Meet Victor Wong

A while back I said I’d put up some old PC backgrounds. Here’s another one from another of Kyle the Viking Hat GM’s games. This one was Osere, a modern espionage game using Kyle’s home-brewed rules. Here’s the character – Victor Wong. Criminal.

Victor was born Wong Ke Lo to a comfortable middle class family in Taipei in 1979. His father, Wong Fai Hun, was a businessman with vague connections to the Bamboo Union, one of Taiwan’s main triad organisations, through his Kuomintang background. An only child, Victor was an unimpressive student, a loner who only found solace in the gymnasium. Victor was a good gymnast, but lacked the competitive drive to truly excel.

After the senior Wong annoyed the wrong Bamboo Union functionary, Victor was targeted for recruitment – a subtle punishment for the upstanding businessman. He was an easy target as his antisocial tendencies made him comfortable with the life of crime while welcoming the social contact the triad provided. His father was mortified, but warned to stay away by Victor’s new ‘friends’ He was only 16, but quickly became a useful second story man for the Triad, breaking in to allow enforcers into buildings as well as minor thefts. The Union taught Victor to fight and use a gun as well as the basic intricacies of alarm systems.

At 17, Victor was nearly convicted for burglary after a job went wrong. Fai Hun interceded to bribe the cops responsible for the bust and decided he had to get the family out. Immigration to Australia seemed the best way to get Victor away from the triad as well as avoid any further shame to the family. In 1996 the Wongs moved to Melbourne as economic migrants, buying a news agents and settling in Box Hill. Victor was just young enough to come with his parents.

Melbourne didn’t help Victor’s behaviour. He quickly fell in with 14K, a Sydney based triad with Melbourne offshoots, and got back into his old ways and quickly became estranged from his parents. But a period in jail in 2001 helped scare Victor, convincing him he wasn’t invincible. After he got out, he moved to Bidawal, not telling any of his triad friends where he was going. He started to look around for other ways to make a living, scraping by on odd jobs and the occasional break in but generally trying to keep his head down. Eventually Sonny Kim, the Bidawal Police Department’s Asian Community Liaison officer, told Victor that he might know of some work for someone with skills like his. Sonny was as corrupt as they come, but he could see that Victor was trying to get out. Now Victor is with OSERE. He’s hoping that he’ll be able to make a living, find some of what attracted him to triad life and stay out of jail.