Thread:Sqrrl101/@comment-82.41.96.246-20180820181053

UX-498

Somewhere between a street gang and a secret society, UX-498 take their name from a common component - specifically, the Mars-pattern UX-498 cable redirect, an angled piece of metal used across the Imperium to group wires together and guide them properly around right-angled corners. This component is found in clusters around their territories, producing a loop of cable - by following the loops, new initiates find the gang, and so most of their numbers are technicians. UX-498 supply technical goods to many other gangs, dealing with all and allying with none - their quasi-mystical understanding of the technology around them manifests as a belief that the nurturing ship-womb in which they live is its own little machine-god, a closed loop of wire, and therefore the proof that they should scavenge materials and make weapons is self-evident - they can, therefore it must be the will of their god. This is a minor tech-heresy that would be rooted out of most ships, but survives in secrecy on the stardock. An ux, pronounced phonetically, is a general idiom for a piece of poorly-understood machinery among the gangers, since most of what UX-498 builds is somewhat mad. Their weapon technology, in particular, often ends up in the hands of ship security after rashes of strange disintegrations or petrified gang members come to light.

Airlocks

The Airlocks are the vice traders du jour in the seedy decks - there have always been drug dealers and people traders among the ratings, but the Airlocks have been particularly durable compared to their predecessors, thanks to friends among the higher ranks of the crew. A ship this size has everything needed to cook up narcotics, from the exotics in the arboretum to the strange chemicals of the engineering decks, and the Airlocks began as the private suppliers of senior crew, trading in White Void and Spook for the astropath cadres or delivering unmarked crates of a curiously fine amasec, the product of an ancient STC distillery buried deep in the forgotten bowels of the bilges by an ancient captain. As this is one of their chief products, not in terms of volume but in terms of importance, the Airlocks consolidate a lot of protection for it - its location means workers there are constantly in danger from the ghilliam mutant detritus that infest the bilges, and travelling to or from The Still is even riskier. This contributes further to their durability - they have a lot of muscle on hand, protecting them, but the necessity of devoting most of it to keeping The Still running keeps them from exerting violent control over specific territories, keeping them off the radar of the officers they don't supply. The name comes from what they see as their role in controlling access to danger, according to current members; it's originally a reference to the gang's mythic founder, who is supposed to have walked out of an airlock after drinking an entire batch of The Still's heady product.

Corkscrews

The Corkscrews are a violent gang with limited territory - they occupy the 1052nd deck access corridor OX38A2, a miniscule portion of the vast ship. They are notable, however, for their violent tactics using heavy mutant shock troops against neighbouring territories and in raids on supply depots, and because access corridor OX38A2 without the Corkscrews would be a source of constant danger. The Corkscrews - whose name is a play on the slang term for mutants "twists" - keep this danger contained and controlled. Descended from crewmembers stationed in the area who banded together for protection, the Corkscrews inhabit a rift in the deck-plan of the ship that opens the bilges into the surrounding crewspaces. Originally the Corkscrews were an armed neighbourhood watch against Ghilliam incursions, but their descendents have reached a working understanding with elements of the mutated bilge-dwellers, and operate as coyotes and diplomats, offering a go-between for the seedy elements of the ship and the fearsome monsters of the bilges. Their relations with other gangs and the crew of the ship are coloured by their recruitment from and interactions with the ghilliams, and tend to be hostile, but the gang is likewise a civilising force on the ghilliam population, who depend on the Corkscrews for supplies and warnings of purges sent down by the ship's command staff. 