The Tundra Syndicate: A Centennial History

This article is an entry in Animalia's citizens' encyclopedia, the Animalopedia. Dates follow the Official Chronicle. For the organization's current status, see the Tundra Family.

The Tundra Syndicate (Tundra Syndicate, commonly TS) is one of the Five Families of the great city of Animalia. Grown from the mercenary and escort bands of northern immigrants who flooded in during the "Third Migration Wave" of AE 30, it holds the youngest lineage of the Five Families. As its motto — "Welcome to the underside of society; from today, cast off your name" — makes plain, its members are known for a code-name system under which they discard their real names the moment they join, making it the only one of the Five Families whose century of history can, for the most part, only be written in the form of "nobody knows who did it."

This article has serious problems with the quality of its sources. Because the Tundra Syndicate conducts no public relations whatsoever and grants no interviews, much of this entry rests on Animalia City Police records, the testimony of rival families, and hearsay from dock workers. The Syndicate has never once submitted a correction — a fact that some attribute to "the article being broadly correct" and others to "the Syndicate never having read it"〔by whom?〕.

Overview

The Tundra is rooted in Frost Harbor and the northern shipping lanes, making its living from arms, information, protection, and — as its public face — the cold-storage warehouse trade. In discipline, control, and intelligence-gathering it has no equal, and every family fears it as "unreadable" (→ Tundra-Family). Its flagship is the battleship Northern Ghost. It is the only house that grows stronger in winter, and in the seasonal spectacle of the seasonal power rotation it is forever "winter's leading act" (→ TMA-Lore-Deep §2.4).

Prehistory and Founding (AE 1–30s)

• AE 30 — Northern immigrants flooded in with the "Third Migration Wave" (→ TMA-Timeline §2). Soldiers, hunters, and sailors back home, they carried no merchant guilds like the southern and eastern peoples, and so they sold the one thing a body could sell with nothing else to its name — its arms. The loose fellowship of mercenary and escort bands in the northern port became the Tundra's precursor, the "Northern Society."
• Early AE 30s — At first the Northern Society was the hired party, guarding the escorts and watching the cargo of the other families' precursor organizations. "The southern houses brought grapes and medicines. The men of the north brought only the cold" — such was the self-mocking verse said to have been sung in the taverns of the day〔citation needed〕.
• Mid-AE 30s — The first boss, Boris Redov (who in later years would take the name "Sever [North]"), took command of the Society. Advancing a step beyond the protection trade, he spread into smuggling along the northern lanes and the "buying and selling of information." Those who guard their employers' cargo come to know their employers' secrets, too — the Tundra's intelligence-gathering character traces back to this change of business.

Role in the Decade of Blood (AE 38–50)

• AE 38 — The Wharf War. Over the stevedoring rights of the docks, the Northern Society collided head-on with the Ninkyou-affiliated "Ninkyou-gumi" (→ TMA-History-Ninkyou). This was the trigger for the Decade of Blood that would engulf every organization. As to the immediate cause of the war, the northern account — that "the Ninkyou-gumi sought to shut northern dockhands out" — and the Ninkyou account — that "the Society jacked up its protection prices and held the cargo hostage" — run parallel to this day〔Tribunal Ruling Record No. c-001; closed with both accounts recorded side by side〕.
• AE 40 — The Northern Society acquired the decommissioned battleship Northern Ghost and formally took the name "Tundra Syndicate" (→ TMA-Timeline §3). How the battleship was obtained remains unknown even a century on, and it ranks among the three great mysteries of Animalia's underworld history〔the TMA Times, AE 110 August issue, "Where Did the Northern Ghost Come From?"〕. That same year, the first boss Boris Redov sank his real name into the icy sea and took the name "Sever," and every member followed suit. This was the beginning of the code-name system and the renaming rite.
• AE 42 — The Silent Purge. The Tundra was the only one of the Five Families not to lose a single member to arrest. The anecdote that "with no names, no warrants could be written" is still told today as a piece of self-deprecation among the Animalia City Police (→ TMA-Police).
• Around AE 45 — Amid the war of attrition, the Tundra avoided open battle and specialized in intelligence, sabotage, and "erasure." The Decade of Blood saying — "Whoever fought the Tundra never learned, to the very end, whom they had fought" — was born in this period.
• AE 47 — The Theater Massacre (→ TMA-History-Rosso). The Tundra was not involved, but as public opinion turned against the mafias, the second pakhan, "Vyuga [Blizzard]," codified the Three Laws of Ice. Unlike the other families, however, it made no public announcement, and the very existence of the Three Laws became known to outsiders only after the Accord.
• AE 49–50 — The effective end of the war. The Tundra is said to have suffered the lightest losses of the Five Families, yet the Tundra dead carved into the Memorial Wall are all listed by code name, so their bereaved families cannot find their names. This problem became a matter of debate at the time of the Wall's construction and was the direct occasion for the birth of the "Ice Memorial" (see below).

Growth Under the Accord (AE 51–110)

• AE 51 — The Five-Family Accord (Pax Animalia). The Tundra took no part in the drafting and was the last of the Five Families to sign. The only amendment the second pakhan, Vyuga, is said to have demanded before signing was that "the real names of the signatories shall not be recorded in the text of the Accord"〔citation needed〕. That same year it sent an executive to the Fifty Seats of the Grand Alliance (The Mafia Animals) — though which member of the organization actually occupies the Tundra's seat among the Fifty is said to be known to only a handful even internally (→ TheMafiaAnimals-Origin).
• AE 55 — The founding of the Tribunal. In place of supplying a judge, the Tundra offered to dispatch technicians to its "Evidence Verification Division." The arrangement whereby the Tundra holds the forensics of the underworld's court begins here (→ TMA-Justice).
• AE 60s–80s — The long reign of the third pakhan, "Granit [Granite]." He established jamming technology (the Northern Light Tower) and the cold-storage warehouse trade, perfecting the present shape of the business: "needed without fighting." It was also in this era that the Grey Ice warehouses became the "look-the-other-way storehouse" of all Five Families.
• AE 89 — The Burrow Panic. The Tundra outwardly feigned that it had escaped unscathed, but its arms-trade settlements froze, and later scholarship has noted that it had in fact taken a grievous wound〔Nightfall Academy Bulletin No. 61〕. It was also the first family to plug into the Goldfist settlement network — as a business partner wholly untroubled by sentiment (→ TMA-History-Goldfist).
• Around AE 105 — The representative case of the so-called "White Dog Affair," in which a shrewd Animalia City Police inspector is said to have resigned and joined the Tundra (→ TMA-Timeline §5 / TMA-Police). The City Police have avoided all official mention of it to this day.

The Present Day (AE 111–121)

The current pakhan goes by the code name "Belyi [White]." Both background and species are unknown. The figure known on the streets as "the face of the Tundra" is rather the unit commander Volkov (a wolf), noted for an unusual résumé as a former police officer and for the near-deified devotion he commands from the young-bloods' outfit, the Silver-Fang Mob (→ Tundra-Family).

Regarding the AE 115 affair of the Grand Alliance's vacant Second Seat (→ TMA-Timeline §6), the Tundra was the first of the Five Families to reply "already investigated" — yet no one, the Tundra itself included, has ever seen the results of that investigation〔the TMA Times, AE 116 February issue〕.

The Line of Bosses (Pakhans)

※ The real names from the second boss onward are said not to be recorded even within the organization, and even the reign dates in the table above are the City Police's estimates〔citation needed〕.

Origins of Its Culture and Codes

• The code-name system and renaming rite — Begun by the first boss in AE 40, upon the acquisition of the Northern Ghost and the formal naming. The custom of sinking a paper bearing one's old name into the icy sea is held by some to derive from a shipboard practice of the Third Migration Wave, in which immigrants leaving their homeland declared to the sea their resolve "never to return"〔by whom?〕.
• The Three Laws of Ice (Orders are absolute / Information rises, emotion stays in the chest / Outside the organization, behave as strangers to one another) — Codified in AE 47. It is the enshrining into law of the lesson, proven in the Decade of Blood, that being an "unreadable organization" was its greatest weapon.
• The Ice Memorial — In AE 50, out of the problem that at the Memorial Wall the bereaved could not find their code-named dead, an internal rite of mourning began: carving the code names of the fallen into the ice wall of the Northern Ghost. Outsiders may never see it.
• The Iron Silence deep-cold training — Its origin is the selection trial for the northern-lane escorts in the first boss's day. Only those who survive may call themselves "soldiers."
• The Wolfpack Bar — The one place in the organization where a touch of humanity is permitted. The third pakhan, Granit, is said to have established it, remarking that "even ice, with no place to thaw, will crack"〔citation needed〕.

Family Chronology (Abridged)

Anecdotes and Controversies

• How the Northern Ghost was obtained — A mystery a century old. The leading theories are three: (1) that it was sailed over from the collapsed fleet of the homeland; (2) that it was bought at a secret auction through the Burrow Bank; and (3) the salvage theory, that it "had been sunk in the harbor all along." To every theory the Tundra replies only, "That may be so"〔the TMA Times, AE 110 August issue〕.
• "No warrants could be written" — That the Tundra alone had zero arrests in the AE 42 Purge is a stock piece of self-deprecation in the memoirs of retired City Police, but there is a counterargument that under the warrant system of the day one could be indicted even under an alias, and the true reason it escaped unscathed still defies explanation (→ TMA-Police).
• The signature line of the Accord — On the original of the Five-Family Accord, the Tundra's signature line bears not a name but only the seal of a small ice crystal. The Tribunal has treated this as a valid signature to this day〔Tribunal Ruling Record No. c-009〕.
• The "multiple Belyis" theory — Eyewitness accounts of the current pakhan disagree on height, build, and species, and the theory that "Belyi is not an individual but a code for the office" runs deep〔by whom?〕.
• One line on the ice wall — According to the testimony of a former member (an expelled one) who claims to be the only person ever to have laid eyes on the Ice Memorial, among the code names of the fallen on the ice wall of the Northern Ghost there is, in a single spot, a name scraped away. Because the Tundra treats all testimony from the expelled as "the words of one who does not exist," there is no way to confirm it〔the TMA Times, AE 119 December issue, occult column〕.
• The winter house — While the seasonal power rotation (→ TMA-Lore-Deep §2.4) sees the delegated authority of hibernating species contested, the Tundra alone needs no proxy. The turn of phrase "each time winter comes, that one house awakens" is among the oldest winter greetings in Animalia.