doesn’t care about any of her staff (except perhaps for Dennis), and can “recruit” new soldatos, new lovers, new servants, etc. at will.

Pro-competence

Iron Goldie abhors incompetence. She demands high standards of skill and intelligence from anybody associating with her. If a person not meeting these standards gets killed or hurt, they had it coming. She doesn’t do the “villain who kills her own henchmen” thing, though.

Her staff is fairly competent, and she’s flexible enough to leave room for mistakes that couldn’t reasonably be prevented. Incompetent henchmen from other mobs are expendable, though. These will be coldly executed on the spot by one of Goldie’s gunmen if they do not strictly follow her orders.

On the other hand, Goldie enjoys the presence of exceptionally competent people. There’s a good odd she’ll decide not to kill them, even if they are her sworn enemies. Especially if they’re attractive women.

Goldie actually looks forward to clashing all-out with competent opponents. She’s a Moriarty pining for her own Holmes. If she finds said high-level opponent attractive, the thrill of the fight will be compounded by a powerful erotic charge.

Control freak

Goldie isn’t fundamentally a bad person. But she was shocked by the death of her family, and particularly of her grandfather. He had warned her that the true enemy were lies, secrets and manipulations around her. To save her own life Goldie brute-forced the problem by making everybody her loyal slave.

When she discovered how easy it was for her to horribly murder Francesco and his family, something snapped within Goldie. Her newfound absolute power corrupted her. She now could impose her will on the world. This furballed with her kink for sexual domination to make her obsessed with control and dominating everyone in an endless affirmation of power.

She is attached to the pre-capitalist vision of the cosa nostra that was her grandfather’s. In this view, the mob is a part of society that maintains a certain sort of order, gives to the poors and widows, etc..

Likewise, Donna Goldie isn’t bloodthirsty. She will have people killed when necessary (which is often), but otherwise avoids that. It’s seldom the safest, most productive way to handle things.

It is also interesting to note that her designer drugs are much less physically harmful than 90% of the crap on the hard narcotics market. Goldie builds her business for the long term and has a form of social responsibility. Plus, killing her customers would be stupid.

Miner for a heart of Goldie

Goldie likes very young women. She has a small harem of enslaved, submissive teenage girls to act as her servants and take care of her sexual needs. This leaves her romantically unsatisfied, though. What she really pines for is the innocence of her own teenage years. She seeks a simpler, purer version of herself that hasn’t been warped by the lies and corruption of the world.

Goldie fell in love with Larry Vincent, but what she was looking for may have been unclear to even herself. Vincent was beautiful and very young, and with extraordinary competence. But though Goldie talked big about breaking her, making her her willing sex slave, etc. she wanted her precisely because she couldn’t have her.

Goldie seemed to want the love of an incorruptible and unbreakable woman. This person must also be sufficiently young that Goldie could see her as “pure”. Goldie may even have subconsciously wanted Larry to stop her and somehow restore her innocence.

Quotes

“I said I would *make* you mine, remember ? I just want you to ready yourself… for slavery.”

(After cutting off the thumb of a soldato who tried to stab in anger, to his capo) “If you employ a bunch of incompetents… you better expect to get your rug dirty. I’d suggest that you train them correctly before I come back !”

“Whether it’s those girls, or all these men here, once I’ve drugged them, they’re just like whipped dogs. Mindless tools. They’re really no fun any more. But *you*’re different. You I’m going to break wild. So relax.”

(Mesmerising a Kerasine user) “This is Larry Vincent. She pretends to be a bounty hunter, but actually she’s not even human. She’s an agent of the space aliens. They’re trying to take over the Earth. The people she captures are never seen again. They’re made into slaves… slaves of the aliens. If you can give her *this* shot, she’ll turn back into an alien and die. But you can’t just walk up to her. No one can beat her space ray gun.”

(Referring to Vincent) “The new girl isn’t just a sex toy. She’s a guard dog – very useful indeed. A doberman, with 9mm fangs and V-8 legs. And she’s already in obedience school.”

“So, be a good girl and I’ll erase all your hypnotic suggestions… *if* you promise to go back to being a badass bounty hunter. I want you to be an even more dangerous, meaner hunter the next time we meet. I’m looking forward to the pleasure of reeling you in.”

“The Kerasine Two we’re bringing to market as ‘powerball’ is merely an upgrade of our previous hit product. The version I used on your men is a slightly different drug, designed specifically for brainwashing. The version of Kerasine Two that’s on the street under the ‘powerball’ brand is one thing, but beta-Kerasine Two is quite a different animal. While the ingredients are practically the same, its effectiveness as a hypnotic are in another class altogether, minus most of the psychoactive side effects. And the price is in another league altogether, I’m afraid. Use of this product requires special training. All sales will be through designated field engineers only.”

(Sarcastically) “Very well, then — I’ll leave it to you. I’m so fortunate to have this opportunity to learn about site security and perimeter defense from those older and wiser than me.”

(As a Kerasine-dosed Minnie Hopkins grabs a firearm laying on the floor)
Goldie (making stuff up): “This gun has been coated with a powerful sleeping drug.”
(Minnie somatically falls asleep)

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Gunsmith Cats: Revised Edition manga by Kenichi Sonoda.

Helper(s): Darci.

Writeup completed on the 23^rd of April, 2014.