Organized crime is a millennia-old solution to blind obedience and civic abandonment. It fills the same void in ChromaSpyke, but its roots go much, much deeper. Not only did it evolve, it learned how to make the clan just as exclusive as it was dangerous.
For centuries, the old syndicates of the East survived through ritual, loyalty, violence, and the belief that tradition could outlast whatever government claimed authority over them. The long game was a way of life. Eventually, those traditions became a liability.
As Earth changed, the old organizations fractured into smaller families competing for relevance in a world shaped by cybernetic technology, interstellar trade, automated surveillance, and powerful m-corp agendas. Ritual survived. So did loyalty. But both increasingly had to function inside systems that cared more about efficiency and social entropy than honor.
Eventually the old clans were broken apart. Traditions, the bedrock of their ideals, became anchors dragging them down. Already diminished, they lost the leverage needed to grasp claims over fleets and colonies, which were ultimately controlled by the most powerful of corporations through networks of subsidiaries and fronts. No amount of extortion, blackmail, or legitimate inroads were going to provide the opportunities needed to match even the smallest of spacefaring corporations. No clan was willing to lower themselves to petty theft, and the old clans’ methods simply didn’t scale to interstellar capital. Even if they could take a heavy transport or subvert a colony’s interests, the consequences were damning once discovered.
The clans dwindled from generation to generation. And then they went extinct.
Ironically, it was their traditions that survived.
More than two centuries later, these traditions resurfaced in poli-Shinto street blocs. Underground shrines, techno-neotribalism rituals, and cultural autochthony. Where Kincept tribes were formed through diasporic convergence and deterritorialism, the Han-Gurei developed strict xenophobic attitudes and practiced influence peddling.
This didn’t mean they were accepted. The Age of Distrust was a cruel era in ChromaSpyke’s timeline, and it was perhaps harshest on the upstart clans, because during droughts of truth, even valuable secrets are worthless without someone willing to believe them. And so the clans buried their secrets in places no outsiders would find. Members swore oaths of secrecy and accepted the punishments that came from their silence. Clans spread out. Some survived.
When the distrust of corporations, pirates, and the leaders of the Origin System began moving toward normalization and homeostasis, the Han-Gurei were there plying their secrets like finely aged sake. They were still small, but they were gaining influence, and they were no longer called the Han-Gurei. They’d become Hangrii.
Now they were able to dabble in security, logistics, enforcement, debt collection, and black-market operations. They had the connections and were seen as valuable resources instead of upstart competition — especially when street gangs were still too unstable, corporate operatives were too visible, and governments were too political.
The problem with power within a system is that the new powers have only their old mentors for teachers. Within a century, the Hangrii were almost indistinguishable from small and mid-tier corporations, and those above them weren’t interested in more peers. The Hangrii were systematically hunted. The Age of Distrust, still strong, had taught those in power to exchange favors—first with freelancers and pirates, and then later through their sponsored gangs.
It didn’t take long for the corporate-backed gangs to hunt down and exterminate those doing the legwork for the clans. In less than a decade, the clans’ leadership was forced into hiding or exile.
The failure of the Hangrii was not without lessons, and soon the Keiratsu-Gumi reappeared. Clans, syndicates, and families who had endured centuries of corporate persecution re-emerged with a score to settle. They now understood the games the Directorates played, lessons paid in blood and frustration. First, they took revenge out on the largest gangs, and then they forced the corporations that’d betrayed them to pay triple the cost for their own services. Whether each corporate Directorate accepted the new arrangement seemed immaterial. The Gumi-clans began a campaign of executing middle-level leadership and anyone who wasn’t a clan member promoted to replace them.
And then they stopped. The Keiratsu-Gumi weren’t after supremacy. They wanted security. They made themselves indispensable. Without their members, the corporations were vulnerable to each other, pirates, and the whims of the Origin System.
When Astral Twilight came and bombardments began raining from fleets of corporate cruisers in sub-orbit, Tsuyomei, home of the Keiratsu-Gumi, was spared. Some say Tsuyomei had become such an invaluable center for influence and political barter, no ships were sent to flatten it. Others say the Gumi were collectively wealthy enough and had enough secrets to pay off the fleet’s captains. No one knows for sure.
If you’d like to encounter the Keiratsu-Gumi in ChromaSpyke fiction, A Star in Shadow explores Tsuyomei and the organizations operating throughout the city, while Default State moves through the Ikari Line and several of the forces surrounding it.
Now that you’ve been introduced to the Keiratsu-Gumi, continue exploring ChromaSpyke through Tsuyomei, the city where many of the Gumi hold influence. Or return to the ChromaSpyke universe page and explore other lore articles.
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