The largest illicit xeno and terran wildlife trafficking collective in the cluster. Possessing numerous licit fronts to facilitate smooth operations their highly lucrative lifeform trade. The Saulchus Combine profits from the sale of everything from the sidosian murder crab to the near priceless terran bovine. The Combine are rumoured to be movers and procurers of rare genetic specimens for the Genetic Liberty Front, whom are said to a have a number of operatives on retainer. The combine posses unparalleled knowledge and experience in transporting hazardous or delicate life forms with the utmost care and discretion.
The Combine gains their name from the Saulchus system in the frontier. The earth type planet was settled 60 years ago with the initial expansion rush. The Combine had existed under numerous different monikers for centuries prior but had until the settlement of Saulchus, officially speaking, not existed. The founders of the combine remain unknown but is believed that a procurement vessel began using the Saulchus system as a base of operation from the earliest corridor mapping.
Over decades the base personnel grew to ensure self sufficiency of the operation and ward off the frequent pirate attacks. Housing and amenities grew and the planets proximity to the distal pillar of the frontier made it an attractive stop for new colonists. Saulchus catered to the frontiersmen by offering a number of locally sourced already domesticated livestock and habituated farmable flora. In time Saulchus grew to be something of a free port with local security being handled by combine indentured supplicants and hired PMCs.
The combine’s leadership structure is completely unknown but an appointed colony administrator liaises with the free port inhabitants and advocates on their behalf for any and all civic matters. Taxation ostensibly does not exist within the Saulchus free port but high leasing and amenity fees leaves many in the free port as penniless debtors before long.
Common warnings for cluster citizens travelling to the frontier disproportionately feature Saulchus. Though the Combine’s economic entrapment is not always the chief most threat to the wellbeing of frontier travellers. The free port exists on a peninsula with the connection to the mainland being the most heavily fortified and patrolled planetary surface border in the cluster.
Rumours abound as to why this might be though all centre around the escape of a number of highly dangerously and potentially engineered invasive flora and fauna species. To date over 50 settlements have been lost over the small worlds small history. Little detail is known about exactly what transpired at these sites but leaked documents seem to support local rumours.
Still, the presence of 50 ton Venti Mastodon mechs is as reassuring as it is disquieting. Though Saulchus remains one of the most successful colonial ventures in the frontier it is not recognised by the cluster super powers and tenuously maintains its free port status for the time being.
The Saulchus Combine frequently employs Armournauts in the procurement of rare lifeforms,. Many Armournauts hope to secure a fixed permanent contract at the free port where they can spend a retirement patrolling up and down a 30km stretch of entrenched defences in exchange for good housing and better pay.
The colloquial term for any smugglers and traffickers that illicitly transport from system to systems via the relay networks or corridor space. Relay Rats are a loose collection of individuals that are often highly skilled or experienced in circumventing security and customs of the manifold and interlinked space faring nations of the cluster.
Their freight they haul is often highly prized and even more highly criminalised and this combined with the constant threats of apprehension or execution generates a sense of desperate comradery amongst relay rats. Many trade tips and tricks over anonymous forum posts and alert each other of emerging security procedures of the various stellar policing agencies.
Apart from their chosen profession, Relay Rats are likely to have little in common. Even then their methods and means to complete their runs covertly vary greatly from rat to rat. Some stowaway on large freighters carrying only their survival equipment and their shipment, others book passage on civilian charters posing as tourists or migrants, others still enlists as crewmen only to disembark without notice or mysteriously disappear enroute.
The rarest breed of Relay Rats use entire ships built or modified to for illicit cargo transport. Whether through subterfuge or sensational stunts Relay Rat captain's are highly prized for their ability to move large quantities quickly and without drawing attention to their consumers or benefactors.
Relay Rats often cut in Armournauts as additional power-armoured muscle or as incredibly versatile, mobile and resourceful agents for planet side delivery or procurement specialists.
Believed to be the largest criminal empire in the cluster, the New Monaco Mob has come to be a byword for corruption. Allegedly, overseen out of New Monaco station by Grand Spireress Ysabella Murensis II the Mob has grown to hold sway in many nations across the cluster. Hailing originally from the Venti homeworld the Murensis family fled the planet following the trial of Marcorno Murensis , also known as labbra grasse the patriarch of the Murensis crime family, was convicted of numerous crimes against the republic.
New Monaco was initially intended to be a brief stop for the Ysabella II and her surviving family but a combination of the threat apprehension and her insensate distain for the Venti compelled her to stay definitely within the independent station state overlooking the home world. For 108 years Ysbella II has taken her family from certain dereliction to supreme dominance of the criminal underworld. In that time countless lieutenants and captains have come and gone while the mob itself shifts, shrinks and expands under the pressures of over 1000 different law enforcement agencies.
The Mob’s cluster wide operations are as varied as they are multitudinous. Narcotics may have been the initial and most profitable pursuit of the Mob but since their revitalisation it seems their is no job too dirty or too dangerous. Dissemination of controlled technologies and racketeering have proven to be vital economic pillars at the very foundation of the mobs economic strangle hold over much of the cluster. The Felicitas chain of casinos started by Ysabella II provide ample means to legitimise mob profits and the New Monaco Police seem either unwilling or unable to investigate the disproportionate earnings.
Rival operations don't remain rivals for long, statistically speaking, you are far more likely to be raided by the mob than any law enforcement agency. Moreover the mob are likely to be better equipped and far more ruthless. It's rumored that the Mob possess highly illegal IP tracking AI that monitor the dark web for rival activity and provide near limitless targets for extortion and expansion. Alternate explanations fail to comfortably reconcile the inexplicable accuracy and efficiency of Mob acquisitions.
High level enforcers of the New Monaco Mob are ubiquitously skilled and or brutal Armournauts. Favouring power armoured hit squads it is not unheard of to hear of entire city blocks descending into full scale urban warfare when even heavier hitters are called in by the mob. For this reason it is considered foolhardy to triffle with even low level Mobbers or their associates.