As long as I wrote this up, I figured someone else might find it useful.
Notes: The Black Lions are a similar street gang in The Sheets, western Charhollow; Chael is the head. The Hive are more like the Mafia than I think is usual; Temil Constantine is an ambitious capo who wants to supplant Karth Orris. The Seamstresses are a guild that tries to protect and support both seamstresses and prostitutes.
The Kickers
A tiny gang of female street-toughs looking to make a name for themselves in Charhollow.
Tier 1
Faction Clock: Take over turf and possibly personnel from the Black Lions (8)
Turf: The Knackers in Charhollow (street-level only)
NPCs: Keisha Maklabre (psycho, ruthless, loyal); Noriel Huet (skilled, charismatic, loyal)
Personal Clocks: (Noriel) Get Keisha to cut way down on the drugs (8). (Keisha) See Chael dead and wipe the blood around (4).
Notable Assets: A small collection of decent-quality swords and knives; some cool jewelry; rocking leather jackets and pants
Quirks: the Kickers are an all-female gang, which is unusual for a start, and they dress kind of like black-leather goths—with a LOT of blades. Keisha is rather crazier than you might think, which is scary because she’s obviously crazy.
Allies: The Hive, Seamstresses
Enemies: Black Lions, Bluecoats, Red Sashes
Situation: Keisha and Noriel have been BFFs since they were little girls playing dolls in Bleakforest Park. Noriel joined the Red Sashes when she was 12 because she had the hots for one of the guys. He soon revealed himself as a creep, so she kicked him to the curb, but she continued with the Sashes because she turned out to be really good with a blade and to like martial-arts training. Eventually the (former) chief of the Sashes, Oziel Klevan, tried to rape her and nearly succeeded; she managed to cut his throat and fled. Keisha, meanwhile, is the sort of person who likes pulling the wings off flies and practicing dagger-throwing on any small animal that comes in range. Psycho she certainly is, but she’s also cunning and fascinating in her way. The two of them are still BFFs, so they hate the Red Sashes on general principles, together. They’ve cobbled together a little gang in the Knackers, almost all of them women who were formerly enslaved prostitutes.
PLANS: The idea is to take out the Black Lions, or make them kiss the ring or whatever, and thereby expand across Charhollow. They really haven’t thought about what’s next.
CURRENT BUSINESSES: Gang members have done various odd jobs for some big-time thugs in southeast Crow’s Foot, and get along fine with that; those guys are from the Hive, but the Kickers don’t know that and have never heard of the Hive anyway. Most of their work is distributing “coppers” (=dime bags) around Charhollow. Their unofficial work is rescuing prostitutes by murdering their pimps. A lot of those they’ve rescued still work occasionally as prostitutes, but it’s on their own terms, so perhaps that’s okay? [Ed.–not really] Certainly the gang would never, ever pimp for them. About a third of those they’ve “rescued” have joined up, since it beats streetwalking; that said, most of “the girls” (their term) aren’t super-loyal—not that they’d betray the gang, but they’d go with something else if it seemed better.
PERSONALITIES: Noriel doesn’t like to think beyond the moment if she can avoid it. She’s not stupid, but she prefers things she can touch or punch or cut. She’s a natural follower, and sees herself as the perfect lieutenant to the real leader, Keisha. She is also obviously very loyal by nature, and quite charismatic in her own odd way, which is why the rescued “girls” tend to adore and admire her. Noriel is a very big woman, almost 6’2”, and frighteningly strong and fast when she’s in the mood. She is horsey-faced and secretly insecure about her large front teeth and brown eyes. She dyes her hair black and keeps it in a functional ponytail.
Keisha pretty much can’t plan beyond tomorrow because of her addiction to Smokeballs, a fungus-drug which she buys in Coalridge and smoke-shoots in whatever alley is handy. She’s scary-dangerous and scary-crazy, but she’s obviously 100% loyal forever to Noriel. When her brain is focused at all, she can sketch a decent plan and she has occasional good ideas, but this is all going to pot as soon as they come up against any real resistance. The “girls” know she’s batshit, but they also realize (as she does not) that she hates men with a passion and will always, always side with women against Them. So from the point of view of “the girls,” she’s a decent bet—certainly better than anything else they’re likely to see soon. Keisha looks like the love-child of Trinity (from The Matrix) and Siouxsie Sioux: small, black leather, bolts and chains, ash-white skin, spiked black hair, strong red lipstick. Her eyes are naturally pale brown, but all the drugs she does make them change weirdly.
CLOCKS: Noriel would like Keisha to stop smoke-shooting, or at least to have clean digs to do it in, but again, she can’t manage (or refuses) to think ahead.
A month ago or so, Chael of the Black Lions came on to Keisha. He didn’t do anything so terribly wrong, nothing more than a pat on the ass [Ed.–again, this is not okay!], but Keisha’s decided that’s the same as rape and wants him dead. Noriel dismissed the idea when she heard it, and is not aware that Keisha is planning to do it herself at the first opportunity. Of course, she keeps trying to plan this and then losing track of details because a day passes or whatever.
RELATIONS:
The Red Sashes do not hate them at all: the feeling is entirely one-sided. Mylera Klev spent some time trying to figure out how to kill Oziel, her first cousin, who raped her pretty much whenever he felt like it. When he died, everyone assumed she’d done it, but she had an iron-clad alibi, so she took control. She knows it was Noriel—who else went missing at exactly that time?—and would happily welcome her back, but she’s not going to go out of her way. (Status 0, but the Kickers think -2)
The Seamstresses rather like them—or anyway, Mrs. Kildahl does. She’s aware that Keisha is bats**t crazy, but she genuinely admires Noriel, and she’s old-softy enough (or drunk and romantic/embittered enough) to think that Keisha can still turn things around. Regardless, she likes the fact that they’ve killed 13 really evil, vicious, abusive pimps and look to keep at it, and she’s trying to spread the word secretly that pimps had better behave themselves or else. (Status +1)
The Black Lions dislike them, mainly because they’re obviously soon going to be in competition or cooperation, and because Keisha rejected Chael, who thinks she’s super-hot. (Status -2)
The Bluecoats don’t like them on general principles, but like all of law enforcement, they are certainly not looking very hard for who’s killing some of the nastiest drug-riddled pimps. (Status -1)
The Hive don’t give a s**t one way or another, except that these girls seem to be passably reliable as low-level drug distributors. Djera Maha would love to recruit Noriel—if she’d ever heard of her—but Karth Orris doesn’t think women should have power in the Hive and looks down on what he figures are skeevy hookers. When Temil Constantine takes over Orris’s Turf, he might revise that, but he’s certainly not going to make any big effort to get the Kickers under Hive wings. (Status 0 or +1, depending)