This post was inspired by a writing prompt in the Worldbuilding Community - Worldbuilding Prompt #709 - Factions.
I've outlined one of many factions within my homebrew D&D setting. Enjoy !
Image created by AI in Nightcafe Studio
Why do you oppose us, Dockrat ? What do you want from us ? What are you trying to take ?
- Count Erich von der Mannich, Governor of Tiraz
You're the government, for now. That's good enough reason to oppose you. As for what I want; to be left to my own business, and anything you've got except for one thing. Rules. I won't take your rules. I make my own.
- Shiazz ul’hajj, "Dockrat"
Dockrat is one of my oldest NPC's (non player characters), and something of a fixture in the great port city of Tiraz in the Sarassid Lands.
His organisation is nominally titled "The Thieves Guild of Tiraz", but most citizens just call them "Dockrat's people", and the authorities use the name "The Dockrat Gang" on wanted posters.
The group originated as one of many small underworld factions in the docks of Tiraz, and this is where Dockrat picked up his nickname. While other factions ran protection rackets, prostitution, burglary and all kinds of other crime, his group focused on the export of illicit drugs.
Tiraz is one of the great port cities of Argull, so this proved to be a highly lucrative business, and enabled Dockrat to build up an extensive network of contacts among ships' captains and crews, the growers of the substances he was exporting, the wholesale customers in other lands he was selling to, and an assortment of corrupt officials he paid to look away from his activities.
The drugs gave them a source of wealth which enabled expansion from just the dockside to the whole city of Tiraz. Competing groups were mostly absorbed in a peaceful but highly persuasive fashion. They worked hard and ruthlessly to keep out groups from other cities of the Sarassid Lands.
At that time, the city was ruled by Abed Qirishi, Dey of Tiraz, sometimes called (but never to his face) Abed "Nice" Dey. Spoiler alert; there is nothing nice about Abed Day. He's a cunning, ruthless opportunist control-freak. Disliking the idea that there was another centre of power in Tiraz, he started to put significant energy into supressing the Thieves Guild.
He failed. All he did was drive it underground, toughen it, and turn it into the focus of popular resistance to his tyrannical rule. His troops picked up numerous members on their sweeps, but achieved nothing other than to make the Guild popular with the wider citizenry.
When Gortig von Telram led a Northern expedition to the Sarassid Lands, ostensibly to snuff out Tiraz-based pirates who had been preying on Jaktan shipping, the Guild were a ready-made fifth column for them. The gates of Tiraz were opened at night and the city was occupied. Abed Dey's army melted away, and he himself fled with nothing but a few bodyguards, his favourite concubine, and the contents of his treasury. But being the survivor he was, he soon found a promotion for himself by being in exactly the right place when the ruler of the Sarassid Lands died under mysterious circumstances.
The Northern invaders established a foothold along the coastline of the Sarassid Lands, protected by a belt of newly constructed castles and active flying columns of knights, and adopted Tiraz as the capital. It's nominally subject to Jakta, with Count Erich von der Mannich as governor.
Dockrat has an ambivalent relationship with the new regime. On the one hand, they are fairer and less oppressive than Abed Dey. But on the other hand, they are still a government, are technically foreign occupiers, and still want to enforce their own set of laws.
So the Guild carries on low-level subversion, allows citizens who fall foul of the authorities to hide or escape, and still carry on their lucrative criminal enterprises. But there are some surprising discreet back-channel communications which go on. Both sides recognise that the city needs to be calm enough for people to go about their lives. If anything, it seems that the Guild is starting to morph into a semi-acceptable business. The government recognises that it's a useful safety-valve for the citizenry, and that when it chooses to protect someone, maybe they aren't so guilty after all.
Dockrat himself remains a shadowy figure. Unlike some criminal masterminds, he doesn't retire to a mansion surrounded by the trappings of his illicit gains. He's rumoured to hang out in the dockside taverns, often disguised as a beggar or drunk, and is still very much hands-on when it comes to running his network of contacts.