Alterian Syndicate

The **Alterian Syndicate** is a criminal organization that operates out of Umoja, having amassed a large power structure based off of smuggling Umojan technology out of the isolationist Umojan Protectorate, and designer drugs and contraband into the Protectorate.

## History

### Smuggler's Run

The Alterian Syndicate began as a series of smugglers who tried to strike a fortune smuggling the powerful but closely guarded Umojan technology out of Umoja and into the planets of the Kel-Morian Combine and the Terran Confederacy, and various black market operations throughout the sector. However, all warp space routes outside of Umoja were heavily tracked, with outposts and jamming platforms along the border protecting from all but precise, military grade jumpdrives, at the time a rarity even for the mighty Confederacy. Roundabout routes were too long for smaller craft to sustain warp without refueling. Yet there was one route out of Umojan territory that was possible for smaller ships: a swath of space filled with unpredictable gravity anomalies that could crush any ship that went through it and scatter them into their base particles: the Alterian Rift.

Umoja could not place outposts along the rift due to its unpredictable fluctuation, but smugglers knowing how much a single run of Umojan technologies would earn them among the black market would continue to try anyway. Most lost their lives and ships to the unpredictable rift, but a few through sheer luck were able to make it through. This caught the eye of an up-and-coming arms dealer named Grey Brankston. Brankston used a small fortune to pay the pilots who survived the trip for their charts and maps, and learned that there was a pattern to the rift's fluctuations, but one nearly impossible for a human pilot to guess accurately. Ten years of data later, in 2458, Brankston uploaded enough data into an advanced adjutant that could plot an accurate course through the Alterian Rift straight from Umoja.

Overnight Brankston had made a fortune selling his formula to pilots, giving out only the route for that week and never the calculations themselves. Those that seemed to be asking for the formula too much in an attempt to discover his calculations would often find themselves with a flight plan that happened to contain some mistakes, and his fortune allowed him to dissuade any other criminals who studied the rift with high bounties.

Eventually, Brankston had his own criminal empire on his hands, one which the Confederacy, benefiting from the albeit small trickle of Umojan technology, willingly turned a blind eye too. Attempts were made to capture Brankston by Umojan authorities, but none were successful. Eventually, some Ruling Council members and high authorities would even turn to Brankston to bring goods in or out of Umoja, be it drugs, contraband, or information to outside parties that had to be kept secret.

Eventually however Umoja themselves would wise up, and in 2489 would place outposts close enough to the rift to track ships coming in and out. In 2496, Umoja themselves would imperfectly crack the Alterian code of patterns, but nowhere as well as Brankston did. The Alterian Adjutant is still one of the most sought after items in the Korpulu Sector, and its location remains a great mystery. But even with Umoja's countermeasures, the Alternian Syndicate had garnered enough power to become a much larger smuggling operation, creating new routes through Umojan colonies, buying off dock workers to turn a blind eye to contraban, and overall remaining a major thorn in the side of the Protectorate from then on.

As for Brankston, when the Confederacy fell and became the Dominion, he had assumed his contacts with the Sons of Korhal before would lead to good relations with him and the new Emperor Arcturus Mengsk, who had worked together in the past for arms deals. He even went so far to assume the Emperor would need him to bring goods in when he had declared a full embargo of Umoja. However, such was not the case. In 2500, while Brankston and his family were vacationing on Tyrador IX, they were dragged out of their beds by Dominion marines and executed in an alleyway.

### The Syndicate

In spite of Brankston's death, the Alterian Syndicate remained the premier dealer of Umojan goods through the sector. With the threat of the zerg and protoss, the need for advanced Umojan goods made the market for their powerful weapons a lucrative ones, and though the greatest Umojan military assets remained far too guarded for criminals to appropriate, mercenary groups using Umojan turrets or nanites weren't uncommon over the wars of the next ten years.

Yet In around 2503, the group began to splinter into factions controlled by various kingpins. This sometimes lead to conflicts and even small mercenary skirmishes within the group. Each kingpin began to gain a hold of their own market, Gregory Malkov picked up Brankston's classic arms dealing business, Nestor "The Fish" Xu made a fiefdom selling non-military Umojan technology to outside parties, and Hector Ricci controlled the lucrative drug trade to the underclasses of Umoja, who had traditionally only known weaker drugs such as Umojan Bog. With his network of smugglers, heavier drugs such as turk and hab made their way from the Dominion into Umojan planets. These three made up the "heads" of the Alterian Syndicate, and mostly cooperated with one another, keeping the lesser sects of the group in line.

The power of the Syndicate has faded over the years since their monopoly on trade outside of Umojan space, but they still remain a very powerful force both in and outside of Umoja, as mercenaries looking for work or new technology often turn to them, and near complete control of several hard drugs within Umoja has kept them afloat as a criminal enterprise. Some have begun to suspect that some members of the Umojan government maintain contact with them and use them when needed, allowing them to operate in poorer areas unmolested provided they do not cause too much trouble, but such reports have never been confirmed.