I arrive to ask: the captains
OH DUDEā¦ā¦ the lore isnt done at all (god forbid you get a history person into tugs bc i start trawling every website, article, book, and newspaper trying to base this off of real life) but this is what i have so far. just a general tw for ppl btw in the tags
name is ezekiel āzekeā starmont iii, born and raised in the bigg city, and just like the others two ezekiel starmonts, he was expected to lead the business just like how his father and grandfather did.
he was raised around the docks and though not thoroughly educated, cpt. star had a insane amount of apprenticeships and work experience as a longshoreman. heās fluent in maritime law, and even more fluent in politics. he even worked with capt. zero at another company before the baton was passed over to him.
the company itself has a very strong moral compass, because it was founded in a time where politics werenāt so cutthroat. so when money got tight, cpt. star was forced to adapt. since the company never allows its tugs to carry anything illegal, that is what made them respected by the authorities, and also feared by the criminal enterprises in bigg city. star tug & marine knew how to keep their hands clean, even if their intentions were not.
HOWEVERā¦. that does not mean he is a great guy. not really a great guy at all. heās not cruel, but heās definitely mean. he picks on some of his tugs and is vehemently anti union (i think this from was a scrapped story called strike i canāt remember)
something i really want to emphasize in this au is that both star tug and marine and zero marine deal with corruption, just different types of corruption if that makes sense. star tug influences contracts, pressures unions, gets shorter inspection times, etc. they always somehow gets around the red tape other companies canāt. they are too embedded in the history of bigg city to go kaput, and thatās why they have the power they have.
nobody is really sure of cpt. zeroās legal name, or where he even came from. some people said he came over from the old world, which country though? nobody knows. the ledger says cpt. zero, so thatās what everyone calls him.
he originally worked for another tug company and worked briefly alongside cpt. star. (they have lore i swear i just donāt know how to handle it yet) cpt. zero would often do things āunder the tableā (aka smuggling) for local criminals and gangs which eventually either had him caught and fired or gave him a criminal record you choose LOL
eventually, zero marine was founded. by the time the volstead act was passed, zero had started his own small, yet powerful fleet backed by all sorts of illegal money. many men that worked amongst star and zero at that previous company followed zero, because smuggling was where the money was.
his biggest benefactors are the handful of mobs in bigg city. he probably speaks a dozen different languages too. zero marine in my lore makes most of its money solely because the volstead act exists. however, even after the volstead act was repealed captain zeroās āshadierā contracts def are where the income is. no liner contract will ever beat the money made from smuggling. drugs hidden in coal bunkers, guns hidden in crates, it all is a very serious operation, and lots of $$ is on the line. its why the z stacks freak out when something bad goes wrongā because often times it means the loss of money will have a gang or a mob boss all over their ass about it.
every dollar that is made is either reinvested into the fleet or used as protection money to pay off cops and other rival organizations. its why even though the z-stacks are relatively well dressed and more āput togetherā looking, theyāre always the ones scrambling for money. zero is looking to build an empire, not a fortune.