Hoyt Lowe

Hoyt Lowe:
31 years old; born 1883; good looking pan-ethnic man with brown "oriental" eyes and hair. People recognize that you come from a poor and rough background. Those who know you think you are fun and moody, and you are known as someone who takes risks and puts himself in extreme situations.

Yau Ling and Nora O'Casey:
Father: Yau Ling (last name / first name), which was transliterated into John Yowe. Originally from Shanghai, Yau moved to the U.S. to work on the railroads, then moved to San Francisco and worked at a tea shop, eventually opening his own tea shop. When it became too violent to be an "Celestial" or "yellow nigger" in San Francisco, Ling sold his shop and moved to the infamous "Five Points" in Manhattan, New York City. He married an Irish girl named Nora O'Casey. They had a daughter named Mary and a son named Hoyt. Yau opened up a New York City tea importing shop, and later bought a building on Mott street and opened an opium den. Both Yau and his wife were violent alcoholics, and you believe your father abused your sister.

Hoyt Lowe's Story:
When your sister moved out and married a colored (she was 16), you immediately left home and joined the first ship that would hire you. You left New York in 1898, the year your neighborhood was razed for being a cesspool and "one of the worst slums in the world." You were 15. You joined the crew of an international steam ship. Life was hard. You were almost illiterate but learned to read, and you abandoned ship in China and eventually ended up in Shanghai. You ended up working on the local railroads, learned Mandarin Chinese, found out you had a knack for languages and "went native." You learned "Long Fist" (Changquan, a Northern Wushu style of martial arts) and found you also had a knack for that.

Shanghai was known as "The Paris of the East, the New York of the West." Opium, prostitution and gambling were rampant, and the city was filled with Russians, Japanese and Koreans. Your home was "The Bund," a lawless trading area brimming with foreigners, their buildings, and all the delights you could pursue or purchase. You met a Filipino woman you fell in love with (after many girlfriends, including many Chinese, two Russians an American and a Japanese) and you eventually asked her to marry you. However, the school (kwoon/guan (hard g, long u)) you were in aligned itself withThe Chinese Society of Right and Harmonious Fists(which the foreigners called "Boxers"). The Chinese Society of Right and Harmonious Fists were a xenophobic group against foreign influence and control. Originally, you aligned with them, but they considered you a foreigner and chased you out. (Scars from that era: a broken heart and a large knife wound that runs down your chest.)

A week later, your girlfriend and her family were murdered; you suspected the Boxers. You joined the U.S. 9th Infantry Regimentas a railway engineer consultant, but you still experienced lots of fighting. The Japanese, Russians, British, French, U.S., Germans, Italians, and Austro-Hungarians all crushed the opposition, and thousands were murdered. You started to hate the foreign military as much as the Boxers.

With the 9th Infantry, you went to the Philippines and served for a year. It was 1901 and you were 19. (Scars from that era: a bullet hole in your right leg, a grazing scar on your left shoulder, continual nightmares, and a raspy laugh which seems to be a left-over from a bout with Malaria.) You went native in the Philippines and learned their fighting style called "Pekiti-Tirsia Kali." You met your dead girlfriend's family, shared in your grief and pain, and then decided to leave.

You traveled to the Ottoman Empire, slowly traveling throughout the Middle East and the old Byzantine Empire, and eventually moving to Constantinople, Turkey. You fell in love with a wealthy young woman (Arzu Ortaç) but she was forbidden to marry you because you had no money. The father absconded with her and to this day you don't know where he or she is. That was 1904. You were 22. (Scars from that era: a drinking and opium habit from your second broken heart, and a scar on your chin from a beating by six of Ortaç's father's goons.)

Eventually you met a young man named Ambrosio Martinez in Paris. The two of you became fast friends and spent many days and nights in Paris amongst the bohemians and the demi-monde. You traveled with him to Honduras, his home. You fought with General Carillo's revolutionary troops in 1906 and settled down, working for the United Fruit Company on the railroad. Ambrosio went back to Paris and eventually so did you (in 1909, you were 27). You've been in Europe, mainly in Paris, until 1911, when you decided to go back to NYC and try and become a detective. You worked for the Pinkerton Agency for one year before you quit; since then you've been building up a clientel as an independent detective. Most of your jobs are domestic spying, but you have this one job that looks interesting...

Your contacts:
Ambrosio Martinez, a flighty young wealthy man from Honduras who has artistic aspirations. He's an artist who is missing, who is at the center of the game. He's a painter who was in France before NYC. He made gruesome paintings that Beatrice bought. He also was the prior owner of the mask. Several of his people are now dead. His ex-girlfriend, art dealer, and former friend. All the same way: eyes missing, fingers transparent and wasted away – like leprosy, but with translucent skin.

You're not sure what his connection is. You find it hard to believe he'd kill anyone. He did contact you. Wanted protection, so you gave him names to bodyguards who are now dead. He's missing. You don't know where he is. He was UTTERLY paranoid.

What you know about the other characters:
Colin Mallery, who was a soldier with you in the Philippine War.

Association with the Seven:
It is known that Clarence was the original owner of The Mask, and that it was he who brought it to.

Betsy Brooks; Jehosephat Blim; Stephen Kilbride; Hoyt Lowe ; Colin Mallery; Clarence Hightower

Disappearance:
place holder