Brotherhood of Missing Chums

This is the thieves guild of Bayport. It is organized in the usual form - top bosses, local bosses under him, and bosses and such under them. It engages int he usual pursuits of a thieves guild - robbery, extortion, gambling and prostitution and any entertainment it can get its hands on. It infiltrates honest organizations when it can, it tries to get control of groups of workers, dockworkers, sailors and so on.
It does these things with middling success. They were a long established and rather complaisant mob in the 1590s, and did not react quickly to the changes brought on by the wars on the Greatflood. They carried on with their thieving and smuggling and extortion and prostitution and gambling, and left the new opportunities - new companies, new sources of money, new uses for money, lending, investment, overseas trade - alone. The results were that they were left behind, most fo them. They remain tough guys, they run bars and brothels, they rob and beat people up for money - but they don't lend money or run ships or deal in the black market abroad, unlike every company in town. They became quaint, while the large syndicates, the Clawfoot Syndicate, the Four Blossoms, turned into multinational forces, engaging in activity most people would call criminal, and certainly able to dominate the poor thieves guild on anythign they chose to.
Not all of the brothers did this - there were elements, mostly downtown, who saw the chances and started to get involved, very early. People like Dinkins, Vermeer, Wetherby and Blyleven and Sparewell all started taking advantage of changes. But they were a section of the guild (even if they were the most powerful) - they could not bring the whole organization into their way of thinking. And more than one of them found that they could, in fact, make more money with fewer constraints legally (whatever that meant) than illegally. Sparewell, in particular, secretly built a network of legitimate business interests that he controlled apart from the guild. And in the end, he saw the Steinmetz Associates' difficulties as a chance to leave the guild and become an honest man.

Structure

Basic guild structure - boss, underbosses, by area, and so on.

Public Agenda

They are basic criminals, though they sometimes like to play up the brotherhood stuff.

Assets

They control the usual array of bars, brothels, gambling joints and so on. They also control most fo the workers at the shipyard, and a lot of the other dockworkers - though they can never control the majority of them.
Some individuals within the guild control businesses and the like which give them an edge - a lot of these, though, are outside the control of the guild.

Type

Guild, Thieves

Alternative Names

Brotherhood of Missing Chums

Demonym

Brothers; Chums;

Leader

Blyleven

Parent Organization

Duchy of Barnet

Location

Bayport

Notable Members

• Blyleven
• Sparewell