Carrion

Corp-allied mercenary outfit — almost a corp themselves. Carrion operates as ARM's deniable arm: the people corps hire when the work needs doing but the corp can't be seen doing it. Ruthless and ambitious. Branded on trustworthy deniability — the brand promise is clean work, plausible deniability, contract honored. They are not loose violence; they are contracted violence with reputation discipline.

Role in the world

Carrion takes every contract that builds the brand and refuses the ones that would damage it. Strike-breaking for PMG against the Sparrows Point Local at the Patapsco fabs (a current contract). Disposal work for ARM and increasingly for Hopkins. Personal-pressure work where Tracers aren't available or the politics are inconvenient. The faction's long-term want is to cross the line into actual corp status — a seat at the Corporate Council table, or close to it.

Reputation is enforced internally — contractors who muddy the brand are reassigned, demoted, or quietly cut loose. The brand is the leverage.

Public faces

• Carrion fields lieutenants, not celebrities. Names circulate by reputation among the people they have worked over, and rarely further.

Allies and friction

• Allies: ARM (largest single client); Hopkins (growing client); PMG (Patapsco contract); the Corporate Council generally
• Friction with: Tracers (overlap in personal-pressure work; turf disputes); the Auditors (contracts occasionally rub against Auditor cases)
• Enemies: Sappers crews; the Drownline Co-op; the Sparrows Point Local (the strike they're breaking); the Mirrored; Free Stack contractors who leak Carrion comms

Where they operate

Carrion does not maintain a single visible HQ. Operational hubs are client-adjacent: a leased PMG facility near the Patapsco fabs; a Hopkins-shared bay-side dock; an ARM-shared armory in the upper Beltway. Carrion lieutenants live discreetly.

The recruitment pitch trades on working-class respectability. The class politics are baked in. People across the resistance networks have family inside Carrion — the corp/network divide runs through families, not just between them.