Tempo del Sur

Tempo del Sur, cryptonym TAXMAN, is the murder you walk into. He’s the asset PSEUDOPOD was sent to Portofiro to handle, the reason Hershel is recalled, and the body you find in the office above the Bootleg Bazaar before you ever shake his hand.

His blood is on the floor. The Weeping Eye emblem is drawn on his desk in cocaine.

Who he was

Tempo started as a bootlegger — mid-level inside the Portofiran criminal underworld, important enough to be plugged into La Luz but not so important that the police bothered chasing him hard. Between ‘88 and ‘91, Hershel recruited him into the Whole Sick Crew. His specialty was access — the kind of criminal contacts a Superbloc operant cannot build from scratch.

The Crew specialties:

Ezsti / ESTOC — deep cover.
Karolina / KINDRED — dream visualization.
Ramses / RADIAN — electronics.
Tempo / TAXMAN — bootlegger and underworld fixer.
Vespar / VIRTUE — police informants.

The cryptonym TAXMAN is a joke. A career bootlegger is the absolute opposite of a tax collector. The Opera files him under his opposite, the same way Vespar’s cryptonym pretends a carabinero running CIs is “virtuous”.

How he survived ‘91

When the Weeping Eye burned the Crew in ‘91, every other member took damage. Tempo did not. His criminal contacts in La Luz — the same network the Opera was using him for — turned out to be enough cover to ride out the burn. The Weeping Eye is La Luz’s secret police; Tempo had relationships on the other side of that hyphen and used them.

Over the next five years, while CASCADE was iced in Novessa, Tempo did not lay low. He went up. He became the boss of the Bootleg Bazaar in Quisach, the main gray-market trading post of Portofiro’s main district. He collected a fee from every vendor in the Bazaar. He took on a teenage protege as his underboss.

His rule had side effects:

A wave of Luzian customers started showing up at the Bazaar.
The local Portofiran gangs were not pleased about that.
Carmuna Pessoa, a vendor with her own opinions, did not approve of him at all.

A bootlegger from ‘88 turned into a small king by ‘96. That’s the version of Tempo Hershel was being recalled to see.

What he was trying to sell

In ‘96, the Weeping Eye suddenly and conspicuously ramped up their activity in Portofiro. Tempo had been close enough to La Luz for five years to notice what was different. He reached out to the Operant Bureau through The Boatman and offered intel. One condition: he would only talk to CASCADE.

The Opera couldn’t get a new handler in front of him. They sent PSEUDOPOD, hit the wall, and PSEUDOPOD requested that Hershel be pulled out of the Freezer to be his double. That’s the request that brings the game’s protagonist into Portofiro.

What you find

Hershel arrives a day late. PSEUDOPOD is already catatonic from the Mysterious Red Disc. And in the office above the Bootleg Bazaar, where Tempo should be waiting, there’s:

a copious amount of his blood;
no body;
the Weeping Eye’s emblem drawn on his desk in cocaine.

The Weeping Eye does not normally announce itself. The signature on the desk is theatrical, deliberate, and meant to be read. Whatever Tempo was about to tell the Opera, La Luz wanted Hershel — and anyone else paying attention — to know it had been buried.

That double event — PSEUDOPOD down, TAXMAN dead — is the inciting double-tap of the game. See What’s Wrong PSEUDOPOD?.

Why he matters across the game

Even dead, Tempo is the centre of the Bazaar. Every Quisach NPC is downstream of him in some way:

The Mysterious Teenage Girl was his protege, and the question of whether she now runs the Bazaar is open.
Carmuna Pessoa has opinions about his rule and his death.
The Boatman was working as his middleman.
The Portofiran gangs he had been crowding out are suddenly looking at an empty throne.

Working out who killed him, and what he was about to sell, is one of the load-bearing investigations of the game.

What’s confirmed vs. unknown

Confirmed: cryptonym TAXMAN, former bootlegger, Crew member ‘88–‘91, survived the ‘91 burn through La Luz contacts, became Bazaar boss, took on a teenage underboss, drew the ire of local Portofiran gangs, was about to sell the Opera intel about Weeping Eye activity, murdered by the Weeping Eye before Hershel arrived in ‘96. What he was actually about to say — and who told the Weeping Eye to get there first — is the open mystery.

As TAXMAN

Even as a corpse, TAXMAN is the gravity well of the Bazaar.

The Mysterious Teenage Girl, his protege, is suddenly the closest thing to a successor. Whether she takes the throne or watches it get taken is one of the early questions of the district.
Carmuna Pessoa, never a fan, has new room to operate.
The local Portofiran gangs see an open seat.
The Weeping Eye’s signature on the desk forces every faction in Quisach to ask whether they’re next.

Reconstructing TAXMAN’s last week is partly a murder investigation and partly a market-share investigation. Both threads converge.