River City History: The Regal Hand of Gold

For the most part the Hoods would prove successful, but their masks would influence a greater evil as the Great Depression overtook the country.

He was known as the Regal Hand of Living Gold. A descendant of ancient Indian royalty, he traveled to River City in 1934. He claimed to be there to build his fortune in a new homeland. But his real goals proved far more sinister.

The Regal Hand ruled over a dangerous order known as the Ten Fingers. A group of deadly assassins, the Regal Hand used his minions to completely cement control of the city. Even Merry Mann’s Hoods proved no match for the super-genius criminal. They died by the dozens, often killed in ways that seemed all too natural.

Merry proved to the Regal Hand’s final victim, killed by the Regal Hand himself. With a knife left in her back, she was meant as a message to any that would come after her that the Regal Hand of Living Gold now ruled River City.

Fortunately for the city, all hope wasn’t lost. Merry had a daughter, hidden even from her. With the city in the hands of criminals, it would come to a young woman named Gloria to free the city from the Regal Hand’s tyranny.

River City History: Merry Mann

In 1915, the nearly decade long war between Silent Silas and “Happy” Harry Murphy finally came to an end upon one of Murphy’s own riverboats. The explosion would rock the city for years to come and end the lives of both Silas and Murphy.

Silas and Murphy were dead, but as the twenties dawned in River City, crime rose to even higher levels. Prohibition ruled over the nation and with it came a wave of crime like never before. Meredith Mann remembered Silent Silas’s crusade. Still barely in her thirties, she set out to keep the new wave of criminals from ever growing as powerful as “Happy” Harry.

She took her longstanding column nickname of Merry Mann to heart as she slowly formed a network of operatives around her. Their job was simple, to report crimes and to act together anonymously to stop it. Each of her chosen protectors wore a hood and mask (and in at least one group, matching robes). Known simply as the Hoods, they quickly became the thorn in the side of any criminal that moved into the city. Only Merry knew all her operatives with each group maintained as a separate unit to preserve anonymity between units.

Her guerrilla tactics would be adopted by many in the decades to come, but unlike so many others, Merry used them as a force for good. While Chicago, St. Louis and dozens of other cities saw a sharp increase in violent crime during the time period, the Hoods worked at all times to keep violence out of River City’s streets.