Six wiseguys. One medieval city. Zero questions asked.
Medieval Mobsters
Six wiseguys. One medieval city. Zero questions asked. When six New York mobsters walk out of a Hell's Kitchen basement into a city of knights and guilds, they do not look for a way home. They look for the angles.
The Thornwall Operations Ledger
They do not look for a way home. They look for the angles.
Six New York wiseguys walk into a medieval city with rumpled suits, twelve precious bullets, and a professional inability to leave an opportunity unorganized. Thornwall has never encountered cocktails, pizza, or customer-friendly protection.
“We walk in like we own it, and eventually, people start believing we do.”
Mikey Morano, strategic planning
Character stories
Meet the crew
They argue constantly, adapt alarmingly fast, and remain fiercely loyal to the only five people who understand how impossible this week has been.
Leader · Nobody Voted
Mikey ‘The Mouth’ Morano
Mikey started talking first and never stopped, which is close enough to leadership for this crew. He pitches the scheme, delegates the work, and cannot admit when medieval vocabulary has defeated him. His snub-nose revolver has twelve rounds; every bullet is now a strategic asset.
Muscle · Fixer
Sal ‘The Hands’ Salerno
Quiet, practical, and unimpressed by anything supernatural. A dragon is a large bird. A wizard's fireball is a nice trick. Sal understands the local currency before anyone else because he is the only one who stops arguing long enough to buy food.
Errand Boy · Accidentally Correct
Tony ‘The Basement’ Castellano
Tony keeps suggesting they check the basement they arrived through. Everyone treats this as proof he is an idiot. He is right more often than anyone realizes, but delivers every insight so badly that listening to him feels irresponsible.
Money · Anxiety
Vinny ‘Books’ Vecchio
Two semesters of college make Vinny the operation's intellectual. He keeps the ledger, deciphers medieval documents, and is developing an exchange rate nobody requested. His pathological cheapness saves the crew exactly as often as it nearly ruins them.
Charm · Cocktails
Paulie ‘Pipes’ Pirelli
Paulie can enter a room of suspicious strangers and have them buying drinks within an hour. He invents the cocktail for a century that thought ale in a bucket was enough. Women, vanity, and his own singing voice remain persistent operational risks.
Cook · Culinary Revolutionary
Frankie ‘No Neck’ Nardone
The schemes, rackets, and protection money are all funding for Frankie's real mission: a proper Italian restaurant. Thornwall's ingredients are wrong, its guilds are obstructive, and its cuisine has personally offended him. He will make pizza anyway.
Inside the world
How to build an empire five centuries early
The Red Door
Reinvent the local tavern
Paulie brings cocktails, music, and atmosphere to a city that thought ale in a bucket was sufficient hospitality.
Frankie's Kitchen
Teach a city about pizza
No tomatoes. No familiar ingredients. No excuse. Frankie intends to feed Thornwall whether its Bakers' Guild approves or not.
Peace of Mind
Make respect profitable
The merchants pay for peace of mind. Sal provides the peace. The paperwork describes this as a community service.
Competitive Pressure
Then Lady Ashworth notices
She controls the guards, the guilds, and every road into the city. Mikey considers compromise a personal insult. She considers him temporary.
Description
Six wiseguys. One medieval city. Zero questions asked.
In 1955, six New York mobsters walk down into a Hell’s Kitchen basement to wait out a storm.
They walk up into Thornwall—a walled city of knights, guild halls, herb-sellers who work miracles for a copper, and something with too many legs living under the docks.
They do not panic. They do not look for a way home. They look for the angles.
Inside a month, Mikey Morano and his crew are running a tavern pouring the first cocktails the city has ever tasted, a pizza place the Bakers’ Guild cannot legally classify, a protection operation the merchants are relieved to pay, and a lending business that charges no interest—only favors. The nobility calls it an infestation. The crew calls it a good start.
But Lady Ashworth owns the guards, the guilds, and every trade route in and out. A priest with a tribunal behind him is quietly asking how a man puts an armored knight on the grass from twenty paces. And Tony keeps mentioning that they should maybe go back and check the basement.
Nobody wants to hear about the basement.
The family business
- Portal fantasy with 1950s gangsters who adapt far too quickly
- Competence applied to the completely wrong century
- Cocktails, pizza, protection, favors, and guild politics
- Comedy with strong language and flexible business ethics
A standalone fantasy comedy by Julian Herschel.