The Story of Gangplank
Gangplank was the king of Bilgewater — not a formal title but a real one, earned through decades of violence, intimidation, and the specific genius for maintaining power in a city that would immediately replace you if you appeared weak for a moment. He controlled Bilgewater's criminal infrastructure with the particular effectiveness of someone who understands that fear is more efficient than loyalty, that reputation is infrastructure, and that the occasional spectacular act of violence pays dividends long after the act itself.
Miss Fortune destroyed him. She spent years building the alliance that could do it — finding every person Gangplank had wronged badly enough to act on it — and when she moved, she moved decisively. He was publicly humiliated, stripped of his power, declared dead. He survived, because he is the kind of man who makes surviving contingency plans when he still has all the resources to make good ones. He emerged from his destruction diminished and absolutely furious.
He is rebuilding. This is slower and more difficult than the original construction because everyone who feared him has now seen him fall, and fear that has cracked once is not the same fear. He works with what he has: genuine tactical intelligence, a pistol, a sword, and barrels of gunpowder that he has always used with the particular creativity of someone for whom explosions are a primary communication method. He will reclaim Bilgewater. This is not a preference. It is simply what comes next.