Italy has the Mafia, Camorra, 'Ndrangheta and Sacra Corona Unita;
France has the Unione Corse;
China has Triads;
Japan has the Yakuza;
Merseia has the Gethfennu;
Ikrananka has the antisocial phratries as well as remnants from earlier cycles resentful of the Deodakh conquest.
Antisocial and resentful phratries skulk in the Old City of Katandara where Ershoka go in groups although Adzel counts as a group by himself. Every inhabited planet described by Poul Anderson is more complicated than we think.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And the US is also cursed with organized criminal gangs. Including the American branch of the Mafia, descending from Italian immigrants. Nowadays the Mafia has been largely pushed aside by far more vicious drug and sex trafficking cartels.
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I forgot to mention how in Anderson's THE WINTER OF THE WORLD, we see ancient, tightly organized criminal guilds in the ages old city of Arvanneth (our New Orleans, in the US), which had carved out a "recognized" status in the city state. A status reluctantly accepted by the theocracy which had long ruled the city. And, altho they had fought hard against conquest by the resurgent Rahidian Empire (ruled by a Barommian dynasty), they approved of how the new rulers had no respect for the criminal guilds and cracked down hard on them.
Sean
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