Garden

Garden operates outside every official chart of the Ostanian state. The syndicate treats the elimination of national traitors as a form of civic gardening, and its very existence stays hidden from nearly everyone; only a handful of figures inside the State Security Service know it is real, while the public dismisses stories about it as legend. Rumor even claims one of its operatives once wiped out a whole military troop. The group has reportedly served the country for hundreds of years.

Command rests with the Shopkeeper, a shadowy man whose loyalty seems pinned to the Miteran Empire of Ostania's distant past. He keeps the organization deliberately apolitical: Garden serves the nation itself and refuses to become the instrument of any individual politician. Its web of contacts reaches into the criminal underworld, where the Shopkeeper owed a debt to the late Gretcher boss yet shows no warmth toward the usurper Leonardo Hapoon, and into the SSS, whose director Wyman Wilker personally carries government job requests to Garden's headquarters. The syndicate sits above that arrangement, turning down any assignment that clashes with its own aims.

Operatives call their assassination work pruning. The Shopkeeper alone decides which requests get accepted, then passes assignments by telephone to an assassin's home or cover workplace, or in person among the flowers of his estate, whose location nobody knows. Before a kill, "the shop" studies a target's defenses and capabilities so the assassin can concentrate on execution, and alibis are arranged ahead of time to shield each member's civilian identity. Targets, all judged traitors to the state, get the polite label of "clients" or "customers." Occasionally the work inverts: Yor was assigned to guard Olka and Gram Gretcher aboard the Princess Lorelei instead of eliminating anyone.

Members think of themselves as soldiers, an identity the Shopkeeper cultivates by framing the trade as a noble calling in defense of the homeland. Their skill sets run from raw strength and weapons mastery to poison craft and uncanny intuition. Stealth stands out above all: Yor once walked up behind the master spy Twilight without registering on his senses, McMahon prowled the Princess Lorelei unseen and struck rival killers from behind, Hemlock shadowed Loid and Yor on an outing until Yor felt his hostile intent, and Gympie sat unnoticed inside headquarters until she chose to greet her colleagues. Field gear exists too, an olive green uniform with a beret, a Garden nametape, and a plant insignia, which members customize with items like Yor's thigh sheaths for her stilettos.

The Shopkeeper leads, with senior operative Matthew McMahon filling a managerial post; Yor addresses him as Director, and he is the only known member working without a botanical alias. The killers beneath them, called pruners, carry codenames like Thorn Princess, Hemlock, Gympie, and Thistle. A remark the Shopkeeper makes to Wilker, that Garden could put together a soccer team, suggests a roster of eleven or more. Thorn Princess and McMahon rank as the standouts: backed by his support work, Yor once dropped upwards of twenty hostile killers over the course of one night, and both excel at scrubbing away the evidence afterward.