Black River Boys

## The Black River Boys

* **Affiliation:**The Black River Boys are part of the vast smuggling network maintained by the Callahan Family of the Minneapolis-St.Paul Metroplex, forming a link to the East, with the McCaskill Family of Milwaukee . They take their pay from the Callahans but also do work for the McCaskills, maintaining their position by a delicate balance between the two mob families.
* **Leadership:**The unquestioned leader of the Boys is, ironically, not a boy. Madeline "Mad Maddy" Reinhardt is absolute head of the Black River Boys. A second-generation member of the BRB, the daughter of old "Mad Max" Reinhardt, who'd been one of their top drivers back in the day, she did a tour in the UCAAF and came back with a vehicle rig and an ambition and quickly took over the gang from the Duquesne Brothers who had been running things. She's got a quick mind and iron hand and never forgets a favor or slight. Which makes the rivalry with her former lover Taylor West all the more vicious.
* **Territory:**Named for the Black River that runs through western Wisconsin and into the Mississippi, they cover the roads and rivers in a triangle between the MSPlex, Milwaukee and Green Bay.
* **Membership:**The Black River Boys are a tight-knit bunch of rednecks, with proven ties to the gang and recommendations from members necessary to get you an audition. Because if Mad Maddy doesn't think you can cut it, isn't any amount of good words going to get you in. But you need those recommendations to get you in the door. Because of this they tend to be Human  (or Dwarf ), tend to be local and have some kind of bond to the Boys (the most common being shared military service, jail time or family), although there's no hard and fast rule about any of that.
* **Racket:**First and foremost, the Boys are smugglers. They mainly handle shipping BTL's  and telesma  east from the MSPlex and arms and electronics west from Detroit  (by way of Chicago  and Milwaukee) along what they call "The Black River Run". They do handle drugs, but its a secondary racket, and there's currently a moratorium on BAD's after the Tempo-Drug War . They pretty well dominate the margarine smuggling racket in the western part of the state these days (yeah, you read that right, margarine smuggling, due to some laws protecting the dairy industry there, slotting Wisconsin, man). They also dabble in para-animal poaching and home-brewing of some drugs.

* **Legitimate Business:**The Boys, as a group, don't have any single legitimate racket to cover for their illegal activities. Each member or family runs their own businesses or concerns as they see fit. A lot of them run garages or act as hunting guides. Maddy herself owns a moving company based out of strategically-placed Madison  WI.
* **History:**The Black River Boys can trace their origins back to the Awakening . While not hit nearly as hard as the MSPlex or points West by the Great Ghost Dance , the Upper Midwest/Great Lakes area was still thrown into a lot of chaos. And where there's chaos, there's scavengers to pick up the scraps. One of the most successful of those scavengers was Dan "Big Daddy" Schroeder, who took advantage of the chaos to provide protection to cargoes going along the roads of western WS and eastern MN, with a fleet of trucks and some gun-toting-good-old-boys. He found himself working with Nicky 'Two-Sheds' Callahan (uncle of his successor "Jimmy Bricks" Callahan and great-uncle of Jimmy's son Micky 'Cave' Callahan ), part of a crew put together by Leo 'The Lion' Catarone (then an ambitious lieutenant of the Capra/Patterson syndicate, soon to be Don Catarone ), and secured the rights to smuggle weed and people back and forth from the MSPlex to Milwaukee. Big Daddy's right hand guy was Mad Max Reinhardt. When Big Daddy passed on in the early 40's, there was a power struggle in the group, which ended with their rivals in the Chinook (then under Elaine 'Auntie' Gerhardt) taking their northern territories and the rest being run by the Duquesne brothers, who were likely responsible for the murder of Mad Max. Maddy Reinhardt, who'd served in the UCAAF until the early '50's returned home and joined the gang and succeeded in leading efforts to retake their routes. This earned her the respect of the Boys enough to overthrow the Duquesnes in '56, and also it introduced her to hotshot young runner for the other side, the rising star Taylor West. They were lovers on-and-off for the rest of the 50's. Nobody seems to know what happened to break them up suddenly in late '61, but whatever it was, it must have been epic, because its been nothing but blood between them (and their gangs since West rose to the head of the Chinook) ever since...

### Relations with Other Organizations

* **Minneapolis Combination** : The Black River Boys are one of a number of the smuggler outfits run by the Callahan Family to run their smuggling operations. They use the protection of their Callahan patrons to get away with their side hustles in McCaskill turf. And the Callahans usually agree to turn a blind eye to those side hustles as long as the Boys give them a foothold in the Milwaukee 'Plex.
* **McCaskill Family** : While the Black River Boys work for the Callahans of the Twin Cities, they work largely on territory considered to belong to the McCaskills of Milwaukee. They keep the good favor of the McCaskills by giveng them a taste of their rackets and doing work when called upon. In return, the McCaskills give them cover and keeps the Callahan fist from closing too tight around them.
* **The Chicago Outfit** : While separated from Chicago by other turfs, the Outfit is everywhere in the Great Lakes and Midwest, rivaled only by the Minneapolis Combine in power and control. Also, the McCaskills are a former Chicago family, so they're connected to the Milwaukee scene. The Boys do the occasional run down to Bug City or other one-time work for the Outfit.
* **The Chinook** : Although the Chinook and the Black River Boys are both smuggling gangs in the pay of the Callahans, there's always been bad blood between these two, very similar, outfits. Their rivalry, which goes back to Auntie's time as head of the Chinook, has gone from a friendly jostling for Callahan favor to an often deadly business rivalry that has led to shots exchanged on several occasions. This escalation mostly comes from the Boys claiming a monopoly on the MSPlex-Milwaukee run, and the Chinook's decision to trade with the McCaskill Family directly instead of through them threatens that, although things like Taylor West and Mad Maddy's personal beef and bad blood from previous clashes only cranks up the violence. The Callahans tolerate, and even tacitly encourage, this sort of competition among their affiliates so as to keep them divided and reliant on the Family for support.
* **The Menace MC** : Older than the Chinook, the rivalry between the Menace and the Boys goes back to the Boys' forming. Big Daddy had been a member of the Outlaw MC, a gang beaten by and patched-over by the growing Menace and when he didn't join and starting forming his own crews to horn in on the Menace's markets, it started a violent feud that continues to this day. Sometimes the Menace and the Chinook work together against them but just as often the Boys can use the disunity between them to their advantage.
* **The Jacks** : There is a certain amount of overlap between the two groups of violently independent backwoods criminals. A Jack joining Big Daddy's gang back in the 30's means that there's always been a few in the BRB crew. Which doesn't make them allies. The Jacks want what they want and that isn't always business. Its a sharp knife that has to be handled carefully. Rumor has it that Maddy relied on them to take out the Duquesne brothers and now owes them an uneasy debt.
* **The Regulation Army** : The last remnants of the New Revolution , hiding out and arming themselves in the wilds Michigan's Upper Peninsula, they are considered pariahs by the mob and other mob-based groups. However, personal ties between a number of the boys and members of the RA makes the Boys a (very unofficial) supplier of arms and supplies for these backwoods militias and return the RA can supply the occasional muscle or a place to hide for their partners within the BRB.
* **Tamanous** :  The Black River Boys are enthusiastic supporters of the general shoot-on-sight rule for these predators that prevails in the upper midwest's underworld.

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