Rival Crews

The crew's own tier of Los Angeles's market for hired muscle, and the one they'll recognize fastest because it's their own reflection. Freelancers who take the jobs nobody will pay properly for: too small for ex-uniforms, too improvised for subcontracted patrol. Most of the people who get sent at the crew come from here.

One of them is four or five people and a truck, organized by the week, taking whatever is paying. That crew is the example worth knowing, because the same faces turn up on three separate jobs doing three unrelated things, and that is what this tier looks like from outside.

What the crew knows#

• Whoever's coming is doing exactly what the crew is doing, for less money, for somebody who probably lied to them too.
• They quit early. The moment a job costs more than it pays, a crew like this is in the truck, taking their people with them. Nobody here is dying for somebody else's copper.
• Tools before guns, usually. A truck, work gloves, maybe one pistol somebody's fired at a can. Armor is rare and expensive.
• They talk. A crew this thin would rather negotiate, split a job, or walk away than fight a table that's better equipped than they are.

Standing with the crew#

Neutral, and reusable. The same face can be a rival on one job and a colleague on the next, because the tier isn't loyal to anybody, including its own last client.