Winston Payne

The brilliant and debonair owner of Trident City’s hottest club, **Winston Payne** is also one of the largest drug distributors in Trident City. Being at the very top of the city's criminal underworld, greatly feared by other crime bosses. His dreams of a legitimate future for himself and his family were dealt a stunning blow after a vigilante, Blue Hawk, arrives in Trident. His plans to get out of the drug game are set back
even further by his business partner Arthur.

## Biography

### Early Life

Winston Payne grew up in the harsh streets of Trident City and began selling drugs as an orphan at the an early age to support himself, after his father was murdered.

At some point in his life Payne met and fell in love with a woman named Angela.

Payne became Trident's most untouchable gangster, who built his syndicate from the ground up. When he took control of Trident's organized crime, Payne befriended Michael Taylor and let him deal with his money laundering and befriended Mayor Mitchell Harrington, to help deal with the politics in the city. With control over the main areas of Trident, the three became the city's most powerful crime lords.

The group also collected large amounts of psychogenic chemicals, which they used to declare people who got in their way insane. With that, they committed many people to Ravenholt and, using all their resources, took control of what was previously out of reach. Payne also kept barrels of that chemical in a warehouse, making sure nothing could be traced to Harrington and Taylor.

After the deaths of Michael at the hands of one of the Society, Payne began to build up his own businesses as fronts.

## Abilities

* Abilities
* Weaknesses
* Equipment

* **Expert Combatant:** Payne, despite having no formal combat training, is a very formidable opponent due to his size and pure muscle, with his immense brute strength.
* **Intimidation:** Payne, due to his exceptional capacity for heinous torture and murder, commands a very intimidating presence, enough to frighten low-level thugs and make them work for him out of the sheer fear of what he would do to them if they refused. This the one quality that Payne and Blue Hawk have in common to an extent.
	+ **Master Tactician:** Payne, much like his archnemesis Blue Hawk, is a genius at planning and improvising criminal activities. Payne has managed to cause a fair deal of the criminal activity in the Diamond District for years without revealing his identity to the public. Even when he revealed himself, he fooled the public into rooting for him and viewing Blue Hawk as a terrorist.
	+ **Master Manipulator:** Payne is an expert at getting into people's heads and manipulating them. This is one of Payne's most effective weapons, as it especially aides him in gaining followers in his many loyal goons, but is also useful for carrying out mental torture).
	+ **Expert Leader:** Payne, as a crime boss at the very top of Trident City's criminal underworld (referred to as the criminal "King of Trident City" by, is a highly skilled and charismatic leader, inspiring fierce loyalty from all of his numerous goons.
* **Multilingualism:** Payne is fluent in English, Mandarin, and Russian.

- **Human Vulnerabilities:** Payne's greatest weakness is that he is a human with no enhanced strength, speed, durability, or superhuman powers, therefore making him quite vulnerable to the physical attacks of stronger and more powerful opponents. Payne, however, always compensates for this extremely effectively with his brilliant and extremely unpredictable intellect, incredible escapology skills, pathological indomitable will and fearlessness, as well as and the numerous goons at his disposal. Hence, Payne has been able to keep up with the stronger and more skilled combatant Blue Hawk

Payne, due to him being at the very top of Trident City's criminal underworld, is an exceptionally powerful and influential crime boss with vast resources, owning a lavish club, having a collection of numerous weapons (both blades and firearms of all sizes and calibers), and commanding numerous strong, flamboyantly dressed, well-armed, and fiercely loyal goons (lead by Payne's right-hand man Frank Walker).

## Relationships

Allies* Diamond Deck
	+ Frank Walker - Right-hand and henchman
* Harrington Crime Family
	+ Mitchell Harrington - Associate

* Trident City Police Department
	+ Commissioner Phillip Baxter
* Society of the Raven
	+ Arthur McDowell - Associate turned Enemy
	+ Courtney Taylor/Wūyā de tóu † - Associate turned Enemy
	+ Damian Haywood/Deathwish - Associate turned Killer
* Roman Imperial
	+ Pierson Spiner/Roman
* Michael Dunbar/Arsonist
* Michael Taylor - Associate turned Enemy