Lore Proposals ⇒ The Burnished

[Leorick]

The Burnished

The Burnished are a Lysium based criminal syndicate which territory includes the The Outer Banks and stretches beyond Lysium's borders to many smaller towns and villages throughout Winhem. They began as a small time fencing organization but grew into a criminal enterprise which deals in all manner of criminal activity, but is known mostly for their extensive human trafficking network and willingness to use public, unsheathed violence. As the primary human trafficker in Winhem they provide most underground brothels and clubs with the victims that keep them profitable, and thus have deep political connections owing to their extensive blackmail on ranking Lysium officials.

Members of The Burnished are considered members for life, and getting into the gang requires a recommendation from an existing member and includes an initiation which is often but not always murder.

The Burnished hierarchy is complex, with each smaller street level 'cell' receiving orders from faceless dead drops. Those who do those drops are middle men, rarely members of the gang but instead street urchins or unwitting fools. Leadership is secretive and mostly unknown, and it is believed those giving the orders to be dead dropped are not at the top of the organization, but themselves simple middle management.

They have no symbol, secret handshake or colors; preferring their members blend in.

This secrecy is confusing to authority, for while they go to great lengths to keep cells separated and hierarchies insulated The Burnished are most known by the public for a single thing - an absolute willingness to commit heinous violence in broad daylight. It isn't rare for a Burnished thug to cut down even regular civilians in front of guards.

It is this open taste for violence which makes The Burnished the most feared gang in Lysium by those outside the criminal lifestyle.

Out of Character

This is designed to be a NPC criminal organization with broad enough goals and actions to be used by anyone in Lysium as an antagonist for their threads not just in Lysium, but throughout Winhem.

They are also designed to be believably insular that any awful things they do in the thread will only blowback on that specific cell, rather then topple the entire organization.

I also have some moderated threads planned for a plot involving them sometime in the future.

[Abraxas]

One thing you got to love about humans is their willingness to commit heinous crimes against themselves even when aliens have invaded the world. This is a good starting point but not something I would call a complete proposal. There are a few things that need to be expanded upon before this could be added to the lore pages. Mostly, its too vague. More detail needs to be flushed out. Below are some suggested points that I have.

History

I like the idea that it was just some low-profile fencing that expanded into a bigger enterprise. But there are many details that you can put in here. I know that having a mostly blank canvass to work with can be difficult, but we need more than the simple summary. For instance, do they still do the fencing? What locations are well-known or strongly suspected to be associated with the Burnished? Why are they named the Burnished? Why haven't they expanded into the Public or Military districts of Lysium if they have blackmail/influence there? Why does initiation involve murder? What are the Burnished's goals and motivations? You don't need to answer all of these questions, but when writing a group be sure to make it something with plenty of details.

Another point is that the organization's influence can't be as expansive as you're suggesting. It needs to centralized to a certain city, or even a certain area of a certain city. The organization can attempt to expand their areas of operation, or influence, through roleplay as the site grows, but to say outright that they're operating all across Winhem is not going to be approved.

Membership & Leadership

Again, these little tid-bits were brief and need more elaboration. The lore pages should include about 80% of the OOC information regarding the organization. Don't just say the leadership is complicated, we want to see an actual map or layout of how it works from the top all the way to the bottom. Create NPC write-ups for the some or all of the leadership. Are these people business men, politicians, or crime lords? All of the above? These sections need to be well thought out for players to really utilize. Don't just make this a group for players to work against, or lay their blame on when random crime is being done. Make it detailed enough so that a player can join it and understand right away how they could climb up the hierarchy. Create a name or title of a person/group that makes the final decision of accepting a new recruit. Do the Burnished approach potential recruits or wait to be discovered before attempting to recruit?

The Secrecy

With how you have described it, the Burnished approach to secrecy is a bit contradictory. Blatant murder in front of the guards but having splintered celled groups? You've been emphasizing that you can't tell who is a member and who isn't. So, perhaps it would be better to say that the Burnished orchestrate events to have murder committed in broad daylight in front of the guards. Sounds like they're supposed to be a "rumored" organization. The name circulates among the public, but the members and the law-enforcement both deny their existence.

Their Crime

I'm just going to say it, human trafficking in Lysium? Not likely. Lysium is the human capital and the centralization of human unity. If human trafficking is going to be their primary game then they'll more likely operate out of Brickwell or in another place that Bigalien is cooking up. If you really want the Burnished to operate out of Lysium then I'd suggest shifting them to running indentured-servitude scams. That could be their thing! They head-hunt impoverished people and offer the chance at a better life through indentured-servitude. Initial recruits could also be indentured servants. Those that are underperforming or are to be disposed of are chosen to perform dead-drops or those brutally public murders.

Overall, more specifics are needed. Solidify what the Burnished have their hands in, what they don't get involved in, and where their involvement is. Otherwise they just become the existential boogeyman of Siliren/Winhem.

[Bigealien]

I want to apologize for misleading you, Leo, on where to place this in the forums. I have not created many formats of proposals, and an agency like this is very complicated and would need multiple NPCs, locations, history, etc in order to be put into the proposals page. So instead we have moved it to the Requests forum so that you and the Mods and other Players if they wish can come in, give ideas, suggestions, comments, etc. to help you develop this.

I love the base idea of this. I think crime agency's are fantastic story for PCs to play around with - but yes it needs a lot of work - which we will help you with!!

Everything Abra said it correct - especially about Lysium. Lysium is very well ordered, the home of the Lysium Military and a significant population as members of the military, constant patrols, etc. Crime is, of course, never non-existant, but its rarer and harder to accomplish in Lysium.

I'm not sure if you've heard of Brickwell. It's mentioned a few times very quickly in some Lore pages, but basically its a human city which will eventually be open for Play, like Lysium and Avakaron. Brickwell would be a great place for this agency to call home. I will work on making the Lore Pages for Brickwell open, and I'll let you know when they are so you can take a look as see if you agree. Placing them in Brickwell will allow them more freedom to grow and act. Lysium can have agents there as well - but it would likely be just one small headquarter location and few agents in the city.

I think Abraxas' idea of indentured servatude is fantastic! This I think would work a lot better in Winhem. Slavery is basically non-existant in the generally understood form. Indenturned servatude makes much more sense for this Region. Once other regions are open, some will have a more basic definition of slavery that is more popular in those locations.

However I am working on a location, a crime base for pirates basically, where indentured servants/slaves would definitely be popular on pirate ship crews, so this agency might be very popular with this location. We can work together on this later!

[Leorick]

Some counter points.

1. Human Trafficking isn't possible in Lysium.
Men and women are trafficked everyday from places that are the 'seat of martial law', rape is prevalent in the U.S. military for example and in a place as aggressively policed as Washington D.C. women are trafficked. That speaks nothing of places ruled with legitimate iron fists, like the CCP, where trafficking is so terrifyingly common.

But even if I concede your point, a pre-mass communication society has such a strong hold over even the The Outer Banks that human trafficking isn't even possible - it's important to understand that is why I stated they operate in the surrounding small villages and towns. The victims are grabbed outside of Lysium for service within Lysium.

However, if your vision of Lysium is simply incongruous with the concept I'm hardly going to argue the point. At the end of the day Lysium is your creation, I just try to adapt to it.

2. Indentured Servitude
The idea of indentured servitude is an interesting play; but I feel significantly harder to get away with unless the legal mechanisms of Lysium allow contracts that bind people into it. I find that unlikely given the information provided to me about it's level of lawfulness. An indentured servant is essentially someone who has been trafficked by circumstance, and is no easier to hide from the omnipresent authority.

3. The Secrecy
The violence being inconsistent with the secrecy was somewhat intentional, a truly secret organization would under almost no circumstance interact with a series of 'murder hobos' known as Player Characters. This would make the organization of little use as a roleplaying tool unless your character was specifically designed as a detective or the like.

Thus, I designed them to be superficially similar to a terrorist organization. They operate in cells, and each cell is disconnected from each other. As to why they allow excessively violent psychopaths to murder people in the street within their organization is simple. Fear is a powerful motivator for regular folks and other gangs to leave them alone.

4. Not intended to be joined
I should also mention, I did not design this organization to be joined by player characters - I'm not opposed to it, but I'd prefer it wasn't looked at through the lens of a organization I'm intending to actively run or recruit for. Every character involved from the outset will be an NPC, and I will keep no creative control over the organization. It's explicitly designed to be a plot device.

That said, if people do want to join it with characters they can.

5. History
It is my mistake for not being more detailed and will work on that soon.

6. Organization
I was vague with it's structural hierarchy to allow players to adapt it to their individual roleplay needs but have no problem structuring it better. Do understand as a Al Qaeda style cell based organization there aren't direct lines up the ladder and advancement is based more on nepotism then merit.

7. The Name
They fenced stolen jewellery and the like, often polishing or 'burnishing' to a shine. Will obviously be elaborated in the story to come.

8. Moving the organization
This was designed to be a plot device for Lysium, I'd likely just do a full redesign or scrap it rather then move it. That said, I look forward to the new location as it sounds fun!

[Bigealien]

Human trafficking is certainly possible in Lysium - I don't ever like to say 'never' because there are exceptions to every rule of course. All I'm saying is it would be unlikely for an organization who deals largely with human trafficking to find their home base in Lysium, as the customer base would be small and the risk would be extreme. I agree with your point that the agency would get people from the surrounding villages and bring them into Lysium, that would work best. As for indentured servatude, I do think this would be more likely in Lysium than traditional slavery as the military wouldn't look too much in to this type of situation since there is some money involved, where with slavery there is not.

If you want human trafficking to be the main focus of this agency then I suggest making it based out of Brickwell, with a small branch in Lysium. This would allow for the human trafficking aspect to have a better root, while also allowing for some business in Lysium.

If you are set on the base being in Lysium, then I think human trafficking wouldn't be the *main* focus (not saying they wouldn't do it at all) but I think they would be more focused on stolen goods, smuggling, etc. In my very personal opinion, I think this route would be amazing as there is a lot of room for smuggling/theivery in Lysium, especially since it has a port within the Lake that can go up to the ocean. This would also work well with the pirate location I'm working on, they could be a kind of supplier. Thats my personal opinion, but this location if up to you and we are just here to help you with it

As for the history and organization we are here to help you with that too! The reason we want to have most of the lore written for the organization is so that when players write about it in their threads, they don't accidentally create contradictory facts. This sounds like not a big deal, but it can get out of hand quickly without anyone realizing it.

I understand your PC likely wont join this organization, but we definitely want it to be open to PCs who want to. Once we get more information about the general activities of the organization then I can easily take over the structuring of the insides if that is not something you are interested in.

[Bigealien]

This account appears to be inactive. So this proposal is paused. Please send me a PM when/if you become active again.