The Mills
The Mills are a machine that runs on hope. The hope of dreamers, the desperate, or the damned, the Mills will take it all with a smile and a thank you kindly. Still, there are those who would count themselves lucky to have walked out of the Mills with hope being the only thing they lost.
No one remembers who the first Lord Milliner was, the names of the dead kings have been written and erased and rewritten too many times for any true accounting, but they were the one who established the Mills as an oasis of decadence amidst the unforgiving austerity of the wastes. No mere tavern or den of ill repute, the Mills are a palatial sprawl of pleasure domes hewn from the pre-fall ruins of a temple to excess. Though now absorbed into the fold of the Dominus the Mills retain a character and a law unto themselves, enforced by flamboyant Vegasian gangs and governed by the Grist Family. Within this colorful fabric the shining thread is that of the Lord Milliner. Now a largely ceremonial position beholden to the Grist family heads, the Lord Milliner remains a necessary and vital part of the Mills, acting as a celebrity debutante, reveler-in-chief, and divine peacock regent whose melodramas provide their followers with entertainment and a parasocial connection to nobility.
On a more practical level the Mills maintain their autonomy by leveraging their pull with the Senators of the Dominus. It’s a rare patrician family without at least one dilettante in debt to the Mills, and Senators enjoy their vice as much as the next politician. There’s a saying in The Bailey that the Mills don’t just launder money, they launder togas as well. By far the greatest innovation at the Mills though has been its Stalk Exchange. The Stalk Exchange began when one of the Mills’ gangs was planning an especially dangerous and lucrative heist. To put together the resources they needed to pull off the score they went to the Mills casino floor and started selling shares in the heist. Since then speculating on all manner of ventures has exploded and the Stalk Exchange has increasingly become one of the financial hubs of the Dominus.
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