> From: "Simon Bray" <simonbray_at_cwcom.net>
> Doc-Tor Mark wrote a rather nice piece about organised
> crime. My only disagreement is with the cult of Selarn, I
> agree that it helps elude the secret police, but I feel
> that it has more powers of governmental opposition than
> simply being an organisd crime syndicate. I personally see
> Selarn as an anti-Ompalamist/Darleester faction that
> preaches FREEDOM (shudder!!), and carries out terrorist
> activities to oppose governmental rule. They are
> true Freedom Fighters. The problem with somewhere like
> Fonrit is that prostitution, narcotics, theft and murder
> seem almost like the things that every normal person is
> involved in! I think Selarn may even specialise in
> smuggling escaped slaves out of Fonrit or somthing like
> that.
Come, as a good Issaries let me assure you that there is
common ground and we need not be in disagreement here. To
survive in such a snake-pit society, any form of opposition
would need...
- ...to be conspiratorial and sneaky, which also
means having some form of protection against detection
magics. Give a secret police Divination and any non-magic
undergrounds will have a depressingly short life-span.
Freedom affinities are not necessarily going to do the job
(you could use them to get out of prison...until the
nasties get wise to this and just kill you on the spot),
and you also need structures that will help keep you
hidden: organising by 'cell', so that you can minimise the
impact of arrests, secret recognition codes, etc. In other
words, you need to organise as OC and probably need
appropriate magical support. Even if your real goal is
freedom, you might find common cause with criminals as
necessary allies. (And Lanbril, as master of deception,
would no doubt encourage this!)
- ...to know their enemies. In a dictatorhsip, you
can rationalise many crimes as blows against the state. One
of the most impressive Chechens I have ever met calmly
agreed that he had worked in the 'mafiya' in Russia,
defrauding banks, because (a) the banks were Russian and
(b) the firms running the banks were all hand-in-glove with
the Kremlin. As far as he was concerned, he wasn't just
making a good living, he was striking a blow against the
oppressors of his people. I'm not trying to whitewash the
Chechens, just make the point that crime and resistance can
often be hard to distinguish (after all, who gets to define
'crime'?). Similarly, the Chinese triads - although their
past has been rather mythologised - have their roots in
anti-government political resistance movements.
- ...to know their friends. 'Proper' criminals may
well support freedom-fighters, both to gain some public
approval and also because anything which destabilises the
government is good for them. In Italy, at times the
(conservative) Mafia supported the (radical terrorist) Red
Brigades for various reasons, including that it was better
to point the police at a different target. In Fonrit,
criminals might well favour a new regime which doesn't
indulge in drug trafficking, etc...because it cuts down on
the competition!
So in other words, Selarn can be both: freedom fighters
using OC methods to try and undermine this nasty regime and
criminals happy to use freedom as a convenient way of
legitimising their crimes!
> BTW Mark if you keep writing this cool stuff on the
> Digest, as your GM I may be forced to use it against you!!
Hm. So I'd better not tell you the tale of what happened to
the Russian mafioso who thought he'd pass himself off as
'working with the Chechens' without asking them first...
See you,
Mark