Vangs

## The Vang Family (Minneapolis Combination)

* **Leader:**Vang Zoua Her "Uncle Z", head of the Vang Family of the Minneapolis Combination.

The third and final family, the Vangs, is remarkable in that it’s to a large extent an actual family. Most of the soldati are second or third cousins. That said, because of the taboo against endogamous marriage, not all of the Vang mobsters carry the clan name Vang, and a good many aren’t even Hmong. The business they’re in, primarily speaking, is opiates. Some of it’s the purer stuff used in traditional Hmong medicine and the like, or even painkillers and such for streetdocs, but a lot of it’s street drugs like bliss. Hmong growers in Dega Alliance-controlled territory in Southeast Asia grow it and trade into the Vangs, sending it through the AMC where it’s less regulated and having it get picked up by smugglers in Thunder Bay. The Vangs send them heavy weapons bought from Ares and pay for it with drug money. The Mob and Ares both make a tidy profit, and the Awakened hilltribes get support in their war with the Vietnamese government.

*Can someone explain to me exactly what’s going on over there in Asia?*
- Juba

*Basically, the Dega Alliance is a group of allied hilltribes (Hmong, Mnong, Akha, Mien, and others), forest and ancestor spirits and various Awakened beings that’s taken over a good portion of Laos and neighboring countries. They’ve got a beef with government and corporate forces tramping around their forest, it seems. They’ve been fighting the Vietnamese Army for about six years now, trying to cut Vietnam in half. Their spirit hit-and-run attacks don’t seem to be able to dislodge the Vietnamese from urban or fortified positions very well, but by the same token the Vietnamese have made basically no progress, getting chewed up pretty bad anytime they go into the highlands.*
- Iab Npauj

*It gets more complicated, too. In Vietnam there’s a sizable number of people, especially in and around cosmopolitan Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon, if you prefer, that are pretty tired of the repressive regime and guns-not-butter economy. There’s a growing movement in Saigon, especially, that would welcome the Dega Alliance breaking through to the coast as an opportunity to rebel and create a democratic and independent South Vietnam.*
- Phim Kooj Koi

*Since Vietnam’s a state-corp economy like Aztlan or Portugal, most of the AAAs (the Vietnamese’s Azzie allies excluded) would like to see this rebellion happen, but would also like to be able to get at the natural resources the Dega Alliance is defending in the hills, which wouldn’t happen if the Alliance really beat the Vietnamese Army. The Cholon Triad in Saigon’s been much more unconditionally supportive. They’d have a lot more room to operate with a less repressive government, and the Chinese population’s been a bit picked on by the regime.*
- Gopher Eater

*After what they did to us Hmong in the Chinese collapse years, there’s a bit of a sick irony in the idea of the Dega Alliance and the Triad working together to break Vietnam apart.*
- Iab Npauj

*I thought they just had similar goals. Do we know they’re working together?*
- Wirefrog

*Wow, sounds complex. I’m almost sorry I asked. Seriously, though, thanks for the info.*
- Juba

*I’m sure they’re looking to get into the BAD business before anyone else in town does, but the growers in Southeast Asia don’t have their act together in that regard the way the Cartels in South America or the Triad-aligned growers in South China do.*
- Hyasynth

They also have by far the bulk of the Mafia’s Awakened presence. That means that, in addition to handling most of the Mafia’s magical operations, they are the biggest source of underworld magical goods. They can get you combat spell formulae, extralegal spirit services, all sorts of things. They also manage the telesma trade from paracritters out in the North Woods, and that’s big money, phoojywg. A lot of that gets smuggled out east, where telesma’s hard to come by, and the smugglers bring BTLs made in Toronto studios back into the Cities for the Callahans.

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