The Gangsters Campaign

took place on Semal in and concerned low-level members of Semal's organized crime.
== Premise ==
Beneath the high rises and gleaming lights of the planet Semal, a seething churn of ruin and fortune animates the population. Everyone is on planet to get rich quick and get out. Most will end up dying here. 
On closer inspection, those high rises aren’t up to code (or what passes for code). The gleaming lights at General Etheric are a beauty, but the ones inside your tenement are gas lamps that would make your grandfather nervous. The ‘speaks are a good time, as long as you’ve still got money and the Constabulary doesn’t decide on a shakedown. The factory might be the only place for two miles that’s air-conditioned, and that gets deducted from your wages. It’s not clear what you’re building these days – a month ago it was hubcaps, then some Baron went bankrupt and now you’re under new management and you’re making literal cogs in the machine. If you don’t like it, there’s millions of people more desperate than you. 
Maybe you came with some money, or you scraped it together on-world, and now you’ve got your own establishment. Deduct the bribes you pay to the Constables, and the protection money you pay to the local crime boss, and the constant shipping delays because of ether-market trades you read about in the paper two days later, and the rent, and you’re probably making marginally more than you would in the sweatshop. At least you’re not sharing a room with three other people anymore. 
Maybe you’re a professional, with a license and everything. That’s a fine thing, and after fifty years working for one of the big companies, in company-owned housing, eating company-owned meals, you might be able to retire if the subsidiary company managing your pension doesn’t implode. If you do end up working forever, at least it’ll be in an apartment with reliable heating and etheric lights. Or you could go private and hope for the best with the two cents you’ll have to rub together after paying off your debt to the company.
If you’re ever going to get out of this sweating, steaming lake of offal, or make a life in it that’s worth living while you’re young enough to enjoy it, you’re going to need to cut corners. That means skirting the edges of the system. Crime. Nothing terrible, like those syndicates you hear about on the radio. Just little things. Certainly not violence. Probably.
== Characters ==
=== Player Characters ===
Character 	Player 	Description
Randolph H. 	Daniel 	Newspaper and radio journalist with lots of sources and info on current events.
Criss 	Daniel 	Head of security at Madeline Tark’s hotel & brothels.
Aicitel 	Jessica 	Young half-elf architect who came to Semal recently seeking to make a name for herself.
Gertrude 	Kristen 	A good shot.
Cilla 	Kristen 	Local constable on retainer with Prektanos. Has an automaton head named Watson.
Harriet 	Logan 	Owns a shop, sells lots of things.
Icheb 	Logan 	Gangster hired by Prektanos mid-campaign. Owns a submersible called the SS Innocence.
Isaac 	Logan, Daniel	
Ayham Vec 	Matt 	Fialta tattoo artist, forger, unofficial medic.
Poncho Smiles 	Mike 	Likes to drive, drives fast.
Joe 	Priya 	"Very reputable pharmaceutical sales rep who has all the answers to your drug needs."
Lenny aka Leonnard aka "Tiny"	Quay 	Excessively strong orcish dockhand with feeble social skills.
Griphook 	Quay 	Scary looking guy, brought back in by Prektanos to help with the occult situation.
Victorio aka "Tiny Jr." 	Seth 	Sent as “ambassador” for the Alberghi Family. Useful henchman, works on the docs.
Jerry Swanwallow 	Seth 	Occultist friend of Ayham Vec
=== Important Non-Player Characters ===
Character 	Description
Prektanos 	The party's boss, Shantine veteran of the First Coalition War, in charge of numbers games (gambling) and also all of the drugs (legal and not).
Iko 	Companion of Icheb.
Mnimi 	Fish-frog person (one of the Curators. Went permanently insane.
Half-Orc Bob 	Owned Barjacks, Head of Barjacks Gang, mostly orcs. Competes with Prektanos.
Rich Craw 	Lenny's dad. Close friend of Half-Orc Bob.
Molly 	Dockworker informant for Randolph, covered for some dark stuff done by the Upper West Trenchies.
Jeff 	Friend of Harriet.
Sarge 	Upper West Trenchie sent to eliminate witnesses. Shot, captured, killed by the party.
Slim Frank 	Local constable, Judge Reddick's #2. Killed by the party during the fight at Barjacks, then reanimated as the "Will of Hieranthotat".
Judge Reddick 	Local elected judge, very corrupt.
Madeline Tark 	Runs the local hoteliers and service industry. A big financial backer of Reddick.
Agent Johansson	Magisterial officer investigating the Cult of Hieranthotat.
Agent Milton 	Magisterial officer investigating the Cult of Hieranthotat.
Slimy Bill 	Squad leader in the Pontooners Gang.
Hieranthotat 	Ancient Thanasid god-king attempting to have himself brought back from the dead.
== Background ==
It has been 36 years since the end of the First Coalition War, as it is known officially among the victors (unofficially, the Aeldmen call it the Fialta War). Bareth Aefendt remains the Serene Doge of Aeldrum, serving out what will be his fourth full, consecutive, thoroughly unconstitutional term. The Serene Doge is still only 170 years old and remains wildly popular, at least according to the state media – privately, Aeldmen may shudder or rejoice at the thought of a presidential dictatorship that could last another hundred years. Under Serene Doge Bareth’s regime, Aeldrum has prospered, some say largely by yoking its industry to the predatory mercantilism of “Fialta Reconstruction.”More critical circles have called Reconstruction the Mervodan Doctrine, after Bareth’s late economic czar, the human Francis Mervodan, who was largely considered responsible for Aeldrum’s policy of economic warfare against the Fialta. Some conservatives have argued that collaboration with the Valdosians during the Gunboat War missed the point of Mervodan’s strategy – these same individuals continued to vote for extensions of the Serene Doge’s term after a visit from his intelligence chief, Count Solaire of Lidenia and Pensace. (Mervodan once had another public role, as the champion of human political and property rights on Aeldrum and its core worlds, for which he is both affectionately and derisively remembered as “Uncle Frank.”)
Certainly, the brief Gunboat Wars of and with Aeldrum’s former Thalranese allies showed that the Serene Doge aims to enforce the commerce clauses of the Third Treaty of Korinth indefinitely, and it reminded the cosmos that Aeldman warships with Orcish Directorate marines (“peacekeepers”) can do exactly that. The collusion of the Bank of Valdos with the Aeldmen (nominally to avoid a second cosmic war) and the moral indifference of other great powersThe Shantine Empire and the quasi-rogue Knights of Adarnum took the Gunboat Wars as an opportunity to agitate for the protection (read: armament) of the Kirvan and Idolmarite faithful in the Fialta Free States. The Alusians were preoccupied with their own conquests. precipitated the Confederate Scramble, a new boom period of hostile takeover, fire sale acquisition and every other form of carpetbagging that Aeldman ingenuity could devise.
In , the Pin Jump was at last reinstated, undercutting the renewed stranglehold of the Nippon States on Celestial trade with Imperial space. Most importantly, however, the Pin Jump was rotated slightly to avoid the Brass Cities’ commanding position on the old Pin Jump Route. The Imperial powers found Celestial space much changed: a more even balance of power prevailed, with the Brass Cities isolated from great power politics and the Nipponese held in check by the Middle Kingdom and the Kingdom of Aksai Chin.A more somber discovery was the collapse of the Margravate of Tarim (long rumored by the merchants taking the Nippon-Brumaire route) and the scattering of its people among the great Celestial Powers. The growth in trade proved explosive, and with an Aeldman monopoly on all Imperial routes to the Pin Jump, the profits were eye-watering.
At the heart of these trade booms is the world of Semal: it is both Aeldrum’s gateway to the Fialta Confederacy and the shortcut to the Pin Jump from most worlds in Imperial Space. Still occupied by the Serene Duchy of Aeldrum, Semal sees more trade than any Aeldman world except Aeldrum itself. Internationally, its trade is rivalled only by Bishant, Korinth and the Pin Jump (to which it is one of the key access points). Semal is planet of boundless opportunity, and it is littered with broken promises and failed ventures.
Semal’s population has gone from a pre-Coalition War level of 18 million (a third of whom are believed to have been killed or displaced during the war) to a current total of 80 million, made up of Aeldrum gentry and colonials, desperate castoffs and enterprising opportunists from the Fialta Confederacy, emigres from Celestial and Naga space, Directorate Orcs trying to enjoy their cut of the mercantile profits Aeldrum has secured with orcish blood, and every other cosmic point of origin. Three quarters of adults on Semal were not born on the planet.
The devastation of the Coalition War and the mass influx of people during the post-war economic boom has left Semal with a strained, shoddy infrastructure – millions live in streets running with sewage and pay calamitous rents for the privilege. Pandemic is prevented only by breakthroughs in vaccinations and other medicines – all the same, preventable disease is rampant across swathes of the planet. Gleaming factories on the frontline of Aeldrum’s industrial machine are staffed as often by economically ruined Confederates as by Aeldmen. More than a few of those who have “made good” are Fialta, taking to the cutthroat economy of the new world as their forefathers did to the endless border wars of a century ago. Semal’s key industries include finance and trade (driven by the technological marvel of instant communication using General Etheric’s Ethernet) and supporting industries such as commercial ship production, but also a vast array of consumer goods, such as textiles, television sets, mechanical computers, automobiles (land and aerial) and medicines. High value, low weight goods are typically produced on Aeldrum and the core worlds, but to save on shipping costs many mid-value activities such as assembly are performed on Semal directly.
In the 430s, the cosmos is in the midst of a technological revolution. Instant communication, while still too expensive for consumer use, has transformed industry: consumer ethernet is touted as just a decade or two away. Medical marvels (some developed by the likes of the Nebai Corporation and others extorted at artillery point from King Sigvald) extend life, so that well-to-do humans have been routinely living to ninety and futurists speculate that the first elf to reach 500 has already been born. Tens of thousands of captured Brass Cities drones from the battlefields of Harwel and the Pin JumpA few Brass Cities exiles (cyborgs and the odd sentient automaton) still eke out a living in Imperial Space – most returned to the Brass Cities when the Pin Jump was reopened, but as cybernetics become commonplace, it is also easier for an old cyborg or even a clever automaton to blend in with the right set. have yielded knowledge that advanced mechanical design beyond prior imagining, and improvements in soul-mapping have allowed not only a transformation in computing, but the widespread development of consumer cybernetics: though still largely a luxury good, millions now enjoy the benefits of artificial limbs and organs, and augmentations that exceed rather than mimic the capabilities of flesh are beginning to see use. Etheric computers remain the province of government academies and the larger corporations, but private mechanical computers are commonplace.
With such a teeming mass of mortality and an endless churn of fortunes made and lost on Semal, crime is rampant: the latest Ethernet infrastructure pipes into corporate headquarters not far from streets where gangs settle scores using surplus hydrogen weapons. Being under defacto military occupation, Semal has local governments (townships have mayors and assemblies) and nine representatives in Parliament but no elected executive: its highest governmental authority is the Military Governor, appointed by the Serene Doge and confirmed by Parliament. Law and order are maintained by a ramshackle network of competing institutions that would have been the shame of even the defunct Aeldrum Trade Company. The local Constabulary sometimes amounts to a criminal syndicate in itself, taking bribes to patrol some streets and not others, extorting anyone who skirts the edges of the law and cannot put up a fight, keeping just enough order to avoid the intervention of other law enforcement groups. The planetary government also has a body of Sector Magistrates, with their own enforcement appendage, the Magisterial Police. Local judges are elected, but the Sector Magistrates overseeing them are appointees of Semal’s governor, and the Magisterial Police are often imported from off-world law enforcement agencies to minimize the chance of corruption. These forces are often spread thin, however, and tend to focus on smuggling, financial and industrial violations and organized crime. As a result, communities have often formed extralegal Watch Societies and similar vigilante groups, keeping their streets as safe as possible and enforcing a rough-and-ready form of dubious justice outside the overtaxed court system. Large private entities often receive dispensations to manage their internal security, and company towns typically have the best managed police forces, as much to keep workers in line as to protect them from criminal activity. The critical strategic position of Semal as Aeldrum’s gateway to the Confederacy (and as the first line of defense against another national trauma like the invasion of Harwel) means that it also hosts a significant military presence, consisting of highly fortified bases at the planet’s etheric gates and along its main rail routes and other infrastructural lifelines. The bases are largely staffed by the Parliamentary Guard, but they are commanded by the Aeldrum Dragoons, with senior officers all hand-picked loyalists to the Serene Doge’s regime. The Guard protects against external threats and cannot be deployed domestically without an act of Parliament, but the Dragoons have a standing license to ensure the security of Semal against internal threats. Thus, Semal’s highest form of law enforcement is perhaps its most arbitrary, managed by the Aeldman Department of National Intelligence and its military auxiliaries in the Aeldrum Dragoons: the Dragoons have been involved in a number of high profile takedowns of crime bosses, often over the procedural protests of their counterparts in the Magisterial Police. Perhaps the most visible sign of Aeldrum’s role on Semal is a two-page photo spread in the Semal Register of Dragoon officers with non-regulation insignias painted on their armor, smoking spice sticks and congratulating each other over a pile of dead gangsters.
 
The people of Semal have an apt adage: “On Semal, you can buy anything you like, but it’s probably illegal.” Weapons are restricted, with noncitizens forbidden from owning any firearms (short blades are permitted and common) and citizens restricted to a narrow class of licensed armaments. The tremendous volume of trade, overwhelming movement of people and seemingly inexhaustible supply of Coalition War-era materiel make serious disarmament of the population a fantasy at the bottom of a long list of law enforcement priorities: many a shopkeeper keeps an old trench gun under the front desk and drops a few extra ducats in the local constable’s pocket every month. Likewise, a proliferation of new and dazzling drugs to enhance and entertain has found an eager market on Semal, which was then swiftly restricted by the state (and by corporations worried about the proliferation of absenteeism). Enforcement is uneven, particularly as some drugs are considered beneficial to society because they improve focus and reduce the need for sleep: the historically lax drug laws of Aeldrum proper have also led to cries of hypocrisy in the management of the issue on Semal.
About forty percent of Semal’s population lives in the metropoles at the so-called North and South Gates (the North leads in Aeldrum, the South in to the Fialta Confederacy), imaginatively called Northgate and Southgate. Another forty percent of the population is clustered along the great rail and canal lines between the two poles. The remaining fifth of the population mostly lives in a variety of exurbs and farming towns, supplying food and raw materials to the hungry factories and warehouses. About a million Fialta descended from the pre-war population of Semal reject Aeldman rule and live in semiautonomous communities in the hinterlands of the planet. These groups are a source of occasional violent conflicts with the Dragoons and the constabulary of far-flung rural settlements. More often, the violence supplied by these renegade Fialta comes from denizens of the metropoles who buy the refurbished surplus weapons scavenged by the renegades.
Semal follows Aeldrum’s usual permissive policy on religion, as long as the local church does not attempt to affect government, organize labor or arm itself (militant organizations such as the Knights of Adarnum are forbidden, and enforcement is handled by the much more effective national security apparatus). Many philanthropic societies operate under the auspices of one of the great cosmic religions (with frequent check-ins from National Intelligence), and some activists seek common cause between labor organization, political autonomy for Semal, and organized religion.
== Summary ==
=== Session 1 ===
=== Session 2 ===
=== Session 3 ===
=== Session 4 ===
=== Session 5 ===
=== Session 6 ===
=== Session 7 ===
=== Session 8 ===
=== Session 9 ===
=== Session 10 ===
=== Session 11 ===
=== Session 12 ===
=== Session 13 ===
=== Session 14 ===
=== Session 15 ===
=== Session 16 ===
=== Session 17 ===
=== Session 18 ===
=== Session 19 ===
=== Session 20 ===
=== Session 21 ===
=== Session 22 ===
=== Session 23 ===
=== Session 24 ===
=== Epilogue ===
It takes years until the investigation into this incident is resolved. No one ever guesses the true cause of the dam collapse. 
Lenny makes it out of the scene of destruction, amid weeks-long power outages, social unrest, and much renewed gang violence. The Governor had written him a nice letter about how proud his dad was of him, and included his tickets out of Semal, some starter cash, and job references. 
Watson becomes assistant chief of security for GE, mounted upon a series of rotating poles as he pleases, keeping an eye on people and telling them to watch themselves. He enjoys his retirement. 
Vec had transmitted a message with lots of evidence of criminal activity to the Aeldrum Dragoons, meaning that Aeldrum National Security gets involved, causing serious damage to the local population and lots of violence against civilians. Dragoons aren’t sure if the cult of Hieranthotat was really a cult or if it was a front for the Fialta resistance, and mount a cold-war style reign of terror. 
After collapse of the Pontooners’ leadership and most of the gang drowning when the dam was destroyed, Isaac and Ingo take control of the gang. 
NSB gets really vicious in putting down the Pontooners, for years treating the area like an enemy combat zone, frequently boarding boats, shooting Pontooners, and tossing them overboard. 
The Trenchies were also connected to the cultists, so the NSB takes an interest in them, too. (“It’s as if organized crime became a national security issue for the first time.”) The party’s actions are likely indirectly responsible for the violent, but very effective, cleanup of South Gate.
Prektanos returns with lots of evidence of criminal activity by Judge Reddick – and is prepared to use this to blackmail Reddick. But Madeline Tark, who got the drop on the situation, is prepared with plenty of blackmail on Judge Reddick herself. He retires ignominiously under her threats. They still call each other every week. 
Prektanos commits suicide in his casino: two shots to the back of the head.
The newsies are as safe as they can be, living in the capital of an authoritarian government. 
The Curators (minus Mnimi, who will never recover) escape off-world, with as many medallions as they can find, in a naive and unrelenting quest to restore their dead god. 
== Notes ==
Category:Campaign Summaries