Welcome to Razorhurst

Welcome to Razorhurst. June 1928. East Sydney has another name: Razorhurst. The districts of Darlinghurst, King’s Cross, Woolloomooloo and Surry Hills are a warren of sprawling slums and ramshackle, rat-infest- ed terraces, home to violentSample criminals, whores,file alcoholics, drug ad- dicts and anyone too poor to move somewhere nicer. It’s a place where you can indulge all your vices. The swirl of criminality is founded on a slew of prohibitions: evening drinking, off-track betting, prostitution, and narcotics. These bans all offer opportunities for people prepared to go the extra mile to meet customer demand. And to fight for their piece of the pie. 2 Sample file 3 Drink & Drugs You can’t get legal booze after six o’clock in the evening, but there are ways round that. You just need to know where to find the sly grog. After hours, a grocer’s shop, a butcher’s, anywhere might turn into a “bingo parlour” – a place to drink the night away. The password, as often as not, is “Mum’s in”. Sly-grog shops are highly profitable: they save money on taxes and they can charge higher prices. After the “six o’clock swill” in the legal pubs, the punters flood in with unslaked thirsts and diminshed deci- sion-making abilities. Opium imports were banned several years ago. More recently, the gov- ernment banned over-the-counter sales of cocaine and heroin. There’s a whole lot of people in Sydney who still want to buy both, and criminals only too happy to sell them impure and expensive merchandise. Sample file 4 Sex & Violence With streetwalking banned, brothels are thriving. The proprietors part-pay the girls in drugs and take a cut of their earnings. They boost profits by selling cocaine to the customers – and robbing them. The prostitution law has an important loophole. It bars any man from profiting from the business, but makes no mention of women. As a result, many brothels in Razorhurst are run by women. Violent gangs compete for power and influence over the vice business. As well as the enforcers and bouncers working for the brothels and sly-grog outfits, stand-over gangs specialise in extorting money from other criminals, victims who can’t go to the cops. A new law this year means Sampleautomatic gaol file time if you’re caught with an unlicensed gun. So the underworld has a new weapon of choice: the cut- throat razor. The victims already number in the hundreds. Some are rival criminals. Some are poor, many are rich people who followed the wrong person into the wrong dark back-street. You see them all over town, unwilling to admit to anyone, including the police, how they came by the scars on their faces. 5 The Queens. “Sly grog was available on every street corner, if you knew where to look, if you knew the right door to knock on. And most of those doors were owned by Kate Leigh. ... Tilly Devine launched her career as a prostitute back in London at the tender age of 16. That’s how she met and married the handome Aussie soldier Jim Devine. What a catch. By 25, Tilly controlled eighteen brothels in Darlinghurst alone, all of them cheek by jowl with Kate’s sly-grog shops. The 1920s weren’t known as the Roaring 20s for nothing. It was a party that never stopped.” — Underbelly: Razor, opening narration Sample file 6 Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh are the most poweful gang lead- ers in Sydney’s underworld. And they hate each other. Kate runs a string of two dozen sly-grog shops throughout Razorhurst. Tilly has almost as many brothels. They’re not even in the same trade, really, but an implacable emnity exists between the two. They despise each other, and each is determined to reign supreme. No one is sure how it started. Some say it was over Tilly’s beloved little dogs. Some say a third party engineered the conflict, an agent provoca- teur. Whatever the cause, the war is on. Their razor gangs brawl in the alleyways, and the two queens have even scuffled in public themselves on more than one occasion. Sample file 7 Razorhurst Faces. Big Jim Devine may be best-known to the general public as “Mr. Tilly Devine” but to the Sydney underworld he’s a feared gang boss in his own right. Big Jim orga- nises protection for Tilly’s brothels, sells drugs through a network of lesser dealers and, when the need arises, he kills people. Sometimes red-haired, sometimes blonde, always blue-eyed. Nellie Cameron ran away from a happy, boring, middle-class home to become Sydney’s most expensive, most popular prostitute. She loves the excitement of being part of the underworld, and involves herself with one gangster after another. She’s become known as the “Kiss of Death Girl” since most of her boy- friends or husbands get murdered.Sample file Guido Calletti is a dead-eye shot with a gun or with a thrown knife. And handy with a razor too. He used to sell fruit from a street stall, and still sometimes claims that’s his job when the cops ask. Now he runs a violent mob of street thugs called the Darlinghurst Push, and he carries a torch for Nellie Cameron. 8 Lillian May Armfield was the first female police officer in New South Wales, appointed in 1916. Armfield works in plain clothes on the streets of Razorhurst, profiling and arresting shoplifters and pickpockets, and doing her best to keep vulnerable girls out of the hands of pimps. Unlike male coppers, she is not entitled to compensation for injuries in the line of duty. Nevertheless, Sergeant Armfield is noted for her bravery and ability with a revolver. A sharp dresser and a sharper operator, Phil ‘The Jew’ Jeffs was born in Latvia in 1896. He started off in Sydney in 1912 selling fruit, then moved on to mugging drunks, selling drugs and working in sly-grog shops. Now a major drug dealer, Jeffs has taken to cutting his cocaine with boracic acid. It’s only a matter of time before one of his gang clients figures it out and wants payback for being cheated. Sample file Frank “the Little Gunman” Green is a small guy with a big temper. The temper is probably not helped by being nicknamed “the little gunman”. He extorts money from sly-groggers, drug dealers and whores, and has a steady gig working for Tilly Devine as armed protection for her various brothels. Despite being an alcoholic, coke-fiend psycho, he’s a hit with the ladies, including Nellie Cameron. 9 Around town. Places 212 Devonshire Street, Surry Hills – Kate Leigh’s main sly-grog shop 104 Riley Street, Surry Hills – Kate Leigh’s home 191 Palmer Street, Darlinghurst – Tilly Devine’s home Tradesman’s Arms Hotel, Palmer Street, Darlinghurst – Guido Cal- letti, Nellie Cameron, Frank Green and Tilly Devine are regulars here 21A Francis Street, Darlinghurst – home to Norman Bruhn, an inter- loper from Melbourne’s gangland, in 1927 The Fifty-Fifty Club, 4th floor, Chard House, 171 William St, East Sydney – Phil Jeffs’ notorious nightclub “The Barbary Coast” – the section of Elizabeth Street around Central Station and Toohey’s Brewery in Surry Hills, including the Blue Lion and Aurora Hotel pubs Ernie Good’s Wine Bar – 236Sample file Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills Charlotte Lane, Darlinghurst (pictured right)– a major vice centre, where Norman Bruhn was shot and killed in June 1927 Kellett Street, Kings Cross – site of a vicious brawl between Tilly and Kate’s gangs on the 8th of August 1929 The Strand Hotel, William Street, East Sydney – Frank Green shot Barney Dalton dead and wounded Wally Tomlinson here in 1929 10 Transport boats: ferry, fancy yacht, fishing boat cars : Ford Model T, Australian Six convertible, Talbot 14/45 coupé, Triumph 10/20 saloon, Citroën 5 CV Torpedo horses: old nag; military charger; draught horse ships: warship, tramp steamer, cargo vessel trams: mostly electric, a few steam-powered Beer K.B. Lager, Resch’s Pilsner, Sheaf Stout, Tooheys, Tooth’s XXX Ale, White Horse Ale Given names for Women Ada, Agnes, Alice, Annie, Beryl, Betty, Cath- erine, Doris, Dorothy, Dulcie, Eileen, Elsie, Florence, Gladys, Helen, Ivy, Kathleen, Mag- gie, Mary, Nellie, Olive, Phyllis, Ruby, Thelma, Vera, Violet for Men Alan, Alfred, Archie, Arthur, Bert, Bill, Bob, Charlie, Cecil, David, Domenico, Eddie, Frank, Fred, George, Giorgio, Harry,Sample Henry, Jack, file Jim, Joe, Michael, Norman, Patrick, Peter, Philip, Reggie, Stan, Tom, Vic, Walter Surnames Abbott, Anderson, Armstrong, Barbaro, Black, Bourke, Branch, Chap- man, Donohue, Gillard, Hayes, Howard, Keating, Kelly, Markham, McPherson, Papalia, Rogerson, Rudd, Smith, Turnbull, White 11 New Rules. Character Creation Create your Player Characters as usual, but using the character types included in this supplement. Capoeira signature moves are not available, unless you’re importing a character from Brazil. Actions Use the procedural actions from the Malandros book, with the follow- ing changes. Delete “Obtain a Patuá”. Replace “Dar um Jeitinho” with “Size Things Up”: Size Things Up When you take stock of the situation, roll Knowing. On a 6+, ask 2. On a 3–5, ask 1: • What’s my best way out of here? • Who is most vulnerable toSample me? file • Who is the biggest threat? • What here is useful or valuable to me? • Who’s really in control here? • What here is not what it appears to be? When you act on one of the GM’s answers in a subesquent procedural scene, take +1 to your roll.

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