Category:Riot Gear

Go and get your Riot Gear
Swing that billy all around
We'll be dancing in the cinders
As the town is burning down

- Riot Gear, Five Iron Frenzy

Originally just a group of nobodies united by a shared hatred of both HeroCorp and Arachnos, Riot Gear grew into a sort of combined street gang, protection racket and market predator - an all-purpose hammer with which to deal physical, structural and financial harm to any power which threatens to get out-of-control. Individual members range from violent misanthropes to cheerful thieves to misguided idealists, but in short, they are anti-corporate anarchists happy to burn the world to protect what they value.

Philosophy

Riot Gear was initially founded as an anarchic operation, designed to simply throw mud in the eyes of as many enemies as they could in pursuit of some dubiously-defined freedom. In a short amount of time, however, the realities of the Isles pressured in, and Riot Gear evolved in response, becoming a businesslike brokering system.

Riot Gear has a simple, territorial direction. It takes care of its own, and 'its own' is a broad term that covers its contractors, its enforcers, its legal and accounting departments and even those businesses they milk for money.

Riot Gear's businesslike modus operandi is a front of sorts; D-38 has lost none of his original countercorporate anarchism that defined his earlier outlook, and he has therefore sought to sculpt Riot Gear into a kind of corporate virus; an attacking life form in a real economy. He seeks to use it to eventually make a serious impact on the world economy, though most likely through terroristic means.

The Gear's philosophy of territorialism bears out here, too; D-38 wants the icons of supercorporate world economies destroyed, because he feels they're unfair and ruin lives. This revolution is to be accomplished, in his opinion, through not murdering something as simple as a man, but by crippling the economies of whole nations.

Business Practice

Investment

Riot Gear sloughs money into businesses large enough to be of interest to them. The Rogue Isles ferry system and the Black Market are two of the businesses that Riot Gear has been seen investing in. This kind of investment tends to be completely above-board; Riot Gear even uses legitimately obtained funds to do it.

Businesses that receive funding from Riot Gear in turn receive the support of the mercenary organisation; in the gangland relations of the Isles, many businesses have property taken from them by gangs, and others require some gang activity to be pulled away from their operations. It is in this way that the Mercenary Support side of the business is fuelled.

Mercenary Support

This is the bulk of the Riot Gear enterprise as it's seen in the Isles. Riot Gear operatives are sent to establish a presence amongst the gangs in an area. After that contact has been established, Riot Gear operatives then pursue their own ends. Riot Gear in this capacity is a broker service - finding contracted work and assigning it to appropriate individuals who have the talents and the desire to execute them. Some Riot Gear operatives thrive on challenge, others on raw, unbridled violence. Others still simply prefer the steady work.

The main way this mercenary support makes money for the organisation at large is by what D-38 refers to as 'coincidental destruction.' Very rarely does an individual in the Rogue Isles have only one enemy, and therefore, Riot Gear spends a large part of its time collating bounties and rewards, collecting them, and cashing in on multiple sources at a time. Then the contractors are paid a generous percentage of this total income.

For this reason, Riot Gear members are encouraged to throw their bounties and personal projects towards the Gear. Even if it's only a modest fee, every Thorn Mage's head is worth something to the right person.

Small Business Protection

"It's extortion when I do it, and taxation when the government does it? I actually do protect these business owners."

- D-38

In addition to all this work, on a smaller scale, Riot Gear collects protection fees from small businesses around the Isles, then keeps those businesses free of other gangs' influences. This behaviour is not much like their investments; instead, Riot Gear tends to adopt businesses, and has a much more friendly, anarchic attitude towards this than their profit-driven behaviour with large business entities. These businesses are not maintained or protected necessarily as part of a profit scheme; they are fostered as a way of engineering good will.

Transport Network

In addition to their investments in the Rogue Isles Ferry system and some initial capital loaned to the Black Helicopter Line to see about establishing a more active business, Riot Gear has purchased and developed a number of basic teleporters, and some other technical storage devices. These are provided to facilitate business and deployment of the Support Crews, and are therefore provided for free to all contractors working for the Gear.

Recruitment

Right now, Riot Gear does not have an active eye towards recruitment nor coalition, and its operatives are a fluid population. E-mails from interested parties should be directed to D-38, and responses will be handled by same.