The Gentlemens

The Gentlemens, also called the Gentlemen, are one of the powerful gangs of the Free Ports, named together with the Hanged Devil and The Boulevard Killers.¹

In the Free Ports there is no king and no law beyond the most basic. Gangs play a significant role in their cities, especially in Neptune, and seize every opportunity that the weakness of central government gives them. Free folk elect even their gang leaders by vote.¹

Rivalry with the Hanged Devils

The Gentlemen have fought the Hanged Devils. The tiefling Blaze, born in the slums of Neptune, was captured by the Hanged Devils as a child. During a gang celebration after a victory over the Gentlemen, a high-ranking Devil decided to hang him in public, to honour the gang's name and keep up its reign of terror in the city.²

In Mürekkep ve Çelik

In the campaign Mürekkep ve Çelik ("Ink and Steel"), the Gentlemen of Neptune are said to have an arrangement, at least outwardly, with the Empire, and a man called Mr Jacob is the figure most closely tied to them. Their best-known haunt is the Working Woman, a brothel where Jacob and his aides gamble and pass their time.³

Castor Onerio, who had dealt with the gang before, goes there to buy information and protection. Jacob is not available; an unnamed aide wearing a red cloth receives him instead in an upstairs office, past some twenty hard-eyed gang members. The aide turns suspicion towards the Hanged Devils, a small but skilled gang tied to assassination, smuggling and butchers' shops, and, as far as he knows, with wizards among them. The Gentlemen have no men inside that gang, but he offers to buy information with bribes.⁴

Castor pays for the information and for a guard. Soon after he returns to the harbour, twenty Gentlemen settle nearby, drinking lightly and ready to step in if anything happens. The night passes quietly; in the morning Castor tells them they are no longer needed, and they leave, calling one another "bird".⁵

Later Castor overhears a secret meeting from a rooftop in which someone is addressed as "Mr Jacob". What the meeting was planning, and who stood behind it, is not settled by what he heard.⁶

In Yeni Dünya

In the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"), set years later, a Neptune barman tells Bruno Rossi that the head of the Gentlemen leads the largest or second-largest gang in the city, and that the gang has been feuding with The Boulevard Killers for about three months. Gentlemen on the street send Bruno to the tavern where their boss plays poker: a two-storey house with gambling tables below and a private game upstairs, its access held by guards.⁷

The boss offers Bruno free passage to the New World, disguised as a priest, and payment on top, if he kills a poisoned former man of the gang aboard the ship. Bruno agrees aloud, but once outside he says he will never do it and sails on another ship. Bruno later met and beat the man the boss sent after him.⁸