Organised crime in Kiravia: Difference between revisions

The largest and best-known organised criminal groups in Kiravia originate among the lower castes of the [[Kir people]], the ''wordhere'' and the similarly positioned "village menial" castes. During the industrial era, many people from lower-caste backgrounds fled the rigid social structures of rural Kirav to seek better lives in the cities, but found themselves still at the bottom of the economic ladder and often turned to criminal enterprise after being shut out of legitimate opportunities for advancement.

Backward Kir crime families are associated with either of two "lineages", Nightworkers (''Fêraventár'') and Gravediggers (''Aigūtumnár''), with roots in the criminal underworld of the late 19th century AD. The term "nightworker" began as an oblique way to refer to any professional criminal, whether part of an organised faction or not. In addition to the obvious denotation of someone who works under the cover of darkness, the word is also suggestive of the nocturnal sanitation-related and other menial jobs traditionally assigned to the lowest castes, which many nightworkers continued to claim as their official occupation. In the old days, the division of labour between the Nightworkers and Gravediggers was such that Nightworkers carried out the riskier, more 'kinetic' tasks of the criminal enterprise - murders, robberies, intimidation, collections, etc. - while Gravediggers were responsible for support activities, such as disposing of bodies (hence the name), moving contraband, minding hookers, and the like. The Nightworkers were the senior party in this partnership, making all executive decisions and keeping the lion's share of the ill-gotten proceeds. Over time, as the Kirish mob infrastructure consolidated from independent cliques to larger, more hierarchical families with more sophisticated operations, the division of labour between Nightworkers and Gravediggers became blurred yet the supremacy of the Nightworkers remained until the late [DECADE] Spring of Lead when Gravedigger crews in Ilminsar rose up to usurp the Nightworkers, a bloody ''tournant des tables'' that repeated in several other Lake Belt cities and Valēka with varying degrees of success, and ultimately effected a nationwide schism between the Gravediggers and Nightworkers. Today Nightworker and Gravedigger families are more or less interchangeable in terms of operations, but the animus between the two lineages remains.