The Gloaming Market

Describe a famous criminal organization and the unlawful acts they commit in your world.

The Gloaming Market is something of a syndicate-black market-shadow government hybrid. It doesn't own every criminal on the planet, but it definitely affects every criminal on the planet. If it's any combination of illegal, desirable, and profitable, they've got their hands in it, with members paying tithes to enrich those who run it.
Generally their operations are concentrated in the cities, but they also have significant presence and influence in smaller towns. For example, many fishing villages on the ocean coast are used by the group as smuggling ingress points as security will be much more lax there than in a major port. A few entire towns in the badlands are owned by them for the purpose of growing and processing drugs. The entire isle of Umbrys is said to be theirs- a place where only the highest-up Bosses reside in their opulent corruption, though few who investigate return to talk about it.
There are a number of functions to this complex beast. The Gloams help to coordinate criminal enterprises for their common good. For example, if a drug cartel requires assistance smuggling product into a specific region, membership within the Market facilitates hiring that needed talent. Of course, those who run the Market take a cut for the service.
In addition to hosting the black market proper, if a thief has goods that are too hot to fence the Market itself will often take the stolen items (perhaps for half what they are actually worth) and store them until the search cools off and it is safer to sell them (at extreme profit).
The Gloaming Market is the only slaver platform on the Garden, as all Nations (with exception of the Chymearan Collective) have abolished it in ages long past. That's not to say it doesn't happen, especially in the homes of the wealthy and unscrupulous, but it is illegal and reprehensible beyond measure, and the Gloams facilitate it.
Finally, it should be noted that the Gloams have close connections with the Snatchers, and occasionally sell slaves with the desired characteristics to the Shining City's laboratories. This may seem too far even for them, as they know they are selling them to their slow, painful, clinically extended deaths. However, it comes with a guarantee of safety: for themselves, their families, their enterprises. So sell them they do.

Type

Illicit, Syndicate