Golden Vegas
City: Las Vegas, Nevada
Population: 18,000
Controls: Las Vegas (part of the USA)
Government: Despotism
Problem: Factions
Heroic Opportunity: Bounty
City Aspect: Free-wheeling
Most people think that, if it weren’t for the Serpentfall, Las Vegas would be a wide spot on the side of Route 91 instead of a rapidly growing metropolis. Before Ragnarok it didn’t have much; desert, cactus, some casinos — but it does have Hoover Dam nearby, which means that the electricity in Las Vegas is some of the most reliable in the Western United States. The changed climate doesn’t hurt, either: the colder, wetter weather actually helps grow more crops in the area.
But the real reason that Las Vegas thrives? Mr. Ben Siegel (it’s worth your life to call him any other name inside city limits). Mr. Siegel has had a ‘colorful’ past as a gangster and mobster, but he’s ostensibly put that all behind him with his ‘retirement’ in 1946 to be a local businessman. In reality, he controls what’s left of the American Mob, running it from the Flamingo hotel and casino. He also controls the rest of Las Vegas.
The Warren administration lets him get away with it because Mr. Siegel knows everybody; Hollywood moguls (who themselves effectively now control large parts of California), Utahn bankers (extremely influential in the half-seceded state of Utah), Texan oil companies (up to their necks in supporting the American gangster faction in the ongoing Cuba insurrection), and anybody else who might find a Las Vegas vacation profitable. Siegel is also an iron-clad anti-fascist and anti-communist who regularly, and highly ironically, helps the FBI bust up Japanese and Soviet spy rings in ‘his’ city. The remaining US government has enough problems on its plate as it is; they have no interest in picking fights.
Las Vegas today exists as a sort of open city; when Texas or Utah needs to do business with the USA — or each other — they send somebody there who meets with somebody else, and things can get agreed upon without anything official ever being said. The flip side of this is that if somebody gets killed in Vegas, well, that’s the price of doing business. Foreign spies? Well, it depends on who’s doing the spying. Mr. Siegel tolerates the British, barely tolerates the French, and seems to be working on forging a long-term understanding with an independent-minded faction of the People’s Jewish Republic’s intelligence service. Everybody else is fair game if they get caught.
As for the rest of Las Vegas? Well, the unspoken rule is that violence stays out of the residential neighborhoods; and if you don’t mind institutionalized corruption it’s not such a bad place to raise a family, at least by current standards. Mr. Siegel insists that his ‘boys’ actually provide the protection that they’re being paid for, which these days means a lot of monster killing, out there in the desert. Monster killing also pays reasonably well, if you’re a mercenary looking for short-term work. Particularly good ones might even end up in Mr. Siegel’s outfit. That can be a real nice life, for a gunman.
Just don’t ever use that one nickname of Mr. Siegel’s. Ever. Don’t even think it. They say he can tell when you do.