<hr/><div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/8/8b/Maxbaine_2.png)</div><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Max Baine<br/><strong>Faction:</strong>Sweetrock (Vice President)<br/><strong>Date:</strong>May 11th, 1876.<br/><strong>Time of Day:</strong>Early evening<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Private offices<br/><strong>Tagged:</strong>Closed, Walter<br/><hr/>Baine gave a mirthless smile at the suggestion.  “I will.  Eventually.  Once there is something we need.  For the most part, the Council acts in our interests by acting in the interests of Gomorra.  It will get trickier with the Law Dogs.  Coleman and Sweetrock saw eye to eye on plenty of things - but him having his own free reign - it attracted settlers that would never have made the journey of Gomorra was simply a company town.  Now Bilton knows where his biscuit is buttered - but we’ve yet to see if he is actually the man for the job that we need him to be.”  Vicious and cunning, yes, and smart enough not to bite the hand that fed him - but power had a way of changing men.<br/><br/>But he took no exception to Walter’s blunt speech - what was the point of having a second if he didn’t consider his advice?  It would have been easy enough to surround himself with mindless yes-men.  Men who would no doubt tell him the scars weren’t as bad as he thought, even as they struggled to look at his suit, his tie, the good side of his face, anywhere but the livid injuries.  He also knew well the value of intimidation - when he’d made the buyout of mines and mesa in Gomorra, the people of Gomorra had been pleasantly amused.  They’d toyed with their revolvers, joked about accidents and Gomorra’s as yet unwritted laws about mine reclamation.  Baine had tipped his hat, hadn’t hired on a single miner - he’d stalled and managed to parley their threats into laws - a mine unclaimed and unworked for two months became city property.  They hadn’t seen the long game - they’d only seen a businessman in a fancy New York suit and a bowler, one who smiled too easily and cowed quickly, utterly unaware the uses he would put their new laws to.  He bought drinks and dinners and made shows of charity until he was more useful on his feet than in the ground, and then the wagon trains of hard men and rifles had arrived.  Gomorra had changed over night, and the plastered smile and the warm handshakes had faded.<br/><br/>So he considered all the reasons to make Walter a Vice-President - all of the ones he wasn’t sharing.  Walter was the sort of man to break someone’s face over an imagined slight - and Sweetrock’s name was mud, to much of the working populace.  Findley saw them as cogs in a machine, sprockets that bled and sweat instead of leaking oil and metal shavings.  But what Findley didn’t see was that there was a point past fear - a point when terror gave way to desperation, to rage, to fatalism.  The point where a man would carry a bundle of lit dynamite into the middle of town, where he’d burn the world down before he lost what he had.<br/><br/>Much as he intended to do with Gomorra.  Enough pain, enough terror, enough agony - and there was no more fear.  Walter could, he had no doubt, induce just enough fear - or he could push too hard, and turn terror in desperate fury.  Bend, but don’t break.<br/><br/>That, and if Walter did the job Baines expected he was capable of doing, it would paint the target on Walter’s back instead of his own.  It wasn’t an active intention to murder his second - he had enormous confidence in Walter’s ability to survive, but he had considerably more regard for his own mortality than he had a week ago.  No - someone who could turn the assassin’s bullets and the thrown dynamite some direction away from him?  Away from the man at the top?  That was most certainly a plus.<br/><br/>He gave a chuckle at the mention of the donkey.  “If everyone was like your donkey, Mr. Sinnett, I imagine the entire world would be … as you say - feckin’ mint.”  His ghastly smile made another appearance, and then he rose and shook Walter’s hand.  He noted the … he hesitated to call it ‘gentleness,’ but there was at least a reserve to it, even if it made his burnt tissue still scream in agony.  But agony was a matter of degree for him - there were waves and ebbs, peaks and valleys.  It was a constant companion.<br/><br/>Then he moved to the board, laying out the players and the strategy.  He smiled at the first two words - it was a good start.  The blank look had troubled him at first, but then he saw what he’d expected all along.  A strategist.  Perhaps not a man aware of his own strategy - but one who’d relied upon it.  One didn’t make their mark in a world of pistols and piss and peril without a certain naked cunning - and feral cunning might not made Walter a master chess-player or an arm-chair general, but it had its own value.  The man brought knives to gunfights, after all - some part of how he survived spoke to that.  Fear and cruelty only got a man so far.<br/><br/>So he fell quiet, and he listened.  He nodded at the agreement they couldn’t take them all on - the Maze Rats alone could summon an army larger than every man, woman and child in Gomorra.  They’d learned the limits of force already, and while force had its uses, it made him smile to see Walter already pointing out an array of different tools Findley likely wouldn’t have considered.<br/><br/>The right tool - the right leverage.  His smile stayed on his face, as he listened.<br/><br/>He pursed his lips at the mention of the Collegium.  He liked it - but Findley wouldn’t.  Findley would hate the loss in profits - but the Collegium’s new fangled airship was going to hurt their bottom line more than any payoff to the Collegium might.  With the independent miners taking their ghostrock directly to the Collegium, they would see the three dimes on every dollar they had been before.  Sure, a few miners were stubborn enough to drag their ghostrock down to Lost Angels - but it was a long trip, and as many of those miners that made it down to Lost Angels perished as survived.  With the cost of renting a boat, it didn’t actually save them money - it just salvaged their pride.  Selling to the Collegium - local, not in cahoots with the ‘damn Sweetrock’ anymore - was faster, and cheaper.  In a month, every independent miner in Gomorra would be doing it, and they wouldn’t have the<em>resources</em>to buy the Collegium back.<br/><br/>Findley had well and truly buggered that one.<br/><br/>“Our only real option,” he admitted.  Taking the fight to the Collegium would be costly - and dangerous.  He didn’t know what sort of toys Hardinger had hidden away, but the man had once designed weapons on behalf of the Confederacy - so while he might be averse to violence, he doubted very much that Hardinger was incapable of it.  Likely on a grand and explosive scale.<br/><br/>He turned his attention to the Whateleys.  Blackmailing them hadn’t really occurred to him - perhaps because he hadn’t been born to means himself.  The notion of vanity being the key to their control hadn’t crossed his mind - he wasn’t a particularly vain man himself, and he hadn’t been even before the burning.<br/><br/>“The Tombstone Epitaph.  Their reporters thrive on the weird, hogwash and impossible tales.  But they’re read on every train from here to New York.  Even being in the Epitaph will be a mark of disgrace.  We’ll send for a reporter.  They’ll be here fast, a lot faster than more respectable papers from the East Coast - but the more respectable papers give us leverage for the future.  I doubt the very<em>private</em>Whateleys would care for an army of reporters on their mesa.”<br/><br/>He nodded, still listening.<br/><br/>He frowned a bit at Black Jack.  The policy Walter was suggesting was the same one Sweetrock had been trying for the last few years.  He didn’t doubt that Walter might be able to step up its efficacy.  But then Walter changed tack, and he looked up, curious.<br/><br/>“Better.  Exposing some proof of the alliance will do more to tarnish their little Robin Hood than any pressure.  The more we hit that nail with a hammer, the deeper the miners dig in.  We need to erode their faith in him.  Sully him.  Not just the crass outlaw business Findley and Cochran have been pushing.  Something that will speak to the miners.  Make him… make him just as much a greedy, selfish bugger as Findley himself.  Exposing the alliance… with real, tangible proof of some kind… and then stepping up the attacks on miners under the pretense of Maze Rat attacks may be just the thing.”<br/><br/>He grew quiet, thoughtful, as Walter suggested pitting the redskins against the Maze Rats and the zealots of Lost Angels.  It would also almost certainly draw the attention of Kang down upon Gomorra, for better or worse.  The recent attack on Kang’s railroad camp might provide exactly the right kind of impetus as well - by all accounts, the laborers hadn’t even seen their attacker.  Only counted bodies and burned up stores of ghostrock in the wake.  It wouldn’t be a hard sell.<br/><br/>It might only take an attack by the Chinese on the natives - enough to send both groups after one another.  There was always the chance the storm could blow out of control, but he wasn’t Findley.  He wasn’t going to wait, and wait.  Fortune favored the bold, as they said.<br/><br/>He gave a small frown.  “No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” he said, with a rueful smile.  “There will setbacks, and I am certain every player on this table has more cards in their hand than they’re showing.”  He tapped his chin.  “But it’s a start.  And it puts every other player on the table on the defensive.  I like it.”  He smiled, bemused.  "I think you underestimate your own talents, Mr. Sinnett.  Foreman Sinnett," he said with a small nod.  "I'll grease the wheels with the Collegium and get Bankum and Bankum giving them their carrots.  Start to line things up for the Maze Rats attacking the redskins."<br/><br/>"One other matter.  A personal one.  If you bring me the Twitch, alive or dead, I will make certain you join the community of business owners here in the city.  Have you ever been to the Perch?"  He raised an eyebrow.  "All the doxies you can pound, all the whiskey you can drink, and all the food you can eat.  Step off a cliff, and don't stagger out til morning.  Bring me the Twitch - and the place is yours."<br/><br/>He reached to his suit, and drew out five double eagles.  "Go.  I suggest you try it out.  Every man should, once in his life.  My treat."