William 'Billy' Cochran

William Cochran as depicted in a mugshot taken in 6 AF

William 'Billy' Cochran is a gang leader in the Oldtown district of the Republic of Lakkos. Having been born in abject poverty, William spent his difficult childhood on the mean streets of Oldtown (then known colloquially as the slums). Lacking any real opportunities, William became embroiled in the world of underground boxing and quickly rose in the ranks. His fighting career was effectively ended when he ran afoul of the Port Hounds gang which ran Oldtown. The Port Hounds threatened his mother, whom he was very close to, so Cochran was forced out of the ring and lost his main means of making money.

Cochran began setting up simple stick-up robberies with some of his childhood pals, and started planning more and more elaborate crimes. Eventually garnering a reputation as the toughest man in Oldtown, Cochran assembled his friends into a new gang known as the Oldtown Cutters. After the Port Hounds murdered one of Cochran's best friends, he rallied the Cutters to go and slaughter their hated enemy and take Oldtown for themselves. After a brutally violent gangland slaying, the Cutters emerged as the new kings of Oldtown. Rumored to be backed by powerful moneymen, the Cutters have risen to become one of the most successful gangs in all of Lakkos. With Cochran's tough-as-nails reputation, there are few crazy or stupid enough to test him or his gang of thugs.

## Early Life

William Cochran was born in 21 BF in the back streets of Oldtown in the Republic of Lakkos. His mother was a prostitute who worked near the Port of Lakkos and he never knew his father. Cochran didn't received any formal education, instead substituting that with a street wise knowledge of the alleys of his home district. When Cochran was only 12, his mother began showing signs of consumption, a wasting disease that often leads to a long, slow, agonizing death. With his mother unable to work, Cochran turned one of his favorite hobbies into a money-making venture.

## Boxing Career

This hobby was street fighting, which was usually carried out using the rules of boxing. Cochran, known as "Billy" to his friends, was an extremely tough kid who could take a punch and had a vicious right hook, making him a prodigious boxer. He quickly rose through the fighting ranks as he made his way through his teenaged years. His fighting moniker was "The Southpaw Kid" owing to his left-handed technique known in the world of pugilism as southpaw. He had a nearly undefeated record by the time he was 17 and was about to be booked for the biggest fight of his life.

In the sweltering summer of 4 BF, the biggest sporting event in Oldtown was about to take place. A long ticket of premier fights featuring the best talent in the city was on offer, and the main event featured the popular Serenusi Stallion against the up-and-coming Southpaw Kid. Thousands of people from all over Lakkos packed into the port to watch the spectacle, a ring was set up right outside THE PIT Spire where the combatants would do battle. By the time the main event started, the ring was already stained with fresh blood from the brutality of the earlier matches, and the crowd had become drunk and rowdy. People hung from the walls, stood out on balconies, and watched from boats in the harbor, as the port was packed with a standing-room-only crowd. The main event saw the best match of the night as both fighters unleased flurries of blows, dashing the ring in yet more blood. The fight lasted an unimaginable nine rounds of frenzied warfare before The Southpaw Kid landed one of his signature right hooks and laid out the Serenusi Stallion, whose limp, unconscious body was quickly spirited away to the hospital. The crowd roared in a deafening cacophony for their new boxing god as he held his blood-caked gloves in the air triumphantly. Little did Cochran know, this would end up being his last boxing match as The Southpaw Kid.

## Formation of the Oldtown Cutters

Unknown to Cochran at the time, he had been set up to lose by the Port Hounds, a local gang of dockworkers who ran all the organized criminals enterprises in Oldtown. The gangsters had not counted on Billy winning the fight, and lost a massive amount in misplaced bets. Cochran's mother was threatened at her tenement by two members of the Port Hounds; they told her that if Billy didn't meet with them that night, they'd come back and gut her like a fish. Cochran was furious at this aggression towards his beloved mother, but had no choice and went to the meeting. Four members of the Port Hounds were waiting for him at the pier and savagely beat him for an agonizing thirty minutes. They left him in a bloody heap and warned him never to fight in Lakkos ever again, then laughed as they sauntered off into the night.

After this incident, Billy decided to form a crew out of his closest friends for his own protection and turned to petty crimes to make money. Through stick-ups, coercion, and small-time scams, Cochran was able to make just enough to eek out a living. Unfortunately for Cochran, the Port Hounds caught wind of his crimes and, fearing his criminal group would become more powerful and challenge their criminal hegemony, they decided to send Billy another message.

In 2 BF, two events would lead to the creation of the Oldtown Cutters. The first was a double tragedy for Billy as his mother would finally succumb to her illness and his best friend would be shot to death outside of his workplace, the Kaufman Cannery building, by members of the Port Hounds gang. The second event was Cochran's response to these terrible calamities, in which he rounded up all the leaders of the Port Hounds gang and held them prisoner at the Port of Lakkos. The Port Hounds leadership had run Oldtown for fifteen years and had become complacent on security. Cochran knew most of the Port Hounds soldiers were dockworkers and decided to put on a public display of their gangs' weakness for them. With all eight members of the Port Hounds, including boss Clarence Filmore and his crew bosses, on their knees by the pier, Cochran slit their throats one by one. They all gurgled and bleed out like fish, pathetically struggling in pools of their own blood, while the crowd looked on in horror. With this incident, known as "the Culling of the Hounds" in Oldtown folklore, Cochran had cut the head off the snake, and the Port Hounds evaporated into nothingness. In their place, Billy established a new gang called the Oldtown Cutters; "Cutter" being a macabre reference to the murder of the Port Hounds' bosses.

## Rulers of Oldtown

With no one crazy enough to test Cochran and his ever-growing cadre of violent thugs, Oldtown was de facto ruled by the Cutters. Though Billy was uneducated, he did understand how to manipulate and control others through threats and violence. He immediately moved to fill in the gap left by the Port Hounds absence, and set up protection rackets for most Oldtown businesses. Next he infiltrated the worker's unions at the factories and the Port of Lakkos, and began embezzling funds from these groups. Cochran also planned elaborate robberies of banks, jewelry stores, and antique shops all over Lakkos, using expert thieves from Oldtown that left law enforcement authorities completely in the dark about who was responsible. Despite all these criminal ventures, it would be smuggling that would become the most valuable to the new gang, though not in a traditional sense.

Cochran wasn't exactly a "citizen of the world", but he grew up by the docks and knew that many expensive items could be found in the city of Leviathan. He endeavored to have illicit goods smuggled into the Lakkos through the port and sold at a significant markup. His elicit activities had an unintended effect, though, as he caught the eye of the Karkarosan Syndicate, a shadowy group with influence all over Rathnir. The Karkarosan Syndicate had contacts, crews and offices from the Empire of Lunari to the Kingdom of Aurora and everywhere in between. With a massive amount of money to throw around, and not having made any inroads in Lakkos at this point, the Leviathan based association decided the Cutters would be a useful asset to have in the island republic.

With a newfound stream of funding from their new backers, the Oldtown Cutters have begun expanding their operations to other parts of the city, which has lead to conflict with other gangs. The Cutters have a growing feud with the mob in Little Serenus, made even more vicious by the prejudice members of the Cutters have for the Serenusi people. Cochran remains intent on fighting any who oppose him and remains one of the most feared men in the Republic of Lakkos.