Rafter Kin

Rafter Kin didn't form out of some grand betrayal. It formed out of the ordinary kind. Old Roof Runners, kicked loose from the guild for reasons that depend entirely on who's telling the story, didn't scatter the way the guild expected them to. Instead they regrouped on the same rooftops they'd already spent years learning, and started taking back pieces of the stride one contested block at a time.

It's working better than anyone in the Roof Runners wants to admit. Whole sectors of Citavas Port City's rooftop highway that used to move Roof Runner traffic without question now belong to Rafter Kin instead, not through some single decisive battle, but through the slow, humiliating math of a guild losing ground it assumed was permanently its own. Roof Runner patrols crossing into Rafter territory have come back short a member more than once, and negotiation attempts (disguises, a little thieves' cant, a bluff that almost worked) have a way of curdling into running rooftop battles before anyone gets to the point.

Whatever else Rafter Kin is, it isn't sloppy. Members carry the same practical kit any working thief would (leather armor, shortswords, a decent set of thieves' tools), but they all wear the same black scarf, an embroidered mark stitched into the cloth that lets them recognize each other at a glance across a rooftop at night. It's the kind of small, disciplined touch that makes a new gang look like it's been doing this far longer than it has.

Not everything about them adds up cleanly. At least one Rafter Kin leader, killed in a rooftop clash, didn't leave a body behind. What was left of him turned to ash before anyone could search it. It's a technique from the Deep, not a surface one, meant to keep a body from ever being identified. It's the same signature that's turned up around Deor'c Aelf's work elsewhere in Citavas Port City. Whether that means Rafter Kin has its own autochthon problem, or just borrowed the trick secondhand, isn't settled yet.