Renfeld
Location: Wellstone City?
Renfeld is a name that is whispered by the upper levels of the crime families and top crime syndicates in Wellstone City. He’s also known as the Ghost, the Phantom, and the Red Death, but his most common name is Renfeld. No one knows if that’s his real last name or not, but when you’re a legendary hit man, it doesn’t really matter.
The police have no official file on Renfeld. They disavow any knowledge of his existence, and although the tabloids keep kicking his name up whenever there’s a mass murder or a killing spree, no formal investigation is made. When pressed, Chief Bennett will answer only, “We’re not in the business of chasing shadows and ghosts, and this Renfeld character is exactly that.” Because of that common answer, it is suspected that he is actually an enforcer working with the police, but completely off the record and off the grid.
Wellstone isn’t the only place haunted by this phantom. Hits in New Orleans, Mobile, Baton Rouge, and Jacksonville are all attributed to him, and conspiracy theorists claim that he’s also worked Tallahassee, Atlanta, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Dallas, Houston, and dozens of cities in Mexico. If they are correct, he has a body count in the 500’s – a feat that most modern action movies barely dare to attain. Even with all his alleged traveling, the highest concentration of hits associated with Renfeld is in Wellstone and the closer communities on the Gulf in Louisiana and Texas.
It is thought that there is a single picture of Renfeld, which is what gave him his name. There was a gas station bombing in Little Italy ten years ago; the cause was never patently identified as foul play, but it was strongly suspected that it was not accidental. The store owner had the latest and greatest video camera system, one that fed to a central location via the Internet, and a single glimpse of a man was caught on film right before the station exploded. The shot of this man showed him casually looking over his shoulder into the security camera, wearing sunglasses and in a military jacket with a patch displaying the name “Renfeld.” The man looked to be of Eastern European decent. He is the sole suspect held by the conspiracy theorists in what has been ruled to be an accidental explosion, namely because he’s the only man in the tape that hadn’t been seen there before in the last three weeks before the explosion. No one has seen him since.
In-game, Renfeld can be whatever you need him to be: the ghost in the darkness, the menacing shadowy figure that is stalking the PC’s, or any number of other things. He isn’t sloppy enough to let himself be seen and identified, but whenever he’s on the case, the upper levels of crime in the city seem to a little more nervous, appear in public a little less, and their body guards are a little more jumpy.