The below organizations are no longer active in String Theory, but were at one time a major influence in the world.
Ghost Shadows Triad
Leadership | Wenzhou Zhao | Founded | 1971 |
Type | Criminal Organization | Headquarters | Unknown |
Status | Defunct | ||
Contact | Manhattan | ||
Reputation | The Ghost Shadows were the sole survivors of a triad war that raged through New York City between 2008 and 2010. They were the single largest organized crime operation in the NYC area and had a firm hold on the regions drug trafficking. Most criminal organizations smaller than the Ghost Shadows had some dealings with the group, simply due to their enormous sphere of influence. They were a ruthless organization that was not above using violence to silence their opposition or get their way. |
The Ghost Shadows were a Hong Kong triad that sprouted up in New York city in the 1970s. The Ghost Shadows activities included extortion, kidnapping, drug trafficking and gambling. They were nearly stamped out in the late 1990s due to corruption from within and complications with the NYPD and their rivals the Flying Dragons. However, in 2009, an alliance of convenience with Daniel Linderman allowed them to wrest control of the remaining disparate Triad in New York City, and crush the Flying Dragons, rising the Ghost Shadows to terrifying power and influence.
The former Dragon Head of the Ghost Shadows, Robin Chee, was publicly identified as being the group's leader in the 1990s and was arrested in 1998 along with many key members of the Ghost Shadows, leading to a near collapse of the organization. It was only the appearance of Wenzhuo Zhao that was the Ghost Shadows' saving grace. It was believed that Zhao was a Triad officer embedded in the On Leong Chinese Merchants Association which, although legitimate in part, has been found by police authorities to be a significant criminally influenced tong engaged in various illegal activities including, among other matters, illegal gambling.
Little was known of Zhao, save that he was a shrewd and cunning strategist and managed to keep the weakened Ghost Shadows alive through the turbulent decade following Chee's arrest. Zhao's true skill for preservation and manipulation was realized in 2009, when he made an alliance of convenience with the Linderman Group, and took significant aid which allowed him to demolish the Flying Dragons Triad — the Ghost Shadows' primary rival — and usurp their operations and holdings.
The Ghost Shadows were a very closely-knit and racially select closed organization, as most Hong Kong triad still are. While outright refusing full membership to those not of Chinese descent, exceptions have been made for those of mixed heritage, and business associations with the organization are common. Under Zhao's leadership the Ghost Shadows have been less exclusive to mixed-heritage membership, given in part to his own Japanese-Chinese heritage.
Beginning in October of 2009, the Ghost Shadows were actively pushing a psychoactive drug known as Refrain on the streets, after having stolen operations from the Flying Dragons. However, they relied on the Linderman Group to produce the drug, and merely supplied it and make considerably less profit off of the drug than the Flying Dragons did. Just before the onset of the Second American Civil War, the Ghost Shadows brokered an allegiance with Adam Monroe that would see them gain access to chemical distribution and production facilities to further push Refrain and saw Zhao elevated in power. Together with Monroe, Zhao would make the Ghost Shadows into the single largest criminal organization in the post-war America.
In early 2019 Zhao was captured in a SESA raid on Ghost Shadows production facilities and remanded to federal custody. Zhao became the target of an inter-faction conflict when the Liberty Island Detention Center where he was being held was raided by Mazdak wherein Zhao was assassinated. Leadership of the Ghost Shadows fell to his second-in-command Tsai who died not long after in a coordinated reprisal led by Yamagato Industries on Ghost Shadows holdings. With its leadership destroyed and many of its key members arrested, the Ghost Shadows broke apart into smaller, disparate groups and effectively ceased to exist.
Praxis Heavy Industries
Leadership | Ju-long Lung-Wei (CEO) | Founded | May 1984 |
Type | International Corporation | Headquarters | Praxis Arcology, Shanghai |
Status | Liquidated | ||
Contact | Manhattan | ||
Reputation | Praxis Heavy Industries was a Chinese global leader in mechanical engineering, robotics, and the bleeding edge field of cybertechnology. They were the largest competitor to Yamagato Industries and were the single largest technology corporation in China. Praxis was the world leader in military drone design. |
Praxis Heavy Industries began as a small shipping company in 1984, and through the tumult of the late 1980s and early 1990s grew into an industrial powerhouse through sound investments, political influence, hostile corporate takeovers, and and China's flagrant disregard for the US Patent system. Praxis is one of the first adopters of an SLC-E workforce, predating the November 2007 revelation of people with extraordinary abilities to the world. Praxis had been secretly tracking and observing SLC-E individuals and acting as a cover for the Chinese government's own superhuman soldier program, Shen Quan. From 2007 to 2011 Praxis Heavy Industries continued to grow its SLC-E workforce through mandatory labor practices thanks to China's draconian SLC-E Registry system. In the wake of the Second American Civil War, Praxis Heavy Industries paid an officially undisclosed sum, estimated at 8.6 billion dollars, to the post-war United States government for exclusive contract rights to revitalize and reconstruct the PSW Dead Zone and create the California Safe Zone.
In the wake of an internet network hack revealing thousands of classified documents outlining numerous human rights violations and federal crimes, the United States government froze Praxis Heavy Industries' contract with the country and stalled all operations with the company. In the background of these events, Yamagato Industries Chief Operations Officer Kam Nisatta brokered a back-room deal that would see Praxis Heavy Industries intellectual property rights and material assets transferred to Yamagato Industries along with a handful of key personnel who negotiated with the US government as state assets to testify against Praxis Heavy Industries' leadership. These individuals also worked with the Chinese government to maintain their freedom in exchange for damning evidence against the corporation, revealing ties to the terrorist organization Mazdak whom Praxis had been funneling military technology to for a decade.
However, the lion's share of Praxis' work was destroyed in a technopathic assault on their Shanghai arcology in February of 2020. This act of digital terrorism destroyed an estimated 7.3 trillion dollars in research data and triggered the destruction of another 20 billion dollars in material assets.
As of 2020 Praxis Heavy Industries still exists as a corporation, but it has been gutted and its highest executives face serious international charges ranging from human trafficking to unlawful human experimentation, arms dealing, and more.
Shedda Dinu
Leadership | Adam Monroe | Founded | 2008 |
Type | Criminal Organization | Headquarters | Times Square Building |
Status | Defunct | ||
Contact | Manhattan | ||
Reputation | Shedda Dinu is a cell of a little-known secret society operating with a seemingly inscrutable agenda. Underworld groups know them as a high-paying and dangerous subversive organization. |
Shedda Dinu was an international secret society founded in late 2008 by Adam Monroe. The organization's ultimate goal was to ensure that the Evolved control civilization. Shedda Dinu's members generally believed the Evolved are a superior step in evolution and the rightful inheritors of the Earth. To this end, Adam quietly gathered powerful Evolved from around the world, working to build a cell-structured organization with these goals in mind. Shedda Dinu's greatest allies were the like-minded Mazdak organization, which counts Shedda Dinu leadership among its ranks. In the wake of the Second American Civil War, Shedda Dinu moved to make their dream for an Evolved-controlled world a reality, and prepares to deal a final deathblow to the humans who sought to control and murder their kind.
However, thanks to the efforts of SESA Shedda Dinu's operation was uncovered and thwarted in early 2020. The terrorist organization collapsed, revealing its ties to Praxis Heavy Industries and helping to seal that corporation's fate. The members of the terrorist cell that avoided capture or death in the raid remained at large.