It was a night like any other. Kar'ar Sok, an industrial deep-miner salesman, traveled through the Old Galactic Market to the apartment of a long-time friend in hopes of finding him to share stories, a drink, and generally good time. Most stories of old war buddies start the same, but they rarely end in a mugging and spending several weeks in a medical clinic on the Senate level.

CSF police reports initially held that Kar'ar was beaten by a gang of thugs, but upon further inspection from an RHS reporter held that it was no random beating and mugging, but a message being sent to anyone who randomly wanders into the district of one of the most powerful criminal consortium in the galaxy: The Migrant Merchants' Guild.

In the files of all official stations on the planet the MMG is a trade consortium that supports the rights of refugees and non-humans, as well as financially donates to the city-world's reconstruction efforts. It is no secret that the MMG came to power during the food riots, heralding non-humans poor and sick to follow their rules after the security forces pulled out of over packed sectors with high immigrant inflow.

The armed guards that helped control the Guild's resources were responsible for various crimes that no one was officially charged with. Men were beaten for trying to gain more food for their families, women and children all but being treated as objects for forced labor or darker, more carnal desires.

Adding the bribery of Senate officials and the extortion of civilian merchants into their fold, the MMG now fully controls the old Galactic Market as their own sector, the shiny neon billboards and smiling armed Weequay bruisers acting as guards one moment and shaking down shops the next. What little Republic patrols that venture into MMG territory now come fully armed and expecting trouble, the downtrodden people of the Market all but having given up on their personal freedoms that – even at the heart of the Galactic Republic – seem almost impossible to enforce.

Billian "Bill" Tetley,