The Midlers

The line for lunch at the UTC manufactory cafeteria moved unusually quickly today, and Thanie picked up her sliced meatball sandwich bag in record time, going to her choice seat on the streetside patio. Someone at beaten her to the punch today, though, a face she recognized in passing. A smaller, freckled girl, one of the shipping and supply clerks in the office. She motioned to Thanie to sit down.
"Thanie, right?" The girl chirped in a lilting voice. "I heard about that argument you had with the Section Supervisor. Wanted to let you know that most of us in the office have your back." She touched Thanie on the hand lightly. "Though I was wondering if you were interested in a little, payback? Nothing serious of course."
Thanie cocked her head to the side. This was unusual. She had expected to have to stay in the guise of a manufactory worker for at least a season before being approached with something unsavory; this was only her third week. "Payback seems a little much, it was just an argument, but I'm open to taking him down a peg." Thanie gave an impish grin. "What are we talking, here? Ryssae oil in his locker, ignition peppers in his lunch?"
"A little less schoolgirl, a little more...Patino, let's say." The girl slipped Thanie a note. "Take a look at this when you get a chance, then meet me down at the loading dock at the end of your shift if you're open to making a little bit of Florin. It's not anything bad or serious, it'll just be a missing part that he won't be able to account for."
The apprentice magistrate had heard stories of the Midlers and their methods, but this girl seemed a little too upfront for her own liking. Was this another magistrate, looking to identify those easily corrupted? She pocketed the note and smiled widely. "Count me in! I'll see you in the evening for some fun."

Structure

The Midlers are structured as a loosely affiliated network of brokers and contractors in Patino, the Machine City. Their name comes from the well-known fact that no member of the Midlers themselves commits any direct crime - they are only 'in the middle', as they prefer to say. The organization's head, the 'Middleman', is only the leader by happenstance - the Midlers are mostly decentralized, only calling upon each other for hired jobs that require greater coordination and resources. The contractors that are tasked with direct job execution are indirectly hired muscle, with little knowledge of any greater organization or circumstance.

Culture

The brokers of the Midlers are focused on discretion and deniability. Unlike the agents of The Grey Archive, who specifically work to amass knowledge, the Midlers disclaim knowledge entirely - only when pressed will a Middle even admit to knowledge of the organization's existence, let alone the terms of any specific job or contract.
Midler contracts are conceptually simple arrangements. Someone with 'access' to a broker of the Midlers requests a meeting, and describes their difficulty, being absolutely sure to not suggest a course of action or name specific names. The broker takes the job, does cursory research to identify the true nature of the requested task and the target, then hires down-on-their-luck 'contractors' to accomplish the goal as a group. Ideally, tasks are completed through subterfuge, and all involved can return to their day to day lives slightly richer, but as most tasks place the contractors in opposition to some sort of guard (typically members of the Mercenary's Guild on guard retainer), the chance for violence is high.

Public Agenda

The Midlers are not a public organization and are proscribed by the Principality of Etoile. The role of 'fixer', as in someone who is able to leverage their connections to facilitate the completion of tasks, is a well known informal role most people have played at some point in their lives. The Midlers are known to take this to its logical conclusion, for tasks both illegal and against the general spirit of Progress. To the Principality, this is a monstrous attack on the founding virtues of Etoile itself, and represents a direct challenge to the state.

Assets

The decentralized nature of the organization means that all organizational assets are actually simply the property of active Midlers who choose to dedicate their resources to the task. With no headquarters, accounts, or even a singular roster, it's hard to pin down precisely what is Midler associated or not.

History

Competition between entities operating in the same space is a well known phenomenon, a matter of interest to virtually all areas of human activity. The First Princeps understood this full well (having won his own great-power competition in The War of Unification and sought to minimize its negative effects in the new industry of Power technology. Organizations such as The Magistrates, direct governing by the local District Commander, and societal pressure towards the greater goal of Progress were intended to work together to ensure that the new private consortiums played 'fair' with each other.
The Midlers represent the general failure of this approach - innovations in Power technology are simply too valuable to be left to monopolization by the discovering entity, especially when all of the entities involved are in the same city limits. The Midlers arose within Patino to service a demand for industrial espionage and sabotage between the rival consortiums, in a way that allowed the consortiums to deny their involvement and minimize risk - all the middlemen needed was a description of the desire and a purse of Florin, and 'things would be done'.
As soon as the rumors spread about the 'Midlers' and their link to several famous incidents (notably a major arson case that destroyed a UTC manufactory for Power-Wagons in 680), the Principality declared the organization itself proscribed; all entities related to the organization illegal, and trafficking with those entities illegal, and several suspected Middles were identified and imprisoned. Since then, their level of activity has declined, likely in an effort to avoid detection rather than any genuine success at elimination.

Founding Date

~670

Type

Illicit, Syndicate

Demonym

Middles

Location

Patino, the Machine City