The Howling Blades
Written by: Ripshot
Y'ever hear the saying 'never bring a knife to a gunfight'? Well, none of these guys have. You've gotta appreciate the dedication some gangs have to sticking to a gimmick, even if it means getting shot to pieces. Crawling out of the worst parts of the The Concrete Forest, the Howling Blades are somewhere between a thematic go-gang and a cult that worships all things sharp. Shivs, switchblades, machetes, those katanas you order off the matrix that rust in like a week, and very occasionally some actual well-made swords. If it makes a satisfying noise when you swing it in someone's chest, they'll be waving it, welding it to their bikes, welding it to themselves, and generally worshipping it while bad-mouthing guns as "tools of the unworthy". Gotta respect how they put their money where their mouth is on that when they get popped from across the street mid-charge. Jokes aside though, don't take these guys for chumps. They're capping themselves, yeah, but they ain't running out of new recruits any time soon, natural selection's left a lot of veteran gangers who've got enough brains, chrome or drugs in them to survive getting in close, and you'll learn how sharp those cutters are. On the off-hand they try to hire you for some assistance, expect it to be loopholing around their whole 'blades only' schtick by sending an outsider to ventilate someone or something, and expect to get paid in guns, ripped-out 'ware and if you're really looky, a shiv made from a toothbrush.Structure
The gang's organisation, if you can even call it that, is classic death-cult stuff: You're either cannon-fodder hopped up on drugs, some kind of cultist-psycho or one of the slots who somehow learned metalurgy and blacksmithing in the sixth world. One guy leads his own inner-circle, who in turn delegate their shit to their own subordinates, and killing the guy above you is a perfectly legit way of climbing the social ladder.
Identifiers
If the big honking swords aren't a big enough identifier, you can usually tell a Howling Blade by how they all go shirtless, even in the winter. Turns out, not all the scars you see on 'em are from fighting: Some are ritualistic drek carved in on-purpose, old runes and patterns meant to aid in focus or summon the spirit of swordsmanship. I don't know, not my department.Much of the symbology amidst the higher-ranking blades are consistent with material recovered from the old Stewards of the Mirror cult along with some iconography based on early Shinto icronography, with testimonies alleging that they act as foci for the few awakened individuals among the group. The younger initiates however, seem to pick their patterns and symbols based on what is 'cool'.
Public Agenda
Nobody can argue what the 'true' purpose of the gang is. Some people in it want to bring back the 'good old days' of fighting with swords, chivalry, drek like that, others want to practice violent darwinism. All of them can agree however, on swords being cool.
Assets
Nobody's sure where they got 'em from, but deep in the barrens they call home they've got half a foundry's worth of metalworking gear and jury-rigged forges. There's only a couple of guys with enough talent to make anything more complicated than a sharpened chunk of metal or some shaving-razors welded to sports-pads, but the few decent swords they actually make down there are some pretty nice pieces. Not that you can appreciate it much when it's being swung at you from a motorbike covered in nails, mind.
As of at least a year back, we know for a fact they've now got a couple of actual trained swordsmiths in their compound. One of them's a fugitive from Wuxing just looking for protection, but the other's a true believer of what Coldbrand's preaching.
History
So weirdly enough, I did some reading on Coldbrand, the guy who's stayed at the very top from the start. Turns out the gang and its fetish for sharp stuff comes from some doomsday cult from before the awakening, that considered round and soft things 'clean' and sharp, angular surfaces potential portals for otherworldly things to crawl through and 'defile all our worlds'. Coldbrand must've either misinterpreted the cult hard or decided to mess with 'em, because he was first seen walking out their last abandoned compound in The Concrete Forest holding a giant-ass sword and a scrapbook of god-knows-what covered in a lot of blood.
At first, he was just another one of those freaks you see wandering Z-zones, waving sharp stuff at anyone who comes close like a territorial hobo. Despite that, he somehow ended up getting people following him: Some punk, usually another barrens-rat, would fuckin' charge at him with whatever shiv of club they had and get cut the fuck up. If they lived, Coldbrand would pick 'em up and tell 'em to follow. Before the end of the year, Coldbrand had a few dozen scarred up lunatics following him, pouncing on anyone that got too close to the cult-compound they made into their new home. Raiding other barrens-dwellers for food and water turned into (vaguely) professional trades, selling themselves as psychotic soldiers of fortune and trading homemade combat-stims in exchange for the amenities they needed and the tools and materials for making their own metal implements of pain.
Ever since, the blades have been a pain in damn near everyone's asses, picking fights with anyone and everyone and barely avoiding retaliation from law-enforcement by hiding all the way in the worst parts of the Concrete Forest. If you got a plan to get rid of these guys chummer, I salute you. Even if it's a dumbass plan...
"ONLY THE BLADE."
Founding Date
2071
Type
Illicit, Gang
Demonym
Blades
Leader
Location
Manufactured Items
Related Items
Total War
Not to state the obvious, but the Howling Blades hate the Falconers, and the feeling is certainly mutual. Falconers have proven a consistent thorn in the side of the blade-cult's raids through their persistent scouting and hit-and-run raids on Howling Blade raiding-parties, who have retaliated by making a point of giving captured Falconers a slow and agonising demise.
Open Hostilities
Make no mistake chummer, these two groups kill on sight for too many reasons to list in one cache.
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