Organised Crime

The Mafia

The Mafia started around 300 years ago, when Sicilian landlord began paying local thugs to protect their estates. When Napoleon's troops invaded Sicily and southern Italy, landowners began hiring even more muscle to protect their holdings. The motto of the landowners and thugs became "Morte alla Francia Italia anela" (Death to the French is Italy's cry) or MAFIA.
When the French retreated, these hired thugs realized they were powerful enough to go up against their former employers. Soon the landowners were paying protection money to these hired thugs.
Through terror and force these early members or organized crime were able to win political office in several communities through Sicily and Italy. From these lofty heights they took over the local police and expanded their power. This often led to bloody conflict as different MAFIA organizations began to expand into the same areas.
These wars caught the attention of the straight shooting arm of the law. The subsequent crackdown on organized crime just moved the Mafia further afield. The most famous of these Mafia expansions was 1920's America. Prohibition led to a very profitable business in bootleg liquor.
By the time prohibition ended in 1933, the displaced members of the Sicilian and Italian Mafia in America had become the most powerful crime syndicate ever seen. In the 40's with World War II in full swing, from a prison cell Lucky Luciano, one of the greatest names in Mafia History, organized members of the Italian Mafia to aid the US troops invading Italy. Such is the reach of the Mafia.
The Mafia dominated the organized crime scene for the rest of the century. But in doing so it bigger than its Italian origins. The name Mafia is now synonymous with organized crime throughout the different cultures of the world.
The 21st Century festered as governments fell and corporations picked up the reins of power with an eye firmly on their bottom line. The Mafia has thrived in this new corruptible and uncaring system. The old-guard Sicilian mobsters are dying off and new crime organizations bring greater profits.There are Irish mobsters in NeoSteelsburg, Polis and Creole Mafia in New Orleans, there is even an African mob working out of the Caribbean with the blessing of the Commissione. and paying tribute to the Commissione.

Commissione

The Aristocrats of crime. Rich and powerful the commissione does not dirty their hands with the day to day criminal operations. With power and influence in every corner of society they are the board of directors of the Mafia. A thin membrane that separates the corporate and criminal world.
Every organization acknowledged by the Commissione is entitled to a voice on this board, but the real power is wielded by an inner circle of the founding syndicates. When they speak, no sane person opposes them.
Like a corporation the Commissione looks out for its bottom line. Families feud, but if the fighting starts to garner too much police attention or cut into the profits they step in to resolve the situation. To Mafia syndicates and organizations, the Commissione word is law. To most Mafia organizations, other than the god of the catholic church, there is no higher power.

The Syndicates of NeoSteelsburg

The present state of crime in NeoSteelsburg involves three factions, two old institutions and one relative new comer. The Malandrino Mafia Family is the oldest faction, followed closely by the Irish Mob. In recent years the NeoMafia has emerged as its own power in the underworld. By agreement the Mandrino Mafia Family controls all territory and crime north of the Steel River and the Irish Mob controls everything to the south. The NeoMafia recgonises no boundaries but generally holds sway over the InterWeb.

Until two years ago there was an uneasy peace between the Malindrino Mafia Family and the Irish Mob. The Don of NeoSteelsburg, to whom both families were accountable to was Douglas Kyne, leader of the Irish Mob. Though rankled by this low birth, the Malindrino Mafia were placated by the huge profits and stability his leadership brought.

Then Douglas Kyne died. The mysterous nature of his death was only made worse by the lack of a clear successor to the Don of NeoSteelsburg. As fingers were pointed and claims were made, outright mob war broke out on the streets of NeoSteelsburg. Agreements old and new were broken and forged on a weekly basis as the death toll rose. The Steel River became the battle line between the Malandrino's and Irish, while the NeoMafia did its best to stay alive. Any police action was blocked by Malandrino influence, Irish silence and NeoMafia hacking.

Though the worst of the fighting is now over, the smoke has yet to clear and hatred is as thick as the dried blood on the streets. The syndicates of Neosteelsburg are wounded, and they are hungry.

Malandrino Mafia Family

Since before there was a Steelsburg there have been Malandrinos committing crimes. When the town was first formed, they were there to extort and run rackets. When Steelsburg became a small city, the Malandrino Mafia Family was there to grow alongside it. So as the city grew, so did their little empire of crime. With this long relationship with the city and its people they had control over almost all the crime and influence over many facets of life in the city, especially the local government and police. Then the Irish arrived. The Malandrinos tried half heartedly to curb their small forays into crime. But like roaches they refused to stay down. Instead the Malandrinos simply put up with the disorganised rabble, left them to their petty endeavours and concentrated on their own more lucrative schemes. The Malandrino Mafia Family stayed this way until the coming of the corporations and the creation of NeoSteelsburg.

They put to use a level of influence that only a syndicate as entrenched as the Malandrino Family can garner. Making back room deals with the corporate giants, they lay down the plans for smoothed the path for outright corporate control of the city. Where such a dramatic endeavour as the creation of NeoSteelsburg would have taken decades, the Malandrino's ensured it happened in less then a dozen years. Councilmen were bribed or threatened, Unions were brought to heel and to the Corporations went the spoils. In exchange the Corporations allowed the Malandrino's to go unmolested in their business of crime. Even the Corporation chosen to police the new city was selected by the Malandrinos. The Family made untold profits from this endeavour, becoming the criminal version of the corporations that they helped. But not everything went according to plan. The Malandrinos, with their adherance to the Mafia ways of old, could not expand quickly enough to fill the massive criminal potential of such a city. The Irish Mob managed to gain control of the lower income and blue collar areas, a move the Malandrinos could not counter, least the conflict anger the Corporate overseers. They had no choice but to allow the Irish their spoils, and watch as they officially became recognised as Mafia by the Comissione. The Malandrino Mafia Family was not idle however. What they lacked in numbers they mad up for in stability and influence. When all was said and done, the Malandrinos had enough influence to alter the shape of NeoSteelsburg itself. Where they had once been subject to the whims of the Corporations, now they had enough dirt and leverage to make their own demands. The Irish may earn their keep from the masses, but the Malandrinos got theirs from the masters who led them, and the masters had all the money.

Hackers had always been a small problem for the Malandrino Family, but that problem grew with technology. They always dealt with any hackers who did not pay the proper respect or money, and often worked with the Irish in this area.

Then came the shift. Douglas Kyne, leader of the Irish was building his Mob into a power that would prove dangerous to the city. He was gobbling up everything he could get his hands on and would sooner or later have to be dealt with. Before events cold turn ugly the Commissione intervened. They named Douglas Kyne as Don of NeoSteelsburg, placing him in the position of supreme power. At the same time the traditional boundary created by the Steel River became an official one. To the north the Malandrinos, to the south the Irish and over it all stood Douglas Kyne.

During this time a new boss came to be in charge of the Malandrino Mafia Family. Maria Malandrino earned her place as head of the family not just through birthright, but through strength and co-operation. She strengthened all that was Malandrino and cut away that which wasn't, placing people she trusted. She nurtured her own and cut down any that threatened them, and through this use of the velvet claw she earned the name Mother Malandrino. Where a one could kill for their boss, they would die for their "Mother".

The rising NeoMafia was dealt with the way all upstarts were, with threats and violence. But this band of misfits turned out to be hard to squash. As the Family and the Irish sought new ways to fight this rising threat, so did the NeoMafia change, bringing in hardened gangs from the fringes as muscle. The escalation of violence continued as both the those with old claims tried with new vigour to eradicate an increasingly dangerous foe.

If this age of conflict was harsh, then it was about to get worse as tragedy struck. The death of Douglas Kyne led to Maria's "children" becoming unruly. She could cold not deny them their vengeance when accusations and then bullets started to fly. She did what was expected of her and unleashed the fury of Malandrino upon those that would dare harm her family. Though the Malandrino family lacked the violent gangs and technology of the NeoMafia, or the brute force of the Irish Mob, they more than made up for it with influence and ruthlessness. Where criminal forces were insufficient, corporate assets proved to be ample.

Irish Mob

The Kyne Family migrated from Ireland many generations ago, when NeoSteelsberg was still just Steelsberg and the world was a simpler place. In a disgruntled world that was still coping with megacorporate takeovers and rapidly rising crime, no-one had the time to help or befriend a migrant family so it was with great reservation that the Kynes turned to an alternative lifestyle to stave off the ravages of poverty.

Steelsberg was no stranger to organised crime, but in their early days, the Kynes could hardly be called organised.

But under the leadership of James Kyne shortly after the city became NeoSteelsberg, the Irish began to cement their authority over the old city and the lower segments of the new construction. Jame’s rule saw years of prosperity for the Irish Mob, and it was during his time that their power grew until the other crime families were forced to recognise their status as a powerful crime family, and they became part of the Mafia.

But the most notable Kyne was Douglas Kyne, Jame’s Grandson. When his time came to rule, he immediately set on an aggressive expansion plan, moving the Irish beyond their usual thuggery, prostitution and drugs. Suddenly they were everywhere; extortion, gambling, protection and almost every vice they could get a hand into – and the largest part of their success was bringing some of the rich man’s vices down to the slums. Where their rival families would make huge sums of money from a single important client, the Kyne’s made the same money from sheer volume of clients. It was during this time that a large number of smaller crime families were subsumed by the Kyne family, they didn’t pick and choose by some sacred lineage code like their bigger cousins – they simply grabbed anyone that could increase their wealth or power.

It was through this strategy, that eventually they manage to outplay all the other families, and Douglas Kyne was named Don of the city by the Commissione, with almost total oversight of criminal activities. Although it rankled many of the other families, his reign was one of relative peace, as the families stopped their in-fighting and got down to the business of making as much money as possible.

But everything must come to an end. Only recently Douglas Kyne passed away under suspicious circumstances, and barely was a finger pointed before the largest families began warring for control. And amidst this chaos, Douglas’ son Michael was thrust into the limelight as head of the family, but although he was eager and ambitious some doubted that the untested boy could survive the war that was to come.

NeoMafia

For years the crime in NeoSteelsburg has been controlled by the two entrenched crime families. These families, content with their usual business model and unwilling to spend time and resources trying to understand newer crimes left a small gap in the underworld, a gap filled by criminals at the edge of acceptability. Sometimes these people weren’t even technically criminals, their crimes being so new they hadn’t been legislated against.

Although most in the entrenched families didn’t want to expand into more modern crime, when they discovered it on their turf they were aggressive about eliminating potential competitors. The established families may not understand what a Denial of Service Extortion Attack was, but they did understand that someone was getting rich on their turf without giving them a cut, and this was not acceptable. Cyber-criminals therefore kept to the very edges of society, living like everyday people, afraid that taking too many chances may draw unwanted attention.

This changed ten years ago when “Mr Charisma” entered the picture. Mr Charisma, a Social Hacker, saw the situation: many disjointed, talented people making small scrapings in a large land of opportunity. When these disparate groups became crystallised by the well publicised death of a hacking ring at the hands of “Local Vigilantes” (Organised by the Irish Mob, and covered up by the police connections of the Malandrino Mafia Family), Mr Charisma and Steve the Cleaner decided to act.

It was hard tracking down those who only survive by hiding, but using Charismas force of personality, Steves established connections, and calling on favours from his old friend “Mr Smiley” to inject hidden messages in mass-media, Mr Charisma and Steve gathered together a loose network of cybercriminals. Their goal to share information about the other underworld groups, and improve life for everyone. It became quickly apparent that the loose network was also helping other people to find other high-tech crime expertise of their own. The success rates of Cyber-crime surged in the city, and now it was harder than ever for the traditional underworld rulers to find the criminals eating away at their market-share.

This didn’t stop the mobsters. Under the Don of the city the two families worked hard to understand and combat this threat. Recruiting sympathetic hackers allowed these families to understand and track down some of the group which was already calling itself the ‘Neomafia’. This overt recruitment of hackers allowed the Neomafia to insert some of their own, thus gaining access to the plans of the traditional families through double agents and outright spies.

It soon became apparent that the escalating risks were too great. Although the Neomafia was becoming better at hiding, the families were becoming better at tracking them down, and more violent when they found them.

Through a few friends-of-friends-of-friends Mr Charisma began to talk to the gang members who had not fallen in with the other mobs. He offered them money, power and information if they would help stave off attacks from the Italians and the Irish. Although the gangs were much less disciplined, and had never had to hide for their lives, they saved many hackers by turning up just as an Irish “Beatin’ Mob” was trying to kick down the door to a Hackers apartment, or as Malindrino enforcers were planting explosives under their car. Some died, but they were well enough rewarded. In addition to the money and power, the gangers were repaid by the NeoMafia in a more valuable coin, respect. It was the respect and integration into the NeoMafia that ensure that there were no defections.

If the struggle was hot, it was about to become much hotter, two years ago the Don of the city, Douglas Kyne, died, and the Irish an the Malandrinos went bezerk trying to find out on whom to pin the blame. Even though the NeoMafia didn’t seem to have anything to do with it, they were a convenient scapegoat. The streets ran red with blood and it was the Neomafia that hurt the most. But the NeoMafia fought back, and began cutting into the families, their muscle now sufficient that they could not be ignored, eventually culminating on a bloody purge of the technologically gifted through the Irish and the Malandrinos, as well as selected "Disappearances" among the Neomafia. Although this purge decimated the NeoMafia intellegence network, it solidified the NeoMafia as a hacker friendly organisaion and hobbled the families incursions into technological crime.

With the cost of the war counted in lives, Mr Charisma, Mr Smiley and the others bagan to worry that the other families would unify, forget their differences and focus on eliminating the Neomafia, undoing the better part of a decades work.

Mr Charisma decided there was only way to stop this from happening. Legitimacy. Bring the NeoMafia under the control and umbrella of the “Mafia” and join with the Irish and Malandrinos for the mutual benefit of everyone. With his mind made up he began casting his eye around for a chance to leverage an invitation to a big event. Somewhere that he could make his case to the Kynes and the Malandrinos and still walk out alive…..

Big Tony

Into this scene stepped a man. His name was Big Tony. No one knew much about him, except that he was Mafia and he was not from NeoSteelsburg. Although he stayed out of peoples hair, he was in town long enough to meet with a few people and make his name (but not his history) known. However, Big Tony's time in Neosteelsburg was cut short by his untimely demise. No one would have taken much notice of another body added to the pile of Mafia corpses, but Big Tony was no ordinary man of the Mafia. For reasons unknown, the death of Big Tony has led the leaders of the three syndicates to to state that they wish to pay respects at his funeral. Not only that, but they have demanded that anyone of importance do the same.

Crime

Crime has plagued society for centuries and the world in 2071 is no different. Almost all organized crime has slowly been absorbed by the Mafia and is ultimately ruled by the Commissione. Protection, Smuggling, Extortion, Prostitution are still big parts of the Mafia business. Drugs are still seen as "dirty" but the profit made on them means they are very much a big part of Mafia business. Traditional Mafioso's have been slow to accept the new technology often having to hire outside "contractors" to advise them on the new forms of crime, Identity Theft, Illegal Cybermodification, Information Brokering and Electronic Narcotics.

Corporations

Corporations now dominate everyone's lives. From the type of cereal you eat in the morning, the brand of public transport you take to get to work, the multinational corp that owns the business you work for, the brand of lunch you eat, the radio station you listen to , etc.
Everything you do is run and owned by the corporations, what corporations you support define you as a person. A Starbucks-Sony employee will lead a different life than someone who works for Subsidiary of Hasbro.
Corporations are large and multifaceted. They are interested in profit margins and brand image. In the 2020's there was a period of time which can only be described as the "Corp Wars" where Corporations waged both financial war and physical war. Lives were lost and many companies merged with other companies or their assets taken and the company dissolved. The general population rarely saw the effects of this, their favorite snack food was relaunched under a new name with a new flavour with them none the wiser.