Red Dragon Crime Syndicate

This is the most powerful crime organization in the series, a tightly structured empire operating out of a Martian skyscraper in Tharsis. Its aesthetic and hierarchy borrow openly from East Asian triad and yakuza traditions, and its elders are dressed in the imperial Manchurian robes of the Qing dynasty. Beneath the pageantry lies a machine devoted chiefly to contract killing and the movement of narcotics.

At the top sits a council of three elders known collectively as the Van, who steer the organization from their Martian tower. Below them the syndicate fields hundreds of armed guards and soldiers and runs a spread of illicit enterprises, among them the trade in the drug Red Eye, while specializing above all in assassination and the trafficking of narcotics. Its most unbending rule holds that no one departs the organization alive: resignation, and even the failure to carry out a crucial task, are punishable by death, which breeds a culture of merciless discipline.

From the mid-2060s the group waged a prolonged war against the rival White Tiger Crime Syndicate. That feud framed a chain of betrayals in 2071, when the elders sought a ceasefire and one of their capos brokered peace with the veteran captain Mao Yenrai, only for Vicious to murder both men and their escorts in defiance of the truce. His hand in the killings was suspected but never proven to the leadership.

Later that year the syndicate convulsed as Vicious moved to seize power. His assault on the Van was anticipated and he was taken prisoner, while the elders dispatched killers to eliminate everyone tied to him, claiming Julia among their victims. The execution never came: Vicious's loyalists cut down the elders' guards, freed him, and let him kill the Van with his own hands, after which he proclaimed himself the new head of the organization. His reign proved short. Spike Spiegel soon launched a devastating raid that tore through the syndicate's ranks, and with Shin's aid he fought his way to the top of the headquarters for a final duel. Vicious died there, while Spike's own fate was left deliberately uncertain.

The ruling Van comprised three elders, Wang Long, Sou Long, and Ping Long, typically shown in the imperial Manchurian robes of the Qing dynasty. Mao Yenrai served as a trusted capo beneath them and mentored both Vicious and Spike, most likely the sponsor who first brought the pair into the fold. Vicious rose from ambitious lieutenant to usurper, while Spike Spiegel walked away in the late 2060s by faking his death and turning bounty hunter. The rank and file included operatives such as Lin and Shin, the latter ultimately siding with Spike. Julia stood close to the organization without a clearly confirmed membership, seeming to be an affiliate rather than a sworn member, and it is left ambiguous whether Annie or her husband ever belonged.