Criminal Syndicates

Criminal syndicates do much the same work as Superpowers, corporations, and PMCs. They move goods, lend money, enforce agreements, provide protection, collect debts, and occasionally kill people who make administration difficult. The main difference is that the more powerful organisations got to decide which parts of their business were legal.

Syndicates thrive where legitimate institutions do not. In the Jambles and Frontier especially, they may be the only people capable of moving medicine through a blockade, finding forged papers, extending credit, fencing restricted equipment, or getting you off-world without asking inconvenient questions. 

Every Armournaut insists they do not work with organised crime. Fine. Ask where they buy unregistered ammunition, who introduces them to local fixers, and which perfectly respectable shipping concern moves the cargo nobody has declared. You do not have to join a syndicate to depend on one.

Saulchus Combine

The Saulchus Combine is the Cluster’s largest illicit lifeform-trafficking collective, trading everything from dangerous alien fauna to near-priceless Old Earth livestock through a network of legitimate fronts. Rumours tie it to the Genetic Liberty Front, but whatever its politics, the Combine has unmatched experience moving hazardous and illegal biological cargo without attracting attention.

Its centre is Saulchus Free Port in the Frontier, a settlement that grew from an old procurement base into a market for colonists, smugglers, Armournauts, and anyone buying livestock, farmable flora, or stranger things. There are leasing and amenity fees, but residents tend to discover that freedom can still come with debt collectors. Security is provided by indentured supplicants and hired PMCs.

The free port’s fortified mainland border is less reassuring. More than fifty nearby settlements have been lost, with rumours blaming escaped engineered flora and fauna. The Combine hires Armournauts for procurement and defence, and some settle there permanently for the pay.

I wouldn’t. Everyone who takes Combine work seriously gives off animal-husbandry-enthusiast vibes, if you get my meaning. If you’re speciated or anthrodivergent, stay well away. I would not trust an illicit trafficking operation to develop a nuanced philosophy of personhood.

Relay Rats

Relay Rats are smugglers and traffickers who move illicit cargo through relay networks and Corridor Space. They are not a single syndicate so much as a professional culture: people who know how to bypass customs, disappear into passenger traffic, exploit freight systems, and share warnings before the authorities catch up.

Some stow away with little more than survival gear and a package. Others pose as tourists, migrants, or crew. The rarest operate dedicated smuggling vessels built around concealment, speed, and routes nobody sensible would use. Relay Rats often hire Armournauts for procurement, escort, or the point where discretion has already failed.

The ones I’ve met are great, honestly. Films make organised crime look like criminal masterminds in expensive rooms. Most Relay Rats are people who decided moving things quietly made for a safe living. They are generally more stable than Armournauts, which is probably why they hire us for the bits they find distasteful.

New Monaco Mob

The New Monaco Mob is probably the largest criminal empire in the Cluster, run from New Monaco Station under Grand Spireress Ysabella Murensis II. Her family arrived there in disgrace after fleeing Adria and, over the next century, rebuilt themselves into something much worse: a criminal network with enough money, intelligence, and reach to treat most rivals as acquisition opportunities.

Narcotics built the foundation, but the Mob now deals in controlled technologies, extortion, racketeering, logistics, and whatever else turns a profit. The Felicitas casino chain launders enough money to make respectable accountants develop spiritual objections. Rival syndicates are often raided by the Mob before law enforcement gets the chance, and rumours persist that it uses illegal AI to track competitors across dark networks.

Its senior enforcers are often Armournauts, backed by power-armoured hit teams slightly overdressed for racketeering.

The Mob is just the worst. Every one of them performs gangsterhood like there’s a camera nearby. Where I grew up, these orbital peacocks would have been robbed by teenagers before breakfast.

Also, Arcado still owes me four thousand scrip in twos-up. I haven’t forgotten, Arcado. Sleep well, friend.