Introduction
The White is a Street nickname for the network of gangs and clandestine enterprises organized by The White Widow, a shadowy figure who has only recently entered the criminal underworld of Metamor City. Its members are marked by their use of white as a gang color, much as devotees of the vampires use the color red.
The White is a young organization, but growing fast, as it feeds on the discontent that many Street-level gangs have felt while working under the constraints of Malcolm's organization.
Symbology
Members of The White always wear at least one prominent piece of white clothing, such as a shirt, jacket or bandana. "Showing the colors" in this way identifies their allegiance to friend and foe alike.
Street-level gang members mark their territory with white spray paint or arcane marks. The most common "tag" of this sort is a stylized 8 with eight angled lines around it, forming the image of a spider. Other tags include a simple number 8, the Suielman numeral VIII, or the image of a spider's web. Some gang members have the spider symbol tattooed on them, usually in white ink (which on a Kitchlander is subtle in daylight, but glows like neon under a UV lamp).
Street Activities
Most Street-level gang members only care about how The White will benefit their outfit, and their goals are correspondingly small: cutting in on the Syndicate's business, selling high-margin illicit goods that the vampires forbid or restrict, and pushing adjacent rivals away from their territory. Being part of The White aids them in these objectives, and when word comes down that the Widow needs something in return, they usually give little argument.
On the broad scale, though, The White's goal is far more ambitious: to destabilize Malcolm's criminal empire, attack and oppose him on every front where he shows the slightest weakness, and ultimately destroy him. To this end, the Widow orders many activities that her local operatives may not understand: spying on businessmen, stealing files, torching warehouses, disrupting computer networks and cell towers at critical moments, and kidnapping or assassinating people who live far outside the gangers' home territory. When asked, the Widow's agents usually say that these actions are necessary in order to keep the vampires from taking back what the gangers have won, though they rarely explain why this is the case. Few of the gangers suspect that the Widow is actively gunning for Malcolm himself.
Operative Cells
The White also employs more sophisticated operatives to attack Malcolm's holdings at higher levels of the city. These operatives include people with expertise in business, law, computer cracking, infiltration, espionage, political activism, and other, more esoteric skills. Each operative cell has a distinct mission and focus and consists of a group of people brought together to achieve that mission.
The operative cells that The White recruits are double-blind: each operative knows only the members of his own cell (2-4 other people, at most), his contact in the hierarchy above him, and possibly the leader of another sub-cell below him. Each cell also has two "dead drops", physical or WorldNet locations where messages can be passed back and forth in the event that the normal communications chain is compromised. These dead drops are one way only: one dead drop is for sending messages to another cell (whose members are unknown), and the other is for receiving messages from another cell (whose members are also unknown). Information can thus be passed "sideways" through the organization without anyone being able to betray the people outside their immediate circle of contacts.
Operative cells may be clandestine, covert, or overt.
- Clandestine cells are so secretive in their actions that their targets ideally do not even suspect their existence. A cell tasked with listening in on Syndicate communications would be clandestine.
- Covert cells act in ways that are obvious to the target, but it is not clear who is responsible for them. Assassination, sabotage, theft, and kidnapping are all examples of covert action.
- Overt cells act publicly against the Syndicate's interests. An anti-vampire hate group or an NGO that sues Syndicate businesses in order to tie them up in legal proceedings would be examples of overt cells. These cells still do not make public their affiliation with The White; ideally, they are perceived as acting independently of one another.