Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Is she a fanatic? She seems to me to just want to make money by threatening to kill loads of people, which is a very desirable attitude in a number of industries.
Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest
- Thread starter King crimson
- Start date
- Superhero
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
Fair warning for people who are only interested in the canon stuff to the quest. I'll be getting up my bit on character thematics up in a bit. Don't be disappointed when I drop a 10K post and it's not an update (that's coming tomorrow).
The Metropolitan Clan Ch. 41
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The Metropolitan Clan, Ch. 41
Recommended Listening: The Ballad of John Henry
John Henry stretched his muscles in the gathering dawn light of the Nevada desert.
He'd heard, back in Maryland, that the Central Pacific Railroad, coming from out California way, was going to put tunnels through some of the hardest, highest mountains in the world. Mountains twice as big as any in the Appalachians and made out of tougher stone. He'd heard that the pay would be fit to match. California was where gold came from, wasn't it?
Working and planning his way on steamships down into the sweltering Caribbean, walking along trails across the jungle of Panama with its own hills- they talked of a canal, and that would be a job to daunt even him- and back up the Pacific coast hadn't been easy or simple, but he and Elizabeth had managed it. And finding a job on the line had been easier than he'd feared.
He'd heard the stories. After problems with drunkenness, unreliability, and desertion among the white workforce, the railroad's construction boss, Mr. Strobridge, had started hiring anyone he could get. Mostly Chinese, mostly. That had been going on long enough by the time John even arrived, that all he'd had to do to get a job driving steel at good pay was put a rusty spike through a railroad tie.
He'd heard talk of the company bringing up Luthor steam drills to speed up the tunneling. Now, John reckoned he could beat any machine ever made, but he hadn't had to. When the prototype showed up, and the Steam and Steel man who'd come to market the drills got one up against a rock face, the drill shattered against the cold, hard granite of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Mr. Strobridge had laughed, then, and told him that he wouldn't be bothered. Though he'd bought a few of the little wood-fired donkey engines, to wind winches and haul cables. Those helped- but it seemed only men could fight the mountains.
He'd faced twenty-foot snowdrifts along with the Chinamen, snow so deep that locomotives couldn't plow it off the tracks; they simply derailed. Men had been forced to build miles of covered roofs along the tracks, to keep the snow off. They'd faced avalanches, and cold more bitter than a Maryland boy had ever imagined. The cold of these mountains could freeze a man to his soul. Could freeze him solid in November, lost and snowbound, and leave him like a statue of ice to be found by his friends, as the white drifts finally melted and drifted away in the spring.
And in the face of all that, he'd battled his way through the mountains along with swarms of little Chinamen. Thousands of them. Most of them worked as hard and as well as any men he'd ever seen, be they black, red, yellow, white, or green with purple stripes. The Chinese handled gunpowder and the mysterious, greasy chemical oil called 'nitro-glycerine' with courage and skill, they teamed up and got jobs done without too much nonsense and squabbling. And John Henry had been working right along with them, driving holes into the rock with chisel and sledgehammer so that it could be shattered by charges of explosive.
They'd slammed a tunnel through the summit of the mountains, high above the pass that had claimed the Donner Party, a third of a mile long if it was an inch. They'd done it with sledgehammers and cold-steel tools that ran back and forth to the blacksmiths' shops in camp in endless succession, worn down by the hard rock.
That was just the Summit Tunnel. There were fourteen more. And through it all, he'd driven steel.
He'd worked like three men, and made the pay of a man and a half. And near every penny of it, he'd mailed back to Sacramento and his wife Elizabeth, and his newborn son. He hoped she could save it up- because that would make it all worth it.
Mid-Morning
Running. Running. Under the noonday sun of the desert.
The rails were handled by teams of eight men, and John Henry hadn't been surprised when he'd been picked. Quadruple pay was attractive enough and then some.
He gripped one end of the rail on the flatcar with tongs- even his fingers might slip and drop the five hundred pound rail on a foot without them- and jerked. Hauling it along by main force, he felt it as the burly Irishmen behind him laid their own tongs on and steadied the thing- though the three of them bunched towards the rear, and he felt as though he was doing half the lifting by himself.
They advanced at a trot that was automatic by now, manhandling the rail ten, twenty, thirty yards- careful, careful, THUMP as they laid it on the ties into the track gauge, resting on the ties that had already been dropped into place by men working from horse-drawn wagons. Then run back to the wagon for the next. And the next. Again, and again, unloading wagon after wagon of heavy iron rails while the platemen bustled behind them, plying their own heavy tools and bucketloads of plates, bolts, and spikes to fix the rails in place. Again, again.
And again and again, Muldoon's beaming grin. Muldoon, the Irishman across the tracks from him, a figure of prodigious strength himself. Many a man in the railroad camps had bet on who would win between them in an arm wrestling match. John Henry and Muldoon had eyed each other and with a mutual nod of agreement, not decided to find out.
To this day they'd never tried, though John Henry reckoned he'd win. Probably, so did Muldoon. Either way, though, now they were working together. How far had they gotten? Four miles of track? Five? Six? John Henry had long since lost count of the time and the rails.
Even he was starting to ache.
But he was part of the Central Pacific crew- and they had a bet to win.
A bet against Mister Luthor, no less. The rich man had- well, had through his agents- dealt fairly enough with John Henry in the last year of the war, sure enough. But the year before that, Luthor had owned the chain on his ankle- and him, too. That wasn't a thing a man forgot about.
It wouldn't do John Henry any harm, to know he'd helped wipe a grin off Mister Luthor's face.
Lunchtime
The ringing chorus of hammers pounding rails into curved shapes against the jig blocks laid on the ground sounded across the moving 'site' as teams of Chinese started preparing the afternoon's track.
John Henry eyed the Chinese, dressed in a style that no longer seemed odd to him and shaded by from the desert sun by the straw hats that were seldom far from their hands. Then he spoke, in a quiet voice that was followed by Muldoon's quiet exhalation of disbelief.
"That's sledgehammer work." John stood up, stretching and feeling as if his arms would reach the sky. "Reckon I can lend a hand, if they'll have me."
Ogden, Utah
April 29, 1869
Union Pacific Railroad Telegraph Office
Leland Luthor had bounced out of bed early, with a boyish eagerness. Sims had wired him the day before yesterday that Crocker and the Central Pacific were massing resources for their push. He could imagine it well enough, from his own success hardly a week earlier. Train after train for mile. No doubt Crocker and his man Strobridge had done the best they could.
He smirked. John Ericsson couldn't out-ironclad him, when he got a head of steam on. John Garrett couldn't out-boardroom him. Alfred Nobel couldn't out-chemist him- he'd figured out the secret of the man's vaunted "dynamite" easily enough. And nothing the famous General Lee could think of could out-fight his land ironclads.
Charlie Crocker couldn't out-railroad him.
Oh, surely the man was no fool or weakling. Surely, he'd given it a good try. He'd probably driven his little Chinese like Luthor had driven his own men, from before dawn until the stroke of midnight. Maybe driven them harder; Leland had done his best to make sure none of the boys dropped dead of the exhaustion. But even so, he knew in his belly that Crocker, like Ericsson, Garrett, Nobel, and Lee, had done his best to match Leland Luthor. And lost. Because if the Central Pacific couldn't even manage seven miles last time, how would they beat a nine mile record-
The telegraph began to chatter. Leland's Morse code was good enough by now that he recognized the telegrapher's fist, tapping the message out.
...That was the recognition code. Leland had no intention of allowing himself to be pranked or tricked....
Leland felt his mind float loose. This couldn't be happening. He'd misheard the message. Somehow. He looked down at the operator, even more practiced following Morse than he was. Surely he'd-
The operator's face was white, and his hand shook slightly as he scrawled out the message in shorthand.
He hadn't misheard the message.
With a cry he flew to the map table in the next room, nearly crashing headlong into a file clerk carrying a box of papers. He looked down at the route tacked onto the map of northern Utah with string, snatched up calipers, drawing-table reflexes keeping his arm steady. Eleven miles- eleven and a quarter, call it… That… that would put the Central Pacific barely two miles from Promontory Point!
He could beat eleven miles. He could. He'd find a way. Except… except…
There weren't eleven miles, nor yet ten, between the Union Pacific railhead and Promontory Point.
There wasn't distance for him to break this record. Even if… even if he could, somehow, beat the nine mile record that he could have sworn took every ounce of skill he and all the men under him could attain…
He… couldn't… win.
"Mister Luthor! Mister Luthor, are you all right?"
Leland Luthor turned to another clerk, a rather more senior and distinguished one. He forced his teeth into some parody of a smile.
"I owe Charlie Crocker ten thousand silver dollars."
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Kir the Wizard
The Sun King
- Location
- Ukraine
Oi, @King crimson, I think you should tag those organized crime lore posts somewhere.
- Location
- Philippines
A scary thought but we never did capture blind spot and he is still in metropolis so while I have no worry for lexcorp tower itself he may be planning to bomb a few places thrpughout metropolis.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
You're not wrong. On the other hand, a warzone where thousands of trigger-happy mooks are exchanging bursts of gunfire, and where giant robots and military vehicles are clashing with each other, is not the best place for him to be. Invisibility doesn't do him much good against someone who indiscriminately sprayed bullets into an area without knowing he's there. And in the chaos of a war zone, finding appropriate targets could be difficult.
He's a relevant threat, but as I discussed earlier, there's not a lot of easy targets for him to hurt. Furthermore, the two main threats here are assassination and sabotage.
In regards to assassination, our building is still warded against his intrusion,* so anything in the building is fairly safe from him personally. Most of our personnel on the streets are wearing power armor that he cannot easily penetrate, and/or are going to be very mobile so he'll struggle to keep up with them, and/or are going to be deployed to locations that are hard for him to predict and move to in advance. Similarly, purely civilian individuals like Lois Lane will be running around, evacuating buildings, and otherwise hard to locate.
In regards to sabotage, again he probably can't get into our building unless he's figured out magic and spent the past year tracking down a wizard. There are lots of other targets he could plausibly infiltrate, but with Intergang already having teams of goons and vehicles with heavy weapons all over the place, there's only so much he can do that way that Intergang's regular troops can't do themselves.
...
Though in the spirit of "remember Intergang has this," remember the phasing technology they used to rob Fort Knox. Intergang has at least small numbers of personnel who can use (presumably tech, probably not powers) to drop out of phase with reality and walk through walls, sort of like Shadowcat from the X-Men or whatever.
__________________________
*(note that our wards will NOT stop cannon fire or anything, because an artillery shell does not have bad intent)
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
So I'm delaying things a bit but I'll get everything out eventually.
This omake earns 500 exp.
If I were to give an informational post I'd also probably run through the first few years of Batman's impact on the city as well. If people are interested I'll write a more in-depth post on the history of Gotham's organized crime and then threadmark that. I'm not threadmarking the current post because it's missing a solid chunk of information in favor of focusing on the narrative of the big fish pre-Batman
And we are moving things forwards slowly but surely with this omake. I'm glad to see some more of them posted. Leland seems to be coming into the twilight of his life and I'm not going to be surprised if he dies soon. The pride comes before the fall and this chapter finally shows that no matter how hard Leland tried someone would eventually overtake him in something. It's an interesting bookend to see that for all of Leland's achievements he still isn't satisfied.
This omake earns 500 exp.
If people are interested I can get up a post that fully explains organized crime in Gotham. I actually skipped a lot of detail (where the hell Lew Moxon came from, everything involving the triads and the yakuza, the decisions made by the government and the city that allowed it to flourish, the attempts to stop it, drug cartels and the ties organized crime ended up having with actual businesses are all things I totally ignored in giving this overview).
If I were to give an informational post I'd also probably run through the first few years of Batman's impact on the city as well. If people are interested I'll write a more in-depth post on the history of Gotham's organized crime and then threadmark that. I'm not threadmarking the current post because it's missing a solid chunk of information in favor of focusing on the narrative of the big fish pre-Batman
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I'm always up for worldbuilding. It would be pretty interesting to read.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I mean, Leland's got a lot of good years left. He's only thirty-six, and he's not in any sense done accomplishing things. American history will remember his participation in the Transcontinental Railroad as an extra layer of luster on his reputation as a national inventor-tycoon hero.
But his winning streak has ended; he's not master of all he surveys anymore, and the story is ceasing to be his story.
A History of Organized Crime in Gotham
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
A History of Organized Crime in Gotham
Organized crime in Gotham has a long and interesting history that goes all the way back to it's inception. This is meant to run through most major developments up until the debut of Superman but I may miss a thing or two. Note that individuals will be addressed and while I won't be giving out specific years there is a solid timescale for this.
The very origin of organized crime in Gotham starts all the way back with its foundation, when the Court of Owls, a secret society of British business men who worked together on a variety of schemes that would have been hilariously illegal with tax laws now (they did stuff like help create the South Sea Trading company and messed around with other such ventures and got out early before everything went to shit) decided to found a city there thanks to the recommendation of an agent of theirs, Nathaniel Wayne, had found and as a way to launder money. They then paid a bunch of people to essentially wipe out the existing native tribe at the time, the Miagani and establish the colony of Gotham town. The Court of Owls then used the city as a place to turn liquid assets into physical ones and conduct money moving schemes. Sometime later the three founding families of Gotham established the city independently of the Court and the Court moved to the United states to more actively engage in their schemes.
Around the time the Revolutionary War began, the Court of Owls transitioned to take advantage of this. They paid robbers to steal from the British and had their men disguise themselves as tax collectors to take extra taxes from people so they could pocket it for themselves. They inflamed tensions since they were in favor of war since either way they could profit and strengthen their control of the city.
Following this period the earliest gang's in Gotham began to form. Primarily formed from minority groups that banded together to deal with a society that didn't treat them fairly. The Court of Owls allowed this to occur since it made moving their own agents and justifying things that served as cover for their real goal much easier. The first of these gangs was the Sons of David who were a Jewish gang. Notably Cyrus Gold was both a member of this gang and had his body disposed of into Slaughter Swamp. Other relevant gangs at the time were the Italian East-Siders and Irish Wound Ravens who formed along similar ethnic lines.
Similarly but with a very different mission statement and operating system was the Free Men Gang. The Free Men Gang was primarily focused on ensuring that freed slaves had a safe place and enough money to live comfortably and resorted to crime in order to make ends meet, showing a particular preference for attacking any southerners who entered Gotham.
In response to all these ethnic groups the All-American Gang rose up as a violent white supremacist gang. They caused the other gangs to unite against them and they were eventually crushed.
After the Civil War, Amadeus Arkham built Arkham Asylum as a way to potentially rehabilitate criminals since the crime rate in Gotham had not dropped at all in the following years. The Court of Owls helped fund this project as they saw it as a way to disappear individuals they found undesirable. As the project neared completion Amadeus realized what the Asylum was going to be used for and attempted to cut connections with the Court. In response the Court ensured that Amadeus would eventually be confined to his own asylum.
In the early 1900's there was a large amount of Italian immigration into Gotham. Furthermore on top of that many criminals from New York moved to Gotham where it was "easier" to make a living as a criminal. This all lead to the city no longer supporting the capacity of criminals it had at the time and so things boiled over into a bloody and violent gang war. Under the leadership of the young Salvatore "Felix" Falcone, himself a New York criminal looking to make it big in Gotham who murdered his way to the top, the Italian criminal elements banded together and pushed out or crushed nearly every other gang. Realizing that he'd potentially made himself a target for the gangsters in New York, Felix stepped down from leading all the Italian gangs and developed Cosa Nostra while also declaring independence from any gangs in New York.
Cosa Nostra was an informal council of the seven most powerful and influential crime families in Gotham (The Falcones, The Maronis, The Berettis, The Bertenellis, The Sabatinos, The Galantes and the Cassamentos). They dictated what could and couldn't be done in Gotham by criminals and banded together to fight all outsiders or those who refused to play by the rules. The most notable of thee rules is that anyone who got sent to Arkham Asylum was not allowed to work for any criminal organization. Cosa Nostra destroyed virtually every other major group besides the Riley Crime family, under whom all of the Irish banded together.
Felix Falcone was eventually caught and went to prison but he continued to more or less run things from Blackgate. Most notably he had a chapel built on Blackgate (which is relevant to Arnold Wesker's time in that prison). His brother on the other hand took over the day to day operations of the Falcone family. Eventually he was released to go and aid the US in uncovering spy rings during World War 2 and his sentence was reduced to exile to Sicily. Felix Falcone eventually set up the Italian branch of the Falcone family and still regularly corresponded with his brother.
Without Felix Falcone to reassure him, Giovanni Maroni, head of the Maroni family, leaves Cosa Nostra feeling that the alliance is hurting his profits when his family is the second largest in the city and he's playing equals with a group as small as the Beretti's. The Falcones also leave soon afterwards for similar reasons. Both the Falcones and the Maronis open up membership in their gangs to non-Italians, but only the Falcone's begin actively subordinating other groups under them, including the Sullivan family. In return Cosa Nostra inducts the Inzerillo, Panessa and Dubelz family into their ranks. There is a tense peace as power is balanced.
Shortly afterward Lewis "Lew" Moxon begins his entrance into the world of organized crime. Lew is a young Jewish banker with a head for numbers and a lot of talent. Lew initially works for the smaller Jewish gangs that are still left and makes a name for himself as someone who can deliver excellent setups. He approaches Cosa Nostra as a young man with a scheme for effectively fixing betting and gambling tables. The leaders of this gang basically take his idea mock him and then force him out without paying anything because he was Jewish and not Italian. He then goes on to work for both the Maronis and the Falcones as a consultant and helps them make a lot of money through various schemes. Lew learns the ins and outs of the trade and eventually manages to start his own group and becomes an arguable fourth major criminal power in Gotham by 1955.
However Lew's meteoric rise to the top gets people nervous and in the 1960's he gets caught by the FBI. Seeing an opportunity even in this defeat, Lew forms a scheme. He surreptitiously contacts the Maroni's and Falcone's and asked them to let him know if there are any of their enemies they'd like to see get detained by the FBI. Both the Maronis and Falcones reveal details on their opponents and bribe Lew to only rat on their enemies. Lew then proceeds to take the money and the reduced sentence and proceeds to only rat out Cosa Nostra. Cosa Nostra is devastated by this and never fully recovers losing more than half of their manpower to this scheme. Lew then disappears as soon as he is let out of prison.
Now only the Falcones and the Maronis are left as major powers. However the Italian domination of the Gotham Underground comes to an end as the Russian mafia establishes a foothold in Gotham and corners the market on hard drugs. The Triads also arrive in the 70's and corner the market on human trafficking. The Triads attempt to actively force as much of Gotham's Asian population into joining and this in turn leads to more discrimination for Asian families. As such numerous gangs of disaffected Asian youth pop up in Gotham as both the police and the Falcones and Maronis come down hard on the Triad and by extension all Asians.
The Falcones and Maronis squabble with each other for a while. Nothing really comes of this in terms of shifting power but a notable incident occurs when Luigi Maroni shoots a young Carmine Falcone and his father takes him to Thomas Wayne to save his life. Things cool off a bit until Vincent Falcone dies. Seeing weakness but unwilling to commit fully, the Maronis embolden a lot of minor gangs to try and take on the Falcones to knock them out of power. Falcone responds brutally by utterly destroying every minor gang he even thinks was involved in challenging him. Falcone breaks the triads even further and reduces them to a shadow of what they once were. At around this time Oswald Cobblepot arrives in Gotham and makes a name for himself as a weapons dealer and makes a killing selling weapons and information to the Falcones. Carmine establishes himself as the strongest criminal in Gotham and secures the dominance of the Falcones.
Shortly afterwards there is a shakeup in the criminal underworld. Stefano Mandragora, siezes power amongst the remnants of Cosa Nostra and wipes out the Bertenelli family. The Sabatinos then split with Cosa Nostra. The Sabatinos and the Rileys make moves to unite together but the Sabatinos betray the Rileys at a wedding. The Sabatinos are all found dead shortly afterwards. The Russians further entrench themselves while Oswald Cobblepot establishes himself as the third major power in Gotham. There is a tentative balance occurring in the city after this point.
And then Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham. Paranoia ramps up to an all time high as assassins arrive to kill Lex Luthor during Bruce Wayne's welcome home party. No one group knows who the assassins were working for and the paranoia ramps up with every group starting to arm itself more and more. Then to add onto the paranoia the Batman shows up and begins targeting criminals. Batman interferes primarily with the Falcones but he doesn't solely target them and so all of the criminal elements of the city are ramped up into overdrive. At the same time Jim Gordon begins to move up in the ranks of the police. Previously the police had been firmly in the mobs pocket ignoring all crime but now with things being forced to light the police had to act on this information.
About a month later a madman dressed as a clown attempts to poison the Gotham City reservoir. Numerous other costumed loons start to make themselves known and commit crimes. At first the Falcones like the implementation of these maniacs since it keeps both the police and Batman away from their operations. However as these supervillains begin to repeatedly interfere with the Falcones operations to establish reputation and forming their own gangs then they slowly turn against them.
In this era two new major criminal factions form. The Menagerie forms out of all of those who would be treated as freaks in Gothams major gangs. They are mostly thieves and don't hold territory but they hit both the Falcones and the Maronis hard and shakeup the underworld. Then there is the False Face Society which is lead by the mysterious Black Mask. The False Face Society's members are unknown and there are spies in every organization.
The tension ratchets up more and more and more until it finally bursts at Johnny Viti's wedding. Scarecrow attacks the wedding and Batman under fear toxin beats Carmine into a coma. The next week Johnny is found dead and the Long Halloween begins.
The Long Halloween is an out and out gang war that devolves into a bloodbath as time goes on. Alberto Falcone, who takes over for his father, breaks the rule about not working with people from Arkham Asylum and supervillains are unleashed in full on the city. The Holiday Killer keeps on killing members of the mafia and by the end of it both the Maronis and the Falcones are nearly destroyed and supervillains have ended up on top. Gilda Dent then gets caught as the Holiday Killer and is sentenced to Arkham. Harvey Dent snaps and kills both of Carmine Falcone's children as the mob boss recovers from his coma. The Long Halloween ends but its impact is still felt for a while.
Tobias Whale arrives in Blackgate and surrenders himself while telling Batman that dangerous people are after him, pulling Batman away from Gotham as a whole. Carmine Falcone pulls in every favor he can and on one of the nights that Batman is in Blackgate speaking to Whale, Falcone springs his plan. He kidnaps both Gilda and Harvey Dent, has and has Gilda murdered while Harvey watches. Carmine then retires. Harvey snaps and becomes Two-Face.
From there numerous smaller gangs scramble and everyone shuffles to end up at the top of the heap. Latino cartels make their way into Gotham and the Russian Mafia begins expanding even further. Batman doubles down on catching criminals. Black Mask is revealed to be a real person and seizes control of the majority of the criminal underworld. Oswald Cobblepot remains a neutral but powerful third party and the Menagerie becomes known as another powerful faction. Rupert Thorne carves out a place for himself out of the remnants of the Falcone and Maroni families and serves as the challenge for the False Face Society.
Gotham restabilizes for a bit and there is a major win for the forces of the law when Batman catches Black Mask and reveals him to be Roman Sionis. Oswald Cobblepot opens the Iceberg Lounge and the other major gangs take shape with Supervillains becoming the dominant force of crime in the city.
Organized crime in Gotham has a long and interesting history that goes all the way back to it's inception. This is meant to run through most major developments up until the debut of Superman but I may miss a thing or two. Note that individuals will be addressed and while I won't be giving out specific years there is a solid timescale for this.
The very origin of organized crime in Gotham starts all the way back with its foundation, when the Court of Owls, a secret society of British business men who worked together on a variety of schemes that would have been hilariously illegal with tax laws now (they did stuff like help create the South Sea Trading company and messed around with other such ventures and got out early before everything went to shit) decided to found a city there thanks to the recommendation of an agent of theirs, Nathaniel Wayne, had found and as a way to launder money. They then paid a bunch of people to essentially wipe out the existing native tribe at the time, the Miagani and establish the colony of Gotham town. The Court of Owls then used the city as a place to turn liquid assets into physical ones and conduct money moving schemes. Sometime later the three founding families of Gotham established the city independently of the Court and the Court moved to the United states to more actively engage in their schemes.
Around the time the Revolutionary War began, the Court of Owls transitioned to take advantage of this. They paid robbers to steal from the British and had their men disguise themselves as tax collectors to take extra taxes from people so they could pocket it for themselves. They inflamed tensions since they were in favor of war since either way they could profit and strengthen their control of the city.
Following this period the earliest gang's in Gotham began to form. Primarily formed from minority groups that banded together to deal with a society that didn't treat them fairly. The Court of Owls allowed this to occur since it made moving their own agents and justifying things that served as cover for their real goal much easier. The first of these gangs was the Sons of David who were a Jewish gang. Notably Cyrus Gold was both a member of this gang and had his body disposed of into Slaughter Swamp. Other relevant gangs at the time were the Italian East-Siders and Irish Wound Ravens who formed along similar ethnic lines.
Similarly but with a very different mission statement and operating system was the Free Men Gang. The Free Men Gang was primarily focused on ensuring that freed slaves had a safe place and enough money to live comfortably and resorted to crime in order to make ends meet, showing a particular preference for attacking any southerners who entered Gotham.
In response to all these ethnic groups the All-American Gang rose up as a violent white supremacist gang. They caused the other gangs to unite against them and they were eventually crushed.
After the Civil War, Amadeus Arkham built Arkham Asylum as a way to potentially rehabilitate criminals since the crime rate in Gotham had not dropped at all in the following years. The Court of Owls helped fund this project as they saw it as a way to disappear individuals they found undesirable. As the project neared completion Amadeus realized what the Asylum was going to be used for and attempted to cut connections with the Court. In response the Court ensured that Amadeus would eventually be confined to his own asylum.
In the early 1900's there was a large amount of Italian immigration into Gotham. Furthermore on top of that many criminals from New York moved to Gotham where it was "easier" to make a living as a criminal. This all lead to the city no longer supporting the capacity of criminals it had at the time and so things boiled over into a bloody and violent gang war. Under the leadership of the young Salvatore "Felix" Falcone, himself a New York criminal looking to make it big in Gotham who murdered his way to the top, the Italian criminal elements banded together and pushed out or crushed nearly every other gang. Realizing that he'd potentially made himself a target for the gangsters in New York, Felix stepped down from leading all the Italian gangs and developed Cosa Nostra while also declaring independence from any gangs in New York.
Cosa Nostra was an informal council of the seven most powerful and influential crime families in Gotham (The Falcones, The Maronis, The Berettis, The Bertenellis, The Sabatinos, The Galantes and the Cassamentos). They dictated what could and couldn't be done in Gotham by criminals and banded together to fight all outsiders or those who refused to play by the rules. The most notable of thee rules is that anyone who got sent to Arkham Asylum was not allowed to work for any criminal organization. Cosa Nostra destroyed virtually every other major group besides the Riley Crime family, under whom all of the Irish banded together.
Felix Falcone was eventually caught and went to prison but he continued to more or less run things from Blackgate. Most notably he had a chapel built on Blackgate (which is relevant to Arnold Wesker's time in that prison). His brother on the other hand took over the day to day operations of the Falcone family. Eventually he was released to go and aid the US in uncovering spy rings during World War 2 and his sentence was reduced to exile to Sicily. Felix Falcone eventually set up the Italian branch of the Falcone family and still regularly corresponded with his brother.
Without Felix Falcone to reassure him, Giovanni Maroni, head of the Maroni family, leaves Cosa Nostra feeling that the alliance is hurting his profits when his family is the second largest in the city and he's playing equals with a group as small as the Beretti's. The Falcones also leave soon afterwards for similar reasons. Both the Falcones and the Maronis open up membership in their gangs to non-Italians, but only the Falcone's begin actively subordinating other groups under them, including the Sullivan family. In return Cosa Nostra inducts the Inzerillo, Panessa and Dubelz family into their ranks. There is a tense peace as power is balanced.
Shortly afterward Lewis "Lew" Moxon begins his entrance into the world of organized crime. Lew is a young Jewish banker with a head for numbers and a lot of talent. Lew initially works for the smaller Jewish gangs that are still left and makes a name for himself as someone who can deliver excellent setups. He approaches Cosa Nostra as a young man with a scheme for effectively fixing betting and gambling tables. The leaders of this gang basically take his idea mock him and then force him out without paying anything because he was Jewish and not Italian. He then goes on to work for both the Maronis and the Falcones as a consultant and helps them make a lot of money through various schemes. Lew learns the ins and outs of the trade and eventually manages to start his own group and becomes an arguable fourth major criminal power in Gotham by 1955.
However Lew's meteoric rise to the top gets people nervous and in the 1960's he gets caught by the FBI. Seeing an opportunity even in this defeat, Lew forms a scheme. He surreptitiously contacts the Maroni's and Falcone's and asked them to let him know if there are any of their enemies they'd like to see get detained by the FBI. Both the Maronis and Falcones reveal details on their opponents and bribe Lew to only rat on their enemies. Lew then proceeds to take the money and the reduced sentence and proceeds to only rat out Cosa Nostra. Cosa Nostra is devastated by this and never fully recovers losing more than half of their manpower to this scheme. Lew then disappears as soon as he is let out of prison.
Now only the Falcones and the Maronis are left as major powers. However the Italian domination of the Gotham Underground comes to an end as the Russian mafia establishes a foothold in Gotham and corners the market on hard drugs. The Triads also arrive in the 70's and corner the market on human trafficking. The Triads attempt to actively force as much of Gotham's Asian population into joining and this in turn leads to more discrimination for Asian families. As such numerous gangs of disaffected Asian youth pop up in Gotham as both the police and the Falcones and Maronis come down hard on the Triad and by extension all Asians.
The Falcones and Maronis squabble with each other for a while. Nothing really comes of this in terms of shifting power but a notable incident occurs when Luigi Maroni shoots a young Carmine Falcone and his father takes him to Thomas Wayne to save his life. Things cool off a bit until Vincent Falcone dies. Seeing weakness but unwilling to commit fully, the Maronis embolden a lot of minor gangs to try and take on the Falcones to knock them out of power. Falcone responds brutally by utterly destroying every minor gang he even thinks was involved in challenging him. Falcone breaks the triads even further and reduces them to a shadow of what they once were. At around this time Oswald Cobblepot arrives in Gotham and makes a name for himself as a weapons dealer and makes a killing selling weapons and information to the Falcones. Carmine establishes himself as the strongest criminal in Gotham and secures the dominance of the Falcones.
Shortly afterwards there is a shakeup in the criminal underworld. Stefano Mandragora, siezes power amongst the remnants of Cosa Nostra and wipes out the Bertenelli family. The Sabatinos then split with Cosa Nostra. The Sabatinos and the Rileys make moves to unite together but the Sabatinos betray the Rileys at a wedding. The Sabatinos are all found dead shortly afterwards. The Russians further entrench themselves while Oswald Cobblepot establishes himself as the third major power in Gotham. There is a tentative balance occurring in the city after this point.
And then Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham. Paranoia ramps up to an all time high as assassins arrive to kill Lex Luthor during Bruce Wayne's welcome home party. No one group knows who the assassins were working for and the paranoia ramps up with every group starting to arm itself more and more. Then to add onto the paranoia the Batman shows up and begins targeting criminals. Batman interferes primarily with the Falcones but he doesn't solely target them and so all of the criminal elements of the city are ramped up into overdrive. At the same time Jim Gordon begins to move up in the ranks of the police. Previously the police had been firmly in the mobs pocket ignoring all crime but now with things being forced to light the police had to act on this information.
About a month later a madman dressed as a clown attempts to poison the Gotham City reservoir. Numerous other costumed loons start to make themselves known and commit crimes. At first the Falcones like the implementation of these maniacs since it keeps both the police and Batman away from their operations. However as these supervillains begin to repeatedly interfere with the Falcones operations to establish reputation and forming their own gangs then they slowly turn against them.
In this era two new major criminal factions form. The Menagerie forms out of all of those who would be treated as freaks in Gothams major gangs. They are mostly thieves and don't hold territory but they hit both the Falcones and the Maronis hard and shakeup the underworld. Then there is the False Face Society which is lead by the mysterious Black Mask. The False Face Society's members are unknown and there are spies in every organization.
The tension ratchets up more and more and more until it finally bursts at Johnny Viti's wedding. Scarecrow attacks the wedding and Batman under fear toxin beats Carmine into a coma. The next week Johnny is found dead and the Long Halloween begins.
The Long Halloween is an out and out gang war that devolves into a bloodbath as time goes on. Alberto Falcone, who takes over for his father, breaks the rule about not working with people from Arkham Asylum and supervillains are unleashed in full on the city. The Holiday Killer keeps on killing members of the mafia and by the end of it both the Maronis and the Falcones are nearly destroyed and supervillains have ended up on top. Gilda Dent then gets caught as the Holiday Killer and is sentenced to Arkham. Harvey Dent snaps and kills both of Carmine Falcone's children as the mob boss recovers from his coma. The Long Halloween ends but its impact is still felt for a while.
Tobias Whale arrives in Blackgate and surrenders himself while telling Batman that dangerous people are after him, pulling Batman away from Gotham as a whole. Carmine Falcone pulls in every favor he can and on one of the nights that Batman is in Blackgate speaking to Whale, Falcone springs his plan. He kidnaps both Gilda and Harvey Dent, has and has Gilda murdered while Harvey watches. Carmine then retires. Harvey snaps and becomes Two-Face.
From there numerous smaller gangs scramble and everyone shuffles to end up at the top of the heap. Latino cartels make their way into Gotham and the Russian Mafia begins expanding even further. Batman doubles down on catching criminals. Black Mask is revealed to be a real person and seizes control of the majority of the criminal underworld. Oswald Cobblepot remains a neutral but powerful third party and the Menagerie becomes known as another powerful faction. Rupert Thorne carves out a place for himself out of the remnants of the Falcone and Maroni families and serves as the challenge for the False Face Society.
Gotham restabilizes for a bit and there is a major win for the forces of the law when Batman catches Black Mask and reveals him to be Roman Sionis. Oswald Cobblepot opens the Iceberg Lounge and the other major gangs take shape with Supervillains becoming the dominant force of crime in the city.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
This still isn't a comprehensive history (I cut out a lot of stuff that's potential spoilers) but I do think I covered it well enough and hit enough of the points to give you an accurate perception of Gotham's criminal history while still keeping some stuff unknown.
- Location
- Singapore
- Location
- alphen aan den rijn
eh seen over all. minor problem
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
Thing is something like that isn't simple. There are actions you can take that would increase the likelihood of a supervillain entering Metropolis and there are ways to even make your own supervillains for Superman to fight but to just get them to up and enter Metropolis is immensely tricky. You have to make Metropolis more appealing of a target than wherever they are now. The current situation in Metropolis doesn't encourage most supervillains to go out of their way to travel to their since it's likely they'll just lose and fail in some way.
That's not to say supervillains won't enter Metropolis but there isn't a stable method to get just supervillains to enter the city since the ecosystem in Metropolis kind of doesn't leave room for newcomers to test their luck. As such unless you are willing to encourage crime in Metropolis you don't have much of a lure for Supervillains to come besides Superman himself and that's out of your control.
So this specific write-in is not accepted but there are ways to being about what would be the results of this write-in.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
Not without massive repercussions and sweeping changes. You need to give the aliens a reason to specifically attack just Gotham which is hard.
The other thing I'll say is that Gotham really hates it when outsiders meddle in the affairs of the city.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Build a rail system that spells out "DATA HERE" in Kryptonian?
yeah, it's a problem that we probably will not be having all that many supervilans in metropolis we can steal stuf from.
building up our main HQ to the point that it can standup to any threat we are aware of and keep us and our cute litle bombmakerdaughter safe means that the town will just be to safe for that. any other way was screwed when we decided that we would not have a pawn in control of the underworld and instead kill him.
plus side, supes probably don't have to much to do, and may go out of town for heroics alot.
building up our main HQ to the point that it can standup to any threat we are aware of and keep us and our cute litle bombmakerdaughter safe means that the town will just be to safe for that. any other way was screwed when we decided that we would not have a pawn in control of the underworld and instead kill him.
plus side, supes probably don't have to much to do, and may go out of town for heroics alot.
- Location
- New Jersey
Superman: Hero for Hire
Can't lie it been interesting see Superman be more a freelance hero rather than primarily operating in Metropolis. It would probably mean we wouldn't have to directly encounter him as much as canon. On the other hand this allows Supes to spread his influence more across the country or even world.
Kkutlord
Prince of Breath
- Location
- Indianapolis, Indiana
@King crimson: Hmm... could we exploit the fact Superman would be a crime lure? Like mercilessly abuse the Superhero Paradox, by giving people incentive to fight Superman (either actually winning or just showing off) while Lex Luthor basically points and goes "See, his mere presence attracts criminals".
We could probably do other stuff, like (correctly) pointing out how Lexcorp/Future Construction does far more to repair the city and keep it intact than him. Also stoke those flames, about how Superman's refusal to hero 24/7 is leaving many to die and suffer because of his inaction.
We could probably do other stuff, like (correctly) pointing out how Lexcorp/Future Construction does far more to repair the city and keep it intact than him. Also stoke those flames, about how Superman's refusal to hero 24/7 is leaving many to die and suffer because of his inaction.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
To an extent yes. However don't by any means think it's a slam dunk argument by any stretch of the imagination. The Superhero Paradox doesn't really work for Superman. Brainiac, Zod, and Avruskin were already evil and are looking to correct perceived slights or insults that have already happened. They were around first and if they didn't specifically target Superman they'd be worse (it's not his fault these people hate him for things in the past). Doomsday is basically an animal that was created by others before Superman was born. Toyman, Livewire, Volcana, Ultra-Humanite and more don't target Superman and weren't created by him and really come into conflict with him the most because they are in the same city. Metallo and Bizarro were specifically created by others so the blame doesn't lie with Superman (it's like saying because you exist you drove an insane maniac to attempt to kill you). The only regular Superman villains I can think of who didn't exist before Superman and specifically target him and cause problems because of him are Mr. Mxyzptlk and Parasite. When the majority of things would have been around to kill you regardless of if Superman was here or not and are not made evil by his actions then the Superhero Paradox falls apart. It's inherently fallacious when applied to some heroes. In fact I'd go so far as to say that the only DC Heroes I can think of who the Superhero Paradox can reasonably apply to in-universe (where unlike in how we write the villains can predate the heroes) are Batman and the Flash.
Furthermore the argument of the Superhero Paradox can easily be turned around to apply to you (there have been three attacks on Metropolis that occurred because you were there). It's victim blaming but if you can get the argument to work for Superman than the same argument can likely be applied to yourself.
TLDR: The Superhero Paradox is a fundamentally broken argument that relies on applying out of universe logic (supervillains and threats are created because of the heroes to sell stories) to an in universe situation (the villains would exist regardless of the heroes and oftentimes the villains in some way make or predate the hero meaning its completely ridiculous to say something like "Batman's responsible for the creation of Poison Ivy" or "Superman made Bizarro"). Don't do it and think you're arguing something clever because it's really not. It's a garbage argument that relies on fallacies and lack of understanding.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Being right across the Hudson from New York, one of the biggest seaports in the colonies, probably helped with that.
...Huh.
Now, a Jewish gang that early, pre-Civil War, would have been something downright unusual. I'd figured them for Anglo-American nativists, with "Sons of David" being their way of casting Irishmen and Germans and whatever as 'Philistines.' Gold is not an unknown last name in England, though it's often rendered as Gould, Golde, and so on.
Huh. That is ALSO very unusual for this pre-Civil War timeframe. Usually any attempt to put together an ethnic, ah, protective society, on behalf of blacks the way that, say, the Irish did in those years got brutally squashed by whites who viewed them as even worse than the Irish.
The usual dynamic would have been for the rise of the All-Americans to happen first and for the other gangs to form in self-defense.
Yeah. Letting the New York Mafia families have the much larger 'territory' of New York peaceably divided among themselves, while making Gotham the fiefdom of his own personal "thing..." pretty closely parallels what Luciano actually did. He made sure his own mafia 'family' had a nice big slice of the pie, but let others take their own slices to a large enough degree that they would feel an urge to topple and kill him, as he had toppled and killed the previous 'boss of bosses.'
I was about to say that the Russian Mafiya were a post-Soviet phenomenon, but... nope, on doing a little research there was Russian organized crime in the US as early as the 1970s, though mostly concentrated in Russian expatriate neighborhoods... historically in Brooklyn... Gotham wouldn't be much of a stretch.
Oh that is hilarious.
Yeah... wow.
Also wow. Though you did tell us this part, I think.
To be fair, Carmine Falcone is the kind of man who could nurse a grudge for a few months while he figured out how to get revenge. If it hadn't been Tobias Whale acting as a massive distraction for the Batman while Falcone took revenge on the Dents, it would have been someone or something else, at some point in the next few years......Ouch. Our fault.
Yeah. A low-crime, stable Metropolis with both thousands of LexCorp goons who periodically help out the police and Superman is not a place any sane supervillain wants to operate in.
The only people we could easily attract would fall into one of the following categories:
1) People who are too crazy to make realistic risk assessments, like the Joker, and
2) People who honestly have good reason to think that they can go toe-to-toe with Superman and win, like, say, Black Adam.
Group (1) is too crazy to control, and group (2) is too powerful to control. We'd do better to make our own supervillains, although then we need a way to ensure deniability.
True, but we don't have a lot of control over that process. It hinges on the premise that people WILL come looking for Superman to fight him. Which is far from out of the question, of course.
It must be pointed out that just because the Paradox works better when applied to Lex Luthor (the city has been repeatedly attacked precisely because we are here) than to Superman... doesn't mean the Paradox never works.
Whether or not it's fallacious depends on who you're talking about. Batman didn't create most of his own rogues' gallery, but a lot of them are obsessed with him and are probably driven to higher levels of lunacy, desperation, and destructiveness by his presence. Superman does occasionally attract outside-context problems to Metropolis, such as interstellar-tier tough customers who are after him personally (e.g. Lobo and Maxima in two very different ways).
The catch is that on the whole, if you aren't operating under the purely Doylist logic of "villains are created by authorial fiat, specifically to challenge heroes," then as I think you pointed out... The whole argument starts to fall apart. MOST of the villains any given hero fights would still exist if said hero weren't active, and would have far more freedom of action.
There are specific situations where it's justified to say "we need [insert person here] out of the city because they're attracting so much aggro from villains that their presence causes more problems than it solves." But that's usually not the case, on that I agree with you.
Kkutlord
Prince of Breath
- Location
- Indianapolis, Indiana
@King crimson: I mean, my idea was for us in-universe to cultivate that image rather than start shouting it with no "evidence". Bait criminals into going after Superman for rewards and/or fame, nurture the idea Superman's inaction is unjustified, rile up people who feel "wronged" by him, that kind of stuff.
Obviously it isn't gonna be easy and we'll never obtain a full 180 on Superman's social reputation, and honestly we shouldn't- the boy scout is useful for dealing with threats for us. Still, nurturing the idea he's better suited for destruction and Lexcorp is the one that'll make everything truly better? Seems like a reasonable enough thing to try.
Obviously it isn't gonna be easy and we'll never obtain a full 180 on Superman's social reputation, and honestly we shouldn't- the boy scout is useful for dealing with threats for us. Still, nurturing the idea he's better suited for destruction and Lexcorp is the one that'll make everything truly better? Seems like a reasonable enough thing to try.
- Location
- Singapore
I thought we could do that with Social Media Memes? Of course we would need to work with this version of Hugo Strange's academic work.