The bodies of thousands of v-day victims lay strewn about the seven cities. Yet, there seemed to be a simple, quiet peace. A short time before thousands would take to murdering one another, a pestilence had taken many of this world's most senior members. It's common, as many know, that severe illnesses would be most fatal to older individuals. Only a few of the elder leadership survived. It amounted to a catastrophe for some cities. An opportunity for others. But in that moment, things were calm.

Weeks ago, I approached these streets as little more than a Goomba with words of advice on how to survive "The Purge". In the weeks that followed, whether individuals chose to take my advice or not, the former regime proceeded to remove many individuals from its ranks with full support of their city heads and crew leaders. These attacks included Made Man and associates. Crewleaders and their hands. No city was totally immune.

Now, I figure it seems appropriate to conduct a bookend review- a hopeful final chapter- of what can be gleaned from those weeks in between.

Their method of "ruling" was well-discussed in our streets, though never by the ones doing it. And while some mourn and others cherish the deaths of that regime, I believe their fate offers an incredibly valuable lesson for many of those who are now or who aspire to be crewleaders. And that lesson is: purging hurts more than just the purged. This was demonstrated, time and time again, by the fallen regime.

• They demanded deaths from Godfather Whoreable- until it cost them the support of that Godfather, and she had to be removed. And with her death came collateral damage. But they pressed on.
• They demanded deaths from Detroit, which cost them the support of EnricoCalabrese. And with his death came the death of Berserker's RHM, Wolverine. They pressed on.
• They demanded more deaths from Detroit, as well as one of my partners here in Philly, James_T_Kirk. Soon CarolHathaway and DougRoss grew hostile to the regime and further fractured it.

Purging erodes the support not only for a regime's leadership, but for each of its leaders. It induces paranoia and distrust in the minds of both its leaders and its members. And each time these deaths are demanded, a regime runs the risk of losing its internal cohesion. Inevitably, these leaders will refuse to sacrifice people they trust for their clique and either fight or be removed themselves.

Guido listened to the words of Javier.

He silently nodded. 

There were truths here, Guido had himself played a role in the events Javier described.

Paranoia and distrust are the mortal enemy of the Mafia. The mafia is built on trust, built on the fact that each holds his place and holds his tongue. And that when you do what your capo ask your capo will have your back. That is the way of the Cosa Nostra and that is how we all grow rich and have easy lifes.

BudKnight was drinking a delicious Bud Light as he listened to his Crew Leaders wise words about the recently deceased regime that had been running criminal operations across the nation. He was not from the oldest of bloodlines, but his ancestors have been around for quite some years allowing him to see the different ways people have run things...

I think you've hit on some very good points here. The idea that purging is not just negatively impacting those purged is something I've not given too much thought to in the past. As you explained it and I thought about it....well it made a lot of sense. My father worked in the city of Los Angeles and saw a group that was spoken of as staunch allies turn on them with what seemed to be very little remorse.

It caught many people off guard and others seemed to be 'not too surprised' that a group full of pro-purge leadership decided to kill some of their own. My father was closer to the latter group in opinion as most groups that rise to the top tend to fall apart eventually. The most committed of members will eventually become the 'enemy' of those at the top. 

Within journals I've read I have seen how groups can truly come together and gain a stranglehold on the criminal underworld. The one thing that usually happens is that group eventually turns on one too many people. The foundation cracks after a few 'purges' or 'city take-downs' or 'wars' depending on how it gets defined after the guns stop firing. In this last groups case there was never a definition.

Then they decide to take out one of their own, not just somebody who was on the far peripheral helping out....truly somebody who was part of helping their group. This causes paranoia and blood-lust to rise to new levels. Which will eventually lead to the final step of any good regime collapse.

The Final Blow. There is usually a final blow to that now crumbling foundation which is one person/city is taken out that was quite important to stability. The take-down that makes everyone truly feel that anyone could be next on the menu. This is where we tend to see things start to fall apart at a rapid rate unlike before. Eventually the group tends to implode leaving a new bunch of leaders taking over and setting up across the nation.

I think that is what we saw in recent weeks with the fall of Los Angeles followed by the events surrounding EnricoCalabrese, DougRoss, and CarolHathaway. The only curveball here was the sudden smiting by the gods that took most of the remaining leadership out of play. 

I think with minor tweaks to the model here and there this can be applied to most of the 'regimes' and 'groups' we and our ancestors have seen over the past few years.

He paused a moment as a few more thoughts came to mind and he needed to catch his breath and organize those thoughts...

The main focus of this conversation is to look at the effects of purging on leadership across the country. I just don't want to forget the effect it has on the kin of those who are affected. I believe that it is what leads to so many instances of what we refer to as 'rogues'. The kin are feeling angry and resentful which pushes them to want revenge for their parent(s). Sometimes this is a situation where we see a person train up a decent gun and wipe a few hands and sometimes we see somebody execute a well orchestrated plan where they wipe multiple Godfathers and Crew Leaders. The latter is very uncommon, but if it happens you can only imagine where that motivation came from. 

The other outcome of a purge regime is sometimes another purge regime. The vicious cycle of one group purging selective members of the underworld and when those who were being purged make it to the top....well they want to return the favor. This cycle does not always unfold, but it definitely has happened in recent years. I think that for some in this most recent regime we could see that being their motivation. 

But, I won't speak for the dead and can only make educated guesses and assumptions. 

Finally before I leave this conversation as I probably won't want to argue if anyone disagrees...since we are all welcome to our opinions...I'd like to say that I hope the group we have here can look past the events of this last regime. Make changes for the good of the criminal underworld rather than just continuing the vicious cycle of bloodshed for no true reason. In just days since so much of these events unfolded we have seen the amount of leadership street presence sky rocket. Something that seemed extinct with the last group. The only time they seemed to come out was to talk down to people who spoke out against them. Not the case for everyone, but for many unfortunately it was.

It has been refreshing to see people who are leading this countries criminal element coming to the streets with such consistency. Even if Javier was not my own crew leader I would have much respect for how he has handled himself since the fall of this previous regime. Even during the final days of that regime he did things that gained my respect. Let's just hope many others can follow his example or set one of their own. One other of note so far has been Forgo from Chicago. So there are leaders out there already setting a different trend...

With that he got on his noble steed Blue Moon and rode off into the distance...

Tutte read Javier-s announcement and just could agree to what he read, his own big brother lost his life to a cl he were just minutes from to kill, the result were that he killed his brother but luckily he manage to re-shoot and kill him before his last breath came out so in a way he walked down the life-oath in great honor.

Truly a hard war was it had he heard and he hoped it will take long before such a sad one occur again.

One of your partners or two of them in Philly? Is one unrelated to this purge-y event? 

There is a pretty simple bit of math here. The more you blatantly purge people with absolutely fuck all in the way of remorse the more people you piss off. The more you push people underground. The more you do this, the less people you have to support your cause. It creates mass resentment among the children of those purged.

You're in effect creating your won underground groups, these have only one goal in mind and thats to avenge the death of their kins and rightly so, imo. Underground groups are welcomed when we see purges of mass, like we have seen recently. It pushes people to play underhandedly with an agenda. Those power recently, created their own beast with such actions. 

In doing so, they also created their own crazy amount of paranoia that they had to resort to cheating to try to curb behaviours that they had ultimately put on their own heads, which is beautifully ironic. Lets be blunt, we all know how fragile our lives are here and for most parts when our fathers die in wars, we get it. we understand. But there is no parity in dying in a war because of opposing factions and dying because of people cheating.

Having said all that; i do feel slightly disappointed in the community. I say this because the tools are there to oppose this behaviour (for most parts, removing the cheating aspect) but not enough purgee's had the audacity to actualy want to do something about it. It took godly intervention. 

Am i happy that the cheating regime is down, absofuckinglutly. Would i have loved to see the community bring it to its knees, even more so. It does pose an interesting question though- 

If the kins of those who where found guilty and punished rise back to the top, will they carry on the work their mothers and fathers started?  

Does the ethos that you cant be judged by your kins actions still apply in this instance? 

as a community do we actively make a decision to let a few generations pass by before allowing that family line to rise again. Hoping that the shitty need to cheat has washed from their family tree? 

Its an interesting time to be alive a lot of us have been purged and been a victim of such cheating. I wounder how that will scape the land going forward? 

Either way, its nice to see thast regime brought to its knees, abruptly 

Michael, you are certainly free to share as many details as you need to make your point more clear. I'm sure people would love to hear them. I don't mind being wrong.

However, when I watch a key figurehead of a regime die dueling one of its other key members while Doug's and Carol's crews rogue against them, I don't generally think of such an event as being abundantly friendly. I'd be curious to see how you describe that group without them appearing "hostile", "fractured", or "losing its internal cohesion."

Seeing how you think they went rogue because of this huge fracture, ask yourself why these two cap killers failed to kill any of their group in this rogue attempt. Do you have any proof or details to support these accusations you make?
 

yet carol lost her life shooting a crew leader that wasn't even close to being capped...LOLZ. and let's face it, who did dougross shot, considering he was a "cap killer"? looking back through the obit timeline, I don't really say many people that he actually shot. So yeah. Cap killers are us, that didn't actually kill any capped members of this world during their lost hours on this world. 

Well for starters it’s pretty common knowledge that Carol went and shot Templar. 

The reason for this was that the was misread for The deaths of the PH crew leader and one of his members (PURGE), it was taken that templer took the shot, when in actual fact it was peptide. Carol then shot templer. She was then killed for that, yet peptide lived to see another day after it had all died down. 

End of the day it’s nice to see the world healthy, but with everything they had done I don’t think we as the new leaders need to sully their names any more than they themselves have.

That's a piss-take, right?  they were caught cheating? They openly were trying and talking about blackmailing the main man himself. They cheated, and purged specific people because of their cheating...do I need to say cheating one more time for it to be understood? I'm, not one for speaking ill of the dead, but in case of cheating oops I said it again, then I'm all for a good riddance party. 

Javier, you mention that the crewmembers of Carol and Doug went rogue. Could you please explain how you define that act?

eMAKE, that was poorly worded and looks unclear now that I read it. They acted in loyalty to their crewleader by dying with them. It would have been more appropriate to say they rogued against the regime, but it was not a rogue act in the sense that they betrayed their crewleader(s). Thank you for inviting a clarification.

you mention that the crewmembers of Carol and Doug went rogue. Could you please explain how you define that act?

is it not rogue to shoot another cl without consulting anyone first? Without going to the correct people to ask the correct questions. She paid with her life, so I would be inclined to say it was seen as a rogue act. Otherwise she would not have been killed literally 30 seconds later. 

Or was it complacency that made her think she could take that shot without suffering the consequence of said action?

I can't say I agree with the cheating part, Forgo, but clearly you know more than myself, but what gave you that impression?

Forgo, we were specifically talking about the crewmembers of Doug and Carol. Not the crewleaders themselves. However, I would posit that a crewleader by definition cannot go rogue, since they by virtue of being a crewleader have autonomy - at least for Doug, since he was city head of Seattle. Carol's actions are more murky, since she was under Berserker.

That is why I would also disagree with Javier when he says that the crewmembers of Doug and Carol went rogue against anyone. They merely followed the orders given to them by their respective crewleaders. Looking at the eulogies given at my father's funeral, it would seem that the rest of the regime share the sentiment I did.

Grindenwald was hanging around listening to the leaders chime in on the events that had persisted over the last few weeks. As eventful as the streets were with this new sense of 'freedom'. Gellert felt there was a bigger question at play here. 

See, we can all come out here and talk about how purging is bad, how bloodlining is bad. However, I think were missing the underlying cause here. There are certain regimes that have over the course of history instituted this method to hold control. Some regimes were able to get away with this more so than others. Obviously as the cheaters have come to abuse the system that is inherently built in to our way of criminal order, the members that look over our criminal activities have made changes accordingly. I remember when there were rumors of huge collections of information that pertained to witness statements. A central ledger of sorts to monitor everyone and anyone. That regime basically cornered the market on this, and due to that they sustained. 

Then afterwards lineage of those same leaders built another such system to monitor people, and then laws were placed where you couldn't investigate mafiosos bloodlines anymore. 

For every bad apple that has graced our streets, there has been a evolution of sorts; in the genetic traits for when it comes to the future. The future generations will always find a way to evolve to be best protected from the sins of the past. Its the way of our world or any for that matter. Evolve or go extinct. 

Fantastic! Hallelujah!!! We can all go home now...

Gellert takes out his cigar and lights it, gently taking a puff. 

Only I haven't yet addressed the underbelly of sorts. As mafiosos, that want to build a better future for the next generation of mobsters. I ask a simple question. 

How long do we stand to cherish and allow members from lineages that have made cheating the norm? I mean think about it? 

When one of our mobsters stands out of line. We punish him. Take away his/her rights, ranks, hell sometimes even their gun. And if they still don't listen, a bullet works better than words. And eventually they learn. 

Only the problem here is. The ones that have been caught in the act of cheating are yet allowed back to our shores. To cause a mockery of our criminal systems. How many times does someone have to get caught with 'their' group of friendly lineages before we come to the understanding that some people, no matter what the repercussions. Will refuse to change. Because the repercussions haven't been strong enough. 

Gellert takes another puff of his cigar and strolls about a little. 

Simply put, and this is my opinion obviously. Giving a bullet to these cheaters haven't worked. Watching their ancestors regimes burn due to being caught cheating hasn't worked. Well its about time we dropped the hammer. Cause when your kid or mobster refuses to learn. Some excruciating circumstances, require excruciating measures. Till that happens. Those that were part of the last cheating ordeal will return like prince and princess of blackwater. They will rebuild what they have lost and leaders hell bent on gaining power will allow this, till one day. They dont have any control over it anymore. And cyclically well be back at this curb again, because power has no boundaries. Has no limits. Its simply an addiction. And addiction cant separate good and bad. It just knows one thing...and thats greed. 

So with that. I say, the decision starts now. Not from me, or you. Or even the leaders. This goes all the way to the top of the Empire State building. Stop the cheaters in their tracks now. Or we will see them again, with even more bloodlust than before. With even more desire to limit our rights than before. Evolve or go extinct. 

People may have got the terminology of rogue misconstrued, or least misguided with the people who they tar with the big old rogue brush. Crew members who stayed loyal and faithful to Doug and Carol are now rewarded for their loyalty with the black stain of being called a rogue.  Where is the logic in that? Surely a good crew member is loyal first and foremost to their crew leader, especially if they have earned the esteemed rank of Made or higher? Or does the initiation of Made only matter when it suits the livlihood of said crew member? Perhaps my father, Agrippa should have lacked a spine, accepted Berserkers invite and just turn a blind eye to his crew leader, the person who he sworn allegience and loyalty to, being slain? Hell, even a remark etched in history from Berserker himself, the man who finally shot my Father, about my loyalty to my crew leader is apparently not enough.

Who would have thought having the ethos of loyalty first and forthmost to my father's crew leader would earn my bloodline the title rogue.

I think anyone advocating further bloodlining of the Blackwater members is being a little naive. This course of action has been the norm for most of them for a very long time and most of them were forced underground prior to their rise to power. It is nothing daunting for them or even new ground to tread, so I very much doubt many of them will be revealing their lineage to too many others around here for the foreseeable future. This leads you to the same problem that puzzled them; how do you stop potentially hostile people getting into a position to hurt you?

Addressing that question will be the answer to how to prevent further purges from becoming the norm. My advice to that would be into exploring the desire that most of these individuals, groups, whatever, actually have. More often than not, at it's very core, it is acceptance; the ability to be themselves and participate in our society. After that, sure, most people want money, respect and power, but this is the mafia and they certainly wouldn't be alone in those desires, but at outset nobody chooses to be an outcast. They are usually forced out by real or imagined dangers to being part of the mainstream.

With this in mind, I have invariably found that when you clearly set out your expectations for someone to achieve acceptance, they embrace the opportunity. That mentality was how my predecessors came into contact with members of Blackwater in the first place, by treating them like anyone else. Not exactly innocent until proven guilty, just an opportunity to gain trust which can be grabbed or ignored.

So I would suggest adopting that approach, cheater or not. The Gods deal with those matters and they have meted out the punishment they see fit. It is up to us now what happens next. As we rarely see a situation where rehabilitation is successfully achieved through punishment alone, maybe try another way? An eye for an eye, eventually, just leaves us all blind. 

I think you missed the entire point Grin-05. Were not speaking of folks that made a mistake unintentionally. Mafiosos do that all the time. They pay for that, brush things of and try again. Being better the next time. As I said they evolve. 

However, law is not the same for repeat offenders. How many times do you let cheaters off with a slap on the wrist? How long do you wait till they keep bringing our way of life to its knees, using methods that are synonymous with cheating. If it was once, sure, twice, maybe...now were well past that benchmark. When do you call a spade a spade? It doesn't take much to decipher that any involvement of Blackwater with any regime has usually come to its collapse due to cheating. It is time to drop the hammer. If we choose not to evolve, we will go extinct. Councils have banned groups before, that were joined to rogues that disturb our course of business. Even the Gods have stepped in when a 3 number org, that shall not be named went past its limits. Hammer has been dropped before for people that have pushed the boundaries, again and again. 

With that I will also say this. Once a blackwater isn't always a blackwater. Some of these members came to the realization of what it requires to be a member. And have since moved on, cause their conscience woke up and they saw the group for what it is. Power hungry, bloodlining loving cheaters. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with being power hungry, its a part of our way of life, everyone wants to climb rungs. Bloodling, is looked down upon, but the ones that use this method, know how to put this in application, as you ancestors so well spoke about previously. 

So yea, go ahead and embark on a similar journey as everyone else that gets off a boat upon these shores. Make your path, earn your bones and rise to the top. No one will have a word to say against that. Regimes rise and fall...none cares. Good ones last, bad ones crumble. However there is a very fine line that separates playing by the rules of La Cosa Nostra, versus breaking the rules for the glory of domination. And thats the difference between repeat offenders and regular good old mafiosos.