Chinook

## The Chinook

* **Affiliation:**On paper the Chinook operates as one of the smuggling crews under the Callahan  Family of the Minneapolis-St.Paul Metroplex, doing most of their business through them and enjoying their patronage and protection. In reality, once past the walls of the 'Plex, the Chinook works so far out past where the busses run that they pretty much run their own affairs and nobody in the Callahans cares, so long as their product gets through.
* **Leadership:**The current head of the Chinook is Taylor West , a bigger-than-life good-ol'-boy Manitoba cowboy who started out as the best smuggler in the gang back when it was under old 'Dirty Dick' Bannish before the 1323  put him in the frozen ground. He runs the gang on basis of proven success and pure, too-big-for-the-room charisma. Under Taylor, the Chinook doesn't have a lot of formal structure, with all the old hands running their own crews and owning their own vehicles but they seem to end up doing what Taylor says anyway.
* **Territory:**The crew takes their name from their main smuggling route, the Chinook Route, between the 'Plex and the Niswi-mishkodwinan, running between the MSPlex and Gaa-ministigweyaa (formerly Thunder Bay, ON) in the Niswi-mishkodewinan. From this strong axis of power they have formed a criminal network across all the northern UCAS  and the southern Niswi-mishkodewinan, recently extending as far east as Winnipeg, as far north as running guns to the Manitou, and as far east as Quebec .
* **Membership:**The Chinook is, as it has always been, a pretty patchwork crew, with rogues, smugglers and rustlers from every ethnic group and walk of life. The only requirement is that you need to be able to sneak contraband past the border guards of three or four different nations at the same time. Riggers, Hackers, Forgers, Trackers, Thieves, Con-Artists and other criminals and rejects all gathered under a loose banner. The biggest test has always been gaining the trust of the de facto leader whether its 'Auntie Gerhardt' or 'Dirty Dick' or Taylor West. The Chinook relies heavily on its business connections and keeps its actual numbers pretty small, so most of them knew at least a few other members well before they joined.
* **Rackets:**The Chinook are first and foremost smugglers. They run chips  up from the MSPlex, telesma  down from the north, guns  to the Manitou, electronics from the Zone , tax-free beer  from the Lake Country. If there's a border or a ban that makes something more profitable to ship under the table than legally, they'll put it in a T-Bird and get it where its going. They also dabble in related fields, like fencing stolen goods, hi-jacking legit cargos and extractions.
* **Legitimate Business:**This is an innovation of Taylor West's time as head of the Chinook. Old Dirty Dick was a thorough-going old crook and spent his profits on better gear and good times as soon as he got them. When Taylor took over, he started putting aside a bit of his take, and convinced most of the other crew-leaders to do likewise, to invest outside the gang. He set up the North Wind Cooperative to invest their profits, playing nice on paper by also donating to a number of reputable causes, especially those that have ties to powerful political and media figures who don’t want to lose face by being connected to a band of smugglers. This has bought them influence in four different nations, from Montreal in the east to Winnipeg in the west, from Arviat in the north to the MSPlex in the south.
* **History:**The history of the Chinook is mostly word of mouth. Some people have been around long enough to remember before Taylor ran things, when it was 'Dirty Dick's gang, and a few old timers still remember back in the late 40's and early 50's when 'Auntie' Gerhardt ran things. Before that? Who knows? Dirty Dick caught a bullet in '65 trying to run Ares Predators into the Oceti Sakowin and was double-crossed by the 1323 and Taylor, who finished the run, was his natural successor. Taylor's made steps to increase the gang's reach in the non-criminal world, setting up the North Wind Collective to put their money to use in legit or semi-legit pursuits and even, recently, involving himself in the volatile politics of the Zone, using the NWC to buy himself a seat on Winnipeg's City Council. Word has it that he's using it as a prelude to expanding their territory farther into the Niswi-mishkodewinan.

### Relations With Other Organizations

* **Minneapolis Combination** : The Chinook are one of a number of the smuggler outfits run by the Callahan Family to run their smuggling operations. There's always been a tension between the Callahans profiting from the Chinook's effectiveness and suspecting that they're not getting their fair cut of all of the Chinook crews' side hustles and a tension between the Chinook needing Callahan as their main business partners and protectors and trying not to fall too far under their heel.
* **The Sixth Family** : On the western end of their smuggling networks, the Chinook overlap with another mafia family's territory, that of the so-called 'Sixth Family' of Quebec. Their relationship is pretty complicated. The Sixth Family officially forbids the Chinook from operating on their turf, but ambitious junior members of the Family do a lot of off-the-books business with the smugglers. And the Callahans sometimes use the Chinook to do business on the Sixth Family's turf without risking a war.
* **Lake Devils** : The Tiospaye 's counterparts to the Chinook, they have a long history of friendly relations. Even during the Whiskey-Callahan War when their patron organizations were at war, the Lake Devils and the Chinook maintained good business relationships. Dirty Dick was always welcome at the Martin Goodboy's private bar and was part of the circle of drinking buddies the Goodboys maintained across the north. They are often in competition for the most daring scams and exploits, and the Chinook are among the major underground distributors for Lake Devil Brewing. The Devils are also one of the major line of communication between the Chinook and their fellow Callahan affiliates in Fargo: the Underberg Family.
* **The Blind Pigs:** While the Blind Pig Gang is technically part of the Underberg Family of Fargo, their territory stretches farther into the UCAS than any of the rest of the Family's operations and they do a lot of their own deals with other Callahan-run smuggling and black-market outfits, which in Minnesota, primarily means the Chinook. Its a profitable partnership and so far the Underbergs and Callahans are both making enough off of it that nobody's looked too closely at the cuts that the Pigs and the Chinook are keeping for themselves.
* **The Mishibijiw Warriors ("The 1323")**: One of the Chinook's major business partners, the Chinook walk a delicate balance between not alienating their primary customers in the Three Fires Alliance and keeping enough of a distance to stay out of the bloody feuds the 1323 has with the Heathens and the Winter Cartel. Recently this has been complicated by Taylor West's foray into Winnipeg politics which the MW see as encroaching on their turf. Taylor has promised to address their concerns any day now, but has not yet withdrawn from the Winnipeg political scene. There's trouble brewing here, and likely sooner rather than later.
* **The Black River Boys** : 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 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. 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** : High in the favor of the Minneapolis Combination, and old rivals of the Black River Boys for the trade between the MSPlex and Milwaukee, the Menace has always been a natural, if unpredictable, ally. Honestly, the Chinook prefer to stay in the air, not have contact with the Menace and let them do their bloody work out of the Chinook's eyesight.
* **The Heathens MC**: The feud between the Menace and the Heathens is the stuff of midwestern shadow legends and to take the side of one is to get on the bad side of the other. The Chinook's tenuous and occasional alliances with the the Menace are enough to put them on the list of the Heathens enemies. There's a reason that the Chinook try never to set foot on the ground in the western part of the state when they can help it and that reason is the Heathens. When they do have business in Heathens turf (which includes much of the Zone), they tend to work through their business partners like the Lake Devils or the Winter Cartel.
* **The Jacks**: The Jacks are a persistent and serious threat in the territories that the Chinook cover, a constant threat to commerce and just general safety. Any number of times a hit on a local nest of these scavengers is enough to buy the Chinook the goodwill they need to do business in these smaller, more isolated communities in the north. The Chinook also contains several ex-Jacks, runaways generally. Most of the ex-Jacks are more violently opposed to their kin then the rest of the Chinook put together, although a few privately maintain some useful contacts back in their old families.
* **The Invierno Cartel "Winter Cartel"**: The Winter Cartel's territory generally reaches farther west than the Chinook range themselves, which makes them useful contacts within the Oceti Sakowin. Because their interests generally don't clash (and because the Chinook stayed the hell out of the Tempo-Drug War), they generally have a businesslike, if not particularly close, relationship.
* **Mustafa Clan**: Among the web of suppliers and clients that make up the Chinook's territory, one of their most reliable is the data thieves, fences, hijackers and black-marketeers of the Mustafas, who run criminal enterprises in the Duluth area, who distribute the BTL's they buy from the Callahans, brought to them by the Chinook, and supply the Chinook with a stream of stolen goods to liquidate in distant markets for them. The Mustafas are among the most solid allies and clients the Chinook have, largely staying out of the petty internal rivalries between crew bosses. The Mustafa don't care who you are or who controls the route, so long as your nuyen still spends.
* **Tamanous**: Generally speaking the Chinook crews abide by the general shoot-on-sight rule for these predators that prevails in the upper midwest's underworld. Generally. But the Chinook crews are pretty independent and nobody quite knows what they get up to out in the wastes. There are always rumors that a few crew chiefs have done some business with the Tamanous on the side, although if they have, its best those rumors not reach back to Taylor West, who sees himself as a cowboy hero and the Tamanous as monsters to be vanquished.
* **Ladies of the Lakes:** One of the few losses the Chinook have taken in recent years is the loss of some of the key central and northern Minnesota routes. The "Ladies" are an informal coalition of smugglers who run in what used to be the territory of old 'Handyman' Green (and include several of his relations), from Brainerd to Lake of the Woods, a group of independents who don't want to get involved in Taylor's big schemes and legendary feuds. Surprisingly, rather than get into a war about this turf, Taylor seems fine to treat them as subcontractors, hiring them for jobs in that area rather than driving them out, possibly distracted by his big plans in the big cities. This live and let live approach though doesn't sit well with some of his more old-fashioned crew chiefs, who may be stirred to take independent action soon if their boss doesn't...
* **Blood Worgs**: The relationship between the Chinook and their biggest rivals, the Shapeshifter smugglers that roam the frozen north is deeply variable, depending on the individual crew chief. Some have a blood-stained rivalry of iron versus blood, riggers against shapeshifters. Others work hand-in-paw with the Worg Packs, especially those from native or metahuman backgrounds, used to making alliances with other outsiders. The Chinook, as a whole, as a rule, doesn't not have a lot of general rules.

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