in Emergent Dreams, My Work

Lore: Authority

When one were to speak of authority, it wasn’t one about the government. In a world as devastated as this, the one who has the ability to hold the last breath has the most power. The government is barely surviving, hidden away and sheltered by false media. The Solntsevskaya Bratva was more than just breathing, it was beating hard.

Within years, the entire country was covered in the clouds of darkness and snow and of hail and hoarfrost.

Meanwhile crime shot up as honest shopkeepers found themselves at the mercy of robbers, thieves and hooligans.

Since the law couldn’t protect you, you had to look outside it. You had to get yourself a “roof”, or a krysha. Krysha is Russian slang for ‘protection’, as in you hand over X amount of money each month to a corrupt politician, your old school buddy who joined the police force, a private security firm or the racketeering organization of your choice in order to avoid having problems. If you failed to keep up your end of the bargain you’d find yourself at risk of having an accident, maybe tripping up over a hand grenade or bumping into a loaded Kalashnikov. In Russia, it doesn’t pay being clumsy.