Horizon: City of Traitors

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HORIZON IS OVER!

The webpage remains up as a permanent archive of game material, mainly for the benefit of nostalgic players - although if you'd like to run a Horizon-inspired game for your friends, that's wonderful too. Horizon will be succeeded by Legacyin Trinity term of 2006.

If you like you can look at the (sketchy, incomplete) GM notes as well.

Defunct Gangs

In the criminal underworld you win some and you lose some. Sometimes you win so big you seem unstoppable, but sooner or later you lose so bad there's no clawing your way back. Here's a brief overview of some names you might hear on the streets in hushed tones when people talk about the past.

The Beggars

The Beggars of Horizon had been loosely organised since the earliest days of the Empire. They could be found throughout the city, from the noble district to the slums, plying their trade in all weathers, regarded little enough by their underworld bretheren in other mobs, and not at all by the honest citizens who threw them their loose change. Less of a mob in the traditional sense, the Beggars were a union of those who make their living on the streets of Horizon. They didn't recruit from one particular district; whenever someone found themselves too poor, too desperate, too ill, or too full of confusion and bewilderment to remain in normal society, and with nowhere left to call home, the Beggars would have an invitation for them. They recruited from all walks of life. Still, they had a definite organization, and it's said that plenty of people found new hope and new purpose in their ranks.

As far as the average citizen knew, there was nothing to know about the Beggars. Those with a little knowledge of the underworld (mobsters and those people in government whose job it is to know) realised that there was more to them than that. There existed a large scale underworld organisation of beggars, and most individuals in the city who begged for a living were part of it. They had a loose chain of command, and would pull together to achieve a common goal, but mostly just regulated their own profession. Anyone begging in the city for more than a few days (and hence making a permanent job of it) was approached by a beggar and invited to join their group, desist from begging, or leave the city. The only exception to the Beggars' control of their profession were known priests of the Intercessor who had taken a vow of poverty to live only by the charity of others - these were left to their own devices.

The Beggar organisation, though, hid a rot inside - the Beggar King, a high priest of the Mutilated One, and his cultists formed the core of the organisation. Some believe that the Beggars were always beholden to the Mutilated One, others think that the Mutilated One adopted them some time after their formation; whatever the truth was, by the Year of Chaos the Beggar King's control of the organisation was absolute. The Beggars were all not compelled to worship the Mutilated One, but they were forced to swear dire vows, rendering them unable to expose the cult. And yet various incidents during the Year of Chaos - the kidnapping of noble children, the abduction of orphans from the Del Orto orphanage, the shocking attack on the kidnapping victims that left many scarred for life - made it clear that there were cultists of the Mutilated One operating in Horizon. The Ghouls soon began to investigate, and the Ghouls soon uncovered the truth: the Mutilated One seized control of the Beggar King for one last time, attacked the Riverview Inn, and was cut down. Those Beggars loyal to the Mutilated One died when their foul master died; those who had taken no part in the worship of that foul God soon found homes in other gangs - especially Inmack's Boys - where they began to rebuild their lives, many eventually working their way off the streets. Indeed, Inmack's Boys have inherited most of the Beggars' secret knowledge about the hidden routes around the city, and their techniques of locating lost items and dark secrets.

The Cartel

The Cartel used to be the major criminal gang in the Trading District, and - as the name implies - was mainly a drugs cartel (although it included a wide variety of affiliated scum). A heavily Jurican-influenced organisation, the Cartel - led by Jurican immigrant Haythim Marid - used to enjoy a near-monopoly in the narcotics trade, but in the Year of Chaos they were dealt mortal blows by the moral disapproval of the Three Families, the competitive instincts of the Dockyard Rats, and the ambitions of Cartel enforcer Eric Tuco - while they survived the Year of Chaos, they did so much diminished, and in later years they would be overwhelmed by their enemies.

First, the Three Families, morally opposed to the Cartel's narcotic smuggling activities, attempted to stamp them out through direct violence. This tactic failed, mainly due to the Cartel winning support from the Watchdogs, and the Three Families lost their will to fight after the assassination of Raymond Daynann. However, the Dockyard Rats - the Cartel's main competitor in the drug trade - began disrupting the Cartel's supplies, winning the monopoly on good Vegdar-dust through a deal with Baron Litkinstien and making deals with the fae in return for supplies of strange Treacherous drugs. Furthermore, once Dockyard Rat Penelope "Bob" Weiss became Commissioner for Illegal Organisations, the Cartel lost their Watchdog backing, and indeed faced a police crackdown on their activities. At this point, the Cartel were crippled by a disasterous internal civil war, in which Eric Tuco briefly wrested control of the organisation from its leader Haythim Marid. Marid succeeded in regaining control of the Cartel, but was shot to death by Eric Tuco at the Riverview Inn - Tuco was then quietly killed and dumped in the river for breaching the Moon Truce. The Cartel ended the Year of Chaos having lost its monopoly, two leaders, and a great deal of underworld respect. The mobs smelt weakness like blood in the water, and as the year closed the sharks were already circling.

The Rumblers

The Rumblers were born out of necessity. Following the Great Strike, a great deal of the workers in steam factories began their own sympathy strikes. Now that the Imperial Legions were busily at war, the nascent Merchant's Arm were forced to deal with things themselves. So they did. They hired a small army of strikebreakers and sent them to work breaking into peoples' homes, terrorising them and generally pushing folk around.

It worked. The steamworkers' strike was broken, and the strikebreakers were paid and let on their way. Unfortunately, when one gets a large number of big, heavily-armed men in one place for a big job and then disbands them they have a tendency to gravitate towards organised crime. It wasn't long before the Rumblers had evolved into the major criminal mob in the Steam.

Power in the Rumblers wasn't hereditary; they recruited people who they thought are useful, and pushed upwards people who turned out to be competent. Their inner politics was not democratic as such: you advanced when somebody high-up noticed that you were doing a much better job than your superiors, and promoted you. At the top there were a group of four men, nicknamed (in a move characteristic of the nonexistent sense of humour of the Rumblers) the Foremen. What the lower ranks didn't know what that the Foremen reported directly to the Merchants' Arm - for the Rumblers were all along agents of the Arm.

It all fell apart when the Liberator exposed the existance of the Merchants' Arm, forcing the Arm to go at least semi-public: it acknowledged its existance, but claimed that it was a mere talking shop for industrialists, and denied any association with organised crime or illegal strikebreaking teams. Simultaneously, behind closed doors the Foremen were informed that their services were no longer required, and that the Arm would go to the Watchdogs when they needed help keeping order from now on. The lower ranks, meanwhile, felt betrayed by the Foremen; those who wanted to be true to their working-class roots eventually drifted off into the Family, whereas those who had a taste for breaking Union men's skulls enlisted in the Watchdogs.

The Daynann and the Columna

Once upon a time, the Family was Three Families: the Kellor, the Columna, and the Daynann, united by the Three Families Truce. For thirty years the Truce held. Then, in the Year of Chaos, it all went wrong.

It began with the assassination of Raymond Daynann, and the accusations of incest, rape, and Ghoul-murder levied at Count Alric Columna which would lead to Alric becoming a fugitive - with two of the Three Families losing their leaders, the crimelords of the Slums found themselves in crisis before the year was half through. For a time, it looked like stability would return: Moebius Columna, Alric's brother (and alleged betrayer) and the pragmatic Stuart Daynann took control of their respective families, and brokered a marriage between Philip Daynann and Crace Columna - a marriage that left the Kellor feeling excluded. Things soon went south, though; Alric eventually managed to clear his name and get his revenge upon Moebius, and Stuart Daynann was assassinated, leaving the more idealistic and fiery Johanna Daynann to lead the family. The final disaster struck when Crace Columna and Philip Daynann attempted to assassinate Johanna Daynann, giving her the Twin Silvers and then killing her without giving her the customary day to prepare. Philip Daynann and several of Johanna's bodyguards died in the attack, but one of Johanna's bodyguards escaped to tell the story, and Crace's disregard for an important underworld tradition shocked the Kellor and the Daynanns' now-leaderless underlings. The Three Families Truce was shattered, and the brief arrest - followed by a swift release - of Alric and Crace Columna on Horizon's Day merely added insult to injury, for the true damage was already done: the Columnas found themselves facing all-out war with the Kellor, a Slum-based conflict that would leave only one family standing - following the assassination of Alric Columna, the Kellor became the unchallenged monarchs of the Slums.