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Tiamat's Chosen
The Chosen, one of the gangs of Torch, hold that top portion of Maygel, the central mountain in Torch, inside the wall. Their men patrol the streets and generally keep the population in line and up to date with their “tax payments”, but they have a walled manor compound that serves as their barracks and command hub.
The Chosen are a pretty straightforward gang of approximately 150 armed men. They moved into town years ago, cracked enough skulls in Maygel to drive out all their competition, settled in, and got to squeezing the locals. The leader's smart enough to know where to apply pressure and where not to waste his time. They make sure any business in town pays protection money to their goons, and that everybody buys what they need from businesses on their turf. Taverns are only allowed to buy ale from breweries that pay Chosen dues, breweries are only allowed to buy hops from suppliers they pay their dues to get it into the area, and so on. Lot of smuggling goes on under their nose, but they rough up anybody they catch. They do protect the peasants and locals, in a way…just enough to make sure they keep spending their gold, so the Chosen can keep skimming off the top.
The Chosen have a partnership with a local temple called the Tabernacle of the Dark Flame, a nondenominational group of clerics who give broad worship to all Lower Planar gods. They have their own shrines and chapels around the area, but their central cathedral sits across the square from the Chosen's main compound. The clerics don't have the muscle to force people to worship the way they want, and the Chosen can't heal or cast spells. Between the two of them they cover each others' weaknesses. One of the Chosen's rules is that no other temples are allowed in their turf. The Dark Flame is the only church folk can pray at, get healing from, and so on.
Tiamat's Chosen were extorting money from The Brotherhood Janko for a period of time. In order to continue to receive funding from the Brotherhood, and to help train the Ysgardian army, Helga came to the aid of the Brotherhood, and terrorized the Chosen, using non-lethal violence and intimidation to prevent them from conducting business until they relented. (26)
