Hanging Cloud Society

* **Purpose:**Justice. The Hanging Cloud Society is a network of militant, Mide  mages dedicated to bringing justice at the edge of a blade. What started as an operation meant to protect their communities has become an infamous band of vigilantes, operating on both sides of the UCAS/Oceti Sakowin border.
* **Membership:**Their numbers are unknown, but what is known is that members tend to be, but don't have to be, Anishinaabe or Anishinaabe descended Midewiwin-followers. They tend to recruit mainly female-identified or two-spirit, with very few male-identified members. The Leadership is fluid, as it has to be, to allow for members getting caught or having to go quiet to avoid the same, but there is an in-group of potential leaders within the Society.
* **Strictures:**Deed, Fraternity, Secrecy, Gaesa, Oath (Group)
* **Resources:**Medium and spread out among the 'Chiefs' or Treasurers.
* **Allies:**Not many, the Hanging Clouds don't make a lot of friends doing what they do. Most of the aid they get is from the Midewiwin religious establishment, which gives them material assistance and a legal shield when operating in the Oceti Sakowin or Niswi-mishkodewinan, in the local area, Region 3 of the Zone, this is largely in the form of the Wild Rice Lodge. They also have strained sometimes-working relationships with the I-29ers and Baba Yaga Society when their aims align, and bloody hatreds when they're at cross purposes. They also have an ongoing, low-key, working relationship with the Faceless Men up in the Niswi-mishkodewinan.

The Hanging Cloud Society is named after the historical figure of Hanging Cloud (*Aazhawigiizhigokwe* lit. "Goes Across the Sky Woman", also known as *Ashwiyaa* "Arms Oneself"), an Anishinaabe woman who lived and fought in the mid 19th-Century, and was the only Anishinaabe woman ever recorded as serving as a full *Ogichidaakwe* or Full Warrior with all the regalia and ceremonial privileges. She fought against anglo invaders and Santee Dakota (especially those led by her cousin, Chief Shakopee).

The Hanging Cloud Society was originally formed in the wake of the Awakening by a group of Anishinaabe *Mide* who suddenly found that the power of their rituals had returned to them and started to use that power to start taking revenge on those responsible for the un-investigated deaths and disappearances of Native women, which while always bad had reached epidemic proportions during the worst of the persecutions leading up to the Great Ghost Dance War. They continued even after the Treaty of Denver, expanding their scope to include abuses and corruption in the New Nations, and the persecution of people left behind in the USA (later UCAS).

They are watched closely by the Sioux National Police as a political threat. In the Oceti Sakowin, they represent the political and religious tensions between the militant, Siouan-speaking majority who follow the Seven Sacred Rites and the Algonquian-speaking large Anishinaabe minority who believe in the rival Seven Fires Prophecy. The only reason they don't get hunted down is that the other Midewiwin cover for them.

The Hanging Cloud Society is fairly representative of the Shadows-side of the Midewiwin, the radical minority that believe in not only healing individuals but in "healing the society", that is to say take 'corrective' or vigilante action against those who they feel are poisoning society. BTL's, political corruption, pollution.

Over on the UCAS side, its more straightforward, the Hanging Cloud Society is considered a terrorist organization and represents the dread and loathing still present on the eastern side of the border for both magic and the Native peoples, especially in Minnesota and midwest, where history has been shaped by their conflict with the NAN.

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