Ricardo Alixandre Noite (the Symphony That Never Ends)

### Titles

Partner of HFN (former), CEO of Internacional Noite, founder of Quilombo de Noite

Ricardo Alixandre Noite was a businessman and founder of the eponymous Quilombo do Noite.

## Biography

### Early Life

Ricardo Noite was born in Macapá, in the Empire of Brazil, and was the second of five children. His parents were both researchers at UNIFAP ~ specializing in materials science. Ricardo showed an aptitude for engineering at a relatively young age, but when a joint venture with his college roommate ~ an Armenian-Brazilian named Romney Zukarian ~ turned sour, an angry Ricardo shifted his major from engineering to business financial investment. Armed with his new knowledge of the ins and outs of business, Ricardo soon regained his company from his old rival.

Applying his backgrounds in engineering and investment, Ricardo soon founded ~ along with his new British-Diasporic colleagues ~ Halsey, Ferris, e Noite, a development company that specialized in using advanced construction techniques to build massive mega-projects such as office complexes, airports, and even small cities, in record time. HFN was wildly successful in the years before Red Tuesday, contributing to the construction of many large model communities around the world and even being hired by the Kingdom of France to consult on some ancillary projects regarding their moonbase and the Swedish Empire regarding their space station, making all three partners very wealthy men.

At some point he married Miriam Noite.

### Life-dream project

By the 1990s however, Ricardo was concerned by the violence and disruption of the impending Red Tuesday. Additionally, working mainly on corporate-funded projects was swiftly becoming tedious and boring to him. Seeing himself in a unique position to deal with the problem, Ricardo started a side company known as Internacional Noite, and began to draw up plans for a new, ideal city ~ an environment that would be controlled and managed by corporations and would be ultimately safe from the economic and social disasters tearing the world apart. His new city would be completely self-sufficient, and capable of holding off even the most determined marauders. It would boast planned neighborhoods dedicated to preserving the feel of different types of nationalities and cultures, as well as a super-modern corporate center that would stand as a shining beacon of enlightened capitalism. It was ambitious, far-reaching, and visionary in its approach. A city so grand that all other cities built before or after it would pale in comparison.

His next move was to secure the unheard-of amount of capital needed to finance the gargantuan project. Luckily for him, history and the forces of a collapsing society worked in his favor. In the lead-up to Red Tuesday, many corporations were looking to establish their own urban areas ~ controlled zones free of crime, poverty or debt. A place where governments would be corporate-run, allowing optimum zoning and no anti-business elements to interfere with corporate growth. Ideally, it would be a capitalist mecca of opportunity. Ricardo's dream city was tailor-made for that purpose, and the corporations eagerly lent him the raw cash required to begin the project. By 1992, the Japanese zaibatsu Arasaka, the Swedish syndicate EFM, and the Brazilian corporation Petroquím had all signed on with Ricardo, and all that was left was to find the ideal location to build his utopian city.

Richard was going to need a lot of land for his new infrastructure development, as well as access to both ocean ports and modern highways to deliver the huge amount of materials that he would need to construct it. He sent scouting teams to scour the north and south coasts of Brazil, but in the end it was a small newspaper article that caught his eye ~ an article describing an incident of economic horror that had taken place in a city called Paulo Afonso, along the São Francisco River, whose course and not-so-distant mouth made up for its lack of coastality. Now a small town a tenth of its former size, Ricardo was able to buy the remnants of Paulo Afonso for reais on the escudo. He was also aided by Petroquím, who had taken over the now-abandoned Dinergia power plant in the town and was already planning to set up a river port and oil terminal site. A leveraged 132 million escudo purchase secured the remaining parcels.

Bankrolled by Morales, Asukaga, e Finch ~ who wanted to make the new city a financial hub ~ Ricardo and Petroquím hired Arasaka to clean out the boostergangs and make the area "safe" again. Further funds came from external (and somewhat shady) investors lured to the project by the promise of lucrative building contracts and possible sources of extralegal income. To avoid the stigma of the Paulo Afonso Massacre, the partnership renamed the area Desfiladeiros Do Coroado, the site of their new utopia of Cidade Coroada. However, thanks to the rather out-sized personality of its founder, Cidade Coroada soon became colloquially known by locals as "Cidade de Noite."

### Cidade Coroada

By 1993, Cidade Coroada needed more space than what the original geology of the river canyon could accommodate, so Ricardo leveled the canyons and dumped them into the river as fill, reshaping it, and also re-dredging it, to make the river capable of porting the large ships needed to build the city. Moreover, the region was an ideal location for a station of the Planetran intercontinental maglev.

Cidade Coroada truly reflected its creator's eclectic vision. Instead of a huge construction of steel and glass, Ricardo's urban plan broke the new city into a series of neighborhoods, each with a different architectural style and theme, much like the original Disneyland park's various "lands". In addition, Ricardo also paid homage to the late and lamented city of Paulo Alfonso by recreating much of the original layout of the area in an open-air environment reminiscent of a riverside city called Centro Antigo. The city and corporate centers were the glittering zones of high-rises and corporate parks. It was here that Ricardo Noite showed off his personal architectural skills in the designs of the many corporate "starscrapers" that were the most visible sign of Cidade Coroada's rising affluence. Ricardo's vision was indeed expansive and truly visionary. The only catch came when he started to build it in May 1994.

Although Petroquím and MAeF were the major bankrollers for the Coroado Partnership, they had one disadvantage: they weren't construction companies. For a job like Cidade Coroada, the Partnership was going to need someone who could bring in the machines and workforce to actually dig the holes and put up the steel. They eventually ended up with the Triads.

## Night Falls

The Triads (whether Chinese, French, British, etc.) had maintained a stranglehold on heavy construction in Bahia for decades. They controlled the construction unions, the transport unions, and most of the governmental agencies in charge of construction licenses, environmental impacts, and other building necessities. By investing a not inconsiderable sum in the Partnership (through a series of shell corporations), the Triads hoped to not only make a staggering amount of return on lucrative construction work, but also have the inside track on future gambling, prostitution, and drug franchises in the new city. However, Ricardo's visionary plan required using his own advanced building techniques and materials, which excluded a number of established unions and construction firms controlled by his organized crime partners, including his old associates ~ now called Halsey, Ferris, and Skiv ~ who were short on money and had unwisely joined with the local mob. This didn't make any of them happy, and Ricardo's further insistence that his new city would be safe and crime free angered them even more.

During the first four years of construction, there were daily threats against Ricardo's life. A proud and self-reliant man, Ricardo typically ignored them. When the threats escalated to the level of sabotage and intimidation, he called in his corporate partners, who dealt with the issue swiftly and ruthlessly. Eventually, Ricardo's luck ran out. On September 20th, 1998, he was shot and killed in his penthouse suite at the top of the newly constructed Torre Parquevista. Ricardo's killer was never apprehended, and in his memory, the newly appointed City Council officially renamed Cidade Coroada as "Cidade do Noite" in his honor, which quickly changed to "Quilombo do Noite" when the city was granted quilombo status.

## Legacy

The Triad bosses who killed Ricardo Noite ruled over Quilombo do Noite during the following years. Eventually, though, the megacorporations took the city back after business between both groups soured.

Miriam Noite used the money of her late husband to build Noite Corporação ~ former Internacional Noite ~ from the ground up and structure it around Ricardo's ideals and principles.

Decades later, Quilombo do Noite would name a new infrastructure after Ricardo.