East Side

## The Don’s Domain

Posted by: Phim Kooj Koi

The East Side is a large swath of St. Paul that outsiders, even those from other parts of the sprawl, tend to treat as a monolithic neighborhood. Truth is, there are plenty of commonalities. This is a much older, more well-settled part of the sprawl; some of the houses date back a century or more. As such, its social roots run deep, too. Many families in this area (not to mention the Family ) have lived here for at least that long. Then again, a large part of the ethnic mix of the area came over during the Chinese conflicts and the Euro Wars after the first Crash . Still, the subdivisions have enough subtle differences to be worth noticing.

   On the northern border is White Bear, which blurs with the suburb of Maplewood to its north and east. The headquarters of the former 4M, now a division of Evo , is in Maplewood, and as such that city is patrolled entirely by an Evo security firm. Evo’s power base there spills over into St. Paul in White Bear, and neither the SPPD, Ares  nor the Mob are entirely ok with that. Nevertheless, the Mafia maintains a significant amount of block-by-block control, but a few areas populated by Evo wageslaves have decided to pay Evo corpsec for security rather than the Don . We’ll see yet if that was a good move.

*Poor khwv khwv probably believe the drek that Mother Corp puts out about its protective capabilities. They’ll never know what hit em.*
- Iab Npauj

*I don’t know, these new Vory  guys may give Evo a little more teeth versus the Family.*
- Phim Kooj Koi

*If I were the New Vory, and I wanted to break the Mob’s hold on smuggling, here is where I’d bring things in. This is close enough to the highway ring and secure enough that my crews weren’t DOA.*
- Brynhild

Another area that’s long had a 4M/Evo presence is the southeast part of the city, Battle Creek. This is actually a much higher income area, and much more Vory-influenced in the higher-elevated areas. Down near the river is Mafia turf, and they run smuggling ops out of there. The area’s still “nice”, so there hasn’t been a shooting war yet, mostly just a lot of positioning and blackmail. That could change soon unless some kind of detente occurs. There’s really not much else to say here that wasn’t said about White Bear.

*The Vory’ll have a harder time than they think. A lot of the families down here, while not truly rich, have a bit of an “old money” attitude, which means the Mafia’s generally got much more appeal to them.*
- Wired Rose

   In between White Bear and Battle Creek, and on west into the Dayton’s Bluff area, is the Don’s home ground. He keeps a mansion in eastern Dayton’s Bluff, actually. His money keeps the neighborhood afloat, and no one questions Mafia authority. Non-Mob syndicates and gangs don’t dare come here uninvited. Most of the western Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood is taken up by the Indian Mounds Park .

*Other factions have to hire runners to do basically anything here, even simple courier work, and they have to pay well, because if those runners are caught…well, don’t get caught.*
- Wirefrog

The bottom line on the East Side? Don’t cross the Don, don’t make too much noise, and watch your back. Same stuff as anyplace else.

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