Goldfist: A Century of History

This article is an entry in Animalia's citizen encyclopedia, the Animalopedia. Its years follow the Official Chronicle. For the organization's present state, see Goldfist-Family.

Goldfist is one of the Five Families of the metropolis of Animalia. It dates its founding to AE 22, the year the loose confederation of gambling-den keepers and show promoters known as the Golden Fist Coalition was formed. Under the banner "Live as a winner, or scatter as a loser," it is a league of individualists run — uniquely among the Five Families — by a flat, deliberative body (the boss council). Through casinos, finance, and insurance it holds Animalia's financial infrastructure itself in its grip, and it is said that "the reason the Five Families cannot go to war is that every family's money passes through Goldfist's ledgers" (→ the AMT economy).

Conflict-of-interest disclosure: One of this article's principal sources, the Liberty Ledger, is a Goldfist-financed publication. It has further been noted that this article's edit history shows a statistically significant tendency for any passage unfavorable to the Oasis Casino's odds to vanish the day after it is published (see Talk:Goldfist — A Century of History / Editing-Trend Analysis) 〔citation needed〕.

Overview

Goldfist, it is said, is less a "family" than a "market." Loyalty is bought with dividends, its code is written in the shape of wagers, and succession is decided not by blood but by shareholdings. Where the other four families were born of immigrant communities, Goldfist alone grew out of a gathering of the ambitious that asked no one where they came from — and some argue that its being the only one of the Five Families to have been, from its very founding, a mixture of several species and several origins is precisely what best embodies the character of Animalia, the city of the Founding Amnesty 〔Nightfall Academy Bulletin No. 58〕.

Prehistory and Formation (AE 1 through the 30s)

• AE 1–20 — In the city just after the Founding, gambling dens sprang up of their own accord. Dice on a barrel-top at the pier, cards behind the food stalls, the rats' number games — the house-keepers who ran them preyed on one another's customers and turf, and often came to bloodshed.
• AE 22 — Against the rampancy of den-raiders and fixers, the house-keepers and show promoters joined hands to compile a "shared blacklist of cheats." This was the founding of the Golden Fist Coalition (→ the Official Chronicle §2). Its instigator was Silas McCready, keeper of a pier gambling den. That he stamped a golden fist onto the cover of the blacklist is held to be the origin of the later family name — though the storyteller's version, in which McCready's fist blazed, gold ring and all, as he beat down a cheat with his bare hands, is the one the citizenry prefers 〔Liberty Ledger, AE 83 founding-anniversary issue〕.
• AE 24 — The Great Fire of Broken Burrow. In place of a soup kitchen, the Golden Fist Coalition issued a "reconstruction lottery" and put the proceeds toward temporary housing. "They'll turn even charity into a bet" — the slander of the day is quoted today as praise.
• AE 26 — Founding of the Burrow Bank (→ the AMT economy). From the bank's earliest days, the Coalition maintained deep dealings with it.
• AE 33 — The introduction of AMT. In the transitional period when the barter economy and privately minted coin gave way to an official currency, the Golden Fist Coalition, playing the money-changer, grew explosively fat. It is the turning point of which people say, "AMT chose its house-keeper."
• AE 35 — The Oasis Casino opens. The Golden Fist Coalition, now surging in growth, formally took the name Goldfist (→ the Official Chronicle §3).

Its Role in the Decade of Blood (AE 38–50)

Throughout the Decade of Blood (→ TMA-History-Ninkyou / TMA-History-Tundra), which began with the AE 38 Wharf War, Goldfist conducted itself consistently as a neutral merchant that "does business with everyone." Weapons, ammunition, medicine, funerals — its readiness to put a price tag on everything a war requires is spoken of by the other four families, to this day, with a note of resentment.

• AE 38–48 — Under the command of the second chief, Barton "Lucky" Wheeler, the Oasis Casino served as "a neutral salon for all the families." The sight of enemies gathered around the same roulette table is regarded as the forerunner of the "crossroads where no one shoots" custom later established at Neon Crossroads (from AE 45).
• AE 42 — The Silent Purge. Goldfist suffered the curious misfortune of having only its ledger-keepers (accountants) rounded up. The lesson of that time — "the bookkeeping is more dangerous than the soldiers" — gave rise to the later tradition of duplicating ledgers and storing them in dispersed locations 〔Liberty Ledger, AE 92 October issue〕.
• AE 47 — The Theater Massacre (→ TMA-History-Rosso). Goldfist paid condolence money to the victims' bereaved families first among the Five Families, and in the largest amount. Wheeler's remark — "It's not goodwill, it's a matter of odds. A bet that turns public opinion against you is a poor wager" — nicely illustrates the way this family's code is written. That same year the code of the Three Stakes (your word / your face / your luck — if you wager it, you always pay) was set down in writing.
• AE 49–50 — The de facto end of the war. It was Goldfist that provided the venue and footed the bill for the peace negotiations. "Peace was the most expensive banquet ever thrown in our house" 〔ibid.〕.

Growth Under the Accord (AE 51–110)

• AE 51 — The Five-Family Accord (Pax Animalia). Though it was the Rosso and the Ninkyou who drafted it, the prevailing view holds that what gave the Accord's "economic sanctions against any family that breaks it" their teeth was Goldfist's settlement network (→ the AMT economy). That same year it sent an officer to the Fifty Seats of the Grand Alliance (The Mafia Animals) (the seat number is undisclosed; → TheMafiaAnimals-Origin).
• AE 52 onward — Each year it takes on the bookmaking (licensed gambling) for the Balance Festival. As the only family to publish the festival's balance sheet, it has, surprisingly, earned the citizenry's trust.
• AE 58 — Co-financed the founding of Nightfall Academy, taking charge of its courses in mathematics, bookkeeping, and probability theory (→ TMA-Education).
• AE 70s–80s — The era of the third chief, Cordelia Sterling. The restorer who converted a house of gambling dens into a house of finance. She expanded the business into insurance, real estate, and AMT credit trading, and in AE 83 completed Liberty Tower, securing "the front door of finance" (→ the Official Chronicle §5).
• AE 89 — The Burrow Panic. In this financial crisis, set off by a run on the Burrow Bank, the Animalian economy faced its gravest peril since the Founding (→ the Official Chronicle §5). Overriding the council's objections, Sterling resolved to prop up the settlement network with Goldfist's own private fortune. The "seventy-two sleepless hours," through which the lights of Liberty Tower did not go dark for three days and three nights, is the greatest legend in the family's history. Thereafter the arrangement by which "every family's money passes through Goldfist's ledgers" was established. Sterling's words at the moment of decision — "This is not charity. It is the largest loan in history, and the collateral is the city itself" — continue to be quoted in contexts both of admiration and of wariness 〔TMA Times, AE 89 November issue〕.
• AE 100 — The Founding Centennial. Goldfist opened the "Centennial Odds" — a public book on Animalia's next hundred years — and caused an uproar when the city authorities removed a betting slip reading "In AE 200, will this city still stand?" 〔TMA Times, AE 100 special issue〕.

The Present Day (AE 111–121)

The current chief chair is Morgan Whitlock, but the figure the common folk picture as "the face of Goldfist" is the officer who runs the Oasis Casino, Gotham (an elephant). Having risen from a former gambler to the rank of "largest shareholder," he is the council's de facto center of gravity, and is also known for the large sums he quietly and continually donates to an orphanage, out of sight of the casino floor (→ Goldfist-Family).

Against the economic unease of AE 113 onward (the turmoil in insurance premiums that accompanied the ban on observing the Void, and the like), Goldfist's settlement network remains the heart of the city. That said, the rumor never quite dies that Goldfist itself still keeps updating what the odds on that removed AE 100 betting slip — "In AE 200, will this city still stand?" — stood at before it was taken down 〔by whom?〕.

Line of Heads (Chief Chairs)

※ The head of Goldfist is not hereditary but is chosen by mutual election on the basis of holdings in the boss council. "Chief chair" is the external title; internally the post is simply called "the Chair."

Origins of Its Culture and Code

• The Three Stakes (if you wager your word, your face, or your luck, you always pay) — set down in writing in AE 47. Its prototype is held to be the membership condition inscribed on the back cover of the AE 22 blacklist: "The name of one who does not pay goes here."
• "Cheating is death — but a cheat that is never caught is craft" — not a written statute, but an ethos grown out of the accumulated precedents of the first chief McCready's court (the Coalition's internal arbitration) 〔citation needed〕.
• "Never let anyone wager what they cannot afford to lose" — the hidden iron rule of the Oasis Casino. This is not family law but an internal regulation added by the current officer, Gotham (→ Goldfist-Family).
• The First Bet (the initiation in which a newcomer lays their entire fortune on a single night's game) — its origin lies in the house-keeper vetting of the Golden Fist Coalition era. What is being watched is not whether they win or lose but the face they make when they lose — this purpose was put into explicit words during the tenure of the second chief, Wheeler.
• The Turning of the Hourglass (on every hour struck by the Sand Clock Tower, members stop their hands and look up) — an admonition that "time alone not even the house-keeper can rig." The official record of the tower's year of construction and the circumstances of its building is curiously thin 〔citation needed〕.
• The tradition of publishing the books — a custom that came with the Balance Festival bookmaking (from AE 52). The paradox of an underworld house that sells its credibility by being the only one to "show its ledgers" nicely captures the essence of the house called Goldfist.

Family Chronology (Excerpt)

Anecdotes and Controversies

• Two accounts of the golden fist — the "blacklist seal" theory (the documentarian camp) and the "fist that struck, gold ring and all" theory (the storyteller camp). The Animalopedia editorial staff adopt the documentarian view, but in citizen polls the storyteller camp consistently exceeds 70 percent 〔Liberty Ledger, AE 115 reader survey〕.
• The winner of the reconstruction lottery — the first-prize winner of the AE 24 reconstruction lottery is recorded as "none," and the entire prize was diverted to temporary housing. An accusation that "there was never a winning ticket in it to begin with" surfaced half a century later, but blocked by the wall of the statute of limitations and of a heartwarming legend, the truth remains unknown 〔citation needed〕.
• Sightings during the seventy-two sleepless hours — through the three days and nights of the Burrow Panic, Sterling is said to have stood in Liberty Tower's settlement room without a wink of sleep; yet there are also several testimonies of her being seen at the Oasis Casino's poker table at those very same hours. Within Goldfist, the latter reading — "in place of sleep, she never gave up her wagers either" — is the one preferred.
• The removed betting slip — "In AE 200, will this city still stand?" The odds at the time of removal have never been made public. Records unearthed by a freedom-of-information request revealed that the very official who ordered the removal had, just before it, bought a slip for himself — a small scandal 〔TMA Times, AE 101 February issue〕.