Triads

## The Triads

There are no Yakuza here, the Mob having made quick work of any that have appeared, and the Triads have fared little better. Their last big push into the Cities  was in the 40s, and got stopped cold, largely at the hands of Black and Striped Hmong refugees from South China, who were quite eager to sign up with the Mob and take a little revenge on the Chinese for being purged out of their homeland.

*Be real careful about bringing up the Chinese collapse wars. Those memories are pretty fresh still for a lot of people.*
- Iab Npauj

*I’ll say. There’s still Caub Fab guerrilla types running around in Guizhou even now, attacking Szechuanese interests.*
- Phim Kooj Koi

*You wonder how much contact they have with the Dega Alliance?*
- Brynhild

They pulled back into the ethnic Chinese communities in Minneapolis and stayed there after that. At least until recently. In the wake of Crash 2.0 , some of those disparate Triad remnants pulled together and pulled the rug out from under the Mob  by offering direct download BTL on the new wireless Matrix. They’ve kept themselves decentralized and mobile for the last few years to keep the soldati off their backs. Lately, though, they seem to have gotten quite a bit bolder, and started building up a noticeable presence on the Eat Street section of Nicollet, in the Whittier neighborhood.

*They’re bolder because they’ve got connections on the outside and resources flowing in they didn’t have before. Better-quality BTL, cyber and weapons to ‘protect’ Eat Street with, even Wuxing tradition arcane foci? Where is this stuff coming from? How are they getting it past the Mob’s control of the smuggling scene? Any ideas?*
- Wirefrog

*Wouldn’t take more than a couple big shipments to get the amount of stuff into town that we’ve seen. Maybe the Mob’s control isn’t as solid as they think.*
- Red Hawk

*I hope the transporters are being well paid. They’re good as cacked if the soldati catch up with them.*
- Gopher Eater

*It might be some of the indie smugglers that are already paying protection money. They’d have a hell of an easier time than trying to do it without the Don  getting word. Still, what GE just posted stands.*
- Brynhild

*A little birdie told me it was the Eighty-Eights Triad in Seattle behind them, but I still am looking for some solid confirmation. Could be just smoke in the Trix.*
- Hyasynth

*If that’s true, that’d sure explain the cyber and the bottom-up organization scheme. But the Eighty Eights are on the outs with the other Triads, aren’t they? And aren’t they strictly a Seattle syndicate? This just seems like an odd time for them to be sending resources elsewhere.*
- Vision Fist

*I’ve got another idea. I downloaded a beetle from them once to try and trace it. Didn’t get very far before the site’s IC kicked in and kicked in hard (where did they get that kind of drek?), but I traced it into the Vietnamese RTG.*
- Nodewalker

*Maybe the Triad’s being propped up by Vietnam  (or the Khouang Combine , which as the nation’s pet corp, amounts to the same thing). It might be trying to give the Mafia here trouble to keep them from helping the Dega Alliance any more than they already have*.
- Phim Kooj Koi

*Could be just a reroute, though. And the Vietnamese and Chinese don’t get along, historically speaking, so it’d be pretty weird for them to prop up a Triad. Hell, Russia’s a Vietnamese ally, it’d make more sense to throw their weight behind a Vory group, or maybe even the Azzies’ David Cartel. Let’s not be hasty.*
- Iab Npauj

*The fact that they don’t seem to have the mystic bleeding oaths in place, at least not that I’ve heard about, says to me that they don’t have ties to the Hong Kong Triads or their affiliates, which really rules out a lot of the usual suspects, like the Ten Thousand Lions/Yellow Lotus or the Red Dragons.*
- Briarpatch

*I can’t trace the downloads, but I had a buddy analyze one I saved. He’s saying he can tell (beats me as to how) from some of the formatting that it’s of Horizon  make, or at least uses their studios’ formatting style.*
- Juba

*As are most beetles. Hell, half the studios in LA let the Mob or the Triads use their facilities for a cut. Doesn’t mean they’re the movers and shakers behind it.*
- Nectarine

*Hmmm… maybe it’s not Don Catarone’s life they’re trying to make difficult, but Damien Knight ’s. Horizon was the one that gobbled up Cross ’ entertainment division in Paris after the Crash. Maybe some of those guys are still fighting the old Cross-Ares war. Nec’s right, though, might not mean anything.*
- Wired Rose

*Haven’t they expanded into England as of late? The UK’s full of Triads, that might be where the Triad element comes in*.
- Vision Fist

*Yeah, but they’re much more traditional and mystical. Again, these guys operate so much like the Eighty-Eights, they have to either be inspiring them or backing them or something.*
- Hyasynth

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