Buddy Underberg

* **Name:**Ryan Marcus Underberg
* **Position (at time of Death):**Owner and President of Underberg Motors and Underberg Utilities, board member of the Red River Valley Investment, Holdings and Development Group, Owner of Buddy's Bomb Shelter LLC, President of the Sons of Moria, Lodge #25 [official], head of the Underberg Crime Family [unofficial]
* **Metatype:**Dwarf  (*Homo sapiens pumilionis*)
* **DOB:**1/14/2012, Fargo  ND (now in the Red River Disputed Military Zone)
* **DOD:**10/31/67 (55), Fargo RRDMZ
* **Education:**Bachelor's Degree in Business from NDSU
* **Family:**Charles 'Chuck' Underberg (father, Rollag MN, UCAS), Roberta [nee Schumacher] Underberg (mother, deceased), Royce Gardiner (father-in-law, deceased), Heidi Gardiner (mother-in-law), Florence [Gardiner Underberg] (wife, Fargo RRDMZ), MacKenzie [Underberg Rasmussen] (daughter, Fargo RRDMZ), Lance Rasmussen (son-in-law, Fargo RRDMZ), Angela Rasmussen (granddaughter, Fargo RRDMZ), Everett Underberg (son, Fargo RRDMZ), Sienna Richard-Underberg (daughter-in-law, Fargo RRDMZ), Tyler Underberg (grandson, Fargo RRDMZ), Taylor Underberg (granddaughter, Fargo RRDMZ), Peyton Underberg (daughter, deceased), Brady Underberg (son, MoorheadMN, UCAS), Karen [Gardiner Tharaldson] (sister-in-law, Fargo RRDMZ), Calvin Tharaldson (brother-in-law, Fargo RRDMZ), Jessica [Tharaldson] Schafer (niece, Fargo RRDMZ), Kent Schafer (nephew-in-law, Fargo RRDMZ), Hunter Tharaldson (nephew, Grand Forks , Region 2, RRDMZ), Floyd Gardiner (brother-in-law, deceased), Margaret [Perleberg Anderson] (niece, Hawley MN, UCAS), Todd Anderson (nephew-in-law, Hawley MN, UCAS), Tabitha Anderson (great-niece, Hawley MN, UCAS), Richard 'Ricky' Anderson (great-nephew, Hawley MN, UCAS), Frank Myhre (uncle, deceased), Martha [nee Schumacher] Myhre (aunt, deceased), Eleanor Myhre (cousin, Fargo RRDMZ), Josephine Myhre (cousin, Fargo RRDMZ), Carla Myhre (cousin, Moorhead MN)

Buddy Underberg always hated the term 'Small Town Businessman'. Or as an old enemy of his always said "Big dreams, big mouth, big temper, the only thing small about Buddy is his height". For the better part of three decades, if you were talking about organized crime in the Red River Valley, what you were actually talking about was Buddy or somebody he was in a deal with at the moment.

Born in the earliest days of the Awakening, Buddy was one of the first wave of UGE  births, back when being a Dwarf wasn't a racial identity, it was a medical condition. But his dad, local mechanic and former local sports star Chuck Underberg, wasn't about to have his boy grow up as 'sickly' or 'deformed'. Buddy had no excuses when he came in last in a footrace or lost a basketball game, Chuck expected no less from him than he would if Buddy had been born Chuck's own six-foot-two. Chuck Underberg didn't raise a loser, and so Buddy learned to win, however he could. When he couldn't compensate for his shortcomings he did what he needed to, that is to say, he cheated. Buddy got good at cheating. He had to. But he also got good at changing the game. When he wasn't allowed to try out for most of the other High School sports he became a star, and relentless promoter of, the ones he could get on the team for. North High never had a more popular or more successful wrestling team than when Buddy was on it (2026-2030), and he single-handedly catapulted the local Curling team (previously just an interest club) into a full High School sport and an institution, gathering his fellow Dwarf students into it. In college, he didn't compete, he managed and managed well, paying for a lot of his degree working within the high-powered world of NDSU Bison sports.

Upon graduation, he went to work, employing all his charm and guile, at Corwin Auto, as a salesman. He excelled at it, working twice as hard as his pretty-much entirely-Human  coworkers by day and spending his commissions partying twice as hard by night. He loved the look on the face of men twice his height when they found out their girlfriends had been screwing a guy they'd been calling 'Stumpy' or 'Underfoot'. Then, after two years of this, he met a Dwarf girl at a bar, working back of the bar, who would change his life. She was broke and wasn't much to look at, but she was athletic and a volcano in the sack. Over the next year, he kept coming back to this forceful, compelling girl, going home with her more nights than not until they were, for all intents and purposes, monogamous. Which was the moment he proposed marriage. They were married a year to the day after they first hooked up. Buddy never believed in wasting time and that's how Flo Gardiner became an Underberg.

Increasingly, for all the grand dreams and extravagant promises he sold both Flo and himself, Buddy was finding himself stalled out. He'd reached as far as he could as a metahuman by working hard and getting results. The time was coming when he'd had to do more than just play fair to get what he wanted. In late 2038 he was a newly-married man with a kid on the way and he was up for the position of Floor Manager, along with a less-successful, but better-connected Human rival. He tried everything, charming the bosses, working harder than ever, only to be informed that he was too valuable where he was to be promoted. In frustration, he almost struck out physically at his rival and came home early to drink and bitch to his wife about his predicament. The next day, he found out that his rival had to take some time off for medical reasons, having broken both his legs in an accident in his garage and he was going to be doing the Manager job in the interim. When he got home that night, he told Flo about it and Flo showed him the crowbar she'd used to make it happen. "You were the one said you would do anything to get ahead, were you serious?" He could have responded one of two ways. Buddy chose "Yeah, yeah I did" with a slow grin. This was the moment the Underberg Family was truly born and neither of them ever looked back.

Buddy would, incidentally, keep the Manager's position. He used time Flo had bought him to find something to blackmail his rival with and something to bribe his boss with. With the birth of MacKenzie, the increased demands on money meant that either Buddy would have to cut down on his extravagant lifestyle or find more money for both Buddy and baby. Since the first felt like losing, he went with the second option, a bit of skimming at first, fiddling the books, then moving back the mileage on used cars to up the price, and the contacts he made doing this led him to fencing stolen cars, and the sorts of connections he needed to do that led him to running a network of drug mules, all backed by Flo's growing crew of Dwarven kneecappers. With a network of criminal enterprises, backed by violence, they were, in all but name, actual gangsters. He even bought himself a strip club. He was soon promoted to the number two guy at the dealership, but by that time he was, through bribery and intimidation, already using it as a front for his criminal enterprises which had far outstripped his job as a source of income. He gained business connections in the underworld, forging lifelong friendships with other operators like the Anishinaabe  smuggler Skip Goodboy, gambler Stands Alone Billy, drug supplier Eduardo Rocha and Duluth black-marketeer Jamar Mustafa.

In the mid-40's his growing wealth and a need for a bigger front exceeding what he could get away with as a Vice President at Corwin Auto led him to leave the firm and found Underberg Utilities, which he staffed with cronies and henchmen. With this new firm, he started to expand his operations exponentially, branching out into areas he hadn't touched before, like prostitution and gambling. It was this, undermining the strangehold the Tiospaye had gained in gambling, that caused Buddy's first real gang war. Previously, a combination of a strong defence and an active charm campaign had always diffused the conflicts he'd run into growing his business. But this time, despite a lot of late-night negotiations with Stands Alone Billy, he'd gone too far this time. Whiskey Jack, leader of the local Tiwahe of the Tiospaye, declared war, and sent out his enforcers, under Deer Carcass, to punish the Underbergs and cripple their operations. To defend his interests, Billy was forced to reach out to the larger Callahan  Family, who operated smuggling through the Fargo area. Jimmy Bricks, then Capo of the Callahan Family of the Minneapolis Combination, came out to Fargo himself to protect his interests and the Underbergs in the Whiskey-Callahan War, the bloodiest gang conflict in the Red River Valley's history, leading to the deaths of a lot of Buddy's original crew (including No-Nose Nussbaum and his brother-in-law Floyd), and even Deer Carcass himself. Finally, Buddy managed to maneuver Whiskey Jack to the table and cuts a deal that divides the territories of the Red River Valley between them.

And, in typical Buddy Underberg fashion, he managed to profit off of it. In representing Callahan interests to the Tiospaye, Buddy got Jimmy Bricks to name him the Callahans' representative in Fargo. Which meant that the Underbergs were no longer independent operators, true, but it also meant they were now official parts of the Combination, demonstrably backed by Callahan muscle. In pretty quick order, he used his new status to take control of all the Fargo rackets that weren't under the protection of the Tiospaye. He expanded his operations, bringing on new people (like his teenaged cousins, the larcenous Myhre Sisters and Flo's outcast nephew Hunter ) and consolidating the other gangs (the predecessors of the Dirty E's and the Ralphs) under his control. Buddy Underberg and the Underberg family was now the gang lords of Fargo.

The next ten to fifteen years saw the Underbergs and Buddy personally, go from strength to strength. Underberg Utilities became a full member of The Group and got the contract for city sewers and water treatment (gotten at least in part due to Buddy's creative corruption) and even bought out Corwin Auto outright, bringing Underberg Motors. But in the 2060's Buddy's health began to decline, and other members of the family began to take on his responsibilities, with Flo taking over day-to-day operations, Peyton and Brady taking over the smuggling and street operations, MacKenzie growing into her responsibilities at Underberg Motors. Even Buddy's Bomb Shelter was taken over by his long-time henchman Sammy the Squat.

Buddy finally fell to his health problems in late '67, leaving behind a Fargo that he had spent the last thirty-plus years working to build, a city that made him money, and a name to be feared and respected...

Return to: Underberg Family