Harborne Boys

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> “The bonds of blood and faith connect men over light years. Blood and faith; that is our strength.”
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> — *Founder of the Harborne Boys, Phoenix Duncan, circa. 2602*
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## Harborne Boys

Logo worn on lapels of Harborne gangsters during combat and ceremonies

### Type

Street gang (until the 2600s)
Mafia
Dappergang

### Territory

**Earth*** Various neighborhoods in Birmingham, London, New York, Paris, Manchester, Dublin, Cardiff, Hong Kong, St. Petersburg, and Tokyo

**Hyperion**

* Various neighborhoods in Jade City, Chasten, Empire Ramparts, New Lunes, New Pennet, Imperial Straits, and Lion Rock

**Tellus**

* Neighborhoods in New Sevilla

### Ethnicity

Origins in British and Irish sets; currently irrespective of ethnicity

### Membership

Over 50,000 members and hundreds of thousands of associates

### Leader(s)

**Earth Borough:** Chairman William Duncan
**Hyperian Borough:** Commander Otis Byrne

* Second-in-Command: General Edward Duncan

### Activities

Arson, bookmaking, cryptographic counterfeiting, assault, extortion, fraud, illegal gambling, loan sharking, money laundering, murder, fencing, hooliganism, bribery, smuggling, hijacking, racketeering, robbery, drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, data brokering

### Fronts

Harborne Luxury Limited
Golden Buck Bookings

### Allies

 Pearl Thule Capital
 Hyperion Commission

### Rivals

 Streetside Satans
Syndicate of the Torch

### Religion

Christianity (unofficial)

The **Harborne Boys**, also sometimes referred to simply as the **Harbornes** or alternatively the **Birmingham Boys**, are a powerful British mafia with a presence on various worlds of the Coalition of Congressional Republics; particularly Earth and Hyperion. Originally a street gang formed in 2570 by Phoenix Duncan in the Harborne district of Birmingham, the Harborne Boys would quickly become one of the strongest British gangs after aligning themselves with the more grittier interests of the Pearl Thule Capital megabank.

## Etymology

The origin of the group's name is from the subsection of Birmingham that its founder came from, named Harborne, in addition to the many youths that took membership in the street gang. As the gang grew in power and scope, they eventually took over the bulk of other Birmingham gangs and were often also called the "*Birmingham Boys*".

## Structure

The Harborne Boys operate as a semi-autonomous collective of planetary sets called *boroughs*. All boroughs at the end receive top-down orders from the Earth Borough leader, but otherwise are charged to manage their own businesses and members autonomously. The two largest boroughs are the Earth and Hyperian boroughs, led by William Duncan (descendant of the founder, Phoenix) and Otis Byrne respectively.

## Activities

### Non-crimes

The Harborne Boys keep their mainly-civil façade through profit generation from their non-criminal activities. Through their shell company Golden Buck Bookings, the group is considered some of the most influential bookmakers within the United Kingdom and the Planetary Republic of Hyperion.

They also own multiple "clean" small-scale businesses and shell corporations in various Coalition territories as a means to facilitate money laundering, which is a crime in itself. Even so, their consistent hiring of netrunners and hackers to clean their digital footprints for laundering leaves this measure a ghost for law enforcement to try and pursue.

### Non-violent crimes

The organization is involved in a miscellany of "non-violent" crimes that do not result in direct violence upon an individual, but nevertheless benefits the syndicate or its members in some way. This includes cryptographic counterfeiting of the Coalition Congressional Note, extortion of targeted businesses or individuals, the committing of fraudulent activities to glean money or connections, illegal gambling (both in the terms of territories where gambling is banned, and in the terms of soliciting gambling for criminal activities such as underground bloodsports), loan sharking, fencing stolen goods, bribing corporations and law enforcement officers, smuggling various illegal items through the Coalition, hijacking vehicles, committing racketeering business, trafficking guns and drugs, and data brokering (where they deliberately collect data to "broker" to online clients, mainly netrunners).

The Harborne Boys commit these various acts the most, as they see it as both less risky and more profitable in the long run.

### Violent crimes

Even with their involvement in both non-criminal business and non-violent criminal activities, the gang is nevertheless known for consistently carrying out violent operations on their opponents and targets. This includes arson, assault, murder and assassinations, and both soliciting the behavior of and participating in hooliganism (mainly against Asian gangs, but also in the terms of sports hooliganism).

Murders and assaults are almost never perpetrated on civilians, unless required in self defense. Instead, they mostly occur with either contract killings issued to members or by gang warfare.

## Rituals and customs

### Initiation

Becoming a member of the Harborne Boys, rather than merely an associate, is a difficult task. Nevertheless, it is seen as easier than being a member of a bonafide ethnic-bound organization such as the Hyperion Commission.

To join as a full member, one must either be a family member of a current Harborne Boy or have been an associate for at least five years with experience and merit in doing tasks within the criminal underworld. Either way, one must also have a sponsor to join, with this sponsor almost always becoming the senior partner that further educates the new member of life within the syndicate.

An initiation ritual occurs when one is to become a full member, which involves a Christian baptism (often of a Catholic design as adult rite of initiation) and the remission of sins past, present, and future. This is done even for irreligious newcomers or those of different faiths, as Christian doctrine binds the syndicate at its core and keeps its identity from shattering over distances of light years. The baptism is followed by the consecration of the new member as a brother to each and every one of the tens of thousands of members, consolidating the group as a massive impromptu family that spans racial lines and physical distances.

### Aesthetics

#### Attire

The aesthetics of Harborne Boy attire originates from the decisions of Phoenix Duncan to distinguish the appearance of his street gang from other outfits in the Birmingham area. He had ruled that the gang should replicate the attire of the early 20th century English street gangs, where the use of peaked flat caps or fedoras, overcoats, waistcoats, and suit jackets - amongst other complements - would be the standard style.

This fashion would persist with the Harborne Boys for over a century into the present, as it significantly distinguished the gang from the plethora of other criminal syndicates in both the United Kingdom and wider Coalition. Becoming a powerful mafia-like organization following the death of Phoenix, their style of fashion - known as "Neoslogger" - would become synonymous with their overall identity and influence. Several smaller outfits of British origin would attempt to replicate the Neoslogger aesthetic, to often minimal success.

In the modern day, the Harborne Boys and their Neoslogger fashion are eye-catching even on the neon, dazzling streets of both Earth and Hyperion. This is because of how they often dress much opposite to the average citizen or even rival gangs - instead of donning flashy neon-colored clothes and holographic decals, they instead use a light sparing of golden jewelry or pearls to complement their dark overcoats and light waistcoats.

#### Weapons

Harborne Boys, although with an antique aesthetic slant, are not ones to shy away from using modern weapon systems and firearms against their enemies. In their many conflicts of territorial and enterprise expansion on worlds such as Hyperion, the Harborne Boys were noted to be in possession of military-grade firearms such as coilgun rifles in addition to augmentations only cleared for active-duty military personnel.

Even so, in non-combat-oriented situations, Harborne Boys often carry gilded versions of antique weaponry such as revolvers, knives, clubs, and semi-automatic pistols while on the street. Others keep their weapons hidden in bodily augmentations, allowing for both surprise attacks and greater emphasis on their fashionable wears to the public eye.

#### Vehicles

For the average member of the Harborne Boys, they often buy accessible European luxury brands of terrestrial vehicles such as Astrallander AMW, French Traverse, or English Purser. However, high-rank and rich members are seen driving top-line brands, including the Italian Balistreri brand of terrestrial and aerial vehicles alike.

By custom, almost all vehicles used by the organization are painted matte black, with gloss only being used in showrooms or in special situations due to municipal vehicular paint law. Vehicular tint is almost always extremely dark, with sometimes golden tire rims and vehicular trim. The interior of these vehicles often resemble or actually use real wood to complement a generally dark and antique vehicular aesthetic; these sometimes come stock, as with Purser vehicles.

### Christianity

Although not strictly a tenet of the syndicate, Christianity carries heavily influence on the organization. More specifically, the teachings of Christian doctrine (primarily through the Catholic and Protestant beliefs of its original founders) disallows Harborne Boys from accosting random members of the public, affirms a degree of peace with law enforcement, and dissuades gangsters from immediately resorting to violence when confronted with issues. Instead, negotiation is pursued, with charity being emphasized to civilians and protected businesses who fall under their territory.

Despite not being an officially Christian gang, this slant towards "honor and ethics" - despite however superficial it may be in modernity - has placed them in the crosshairs of many anti-theistic, Satanist, or otherwise malevolent gangs that roam the urban centers of the Coalition that they co-inhabit. This includes the Streetside Satans of Lorenzo and Maogang, whose animosity had helped sparked the massive Southern Albion Gang War from 2688 to 2691 for control of the monolithic stretches of urban terrain.

## Relationships with other criminal organizations

### Allies

#### Hyperion Commission

The Harborne Boys are currently allied to the Hyperion Commission by way of negotiations carried out in Lorenzo in 2686; these were done to begin preparations for mutual warfare against the onslaught of anarchic and malevolent gangs such as the Streetside Satans, Sons of Chaos, and the Black Order. Such an alliance culminated in the Southern Albion Gang War, and persists to the present as a means to minimize violent competition between the two mafias.

## Cooperation with megacorporations

The Harborne Boys have been consistently rumored to be in bed with the banks of Pearl Thule Capital, both by law enforcement agencies and by their criminal rivals. The origin of such a rumor lies with the founder of the gang, Phoenix Duncan, and his supposed steering of an alliance between the original Birmingham outfit of the group to the Earth-based central bank of Pearl Thule Capital, one of the three British banking giants. Although no proof exists of this alliance occurring, the original rumor does coincide with the sudden explosion of power the street gang accrued in the 2570s - enough to catapult it into interstellar vectors of power by the turn of the next century.

## Relationship with law enforcement

The Harborne Boys usually maintain a shaky but peaceful relationship with law enforcement - either as a result of orders from their superiors, or due to bribing the local precinct. This is evident with the Hyperion Police Department, who often (but not always) overlook Harborne Boy operations out of a mixture of respect, fear, and bribery.

## Database Entry

HARBORNE BOYS

Golden trims, short-fuse attitudes, antique cars, and (of course) peaky hats — tenets of the Neoslogger style that punctuates every aesthetic note of the **Harborne Boys**.

The syndicate of over fifty thousand originally comes from the British Isles on Earth, but their connections and influences have spread across much of the civilized Core. Rumor has it that the Harborne Boys are backed by the banks of Pearl Thule Capital, and in turn serve as their muscle on the streets. Others say that they are simply a street gang of ruffians given too much money and power, with "boroughs" of the gang opening even on major worlds such as Hyperion.

Regardless of their true nature, the Harborne Boys are a unique force when they take to the streets. Some of the younger members participate in hooliganism, fighting Japanese or Chinese gangs or destroying properties of both criminal and megacorporate shell companies alike; others operate in more refined black industries, such as money laundering and profit generation through a plethora of different rackets. Their choices of weaponry, vehicles, and attire may seem antiquated at first, but do not be fooled — they are a definitive outfit of heavy hitters in the Coalition underworld.

## Trivia

* The Harborne Boys are heavily based on the *Peaky Blinders*, a street gang from Birmingham that operated in the early 21st century. Taking some inspiration from the TV series of the same name, the Harborne Boys also take various elements from English crime at the time, including lesser-known Birmingham gangs and the Slogger phenomenon.