Coyotes

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A Tucson by Night game....run by Jason...

Contents

Introduction to the Gomez Organization

This ring of polleros (immigrant smugglers) specializes almost exclusively in bringing undocumented aliens across the border with Mexico. Forced violently out of the drug trade several years ago by a rival gang, the organization has discovered that in the post-9-11 world of alien smuggling there's at least as much money, and a lot less hassle, in bringing across people. Specialization has led to advancement and now the organization uses technology, money, vehicles, and physical assets in an almost corporate structure, also providing stolen and false identities for new immigrants for additional fees and raking in money as fast as the organization can.

Dominated, though not exclusively, by an extended family - the Gomezes - the ring operates throughout Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora and Chihuahua, avoiding the entanglements of the California drug gangs.

Known in underworld circles for having a code of ethics, the Gomez ring does not kidnap helpless immigrants and hold them for ransom from worried families, nor do they sadistically torture or rape border crossers. On the contrary, the Gomezes have a lucrative side business in acting as go-betweens between terrified families and kidnappers.

This game is about their strange and creepy adventures along the borders and edges of the world...

History

The particular iteration of this branch of the Gomez family first entered the criminal underworld as an organization in 1996. They obtained and moved both illegals and drugs, mostly cocaine and heroin, from Mexican sources and sold them in the United States themselves. As they expanded their operation, they became middlemen for a larger drug distribution gang and slowly phased out their own drug sales until only a handful of Gomez dealers were left by 1999. They were getting enough money from muling the drugs that they didn't feel it necessary to compete with their allies.

However, their allies did provoke a gang war with the Montes de Oca family, an up and coming drug distribution racket, and in 2000, the bodies started to fall, bringing law enforcement down hard on the drug rings battling it out in the streets and deserts. The Montes de Ocas correctly surmised that if they took out the Gomezes, their rivals would be left without any product on the street, no money flowing in, and no support. A brutal assault followed, eliminating virtually all of the Gomez family's drug smuggling capability, leaving behind a shell of those who either were not directly involved, those that had ducked and covered, those that had betrayed the family to the Montes de Ocas, and those that were jailed.

The Montes de Ocas have controlled a significant piece of Southern Arizona's drug trade ever since. But another circumstance arose that kept the Gomez syndicate alive, and brought it to its current success: the attack on the Twin Towers on 9-11. The subsequent militarization of the American border made the price for bringing across illegal entrants skyrocket. It doesn't seem to matter how much the Gomezes ask their human cargo for - they will always have a waiting list of people willing to pay the price.

The Border Patrol's increasing militarization also made direct confrontation incredibly unwise, leading to more and more sophisticated operations by the Gomez organization but not much in the way of expansion. This caution, borne of the war eight years ago, has led the Gomezes to make extremely large sums of money, while not being involved in the war on drugs. This keeps them largely off the radar of most law enforcement (and criminal) organizations, and they will do what they can to keep it that way. Getting back into drug distribution seems like an incredibly unwise gamble at this point - to some degree there's a sort of surprise that the conspiracy can be this successful without drugs, but the money doesn't lie.

Current Activities

Number one activity: transporting border crossers from Mexico to America for money. The standard price is $3,000 American, in cash. Even at that slightly-above-market price, the ring has more business than it, in its cautious way, can handle. It makes more financial sense to bring across 1-4 per day, or an extended family, and shuffle them through a complicated pipeline of safehouses, forged papers, and hideouts rather than try to load up a single truck with 15 in a weekend and rollover onto the front page of the Daily Star.

Other operations include:

  • a false identity generation business incorporating forgeries and identity theft, a sort of "premium service" for border crossers to get fake Social Security cards, green cards, and sometimes even credit cards
  • legitimate businesses and shell companies, to launder the money obtained in two countries, and keep the operation in disposable cellphones, desert gear, vehicles, immigration attorneys to spring those caught, and rotating safe houses

The active organization (as opposed to 'consultants' and short-term hirelings) is small, perhaps 10 members at most, more than 5 are virtually never in the same room at the same time.

The Campaign

Here is a campaign log of the events of the game so far...

Player Characters

Here are the old Character Creation Guidelines we used to make these characters.

Non-Player Characters

Gomez Organization

MDO Organization

Trans-Mexico Shipping

The Montes de Oca's former suppliers for drugs of all sorts. After the war began between MDO and Trans-Mexico, they identified a new distributor. The "Old" or "Original" Mexican Mafia (also known as "13" or "OMM"), formerly a California prison gang, now a major syndicate throughout the West, began a concerted push into Tucson. The player characters managed to trick a significant underboss, Juanita Ortiz, into crossing the border while holding weight, and got her arrested by Roy Cardwell of the DEA. Thus weakened, they were no match when the Montes de Ocas came to kill them all and take over the supply, which they did.

Law Enforcement

Others

Links

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