As it stands, we have three main criminal groups on Cloud City: Black Sun A crime franchise. The most overt part of Cloud City's business is it's casinos, which are used as a front for Black Sun activity in the area, the manager of the casino acting as the Black Sun Lieutenant for that planet/sector. The "franchisee" for Cloud City is Sanis Prent, who runs the swanky Cumulus casino on the city's upper levels. Black Sun has a Bond villain approach to crime: on the surface it's all smiles and fancy suits, but they're not afraid to get down and dirty behind the scenes. They're also relatively organised and orderly in the grand scheme of things: they'll do murders and gang wars and what-not, but there's usually thought and planning and machinations behind what they do. The Exchange A crime business. The front company is Elysian Acquisitions, a shipping/imports firm that can get you "whatever you want", from items to information to people. The Exchange is the back room criminality aspect, which comes into play if the thing that you want needs to be obtained by illegal or illicit means - by thieves, slicers, bounty hunters, etc. For the most part, Emelie Shadowstar oversees the legit business side of things, while Atton Kira manages their information network, but both claim to answer to "The Broker", an entirely fictional Wizard of Oz style figurehead who is impossibly mysterious because he doesn't really exist. Most of the Exchange's work is handled by sub-contractors - bounty hunters, slicers, career criminals, etc who they hire either case-by-case or have on retainer. There isn't really a gangs or territory aspect to the Exchange... they are "criminal entrepreneurs" who want to carve out their niche and profit from it: they might steal your customers and put you out of business, but they're not going to kill you and take your stuff. (unless Em is really cranky that day) The Rath Cartel A crime family. Ambassador Wrath has the same approach to crime and business as he has to dinner: gobble up all the things. He controls the remnants of the Zann Consortium. He owns a slew of legitimate businesses with legitimate business interests in Cloud City. He finds agents and operatives that he likes and wants, and he makes them his, with money or subterfuge or indentured service. His favourite tactic is finding a company that is struggling, acquiring it when it fails, and then smushing them into his mega-corporation for greater profits. He is basically the quintessential evil corporation; every negative stereotype about big business harming the environment, exploiting workers, evading laws and regulation in shady ways, crushing the little guy out of business... that's the Rath Cartel. He probably hunts and kills cute fluffy little animals, too. Asshole. That's all fine and dandy, but there's more to crime than that, and more is always better. Sarah and I have tentatively tossed around the idea of connecting the Exchange to the Pink Moon Syndicate (the Zeltrons) because of the Emelie Shadowstar connection, so we might end up with some pink people on Cloud City at some point. In the past, we've toyed with the idea of the Tenloss Syndicate which I guess is a "crime alliance" - a bunch of crime bosses, gangs, and shady corporations (some of them legit-ish) which have banded together, and who focus a lot on the scummier / more amoral end of the crime spectrum (spice, slaves, loans, extortion, etc). If Black Sun is the crime equivalent of the Core Worlds, then Tenloss is the crime equivalent of the Outer Rim; having them try to muscle their way in at various tiers of Cloud City society could be interesting. Also, we don't have any "gangs" on Cloud City. While the upper levels are all swanky and Imperial, the lower levels like Port Town and the industrial/processing parts of Cloud City have a lot of non-human workers living in considerably more dingy surroundings. A gang (or gangs) of non-humans fighting over turf or trying to stick it to the (hu)man; pick pockets and shoplifters and fences leeching off the other businesses; spice dealers that the larger crime groups can supply to; underworlders that can be exploited for information; the local Bounty Hunters Guild office handing out jobs/contracts; all sorts. Cloud City has pretty much become the unofficial crime capital of the galaxies these days... so lets really go for it and make the most wretched hive we can.
I like the idea of having Tenloss as some NPC "other" in the sense that we can all go "Look we run a business based on respect, we're not like those fuckin' animals" because that kind of stratification and distancing feels very mafia to me. That plus local gangs. Use gangs as proxies and vassal kingdoms. You want to hide your hand, you get your particular flavor of toughs to do something nasty.
Personally, I think Tenloss as NPCs is a heinous waste of potential. You could just as easily point at the scummy underworld gangs if you're looking for a contrast. Tenloss has far too much juicy potential for real piece of work characters, that make your skin crawl and make the Hutts seem like nice guys by comparison. We have the Exchange and Black Sun who are sort of the "lovable" criminals, and we've got Wrath who is "slimy", but Tenloss has the potential for people who are honest-to-god evil, and that doesn't feel like an opportunity you waste on a throw away comment here and there. NPC gangs makes sense, though a player here and there wouldn't hurt. Rather than a "we must do this now", I was thinking of it more as a keeping our options open type thing... do we want absolutely everyone who comes onto Cloud City as a criminal to end up in Black Sun, or do we want to make it obvious that there's a whole buffet of options? ...as a Jedi Knight, I of course encourage none of this.
Oh that's completely cool if someone wants to dive in with Tenloss. Definitely not discouraging anyone if they feel like it. I'm probably a bit full from having guys in two of these wiseguy outfits, but don't let that stop anyone else.
Just chatted to Dee about this, and she's gonna be bringing someone in to start creeping some Tenloss Syndicate activity into Cloud City. Among other things, she'll be running a casino... because damn it, a casino on Cloud City is how you show the criminal underworld that your organisation matters, apparently.
I think we should each have sort of a prospectus about what sorts of rackets we run and what sort of things we push. Try and be specific and give/take. If we come at it with definied illicit territory then it makes it interesting if we smash someone for some of their pie or we haggle over it or things like that. One thing I intend to explore (it was going to be the original source of irritation between Black Sun and the exchange) were protection rackets in port town. Easy revenue, just taxing some of the little guys to make sure nothing happens to their shops. Not sexy, but a meat and potatoes cash stream.
As far as Ambassador Wrath goes, he's less outright crime, and more just shady Lex Luthor business practices. He is on Cloud City because he wants to set up sweat shops and dump his nuclear waste in the lake, and that kind of thing. He will probably have his enforcers breaking some knee caps while collecting debts for his casino, and he will probably get into some Quark level smuggling, book-fixing and arms deal stuff... but most of his interests are probably on the upper levels of the city, white collar stuff. He doesn't set out to actively break laws... he just doesn't give a crap that they're there. For the Exchange... Sarah will have to back me up / correct me on this, but our mandate is "acquiring" things. We have our information network to acquire information. We have our front company, Elysian Acquisitions, which will "get you stuff" - they will import, they will source rare artefacts, they will find your lost dog/daughter... but they will also smuggle things for you, obtain stuff from hard to get into places, and they will even send in Vittore Montegue to bring you someone's head, as it were. I don't THINK (Sarah?) we have any interest in like... spice or trafficking or any of the "asshole" crimes, I don't think we'll be doing protection rackets or breaking kneecaps, or anything like that. Though... I guess we might torture a guy for information, cut of his thumbs or whatever. We're going for that "lovable scoundrels" niche, so we can't be too overtly villainous. Unless Sarah tells me I'm wrong, in which case it's something else. As for Tenloss, they deal in the really really shitty crimes. Human trafficking, hard drugs, illegal holoporn (I'm not kidding, this is a legit thing from the EU), and basically that whole... profiting from human misery sort of dealio. They probably stick to the lower levels 90% of the time... so the only people that Black Sun is likely to have any sort of clash with Tenloss (which is why I felt we needed to add them). With that in mind... Sarah, do we need to have the Exchange start getting friendly with some local NPC gangs or something? Or do we need to have Wrath do that because it's not Em's cup of tea? We haven't planned to have any muscle as either of those (as far as I remember), but that sorta... makes the gang situation a bit lopsided in Black Sun's favour.
