Gangs of Varaar
| Type | Criminal gangs, and the government of Varaar |
|---|---|
| Leader | Five gang heads, of whom only Burkhan of the Damaziko is named |
| Headquarters | Varaar |
| Sigil | One to each gang, engraved in stone above their boxes at the Varaar Colosseum |
| Status | Ruling |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
The gangs of Varaar are the five criminal outfits that built the canyon city of Varaar and have governed it ever since. Tabitha Glowdish names all five for Reagan Hideaway beneath the statues on the colosseum wall: "The Rewakan, the Nabagari, the Damaziko, the Khaylant, and the Senadryn gangs. Five gangs, five sleazebag rulers."[1] Where the rest of the kingdoms of Eslura are watched over by their Sacred Ruler, Varaar is kept in check entirely by its gangs.[2]
The five gangs
The books name the five once, in that single sentence, and both novels' pronunciation guides list all five under other.[1][3][4] Beyond the names, the material is uneven: three of the five are given sigils, members or territory, and two are not described at all.
Rewakan
The Rewakan keep a guarded hideout in the depths of the canyon, camouflaged by layers of natural rock outcroppings, and the citizens of Varaar know to keep their distance from the gang's territory. Behind a spiked wall and a garden of broken glass stands a cluster of fenced-in sand brick buildings patrolled by goons and by Rhazgol, a black hound with one burning red eye and one dull grey one, grown since Aero last saw him from the size of a rabbit to that of a miniature horse.[5] Aero Ellisvat grew up in the city and learned his way around the compound.[5]
Two Rewakans are named. Kai Demari is a mountain-sized gorilla with a silver hoop through his septum who guards the compound with an axe, and who tells Aero that he is no longer welcome inside the walls.[5] Jensaad was Aero's mentor when Aero was a teenager, and gave him what he called the number one rule of the Rewakan: never let down your guard, not even for a moment. Aero killed both of them in one night, taking back the necklace called the Heart of the Kella.[5]
The gang took Aero's sister from her bed as a child and sold her on to the Nelazgians. Aero joined the Rewakan afterwards to find out where she had been held and why, and learned only that they had pawned her off as fast as they had taken her.[6] A gorilla of the gang caught up with him at the Avonbourn a lifetime later, named him as the killer of his brother, who had guarded Rewakan territory, and of Jensaad, drugged him and Reagan with a needle, and had them carted to the colosseum. That gorilla later sat among the gang heads in the boxes, drinking out of a golden chalice.[7][2]
Nabagari
Nothing is recorded of the Nabagari beyond the name.[1]
Damaziko
The sigil of the Damaziko is a snake with swords for fangs. It is cut into the brick above the door of the Hollowed Shadow, and it is worn as a tattoo, whose position on the body marks rank: inked on the tongue, it signifies the high-up ranks of the gang.[8]
Burkhan ran the Damaziko and owned the Hollowed Shadow, the underground club that kidnapped young women to entertain the highest-ranking gang members in the city. He is the only one of the five heads the books name. Tab killed him inside his own club and burned it down, and Damaziko thugs were in the courtyard looking for her before the fire was out.[8][9]
Khaylant
The sigil of the Khaylant is an upside-down naked pine tree, shaved into the fur of an animal's arm or borne on the forearm.[8] The gang is described as a protection racket for criminals, and the criminal it protected at the Hollowed Shadow was the Damaziko: a Khaylant bear kept the courtyard door and a Khaylant fox the door at the foot of the stairs, and the two gangs shared business dealings.[8]
The bear, Kayloo, had spent his whole life serving the gangs and said as much when he opened the escape hole for the club's dancers instead of stopping them.[8]
Senadryn
Nothing is recorded of the Senadryn beyond the name.[1]
Rule
Five gangs erected Varaar and five gang heads rule it. Unlike the rest of Eslura, the city was created by its own people rather than watched over from outside, and Tab calls the five "The very voraths standing above you" as she points out their statues, five of them along the top of the colosseum wall with their eyes plated in gold.[1]
Tab grew up in the canyon streets and learned a thing or two about the five governing gangs. She calls them ever present, lurking in the shadows and often on the rooftops, and says that as long as she could pay her share at their establishments they did not care that she was an Olphin.[8] Their indifference cuts both ways: they do not give a flying rabintail's horn who is coming and going through their territory so long as a traveller has kaps in their pockets, kaps being the gold coin of Eslura's currency.[1]
The claim to independence is thinner than the gangs pretend. Tab holds that for all they will claim it, they still fall under the rule of the Sacred Rulers and are still part of Eslura, that nothing Sacred is to be found in the city because the gangs saw to it when they laid down its framework, and that "Nelazgian propaganda is what I call it".[1]
The heads sit together in decorated box seats at the colosseum, each under his own sigil engraved in stone above him. One of them, draped in orange, opened the games from his box with two claps of his hands, timed a prisoner's run through the arena maze with a sand timer, and ended the show by calling for the beast.[2]
Business
The colosseum is the one place the gangs take their prisoners, who are put into the ring against whatever creature has been riled up for them.[9][2]
They deal in people. The Rewakan sold Aero's sister to the Nelazgians as a child, and the Nelazgians settled on Varaar as their source of Eslurian leaders because, in Ferra Ellisvat's account, Eslurians there were willing to capture young children and pawn them off for a quick buck. Ferra says she was taken at a young age that way herself.[6][10] The Hollowed Shadow's dancers were stolen from their families and held in a quarters beside the club.[8]
They deal in most other things as well. The side streets off the main plaza are lined with stalls selling drugs, moonshine, animals and children, and a stall under a flag with a crudely drawn shield on it will produce two knives for a single gold kap without a question asked.[1]
Serving a gang is one of the two livelihoods the city offers. Watching an old troll scrub a burst eyeball off the cobbles on Burkhan's order, Tab thinks him a pawn with no real choice: life on the streets fighting the same fight day after day, or making ends meet beneath one of Varaar's five governing gangs.[8]
Enemies
The gangs are patient and they do not forget. Aero says they send out search crews, that they do not like to be outsmarted, and that when they find someone the punishment is double what they had first planned.[6] Tab left Varaar and hid in the desert after burning the Hollowed Shadow, on the reasoning that the gangs would forget about their dancers but would never forget about the one who took away their stream of money.[9]
Fawn and the women who came out of the Shadow moved back into its burnt-out basement, which the gangs never touched again, and turned it into the base of a standing campaign against them. They keep watchers in every corner of Varaar and work to stop the gangs taking any more women.[9] After Fawn shot the gang's guards off Reagan and Aero in the colosseum, Tab stayed behind to get the women out of the city, knowing the gangs would come for them both.[2][6]
Behind the scenes
Only one of the five gang leaders is named. Burkhan of the Damaziko is identified in The Way Shadows Live, and the other four heads appear only as the statues on the colosseum wall and as figures in the boxes above the arena, one of whom is described by the colour of his clothes.[8][1][2] This is a gap in the source material rather than a gap in this article.
The novels also disagree about which gang one of their goons belongs to. Razaryn, the orange lizard at the Hollowed Shadow, is identified by his tongue tattoo as high up in the Damaziko, and is called a Khaylant goon a few pages later in the same story.[8]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Book 1, Ch. 14.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Book 2, Ch. 13.
- ↑ Book 1.
- ↑ Book 2.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Collection, Ch. 1.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Book 2, Ch. 16.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 8.
- ↑ 8.00 8.01 8.02 8.03 8.04 8.05 8.06 8.07 8.08 8.09 Collection, Ch. 2.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Book 2, Ch. 10.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 22.