Silver Shogun

[Webstral]

I’m at an impasse in my effort to turn Silver Shogun into a script for a graphic novel. A little back-and-forth with the boys of Twilight: 2000 might be the trick for getting out of my own head and gaining some perspective, if you guys are willing to indulge me.

Some things are settled on. The protagonist, David Tokugawa, is a major shareholder in a Las Vegas casino and hotel named The Phoenix. The story begins with him at The Phoenix on the evening before Thanksgiving 1997. A series of vignettes set the stage, establishing that the war has been going on for a couple of years and has turned nuclear in Europe and China. Vegas is packed with people trying desperately to ignore what has been happening in Eurasia. Profits have been at an all-time high everywhere in Vegas, but things are getting out of hand. Some vignettes hint at the activity at Nellis AFB. Others show that the City of Las Vegas has been taking some action in the direction of contingency planning. Tokugawa has a number of brief encounters all over the casino that show the relationships he has with other principal players at the casino as well as his approach to management.

When EMP knocks out the power on Thanksgiving, the masses panic. On this weekend, Vegas is particularly susceptible to the mess we have described amongst ourselves over the past few years because there are more visitors in Clark County than residents. Whether the visitors hit the road, riot, loot, or have sex in public places, their manifestation of mass panic will be as intense as or more intense than any other city in the US. The first 24 hours after the power goes out will be very, very intense. I intend to immerse the reader in this experience through Tokugawa’s eyes.

Soon enough, though, the military and the police appear on the Strip and enforce law and order. Like an elastic stretched and released, the people snap back to the patterns of civilized behavior, though not ever again like it used to be.

There’s a period of time between the initial calming in many parts of the city and the abandonment of Las Vegas and Nellis AFB by the military (see my notes on 99th Wing) that I have not defined to my satisfaction. While I intend for Tokugawa to take on the role of the leader of a powerful alternative force in Clark County prior to the departure of 99th Wing, I’m having trouble sorting out a number of the details that need to be sorted for him to make the transition from the de facto owner/CEO of the casino to the leader of an army that includes gang members, outlaw bikers, armed civilians, casino security forces and other private security forces, organized crime, subverted city and county employees (including police), and subverted military.

So far, the best I have been able to come up with is that Tokugawa goes down a path on which each step towards becoming the enemy of 99th Wing has its own logic answering to the events of the moment. While we see during the vignettes that Tokugawa plans carefully and looks at the big picture, events in the immediate aftermath of Thanksgiving prevent him from looking beyond the next moment in a systematic fashion. He has immediate crises, like caring for the needs of guests and staff at The Phoenix in a totally unprecedented situation.

I haven’t developed a detailed picture of Las Vegas at various points after Thanksgiving. Obviously, it sucks big time. The orgy of death and suffering right after Thanksgiving dies down but then slowly builds to a new, better organized crescendo. During this time, where is the food coming from? How is the water getting to people? These two questions are very important because they dictate the shape of things in Vegas during the first 10 days after Thanksgiving.

I’ve considered cheating on the water by having electricity restored. My deus ex machina is the idea that the Hoover Dam generators are just too important to be allowed to be knocked out by a single burst of EMP. Backup electrical equipment is located on site after July 1997. Contingency plans are put into effect, turning the pumps back on in Vegas. Water doesn’t go to everybody, though. It’s distributed at central locations, which also can serve for distributing rations.

This goes back to the food issue. Where’s the food coming from? Obviously, the government will have seized all local warehouses and other stores. There are farms and ranches in the northern part of the state. I’m stuck on how this translates into a situation inside Las Vegas, though. What the relationship between Tokugawa and the people who control the water, food, and fuel during the first week of December? I’ve considered having Tokugawa and the other heads of casinos on the Strip assemble to try to figure out what they are going to do while supplies last with the result that Tokugawa becomes leader of this conglomerate. But then what? Does the city government recognize him in any meaningful way? Does Nellis AFB (by which I mean the Air Force command) recognize him in any meaningful way? What would their acknowledgement of his leadership of these hotels full of guests mean? Do they dump rations with Tokugawa’s security forces and tell him to handle distribution? Does he get assigned responsibility for local security? While the fact that the rest of Clark County is descending into anarchy is a given, what does this look like from Tokugawa’s perspective? What are they telling the surviving guests of the casinos about their fate and futures? How do these developments bring Tokugawa into conflict with gangs, ad hoc militia, and ultimately the surviving government forces?

I’m thinking, too, that Tokugawa needs to be part of a scheme to get people through the coming lean times that fails. I don’t yet know what form this takes. Maybe there is an effort to plant gardens inside and around the city. Maybe there is a Nevada version of relocation, taking survivors from the urban areas of Las Vegas to farms throughout the state. I’m sure other crushingly tragic possibilities exist.

I’m certain of a couple of things, though. One of Tokugawa’s chief weapons in this stage is diplomacy and subversion. I’m thinking of having him bring a minor gang into the fold, then using them to cripple a larger gang. This would require rapid consolidation of all the security forces on the Strip. Why aren’t these guys drafted by the Air Force? I don’t have a good answer for that yet, but I need them not to be drafted by the Air Force or the story dies.