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Thread for Las Vegas
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Pegasus J Crawford
9:44pm, August 16, 2017
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[Delete] | You pick up a cocktail in a bar in a plastic souvenir glass and walk with it, wandering without consequence into the night. You amble through a parody of Earth—an Egyptian pyramid shooting light into space, a faux-medieval fairy tale castle, the Statue of Liberty, the Arc de Triomphe, Roman colonnades, palm trees, volcanoes, and enormous golden lions floating in a sea of pulsing phosphorescence.
Everywhere you look, something beckons, calling you to the Big Win—step up and try your luck, free knick-knack with every purchase,
don’t miss this special offer. People on the street push cards at you with a distracting slap, the naked women on them staring into the middle distance.
Club beats meld with the clinking of glass. Breasts jiggle with the passing of dollars. Alcohol pours in every color of the rainbow.
Sometimes, you might look into the spaces between the lights, but not for long, because the gazes that stare back at you are hungry and desperate. You imagine the crime and danger you’ve seen in cinema and television, and then return to the lights, where the truly dangerous criminals steal your money with your consent. Or you might brave those shadows, seeking something more genuinely forbidden than what the billboards encourage.
Very rarely, you achieve what the advertisements promise you and win big. More often, you leave with less than you came with and dream about the next time. If your luck is truly awful, you become a part of the city, stuck in those dark spaces, noticed only in fleeting glimpses by people who were once just like you.
Worst of all, you convince yourself that the city is responsible for the things you do. Plausible deniability. That is how we draw you back, time and again.
Welcome to Las Vegas. Enjoy yourself, because we certainly will.
TLDR: Las Vegas is a Hunting Ground, where every faction that rises to power only keeps it, because none of them are stronger then the other. That there are souls and victims a-plenty and enough to share certainly helps, but nobody wants an escalation. Unlike the amiable relationship in NYC that evolved into the Triad of leaders dominating the drug, flesh and violence market however, Las Vegas runs along the edge of a knife. Its feint and counter-feint, where only the cunning and ruthless survive.
The following people are some of the current big fish in the pond.
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| A brief history of Sin. |
Pegasus J Crawford
9:56pm, August 16, 2017
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[Delete] | Let’s get the big one out of the way first: there’s a reason we call this place Sin City. It’s not just a marketing ploy. The city literally feeds on the energy of corruption, a psychic vampire miles and miles across. Every bad thing everyone does—from the smallest of white lies to the most heinous and dehumanizing of crimes—works in some small part to sate its hunger.
As bad as that sounds, it’s actually the lesser of evils. Without that corruptive energy, Vegas would no longer be able to serve its actual purpose, sealing away something even worse underneath Nevada, stirring in the depths.
No one save one, knows exactly what that is. It could be an entity, or simply a point of contact with some horrible Beyond. What information that does exist say is that the last time it broke through, it scarred Death Valley into the very crust of the Earth. The gate, for lack of a better term, was sealed between its world and ours sometime in pre-history, perhaps by powerful shamans in the Anasazi or their ancestors.
Whatever it was, they summoned something else to help keep the seal intact, a demon in every sense of the word. It demanded a high price for its service—the continual direction of corruptive power right into its black heart for eternity. There has always been one person, the demon’s contact with the mortal world, responsible for making sure this happens.
On March 17, 1905, the demon passed this mantle to a noble of the Red Court, who afterward answered only to “the Dragon.” The Dragon proved equal to the challenge, using the Court’s finances and guiding the right people to build Las Vegas up. It started with Block 16 and the “dude ranches,” and eventually became the
sprawling thing you now know, with the Red Court or their proxies propping up much of the financial might necessary to make it function.
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Once the Dragon realized what he had gotten himself into, he tried to break free from the demon’s grip, leading to all-out war. It’s no coincidence that the
United States government chose the Las Vegas Aerial Gunnery School as a nuclear test site. Those craters in the ground are the scars of their battle.
In the end, the Dragon lost. The heady cost of his struggle forced him to diversify; soon, other supernatural beings came to answer the call of Vegas, seeing prime opportunities to be had.
Vegas was new, an untapped source of energy, food, slaves, favors, debts, and bargains—the grease on the wheels of the empowered world. The Dragon shaped them until they unwittingly fed the city, allowing each faction to pursue their interests to a point, but curbing anyone who threatened to curtail the city’s growth—no
people, no more sin. He had balanced the equation. The demon was satisfied.
Such is the Las Vegas of today, a continual race to feed a demonic vampire, who guards a seal keeping back an unnamed horror. |
| Who's Who in Las Vegas |
Pegasus J Crawford
10:13pm, August 16, 2017
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[Delete] | Coyote: The God of the Native American Tribes and unofficial de facto leader of the Shifters. Some time after the Dragon had claimed power, Coyote became one of the first major powers to stake his claim. In his casino, he is known to host diverse guests from all walks of life.
The Dragon: For lack of a better word, the referee of Las Vegas. With his machinates and connections, Las Vegas runs smoothly. All infractions that come about, sooner or later tend to become known to him. The most powerful figure in Las Vegas.
The White Court: They would probably be the most powerful faction in the city, if not for their terrible infighting. The problem is, most of the White Court vamps we ended up with are here because they couldn’t get ahead in their respective Houses. Mostly Skavis, but there are handfuls of Malvoras, Raiths, Lagios, and so on. They band together against external threats, but keep trying to undermine each other.
Mostly, their role in the Dragon’s grand scheme was to act as street-level operators for the drug trade, as well as the casino and ultralounge industry. They’re the middle management to the
Red Court’s CEOs—the people running the places you want to go, making sure authorities look the other way, and pocketing their share of the Red Court’s investments in both money and people.
It took some bloodshed to form the symbiotic relationship—the first twenty years were touch and go, until an enterprising White
Court vampire ended it by selling out all the power players in his own clan to cement the Red Court’s dominance. His name is Corin Skavis and he acts by and large, as the Dragon's street level enforcer.
The Black Chip Division: A small group in the police force
have created an “off the books” department as a response to rampant corruption in the city’s political infrastructure. It’s a common occurrence for some investigations to ground out in a series of procedural errors and for evidence to go missing, all the better to protect the interests of politically connected criminals.
The Black Chips might be the city’s only enforcers of true justice. They receive no formal support from the department, and they live in constant danger of being undone by the same legal system they’ve sworn to uphold.
Pegasus J. Crawford: An eccentric billionaire with ties to everyone it seems. Both a gambler and a sorcerer, Pegasus runs a special game known as 'X-Crawl.' A team-centric, labyrinthine obstacle course to the death that is slowly growing in popularity. Formerly only taking in criminals, mercenaries, serial killers and the like- A growing trend are sponsored teams, sent in to gain glory in a Roman-styled entertainment of Bread and Circus. |
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Pegasus J Crawford
2:47am, May 09, 2018
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[Delete] | 
A little video began to trend on the Dark Web, sent to a number of folks via an innocuous Craigslist link. Those who got it, saw Pegasus sitting on an armchair as he grinned and waved.
"Hunters and mercernaries, killers and artisans of death! Welcome to the latest X-Crawl sponsored event I like to call 'The Long Winter!' As of this moment, we've some incredibly special targets tonight! Live from the city of Las Vegas, we've some VERY special goals tonight! The Wolverine and a Macleod, together protecting these unknown folks from the predation of the Winter Lady!"
With a grin, Pegasus snapped his fingers as grainy pictures flickered and revealed Logan, Laura, Ala and Duncans faces.
"Wanted for the standing price of six million dollars and a favor from her ladyship, you have twenty four hours to claim them before they vanish from Las Vegas! So..."
He smirked and leaned forward.
"What are you waiting for? Shoo! Shoo!" |
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