Hector Ricci

**Hector Ricci** is one of the three major kingpins of the Alterian Syndicate. He is a large man with an intimidating demeanor, and has the air of a brute. This hides an uncanny cleverness and intelligence, which served him well in his rise to power.

## History

Hector Ricci was a trader from the independent colony of Verk Rio, who took up a job transporting vespene gas from the surrounding colonies back to his home. Ricci, seeking some profit on the side, eventually began to take up side jobs for less reputable characters, carrying along weapons, drugs and other contraband. Eventually, sick of the monotony of everyday life, he left his colony behind, sold his supply ship, and bought a blockade runner to go in full time on smuggling.

Initially he helped gun run for the colony of Tiber, which was experiencing a brief civil war after the colony's founder declared himself president for life. Soon he found a strange opportunity which could net a fortune, a fellow arms dealer named Grey Brankston claimed to have found a way through the space surrounding the Alterian Rift, the one place the Umojans had not set up warp space blockades. Gambling it all, Ricci loaded up his ship with Umojan weapons and went into the unstable section of space.

Miraculously, he came out alive, and found himself a very rich man selling his haul at Dead Man's Rock. He would make two more of these runs with weapons, becoming a rich man and buying a share in Brankson's new operation, which would come to be known as the Alterian Syndicate. But Ricci noticed many were making a fortune selling Umojan technology to the outside, but very few were considering the possibility of selling outside materials to Umoja. Drugs on Umoja were infamously diluted in spite of the planet's scientific background, as creating pure strains was a surefire way for a scientist to lose his social standing. But in the Confederacy, there was no such stipulations, and private businesses on fringe colonies were hiring the best and brightest to design some of the most addictive drugs.

Making contacts on Tarsonis and Halcyon, Ricci made a deal with infamous kingpin Scutter O'Bannon to buy two of his most potent drug stock, hab, an addictive sedative, and turk, a dangerous stimulant. Ricci hired his own crew to run shipments in and out of the Alterian Rift, and soon the many other routes either discovered or created by Brankson and his men. Bringing in such wealth, Ricci rose to power in the Syndicate, enough to when the Umojans caught wind and closed the trade routes, Ricci had plenty of other avenues of wealth.

Ricci has set up operations on Umoja itself to start developing the drugs. While drug use was kept to a admittedly smaller underclass, it spread like a wildfire through the labor class of Umoja. Projects on Umoja and its nearby colonies would allow Ricci to have his own personal empire with a captive market, and the power of the Syndicate ensured that he would remain uncontested.

However, the foundation of the Umojan Proectorate lead to major crackdowns, and the Great War, Brood War and rise of the Terran Dominion lead to the death of Brankson. His death, rather than destroy the Syndicate, made it a multi-headed beast, with Ricci ruling the drug trade, Gregory Malkov taking over Brankson's arms dealing operation, an Nestor "The Fish" Xu running more conventional Umojan technology out of the Protectorate. Though the Umojan authorities tried to crack down on them, they were usually able to slip out from capture, and some Ruling Council memebers even worked with them to smuggle Shadowguard and intelligence agents in and out of Dominion territory.

While the Alterian Syndicate is a shadow of its former self, the defensive stance of the Umojans and their insistence on limiting trade has kept Ricci a wealthy man and in power. Yet a recent shift in the Syndicate seems to be causing trouble, and rumors are Ricci stumbled upon something he wasn't supposed to discover. The recent influx of mercenaries to his base of operations in Soe-yun Terrace has led some to speculate the towers may once again be the center of some sort of violence, the first since the food riots decades earlier.