Crime Syndicates

 

Brass Monkey Gang

The Brass Monkey Gang is a criminal organization in central Jumira, operating primarily in and around the major cities of Mudinak, Ivory Road and Sathirajan. The Brass Monkeys are generally suspected to be under the control of House Kapoor, the longrest standing Great Family in Mudinak. In addition to their control over prostitution, gambling, usury, protection rackets and other illegal activities in these cities and their surrounding areas, they also control the illicit trade of many controlled substances including narcotics and rare alchemical ingredients. The Brass Monkey Gang are in constant conflict with the Jade River Runners, and in places where they are in direct competition, such as Ipuri, Indigo, and other smaller towns and villages, there are frequent violent confrontations between the two groups. While the Brass Monkeys have tried on numerous occasions to permanently eliminate the Jade River Runners, any time they have made notable progress toward this end, the Jade River Runners dissipate into an unstructured collection of bandits who can no longer be effectively engaged.

The Coal Foot Gang

The Coal Foot Gang are an organized criminal group operating mostly across the southern half of the Iron Ridge mountains in central Golanicja. The group has taken many forms over the centuries, and almost certainly there have been many different groups that have appropriated the name, going back perhaps a thousand years. Some claim the group to have have been started by rogue orcs and goblins who deserted their armies during the Orcish Invasions, though by the 15th century, the group is understood to be controlled (deniably, of course) by powerful political families in Starnje, on the Hidden Sea.

The Coal Foot Gang controls smuggling, racketeering and extortion in the Iron Ridge mountains, and are known to use potentially millions of kilometers of mining tunnels through the mountains to move illicit goods between dozens of cities and thousands of towns, villages, and camps. Their virtual stranglehold over criminal activity in this difficult and inhospitable terrain means they also claim a significant cut of the wealth that continues to be mined out of the Iron Ridge mountains.

The Glass Fox Gang

The Glass Fox Gang mostly operates across the main island of Senecia. They are not believed to be affiliated with any of the major Great Houses in Senecia, and so do not have a strong presence in the major cities. Most of their operations are centered around theft - particularly organized heists of precious metals or gems from the MGS Triangle - often putting them at odds with Trade and Industrial Guilds as well as other criminal organizations. They have good relations with the Shearwind Cutters enabling them to smuggle their heists out or to bring in illicit goods from across the archipelago for distribution across the main island.

Jade River Runners

The Jade River Runners are a criminal organization operating principally in the Jade River Valley in southwestern Jumira. The organization is structured in an ad hoc fashion with dozens, or perhaps even hundreds of low level bosses operating their local rackets as small independent cells, and paying protection money upward in a kind of pyramid scheme. Obviously, this loose structure leads to frequent leadership challenges, and constant internal conflict. While the Brass Monkey Gang consider the Jade River Runners to be their biggest enemy, most Jade River Runners see their biggest enemy as being the Jade River Runners members two villages up river. Occasionally, some local boss will be smart enough or lucky enough to gain control over many local rivals, and bring dozens of individual cells under their control. When this happens, ambition typically leads either to an internal gangwar, or to a direct attempt to seize control over organized crime in one of the larger cities controlled by the Brass Monkey Gang. This invariably ends in several months of targeted killings and retaliations until whatever top-down structure was imposed by the emerging boss is reduced enough that the organization can return to operating as an ad hoc collection of independent cells.

The Merry River Players

see listing under Entertainment Troupes

Shearwind Cutters

Pirates operating in the southern Senecian Archipelago

The Starc Parkers

Starc Park is the name of a large urban park in Kovstepovi on the west bank of the Kovstepovi River where it borders on the neighbourhood known as Gongtown, which is the old orcish district of the city. The park was created to commemorate one of the last Golanicjan battles of the Orcish Conquests, but during the famine that came with the insolvency of the Kingdom of Golanicja, it became the site of an uprising that nearly ended with a storming of Castle Torbjorn. The massacre was avoided when a defacto council from Gongtown, who called themselves the Starc Parkers, met with the leadership of the Gatekeepers to negotiate for food. Their demands were met, and the Starc Parkers were celebrated as heroes by uniting Kovstepovi's underclasses and giving them a voice.

Over the following years, as Kovstepovi re-established itself as a Chartered City, the Starc Parkers had enough popular support to carve themsevles a seat on the new City Council, even as infighting led the group to fragment into warring criminal gangs. By the mid 14th century, Gongtown and Starc Park (which is technically outside of Gongtown) was governed as an autonomous 'city within the city' of Kovstepovi, and the leader of Gongtown traditionally holds a seat on the Kovstepovi Council.

For a century, this was a tumultuous arrangement, with several gangs in Gongtown in a state of continual warfare, and the Gongtown seat on the Kovstepovi Council often changing hands several times a year, or even being left vacant.

In 1403, however, Klimentina Goluz rose to power, purging the leadership of several rival gangs in Gongtown and unifying the Starc Parkers under her control. Twenty years of relative peace in Gongtown followed, as Klimentina's grew and stabilized her power, seizing control of almost all criminal activity in Kovstepovi and expanding her criminal empire to other cities and towns around the Sea of Azane and putting her organization on a collision course with the larger and more established Coal Foot Gang.

Upjohn Holding Company of Cairgherd

The halfling Upjohn Family are one of the Great Houses of Cairgherd in Weayron. They are known throughout the region for their control of Cairgherd's organized crime operations, but their power is largely based in their control of the docks in Cairgherd, and indeed along most the east coast of western Waeyron. The Upjohns came to power in the mid 11th century, very possibly by collaborating with the pirate raiders who were plaguing Waeyron at the time. If they were complicit in this, the fact was never revealed, but it is certainly true that they rose from a small tranport company in Beggar's Hole to become a large import/export company in a period of only 50 years, mostly by buying up the remains of competitors who had had the misfortune of being targetted 'randomly' by pirates.

In the early 15th century, the Upjohns supported the Mellish family in a feud with a former Great Family of Cairgherd known as the Gunmay family. In the end, the Gunmay Family were all murdered in a bloody coup, and the Mellish Family were installed as a Great House in the city state of Cairgherd.

While the Upjohns are known far and wide to be dangerous criminals, they are also beloved by the people. With the 'permission' of the City Council of Cairgherd, the Upjohns sponsor a holiday in the late spring or early summer where they go through the streets with wagons and hand out tens of thousands of bread loaves, about 5% of the loaves have a gold coin in them, and about 1% have a platinum coin in them. This holiday - which is called 'Bread Pudding Day' - always comes as a surprise announced at dawn. It is held at a time of strategic convenience to the Upjohns, when wheat and flour stores begin to run low, bread prices start to climb, and the wheat harvest is still about a month away.