Maxwell Loveridge

> *'Maxwell Loveridge, Maxwell Loveridge... he's a hard man to read. See, he might look like a hot-tempered oaf, and he's got the stature and swagger to back it up. Mean left hook, I'll tell you that much. But he's a lot cleverer than he looks. If you ask me, I think it's a bit of a facade. Gets people to underestimate him. Biggest long con in all of Waterdeep, least since his dad stole my horse.'*
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- Amelio Cassalanter on Maxwell Loveridge.

**Maxwell** **Brutus Loveridge** was an orc gang leader from Felonil active in the 1540s-1560s. He was famously legendary for rising from a pickpocket to one of the most famous criminals of the era, almost like an Indrateran Al Capone or Pablo Escobar. In addition, he was a famous figure for being involved somehow in almost all social change in the city of Felonil/Halcyon from the 1540s to the 1600s. He eventually used his position to try to improve social conditions in the city when it was at its lowest. He was a genius savant, but played an outward appearance of a stupid dumb brute.

## Early Life

Maxwell was born to the orc betting-shop-owner and horse-thief Edward Loveridge in 1520; the youngest of three. He had two older sisters, Lucille and Charlize Loveridge. Max grew up in the slums of Felonil and from a young age was cleverer than he might have looked. He worked as a courier, cutpurse, and common street thug in a few gangs here and there. He also made a small name for himself as a bare-knuckle boxer in the underground fighting rings.

## Allying with Revolutionary Terrorists

In the 1540s, he rose to become patriarch of the family gang, which slowly became much larger under his reign from subsuming smaller gangs. However, his big break was yet to come. In 1552, he allied with the anarcho-communist terrorist group Red Hand of Felonil, which were a much more extreme sect of the socialist worker's union The Red & Blacks. Maxwell exploited and enabled the Red Hand of Felonil into bombing a luxury hotel owned by the Di Lamendolio Family, a mafia family that was Maxwell's main competitor in the ore affluent parts of the city. In the hotel was also a Dwarven detective named Gror Warbell I who was investigating the theft of 40 stolen machine rifles; the terrorist attack killed him.

Maxwell had orchestrated the theft of these 40 newfangled gunpowder machine rifles intended to help the war effort in Kol Darim. He did this by blackmailing the Harbourmaster, then swapping them with a crate of Alfa de Bristos sparkling wine, before framing yet another rival gang for their theft. He used their value to extort the police, threaten many rival gangs, and use as a bargaining chip.

## Finally Meeting his Equal

Despite silencing the Darim detective, the detective's son Gror II set an adventuring party known as the Agents of Chaos on the trail. The Agents investigated the theft and eventually ascertained that Maxwell had something to do with it. Maxwell realised he was close to being exposed, and for once, someone had intellectually got the better of him - Perennial 'Renny' Althier. They first met in Maxwell's pub, The Loft, after she caught his eye whilst he was demanding to know who had double-crossed him at the docks. He got angry with her and told her to leave, but she defiantly said 'Make me'. He was so astounded by her boldness that she managed to convince him into a meeting. Renny posed as a representative of the Cassalanter noble family and duped Maxwell into revealing the location of his bargaining chip - the 40 machine rifles - and even managed to forge an alliance between the Agents of Chaos (still posing as a contingent of noble bodyguards) and Maxwell's gang.

## Double-Crossed by Anarcho-Communists

Maxwell took Renny and the Agents to where he was keeping the guns, off Edhellan Wharf in the southern docks of Felonil at night. However, the guns' boxes had been swapped and booby-trapped by the Red Hand, who had double-crossed Maxwell. The Red Hand had taken the 40 machine rifles, intending to flee the city by the 23:06 train to the sulfur-mining town of Charteyn in the Burning Hills to take it over and use it as a communist utopia / haven for their political ideology.

Maxwell and the Agents of Chaos rushed to Felonil's central train station, and the Agents leapt aboard the train as it left, but Maxwell was too slow to join them. He waited worriedly. Out over the snowy plains, the Agents were unable to retrieve the guns from the anarchists, and instead they used the salvaged booby-traps to blow up the train, destroying all the guns and killing all the anarchists, thus saving the day.

## Absolute Anarchy

Maxwell had been exposed as having lost his bargaining chip. This led to massive gang wars between his gang and the Rapscallion gang now that they knew he had no weapons of mass destruction. His pub was bombed, and there were clashes in the streets of the slums and docks. The Agents of Chaos disappeared for quite some months without explaining, and he assumed they had died in the explosion.

The gang wars lasted several months and were very violent and bloody, gripping Felonil in the worst chaos it had seen in fifty years since the 1502 Mage Riots.

By early 1553, the city had fallen into absolute anarchy, and Maxwell's gang reigned over a large portion of the constantly shifting lines on the map. During this time, Maxwell was forging and breaking fickle alliances with multiple other gangs - he mainly allied with the Red and Blacks led by Barney Bombs. Though the Red and Blacks were the less extreme forebears of the Red Hand that had betrayed him months ago, the Red and Blacks were the enemy of his enemy, so they worked together.

The Agents of Chaos returned to the city and learned that the Carmogan garrison was coming within two weeks to siege the city and let civillians escape, because the Felonil guards were overwhelmed. This bode very badly - the city was practically a battleground and going to be completely evacuated or razed by the army!

## The Gangs Truce

The Agents of Chaos set up a meeting with Maxwell's gang, many minor other gangs, the Rapscallions led by Robin Knox,, the Moonstars, and Barney's Red and Blacks. The Agents wanted all the gangs of the city to form a truce in the name of the civillians, and to stop the army from needing to come and raze the place. Maxwell was hesitant, but then Barney's Red and Blacks tried to bomb the warehouse the truce was being signed in. The Agents thwarted the plot, but the close shave incited all of the gangs (EXCEPT the Red and Blacks) to team up, destroy the anarchists, and clean up the city.

The Agents led a combined force of multiple gangs to the Shootout at the Lanchester Steelworks in the industrial district. The battle was long and bloody, with people being killed by production line tools, machinery, spells, guns, and more. Several important people died, including the anarchist leader Barney, and a mage named Florida. Maxwell helped in the fight, and thanks to the Agents' heroism, the gangs of the city were effectively fully united!

## Change for the Better

The Agents of Chaos hosted a sobering summit where Virion Galadell spoke some sense into Maxwell. His viewpoint changed - Virion made him realise that the social conditions in Felonil had reached an absolute breaking point, with unrest and anarchy in the streets, rampant crime and poverty, and a huge wealth disparity. The united gangs agreed to protect the people, not exploit them. Maxwell became one of the most important figures, acquiring large swathes of territory as smaller gangs were subsumed into his large, wide-reaching, nonviolent gang. He provided health care, housing, and honest work for the disenfranchised in society, as well as of course maintaining some level of organised crime - but as we know, organised crime NEEDS law and order to function, so it was in his interests to keep the city's social environment stable!

## Settling Down and Politics

About a year after the unrest had died down, Maxwell and Renny got to know one another a bit more, reminisced over saving each other and beating each other up, and the pair eventually married in 1554 at the Old Minster Church (much to Maxwell's sisters' annoyance at marrying, quote, '*a two-faced diplomat who upholds all the bureaucracy that we've always hated*.') Some who knew the pair remarked that they would '*certainly not want to be there at dinner during an argument*', since they were both some of the cleverest and quickest-witted people in the city.

In late 1553 after the unrest, the Convocation was formed; a plutocratic council dedicated to taking care of the city of Felonil. Maxwell and Perennial both sat on the council - Maxwell spoke for the industrial districts, the slums, the poor, and the disenfranchised.

In 1558, as Maxwell took a more hands-off role in the business and let his two sisters do the tougher work, Renny and him had a child, Iris Loveridge-Althier, a half-orc. One of Iris's childhood friends, an orphan named Ezra Stormwind, was adopted by Maxwell and Renny too.

In 1560, Maxwell's partner Renny was murdered by the shadowy fascists known as the Oracles. The Night Watch party helped to solve her killing, although the secret Oracle agents Adrienne and Aresilia framed Maxwell for some of the other killings, which provided a red herring. When the Oracles assumed total governmental control and began imprisoning political prisoners, Maxwell joined many other famous Felonillian figures and formed an underground resistance, which the Night Watch returned to aid a few months later. Maxwell led gang members and city guards as part of the resistance, and helped to once again free his great city. Felonil was liberated into the hands of the Lakayan Federation and became Halcyon.

## Legacy

Interestingly, his daughter Iris later grew up and trained as a knight, following an ancient order of barrow-keepers that worshipped a slumbering sentinel older than the very city's founding. She was also haunted by ghostly visions of her late mother. Under the name Talia, she and her moon-priest brother Ezra were part of the Bygone Bastards gang who orchestrated the Crime of the Century, stealing millions from the Naysayer gold vault.

Maxwell's life was thankfully quite calm thereon. He was able to retire, tend to his gardens, and think about the old days. He probably died peacefully at a ripe old age in the 1630s, before the God Wars.