The Orcish Crime Syndicate
"Any job for the right price, no scuples, no questions." -Maxim of the Orcish Crime Syndicate.
The Orcish Crime Syndicate is a decentralized but far-reaching network of smugglers, mercenaries, and brokers whose origins trace back to the unregulated badlands of Kathar What Everwealth defines as illicit activity, drug running, weapons dealing, extortion, and mercenary work, the Syndicate sees as perfectly legal enterprise. In Kathar, commerce is king, and all trades are fair if you can afford them. The Syndicate thrives in this environment, with its legions of orcish raiders, vice traders, and warband-turned-businessmen now extending their reach far beyond their home borders. Though not officially sanctioned by Kathar’s government, the Syndicate’s domestic legitimacy and economic power afford it unchecked growth. Even in Everwealth, where they are officially reviled, covert deals for weapons, labor, and ‘special operations’ have become a wartime necessity, turning these criminals into tolerated partners.
Career
Qualifications
No formal resume required. The Syndicate favors the strong, the clever, and the desperate. Most recruits are locals from Kathar or borderland drifters, hired for specific trades, logistics, smuggling, muscle, assassination. Language skills, bribery instincts, and a good sense for survival go further than loyalty. Specialists are often recruited through trade-houses, which double as brothels, bars, and fencing hubs.
Career Progression
Initiates begin as Runners, hauling goods, delivering bribes, or testing border routes. Survivors become Brokers, Enforcers, or Handlers, depending on their skills. Top operatives answer to a rotating leadership called the Ledger Circle, which includes warband chieftains, Katharan tycoons, and diplomatic middlemen who maintain plausible deniability with foreign states.
Titles are fluid, and betrayals are frequent.
Payment & Reimbursement
All work is compensated based on success. No taxes, no paper trails, just raw goods, Everwealthan coin, or Katharan scrip. Bonuses include looted cargo, seized territory, and sometimes slaves, though Everwealth pretends not to notice.
Other Benefits
Free travel under forged or legitimate documents, access to Katharan black markets, and the protection of powerful employers who dare not name them publicly. Most enforcers enjoy private compounds in Kathar, guarded by ex-military mercs and debt slaves. Those who rise far enough often retire into Katharan politics or trade guilds.
Perception
Purpose
To provide any good, service, or illicit commodity desired, so long as the buyer can afford it. In practice: destabilization, foreign influence, and profit through vice.
Social Status
In Kathar, they are respected magnates, often invited to galas or paraded as success stories of free enterprise. In Everwealth, they are whispered about, denounced in speeches and then contacted in secret for arms and mercenary support. To most commoners, they're phantoms. To border towns, they're payday or death, depending on the deal.
Demographics
Over 65% of known Syndicate operators are of Orcish ancestry, but the organization includes Goblins, Humans, even some Dwarfish are present here despite their tense history; An accolade in a sense that even those with stubborn racial grudges bend the knee to their rivals and their sure-profits if you keep your mouth shut and do what you're told. Some ex-Everwealthy officials and nobles are rumored to serve as silent shareholders. Numbers are unknown, but their legions in Kathar remain untouched by current wars, giving them a disturbing edge in future conflict.
History
The Orcish Crime Syndicate was never born from a singular declaration or founding figure, it is the inevitable outcome of Kathar’s zero-restriction economy, where law bows to wealth and moral scrutiny is a foreign concept. In a land where thievery is a trade, slavery is a contract, and poisons are sold beside pastries, the Syndicate emerged as a byproduct of normalization, not rebellion, but entrepreneurship. In its earliest forms, it began with orcish caravans offering “alternative goods” to borderlands too poor or desperate to care. Over time, this decentralized network grew, bolstered by former warbands, exiles, black-market alchemists, and failed nobles who saw more profit in vice than virtue. As Kathar’s economy grew fat on its own indulgences, the Syndicate became one of its largest unofficial exports. During Everwealth’s periods of internal collapse, including the Ration War and Schismatic Resurgence, Syndicate goods flooded into famine-struck towns, their muscle hired to “protect” crumbling roads or harass Elfese caravans. Officials condemned them publicly and paid them privately. Attempts to disrupt their influence failed, either due to corruption, incompetence, or quiet complicity. Each failed crackdown only increased their mystique and reach. Today, the Syndicate is no longer just a Katharan parasite feeding on Everwealth’s decay. It is an unacknowledged participant in the kingdom’s war economy, supplying black-market weapons, illegal manpower, and rare materials that Everwealth can no longer produce or afford on its own. And while no scroll or speech admits it, the truth is this: If the Syndicate vanished tomorrow, Everwealth’s war effort would falter within weeks.
Yet this relationship is not eternal. As their wealth piles and their legions swell, untouched by the wars of men, many whisper the Syndicate may soon abandon partnership for conquest.
Operations
Tools
Members of the Orcish Crime Syndicate use a mix of brutal practicality and sly sophistication. Standard gear includes:
- Concealed blades and collapsible cudgels for silent enforcement.
- Ledger sticks (Katharan runic counting rods that double as contract seals).
- Coin-weighed bribe pouches, pre-labeled for guards, dockmasters, and minor officials.
- Signal flares and whisper-shells for silent long-range communication.
- Custom-forged lock breakers and rune disruptors for bypassing magical protections.
- Trade cloaks, reversible garb with built-in compartments for contraband transport
Materials
The day-to-day operations of the Syndicate rely heavily on versatile, disposable, and deniable materials. Counterfeit licenses and trade seals are always in circulation, used to pass as legitimate merchants during inspections. Crate markers, often enchanted to disguise cargo, are used to obscure shipment origins or destinations. For dangerous goods like Blackglass Dust or weaponized tinctures, operatives use mosswraps and silken slings to transport volatile cargo without triggering arcane sensors. “Slaver’s ink,” a magically resistant compound favored in Kathar, is used to draft invisible labor contracts or falsify ownership papers. Commonplace materials such as sacks of grain, bolts of linen, and jars of fermented spice are used to hide illicit wares in plain sight, blending into legal shipments or undercutting detection by overloaded border authorities. Even seemingly innocent supplies like binding wax, boot heels with hollow cores, and ledger paper are weaponized in service of the Syndicate’s greater machine.
Workplace
A Syndicate workplace might resemble a tavern, tradepost, or caravan station, but beneath the surface, it functions as a well-oiled node in a continental crime web. Front operations often include tea dens with backroom trapdoors, spice stalls that cover for distribution cells, or brothels doubling as information exchanges. In Kathar, their headquarters, the infamous Ledger Halls, mimic high-class merchant offices, outfitted with leather seats, brass scales, blood-stained ledgers, and the ever-present scent of pipe smoke, sweat, and ink. In less luxurious settings, workplace environments are defined by musty storage rooms, reinforced back walls, and soundproof kill rooms hidden behind crates of wine. Caravans act as roving fortresses, outfitted with false compartments, storage for arms and documents, and protective glyphs. Most locations are built with at least two escape tunnels, anti-scrying enchantments, and bribed locals on watch duty. The atmosphere buzzes with low conversation, metallic clinks, muffled threats, and a faint haze of narcotic or alchemical fumes.
Provided Services
The Orcish Crime Syndicate provides nearly every illicit service imaginable, available for the right price and with no loyalty beyond profit. Arms trafficking remains their most profitable operation, distributing cursed blades, enchanted bombs, and reclaimed Hexsteel to rebel groups, mercenary bands, and corrupt nobles. Potion running, alchemical reagents, and recreational narcotics, many made from Everwealthan black-market herbs, are sold in bulk to border settlements and underground circles. Mercenary contracts, assassinations, and retaliatory raids can be arranged quickly, usually through coded orders or vagrant intermediaries. Other services include documentation forgery, debt labor transportation, black-market spell scrolls, and information brokering, especially intelligence on troop movements, noble scandals, or Elfese trade routes. When hired by Everwealthan or Kibonoji officials under the table, the Syndicate also specializes in discreet political interference and banditry-by-design. For the desperate or morally bankrupt, the Syndicate offers war without war.
Dangers & Hazards
Despite its wealth and protection, working for the Syndicate is a high-risk profession. Operatives face the constant threat of ambush by rival factions, including the Dwarfish Cartel, Kibonoji assassins, or the Arcane Coalition. Betrayal from within is common, loyalties are bought, not earned, and failure often ends with a slit throat or forgotten grave. Smugglers risk exposure to volatile materials such as Blackglass Dust or Mire-Iron based narcotics, which can cause hallucinations, sickness, or explosive magical backlash. Some suffer permanent damage from cursed artifacts or alchemical spills due to poor containment. Border crossings, even under bribe, remain a gamble, Everwealthan patrols occasionally arrest or execute traffickers publicly to make examples. Psychological tolls also weigh heavy; long-term Syndicate enforcers often fall to paranoia, addiction, or burnout from years of dirty coin and violent coercion. And, above all, rumors swirl of the Syndicate’s expansion plans, suggesting that one day soon, the hazards may not be from outside forces, but from becoming part of something far darker than business.
Type
Illicit
Demand
Through war, famine, and state decay, their demand only grows. Everwealth’s wartime logistics rely on stolen Elfese goods, discreet mercenaries, and black-market spellpowder, much of which flows through Syndicate channels.
Legality
In Kathar: fully legal. Every transaction is enforceable, every shipment protected by “Free Commerce” codes written into Katharan law. In Everwealth: unlawful on paper, but tolerated in practice. Accusations vanish, paper trails “go cold,” and the Syndicate remains a convenient evil. No one, not even Kibonoji, has yet dared to declare them an enemy, partly due to their economic weight, and partly due to fear. If Everwealth collapses further, the Syndicate’s legions may shift from merchants to conquerors.
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