About.

[omertae]

About.

Name Michelangelo Salucci Nickname Angelo Age 33
From Long Beach, New York Occupation Salucci Family underboss
Power Reality distortion Sexuality Gay PB Luca Marinelli

tl;dr Your typical ultraviolent, extremely vain asshole son of a mafia boss vying for attention from his dismissive, cruel father, except he has the added ability of having powers bestowed upon him by a demon. Officially, he uses his powers to psychologically torture people who get on the wrong side of the family. Unofficially, it also comes in handy in other ways: his younger brother Ludovico, his father’s favourite, was set up to take over as don of the family — until Angelo killed him. Ever since then he’s been using his powers to erase Ludo from the memories of everyone who ever knew him, effectively rendering him nonexistent, to firm up his position as his father’s sole heir.

Moodboard Versace dress shirts and loafers, blowing smoke in your face deliberately, extensive hand gestures when talking, lazy Italian in a dialect you can barely understand, a perennial jaw clench, excessive levels of jewellery, 'is he gay or just Italian', beating the shit out of someone for almost no reason at all, debilitating anger issues but it's fine it just means he's a man, divorced but we don't talk about that, Never Had A Boyfriend™, bloody knuckles from punching walls, shirt unbuttoned like halfway down his chest, seeking power at all costs but no idea what to do when he gets it, pay attention to meeeeeee, homophobic homosexual

First impressions.

Reputation The Salucci family is quite well known in many circles. They're not quite Corleone-level: Don Gio is known by other criminal families, but his reputation is closer towards fear than respect. Angelo's general reputation is as Gio's attack dog, a thug with a hair-trigger temper and a penchant for violence, who's beaten people to a pulp with very little prompting or reason. It's also fairly well-known that Angelo has some kind of illusion-based power, but not the exact details.

art by flurgburgler @ tumblr

Visual Angelo's just a little above average height at 5'11". He's very reedy, with a narrow waist and wider shoulders, and muscles a little on the wiry side. He keeps his hair long-ish and usually swept back off his face like so, and is mostly clean-shaven except for a moustache, although sometimes he goes a few days without shaving.

Notable features He has a dark mole on the right side of his face, and a raised scar on his right cheekbone. For those who can tell this kind of thing about scars, it's quite obvious that it healed badly.

Fashion He has quite an expensive taste, with a penchant for Versace, baroque-patterned silk shirts, fitted cigarette-style pants, and loafers (no socks, he's a reprobate). He has a Cartier watch. He also wears quite a lot of jewellery. Necklaces: a crucifix, a set of rosary beads, an Our Lady of Guadalupe pendant, and a plain silver chain. Rings: a plain gold signet ring on his right little finger, a St Michael the Archangel ring on his left index finger, and an ouroboros ring on his right ring finger. He also wears a gold hoop earring in his left ear.

Temperament Very difficult to please. He has a very thin temper which can break at any moment, for apparently no reason, and he resorts to violence and extreme displays of anger faster than most people expect. If he's not actively angry, he's at least very sullen, usually quite negative.

Aural Very strong Long Island accent. He's not afraid to shout, and he gesticulates a lot while he's talking, doing various things with his hands and fingers for emphasis.

Power.

Angelo is able to distort the way a person (including himself) interacts with and perceives their own reality, which is admittedly kind of overpowered, but he's only managed to get good at a few very discrete things. He really doesn't know the extent of his powers, and can develop new branches in an instant (i.e. a moment of threat where he acts on instinct) or simply by trying hard enough to will something to happen.

Illusion generation Creating realistic illusory experiences for another person

Angelo can make other people experience short, intense bursts of extremely complex illusion, for example, he can make someone believe they're covered in bugs or being slashed by a thousand tiny razorblades. These illusions cause a lot of mental distress and often physical pain in their targets, and though people mostly come out of it physically unscathed, there have been occasions where a mind has believed in the illusion so strongly that the body was physically injured in some way. This is Angelo's main strength when it comes to his powers, and for a long time it was the only thing he thought he was capable of doing with them. They don't necessarily have to be torture-related, but it's all he's done for so long that it's like exercising a muscle he didn't know he had to do anything with an illusion besides this.

Memory manipulation Altering, erasing and rewriting someone else's memories

Angelo can press into someone's memories, looking for something specific, and erase it. He's not very practiced at it, and he usually tends to go storming into someone's mind with very little care. He's pretty much exclusively used this to erase his brother from the memories of the people who knew him, although he also uses it to erase his own face from the memories of any men he has one night stands with. A memory that has been manipulated by Angelo is often very fuzzy and unclear and gives a general 'sense' of what he wants you to remember, rather than a crystal clear image of it. If he's removing a specific person or object from a memory, concentrating hard on the memory in your head, you might be able to notice a distinct blur where that person or object once was.

Regarding Ludo specifically, it's possible to know of him and that he disappeared suddenly, not that long ago — Angelo's power works on an individual basis, so although his memory manipulations have thus far proven to be permanent, he has to do it person by person, memory by memory. Someone who's had no interaction with Angelo but knows of the Salucci family by reputation would therefore still believe Ludo exists.

Self-defence Warping his own reality to protect himself from injury or discomfort

This is a really vague one since he's only just starting to figure it out, but Angelo can use his powers to warp his own reality in order to defend himself from something. For example, he could light a candle and 'warp' the flame out of his reality, and hold his hand above the flame without burning himself. To anyone else watching, it would look as if he was impervious to the flame, but it's really just that the flame doesn't exist for him. He's also used this power to stop himself from choking to death on smoke from a fire, by warping the smoke out of his reality. It takes an awful lot of mental effort to keep this kind of thing up and he would never be able to make himself fully impervious to anything; it relies on mental fortitude and quick reactions, and any distraction would bring him out of it instantly.

The Family.

The Salucci crime family is an organised crime group operating in New York, currently headed by Don Giovanni Salucci. Until the early 1900s, it was known as the Passerini family, until its don was killed by a Salucci, at which point the Saluccis took over the Passerinis' operations and began to expand from there. The Saluccis have a reputation for violence as well as a history of inter-familial bloodshed. They're fiercely protective of their territory and criminal interests, which primarily consist of racketeering, distribution of illegal drugs and firearms, and gambling. The family's legitimate front started out with restaurants, but they currently also own several five-star hotels throughout New York, and one in Miami, where they're hoping to expand further.

Dramatis personae.
Click to expand.

Giovanni "Gio" Salucci

Relation Father Age 69 Role Don PB Carlo Cecchi

Rumours that Gio killed his own father to secure his current position as head of the family are as-yet unproven, but widely believed.

Romola Salucci

Relation Mother Age 54 Role Lawyer PB Ronit Elkabetz

A retired defence lawyer, although she still practices for the Saluccis. Not a particularly caring mother, but she values family above all else.

Ludovico "Ludo" Salucci

Relation Brother Age 26 – deceased PB Tom Schilling

Not that anybody remembers he existed in the first place, but when they did, Ludo was their favourite. Level-headed, intelligent, and charming.

Carlo de Palma

Age 48 Role Consigliere PB Stephen Dillane

Was Ludo's godfather. Often butts heads with Angelo: Carlo's been suggesting a transition to legitimacy, which Angelo disagrees with.

Victoria Perrone

Relation Ex-wife Age 33 Job Surgeon PB Jennifer Connelly

Vic and Angelo spent most of their four-year marriage arguing with each other and sleeping with other people, both too stubborn to call divorce.

Eulalia "Eula" Salucci

Relation Daughter, maybe Age 8 PB Dafne Keen

Born while Vic and Angelo were still together, but neither of them are sure who her father is, so Angelo has decided to assume it's not him.