Name: Vito Frazetti
Age: 28
Callsign: Bada-BOOM!
Affiliation: Shieldwall of Rasalhague

Summary:
Vito Frazetti was born in Camden, NJ, USA, Terra and lived there until just prior to his teen years when his family, which at one point was affiliated with Comstar, headed out to Solaris to do some...business. Whilst there, Vito's family connections had him becoming a mechwarrior for the DeLon Stables, something at which he naturally excelled. The bookie business on Solaris, after all, permeated the entire Inner Sphere, and an enterprising family that wanted a piece of that action needed someone on the inside to keep them well-informed.

After ten years on Solaris--ten years where he built up a reputation for being a highly skilled support pilot, making it rain LRMs on the heads of his opposition and evaluating opponents' mechs and piloting skills, Vito had built up the family business to the point where the Frazetti family was making billions of credits. His purses were large, but not that large--no, it was his inside intel on the little things; which pilots were distracted by money or romantic problems before a match; which mechs had flaws in armor layout; which mechs had components from which companies--that helped the Family business grow.

Ten years is a long career on Solaris by any measure, and his cries of "BIG Bada-Boom!" when an opponent's mech went up in a gout of flame and sound were no longer drawing the crowds that they once did. From his fame and popularity, however, he did have quite a following...but groupies get tiresome after a while, and Vito had a hankering for a place where the world wasn't served to him on a platter. Not only that, but he was getting pretty disgusted with the stable he had to work with. DeLon was getting too yakuza-friendly for his tastes, and he'd never really cared much for Kuritans to begin with.

When a short-lived stable--the Gustavson Stable--from the Free Rasalhague Republic tried to join the Solaris community of stables, Vito was shocked at the sheer hatred the DeLon stables showed for them. Anybody that much of an underdog intrigued him, so he got to know them. He took an instant liking to the Swedenese vikings both in and out of the Arena. The Frazetti family, growing irritated with the increasing Yakuza influence on DeLon, encouraged Vito in his endeavors to befriend the Gustavson mechwarriors in the hopes that they could collaborate together to take down some of the better Yakuza-backed mechwarriors in the battle to control DeLon.

This didn't work out as planned. Despite their best efforts, the Yakuza not only soundly defeated the Gustavson Stables in the arena (despite Vito's essentially fighting for the other team), they also moved on the stablemaster, kidnapping his family and threatening the lives of the other Gustavson members. The fight might have lasted forever--and likely ended with a lot of deaths amongst the Gustavson Stables--if the Frazettis didn't abandon their stake in the DeLon stables and throw themselves fully in with the Gustavsons.

Economic conditions on Solaris being what they were on Solaris 10 years after the Fourth Succession War, however, had made it impratical to family interests to remain in the Solarian criminal cesspool. The family patriarch, back on Terra, had come to the conclusion that there would most likely be a pretty large war in the future--ten years was a long time for there to be this much peace in the galaxy. So, as part of the family's plans to keep their fingers in every pie, Vito was given permission to emigrate to the Free Rasalhague Republic. His task? Join a mercenary group there, and keep an eye on things for the Family. Contacts between the Frazettis and the Rasalhague government had been improving, and feeding the FRR data on Kuritan (and yakuza) movements benefited both parties.

So Vito, the prodigal son, was sent to join the Shieldwall. He brought with him not only native skill and a certain fading popularity in the arena, but also contracts for mechs, mech replacements, and a fighting spirit to match the berserkers he would serve under.

Dark-haired, olive-skinned, medium-height distinctively non-Swedish Vito cuts a strange figure lined up in parade formation with a bunch of tall blond muscular Vikings, but he wouldn't have it any other way. They call him brother (even if they do it in a strange accent), and he's proud to serve with them.


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Me: I own a game store--the Gamer's Gambit in Saddle Brook, NJ. Check out the link to the site, below. If you're in the NJ area, check it out. We play tabletop Battletech every other Sunday usually, not to mention dozens of other games.

P.S. I'm not Italian, and no offense is meant by this caricature, it's all in good fun!