Silver Shogun

[Raellus]

It bears noting that under the Tokugawa Shogunate, farmers had a higher social status, at least in theory, than merchants. This despite that many farmers were more or less impoverished while many merchants could be quite wealthy. From my understanding, the reasoning was that farmers were producers, while merchants simply trafficked in goods produced by others.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Raellus

It bears noting that under the Tokugawa Shogunate, farmers had a higher social status, at least in theory, than merchants. This despite that many farmers were more or less impoverished while many merchants could be quite wealthy. From my understanding, the reasoning was that farmers were producers, while merchants simply trafficked in goods produced by others.

I was going to bring up similar points but you beat me to it. The Shogun/Daiyomo/Samurai/Peasants social hierarchy works ok for the point Simonmark was making, but it was more complicated than that in feudal Japan, and particularly in the late feudal era. The merchant class and the two distinct priestly classes were also important players and in the case of the merchants didn't fit well into the structure at all (as in, they had increasing economic power but were looked down upon socially). And then there were the occasional conflicts with the more militant Buddhist monasteries, and finally the partial breakdown of the samurai system with the introduction of firearms.

Of course, the finer points don't matter. The Silver Shogun isn't trying to recreate feudal Japanese society, he's using a mish-mash of modern analogues of the samurai system along with some of its mystique. Web, you've probably mentioned before in other discussions of the Silver Shogunate's backstory, but how much of an expert on Japanese history was the Silver Shogun? With a name like Tokugawa I'm assuming his family took great pains to educate each generation about their glorious legacy?

[Badbru]

With regards to food I've worked in fast food, specifically Pizza shops and Cafe's most of my life. Pizza shops and less so Cafes generally get all there stock from dedicated food distributors. In Perth our shop used two; Variety Foods and European Foods. There were about two or perhaps three others I could have used. These three or four distributors serviced most Pizza shops in Perth and as example there were 15 other shops in the 5 or 6 kilometer delivery radius we had (competition was huge).

The restaurant trade is going to be similar. And historically has been a target for extortion-standover tactics by the Mob.
"Nice place you got here. It'd be a real shame if it caught fire. Now for a small weekly fee my boys and I could make sure that'd never happen, capishe?"

Consider that the Casino will have atleast one restaurant and possibly a seperate kitchen for room service and there is your conection to food distribution post TDM. Your protagonist just needs to also have one or more of these Food Distributon companies in addition to his Casino and he'll have links to all the food outlet points throughout the city, or atleast a significant portion of them as there is allways competion. His distribution truck drivers may even be the bag men for kickbacks etc and he also has a network of trucks available to him too.

I beleive the supermarkets opperate in a similar fashion although often with their own distribution networks.

That'll get him established in controll of local food distribution untill the imports and factories and all the actual infrastructure breaks down and also put him in a position to see how quickly local supplies will run out and thus he'll be ahead of the game looking for alternative sources of food.

This is where he reachs into another arm or his empire, those motorcycle gangs others have talked about. Their high mobility could be used to access surviving farm communities and by force, negotiation, or hostage taking he secures local farms, protects them and has the trucks and escorts to get the now more raw produce to the markets. The products change and his role alters slightly but it's still essentially the same.

[Webstral]

Thanks, all, for the input.

I have been avoiding mixing the mafia and Tokugawa partially because the mafia and Vegas does seem so cliché and partially because I lack confidence that I can represent the mafia correctly. However, I did create a mob character for possible use with Tokugawa. I made Jimmy Silver (for “silver tongue”) as a possible means for Tokugawa to conduct subversion and collect information. I haven’t fleshed him out very much, though. I haven’t decided whether he is a mob lieutenant who maintains liaisons with Tokugawa or a former mob guy who is now one of Tokugawa’s lieutenants. I’m going to have to think about the mob thing some more.

There are the drug and sex industries that will definitely impact The Phoenix. It would make sense for Tokugawa to have some means of governing their access to his guests, which would mean either a partnership or capturing a small segment of the industry. Capturing a small segment of the industry gives Tokugawa more control, but a partnership allows him greater deniability.

I had planned to imply that Tokugawa had put some money into the private security industry in Las Vegas once it really starts to take off after the start of the Sino-Soviet War. This would give him access to manpower and hardware that might not otherwise be available to a major shareholder of a casino. Also, if Tokugawa’s company has supplied a portion of the private security operating on the Strip, this gives him ready access to the surviving management as well as a position of leverage and leadership. I did plan for him to have control over some of the armored cars and crews in the city. He uses these to retrieve the families of important employees from the city when things start looking bad.

Bikers… They have the potential to be drug runners for whatever entity distributes narcotics at The Phoenix. Again, I’m wondering whether it’s better for Tokugawa to have a working relationship with someone independent or start the story with a small in-house group.

I definitely don’t want Tokugawa to start the story as a major crime lord. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem possible to operate in Sin City without coming to grips with the presence of the underworld in one fashion or another. This bears more consideration.

Regarding a draft, I really just meant the uniformed security working on the Strip and elsewhere in Las Vegas. They are organized, have some training, and have some weapons. A manpower-starved 99th Wing would look upon these guys (not street gangs, bikers, or wise guys) as potential recruits. I think the question of how far they are willing to go to get hold of them is a critical one to have answered. I wonder if this issue might not be the one that really breaks the relationship between the Air Force and Tokugawa. It’s not hard to imagine the Air Force, which is trying to control Clark County with active patrols throughout the area, announcing a draft of 200 men from the private force Tokugawa consolidates on the Strip. Tokugawa refuses, though he commits to allowing volunteers. Someone in the Nellis chain of command decides to impress some of Tokugawa’s men in the Royal Navy sense. This creates a rift that never closes. Perhaps.

As long as the Air Force has armored vehicles and firepower, they have a real trump card to play in Clark County. Small scale crime will be endemic. However, concentrations of outlaws of any description will draw a reaction from 99th Wing. As others have suggested, it’s certainly possible for the military (which absorbs the government of the City of Las Vegas and perhaps the whole of Clark County fairly early) to decide that the easiest solution to the manpower crunch is to assign a sector of Las Vegas to Tokugawa once it becomes obvious that he has assumed responsibility for a large block of civilians (who need feeding and services) and a controls a conglomeration of private security that is too large to deputize at gun point without major pain. Assuming Tokugawa is given de facto control over a section of the city centered on the Strip, he is then in a position to shelter those on the run from the Air Force (which soon comprises the entire government, agencies, and personnel of greater Las Vegas). This can give him the opportunity to bring in smaller gangs being menaced by larger ones or gangs reeling from an attack by the Air Force.

So one question becomes how Tokugawa gets control over the Strip. The day after Thanksgiving he is the uncontested leader of a modest casino at the southern end of the Strip. He is a major shareholder in a new private security corporation that absorbed several smaller operations in Las Vegas. Many of the newest additions to the casinos’ security types are employees of the security firm contracted out to the casinos and elsewhere. Still, he’s not about to launch a coup against the leadership of the other casinos. The best I can think of at the moment is that the casino bosses have been meeting with city leaders in an effort to talk about what they will do if nuclear war comes to CONUS but does not directly affect Las Vegas. What’s going to happen with the people in the major hotels if the power goes out? I did a rough count of the rooms available in the hotels on the Strip. Even in 1997 there are more than 40,000 rooms available in the major hotels on the Strip. If they average 2 people per room, then there are possibly 80,000 people rooming on the Strip on Thanksgiving, plus however many people are in the casinos when the lights go out. Many of these people will disappear or become casualties very soon, but there will still be tens of thousands of people crammed into a small area in Las Vegas. I can’t envision any of the details, but I’m thinking that Tokugawa gets made chairman of a new board made up of the on site senior leaders of the casinos. This board becomes responsible for basically trying to manage the people on the Strip while food distribution and public sanitation gets worked out. The board liaises with government agencies and forces as they struggle to get the situation under something like control.

I’m thinking that the casinos gradually fill up with employees and their families as the residential neighborhoods of greater Las Vegas become uninhabitable due to fires and violence.

Under these circumstances, I can begin to see how Tokugawa’s subversion of government personnel can function. He’ll have to have agents working on Nellis, which is a whole other subject.

Tokugawa does in fact use his Japanese identity extensively. He is the Shogun. The officers of his army, the Gunryo, are samurai. The enlisted men are ashigaru. He adopts distinctly Japanese images and philosophy to give his army a strong bond that marks them as separate from the society they take over. His senior leadership are daimyo.

One theme I want to play up is that Tokugawa is not interested in being a post apocalyptic warlord. He starts down his path to make some money and build a legacy. He cares about quality, and he cares about the welfare of the people in his organization. His outlook is that employees who can see the evidence of care for their interests and well being on the part of the management work better and produce a high quality service and/or products. This idea extends to safeguarding the people who are stuck in his casino the day after Thanksgiving. At each step along the way, Tokugawa feels compelled to move in a given direction to provide for the people under his protection. I want to show how the logic of this thinking leads him to initiate his own raids against rival powers in Las Vegas and ultimately take control of Nevada at gun point. He installs secret police in the towns, wipes out a town, and conducts motorized raids against surviving farming communities in California, Utah, Idaho, and Arizona because these things have to be done in order to secure the well being of the people under his protection. I suppose one could say that the central theme of Silver Shogun is that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Thanks for the ideas and discussion, gentlemen. I welcome more as long as people are interested.

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by Badbru

With regards to food I've worked in fast food, specifically Pizza shops and Cafe's most of my life. Pizza shops and less so Cafes generally get all there stock from dedicated food distributors. In Perth our shop used two; Variety Foods and European Foods. There were about two or perhaps three others I could have used. These three or four distributors serviced most Pizza shops in Perth and as example there were 15 other shops in the 5 or 6 kilometer delivery radius we had (competition was huge).

The restaurant trade is going to be similar. And historically has been a target for extortion-standover tactics by the Mob.
"Nice place you got here. It'd be a real shame if it caught fire. Now for a small weekly fee my boys and I could make sure that'd never happen, capishe?"

Consider that the Casino will have atleast one restaurant and possibly a seperate kitchen for room service and there is your conection to food distribution post TDM. Your protagonist just needs to also have one or more of these Food Distributon companies in addition to his Casino and he'll have links to all the food outlet points throughout the city, or atleast a significant portion of them as there is allways competion. His distribution truck drivers may even be the bag men for kickbacks etc and he also has a network of trucks available to him too.

I beleive the supermarkets opperate in a similar fashion although often with their own distribution networks.

That'll get him established in controll of local food distribution untill the imports and factories and all the actual infrastructure breaks down and also put him in a position to see how quickly local supplies will run out and thus he'll be ahead of the game looking for alternative sources of food.

This is where he reachs into another arm or his empire, those motorcycle gangs others have talked about. Their high mobility could be used to access surviving farm communities and by force, negotiation, or hostage taking he secures local farms, protects them and has the trucks and escorts to get the now more raw produce to the markets. The products change and his role alters slightly but it's still essentially the same.

Badbru, there are some good ideas in there. Thanks for posting that. If you don't mind I might try and adapt some of those ideas into my UK work.

[Webstral]

Badbru, I must apologize for not writing feedback for your ideas in my previous post. I offer the lame excuse that I needed a bit more time to digest your food slanted idea.

There are lots of good ideas in your post. I think I’ll several, though I’ll scale them back a bit. I have a couple of ideas. I may have Tokugawa own a piece of the company that supplies The Phoenix with its food items. Alternatively, I may have The Phoenix have an in-house operation that goes to all of the distributors, bypassing the usual middle men. I think it’s a good idea that Tokugawa have some idea of where the food all comes from and how much is really left at the usual distribution points when the military confiscates the lot. He could and should have an inside source at one or more of these warehouses. I also like the idea of him having some sort of connection with the drivers, who would be in a position to pass information to him.

A couple of ideas have matured a bit more. If Tokugawa becomes the chairman of the conglomerate of casinos on the Strip, and if he becomes responsible for management and defense of the Strip with his own security force, etc., then where are the boundaries drawn? I can’t help noticing that the University of Nevada at Las Vegas is also very nearby. While the students will have gone home for the long weekend, the faculty and staff are going to be local residents. They won’t be on campus when the nuclear war catches up with CONUS, but they will be nearby. The facility and the faculty represent an invaluable resource. The campus will have unoccupied dorm rooms, while greater Las Vegas will become less and less tenable. If Tokugawa can extend his security zone to include the campus, and if he can get the faculty to move into the secure zone, then he will have a gained something really important.

The Strip is also very close to McCarran IAP. This is an obvious base of operations, since it is easily defensible and basically devoid of residents. I wonder if the Las Vegas government or Clark County government or both don’t move there early in the process or if they don’t go straight to Nellis. The people stranded there when the nukes start flying will have to be moved, of course.

[Badbru]

Rainbow Six and Webstral thanks for the kind words and by all means use or adapt anything you can. It's why I posted afterall.

Webstral, you seem fixated on the notion that the military will confiscate all the food, as seen in this quote

Originally Posted by Webstral

I think it’s a good idea that Tokugawa have some idea of where the food all comes from and how much is really left at the usual distribution points when the military confiscates the lot. He could and should have an inside source at one or more of these warehouses. I also like the idea of him having some sort of connection with the drivers, who would be in a position to pass information to him.

Yet in the following you also want him to have recieved some sort of legitimacy by the City, to be in some sort of unquestioned position of power atleast over a segment of the city, as seen here

Originally Posted by Webstral

A couple of ideas have matured a bit more. If Tokugawa becomes the chairman of the conglomerate of casinos on the Strip, and if he becomes responsible for management and defense of the Strip with his own security force, etc., then where are the boundaries drawn?

Have you considered the later happening before the former? That way he is "legitimately" in controll of, a segment atleast of, the City food distribution.

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by Badbru

Have you considered the later happening before the former? That way he is "legitimately" in controll of, a segment atleast of, the City food distribution.

I had not considered that idea. To be honest, I see the immediate seizure of food and fuel by the government as a foregone conclusion. If there are any preparations made by the government regarding nuclear strikes against CONUS, I believe seizure of food and fuel stocks will be at the top of the list. Not every scrap of either resource will fall into government hands on D+1. Private stocks of both probably will remain untouched by the government, unless the government knows about them and thinks obtaining them is worth the potential trouble. But fuel distribution points and warehouses, storehouses, and processing facilities will be well known to local governments and the local military leadership. I see food flowing from the government controlled warehouses and other stockpiles through the hands of the chairman's organization to the people on the Strip. I'd be very willing to consider an alternative point of view, though.

Now I suppose it's possible that Tokugawa assumes his new position on the Strip prior to the organization of a city-wide rationing system. Even then, though, the best that could be said is that stores already inside the zone of control of the new chairman would be "let go".