The Syndicate

An organization originally hailing from the mean streets of Detroit, the Syndicate is very much what it sounds like - an enormous crime syndicate without police interference to hinder their efforts. When the end came, inner city Detroit (never the most stable community to begin with) became stark pandemonium. The invasion, coming as it did in the middle of a crime wave, drove the bloody gang wars to fever-pitch even as the survivors struggled to escape Detroit before food and fresh water ran out. The ensuing carnage was unprecedented even for a third-world demilitarized zone, let alone a major American metropolis, as the street gangs, the mob and the tongs set to murdering each other with state-of-the-art technology, dirty tricks and unrestrained will, all seeking dominance of what was left.

In short order one gang known as the Lincoln Avenue L.T.s asserted dominance over the remaining organized criminal element of Michigan. Several significant factors aided in their success - their headquarters were in an easily defensible and heavily fortified converted warehouse, allowing them to protect themselves not only from enemies but from invaders effectively. They had made a successful raid on one of the mob’s larger weapons shipments, weakening the mob while strengthening their own position... And then, of course, they had Ray-ray.

Roger ‘Ray-ray’ Dubosi, warchief of the L.T.s, is a tactically brilliant individual, despite his questionable moral (and mental) stance. Once his gang was armed with the mob’s large cache of automatic weapons and explosives, he arranged several extremely effective guerilla strikes on the remaining holdouts among the opposition, securing an unassailable fortress in the Detroit Institute of the Arts. Dubosi insisted that the heads of the various organizations meet him here for a summit, despite rumors that certain Things covered in glowing sigils and oddly technological-looking paraphernalia had been seen collecting refugees for some unknown purpose in surrounding districts.

Dubosi offered the remaining crimelords a business proposition — now that no authorities remained to stop them, they would carve out a new monarchy based on strength of arms. Although Dubosi was a wily, ruthless and hated enemy, his unwilling guests had little choice but to accede to his demands for fealty and manpower — especially after the one dissenting voice (that of the representative for the Tongs) was swiftly and terminally silenced. And so the Syndicate was born — but many a respectable enterprise has had questionable origins.

The Syndicate’s future was saved by the deciding factor of bureaucracy. Faced with the task of riding herd over massive numbers of refugees from the urban areas, all of whom needed to be fed, clothed, provided with potable water and protected from the decidedly predatory invaders, a de facto power structure developed, largely made up of the selfsame thugs who had become the nucleus of Ray-ray’s plans, and thus indispensable. Somewhere in the middle of this chaotic hodgepodge of intentions and power plays, battling the invaders became a primary focus of the Syndicate, initially as a means of initiation to the ranks of the Syndicate’s armed forces, then as a means of securing territory (and personal glory in the organization), finally as an end unto itself.

This state of affairs has led to certain conflicts in the upper echelons of the Syndicate’s power structure — many of Ray-ray’s advisors were from the old school, criminals bent on pillage and conquest, while a continually growing arm of Syndicate heirarchy have developed a very protective sense of responsibility towards the encampments within their sphere of influence. Unable to do without Ray-ray’s tactical wit and charismatic leadership until now (although how long his luck in this respect can last is anyone’s guess), they have wormholed the administration with their own loyalties and plots.

Coming from a city rife with foundries, steelworks and mechanical engineers, they are ideally prepared to produce medieval armor and weaponry created with the technological advances of the 21st century. Even the most lowly of the Syndicate’s conscripts is generally issued with some form of lined clothing, often created from the cable-reinforced fabric once used in safety airbags. Engineers recruited during the exodus from the Detroit area have also been instrumental in crafting heavier armor from the special alloys they once used in designing sportscars. The ballistic ammunition assembly line has in the Syndicate’s home base hidden in the Michigan suburbs allows the Syndicate to keep their troops better armed, trained and prepared than resistance communities forced to scrounge their ammunition.

It is these superior grade armaments and weapons, along with a growing reputation for producing fine mercenaries, guards and soldiers, that form the Syndicate’s main export, and the one excuse for it’s continued survival. Since the Syndicate’s conception, it seems to have reaped the karmic debt of it’s founders — aside from the now-common attacks by zombies, aliens, bandits and other scourges of post-fall America, Detroit’s placement near a large settlement of savage, raiding mutants has caused them to require an even greater degree of vigilance against unprovoked attacks. Couple this with the outbreak of deadly plague that has necessitated the burning of significant portions of the inner city and you find a decimated and demoralized population.

In happier times, Ray-ray’s charismatic leadership has carried the Syndicate through similarly trying situations, but the visionary leader behind this new feudal society has grown progressively more insular, rarely meeting with any but his closest and most trusted advisors, and not all of them. His detractors (when they are brave or foolish enough to express an opinion) claim that Ray-ray is becoming increasingly paranoid and irrational, given to near-schizophrenic flights of fancy, while his supporters cite recent attempts on his life as proof that his paranoia is quite rational indeed.

Either way, the general sense of malaise and hardship on the streets of modern Detroit, coupled with the disease, constant attacks and encroaching threat of famine and revolution recall not only the middle ages, but the darkest parts of the dark ages.

Plague and famine aside, Detroit’s aggressive expansionist policies are also bogged down in the same difficulties that dog most people on present-day earth... Most specifically, the non-euclidean landscape and the problems it causes in engineering large troop movements has slowed the spread of the Syndicate’s influence even more surely than the slow but steady attrition of their fighting forces by plague and constant warfare. Likewise, the Syndicate faces the same continuous struggle to find the necessities of life that challenge other people, only more so — the forces of the Syndicate routinely search not just for food, viable medical supplies and potable water, but also for more obscure resources, such as ready supplies of steel, brass, sulfur, glycerine and other materials used in furthering the research and development of weapons and armor production, a desperate scramble for new technologies calling to mind the third reich’s efforts to harness small numbers against larger forces.

Despite all this, they still control several encampments, and have shown a more entrenched and codified sense of responsibility towards them — after all, their plans amount to a protection racket on a grand scale, so it is not that surprising that they feel a need to protect their ‘investment’. The Syndicate maintains a garrison force in every encampment within their sphere of influence, protecting them and going so far as to police the actions of their citizenry, although punishment of crimes (generally overseen by a governor of the ‘old school’ mentality) tends to be brutal if not sadistic. Several of the encampments that pay fealty to the Syndicate in fact police and protect themselves quite civilly, aided by Syndicate experts in these fields and the Syndicate’s ever-evolving armory.

In this way their society has grown into a community to contend with, in spite of continuous hardship, owing their success at least in part to a sense of general normality (in comparison to other resistance communities). The citizenry believe that their government is chaotic, corrupt and insane, but there’s a cop on the corner and spaghetti-os for dinner, so aside from the occasional ghost or alien, what has changed significantly?

Typical Attitudes toward the other Communities

“The recent years have been trying for everyone across this country and, we have to assume, the world. The Syndicate in general and King Ray-ray Dubosi specifically wish to express our gratitude to the many resistance communities across America which have aided us in our struggle to remain a stronghold for what remains of the human race. As new communities, new nations emerge and old ones persevere, we pledge to you undying enmity to the invaders that seek to supplant, enslave or destroy mankind, and likewise pledge to accept into our ranks all humans who hunger to strike back at these forces, until the enemy is driven from our homeland and our world. Unity is the answer to the monsters and aberrations that seek to divide and destroy us. Together, we will prevail.”

Cheyenne Mountain

Blackburn’s Compound

The Fellowship

San Francisco