Fūma clan

The clan specialises in horseback guerrilla warfare and naval espionage. The family took root when they served Taira no Masakado in his revolt against the Kyoto government. The use of the name started with the first leader with each subsequent leader of the school adopted the same name as its founder Fūma Kotarō, making it difficult to identify them individually.

Hanseatic League

The Hanseatic League is a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and their market towns. It dominates Baltic maritime trade along the coast of Northern Europe. Stretching from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland. The League was created to protect the guilds’ economic interests and diplomatic privileges in their affiliated cities and countries, as well as along the trade routes the merchants visit. The Hanseatic cities have their own legal system and furnish their own armies for mutual protection and aid. Despite this, the organization is not a state, nor can it be called a confederation of city-states; only a very small number of the cities within the league enjoy autonomy and liberties comparable to those of a free imperial city.

Quarter	City	Territory
Wendish	Lübeck (Capital of the Hanseatic League, capital of the Wendish and Pomeranian Circle)	Free City of Lübeck
Wendish	Hamburg	Free City of Hamburg
Wendish	Lüneburg	Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg
Wendish	Wismar	Duchy of Mecklenburg
Wendish	Rostock	Duchy of Mecklenburg
Wendish	Stralsund	Principality of Rügen
Wendish	Demmin	Duchy of Pomerania
Wendish	Greifswald	Duchy of Pomerania
Wendish	Anklam	Duchy of Pomerania
Wendish	Stettin, This city has gradually adopted the role of a chief city for the Pomeranian Hanseatic towns to its east	Duchy of Pomerania
Wendish	Pasewalk	Duchy of Pomerania
Wendish	Kolberg	Duchy of Pomerania
Wendish	Rügenwalde	Duchy of Pomerania
Wendish	Stolp	Duchy of Pomerania
Baltic	Visby was a member of the league, however two hundred years ago at Kalmar, Visby’s status was rescinded by the League, with Lübeck razing the city’s temples	Kingdom of Sweden
Baltic	Stockholm	Kingdom of Sweden
Saxon	Brunswick (Capital of the Saxon, Thuringian and Brandenburg Circle)	Duchy of Saxony
Saxon	Bremen	Free City of Bremen
Saxon	Magdeburg	Archbishopric of Magdeburg
Saxon	Goslar	Imperial City of Goslar
Saxon	Erfurt	Archbishopric of Mainz
Saxon	Stade	Archbishopric of Bremen
Saxon	Berlin	Margraviate of Brandenburg
Saxon	Frankfurt an der Oder	Margraviate of Brandenburg
Baltic	Gdańsk – Capital of the Prussian, Livonian and Swedish (or East Baltic) Circle.	Teutonic Order
Baltic	Elbing	Teutonic Order
Baltic	Thorn	Teutonic Order
Baltic	Kraków Capital of the Kingdom of Poland. – Very loosely associated with Hansa, payes no membership fees, nor sends representatives to League meetings.	Kingdom of Poland
Baltic	Breslau. – A part of the Duchy of Breslau and the Kingdom of Bohemia, was only loosely connected to the League and payes no membership fees nor does its representatives take part in Hansa meetings	Kingdom of Bohemia
Baltic	Königsberg(Kaliningrad)Königsberg is the capital of the Teutonic Order, becoming the capital of Ducal Prussiaon the Order’s secularisation in 1466. Ducal Prussia was a German principality that was a fief of the Polish crown until gaining its independence in the 1660 Treaty of Oliva. The city was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946 after East Prussia was divided between thePeople’s Republic of Poland and the Soviet Union at the Potsdam Conference.	Teutonic Order
Baltic	Rīga, A Free imperial city	Terra Mariana (Livonia)
Baltic	Reval (Tallinn)	Terra Mariana (Livonia)
Baltic	Dorpat, The Bishopric of Dorpat has gained increasing autonomy within the Terra Mariana.	Terra Mariana (Livonia)
Westphalian	Cologne, Was the capital of the Rhine-Westphalian and Netherlands Circle until after the Anglo-Hanseatic War, when the city was prosecuted with temporarily trade sanctions for having supported England, and Dortmund was made capital of the Circle.	Imperial City of Cologne
Westphalian	Dortmund, After Cologne was excluded after the Anglo-Hanseatic War, Dortmund was made capital of the Rhine-Westphalian and Netherlands Circle.	Imperial City of Dortmund
Westphalian	Deventer	Bishopric of Utrecht
Westphalian	Kampen	Bishopric of Utrecht
Westphalian	Groningen	Friesland
Westphalian	Münster	Prince-Bishopric of Münster
Westphalian	Osnabrück	Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück
Westphalian	Soest, The city was a part of the Electorate of Cologne until acquiring its freedom after which it has aligned with the Duchy of Cleves.	Imperial City of Soest

Kontor

A kontor was a foreign trading post of the Hanseatic League.

In addition to the major kontore in London (Steelyard), Ipswich, Bruges, Bergen (Bryggen), and Novgorod (Peterhof), some ports had a representative merchant and a warehouse.

Quarter	City	Territory
Kontor	Novgorod: Peterhof, Novgorod is one of the principal Kontore of the League and the easternmost. Ivan III, Grand Prince of Moscow, closed the Peterhof; it was reopened a few years later, but the League’s Russian trade never recovered.	Novgorod Republic
Kontor	Bergen: is one of the principal Kontore of the League. It was razed by accidental fire administration of Bryggen has since been placed under Norwegian administration.Bryggen	Kingdom of Norway
Kontor	Bruges: Hanzekantoor – Bruges was one of the principal Kontore of the League until the 15th century, when the seaway to the city silted up; trade from Antwerp benefiting from Bruges’s loss.	County of Flanders
Kontor	London:Steelyard – The Steelyard is one of the principal Kontore of the League. The Steelyard was destroyed and Edward IV exempted Cologne merchants, leading to the Anglo-Hanseatic War (147074). TheTreaty of Utrecht, sealing the peace, led to the League purchasing the Steelyard outright, with Edward having renewed the League’s privileges without insisting on reciprocal rights for English merchants in the Baltic. London merchants persuaded Elizabeth I to rescind the League’s privileges; while the Steelyard has been re-established the advantage never returned.	Kingdom of England
Kontor	Antwerp, Antwerp became a major Kontor of the League, particularly after the seaway to Bruges silted up recently, leading to its fortunes waning in Antwerp’s favour, despite Antwerp’s refusal to grant special privileges to the League’s merchants.	Duchy of Brabant
Kontor	Bishop’s Lynn -The Hanseatic Warehouse was constructed in 1475 as part of the Treaty of Utrecht, allowing the League to establish a trading depot in Lynn for the first time.	Kingdom of England
Kontor	Ipswich	Kingdom of England
Kontor	Malmö	Kingdom of Denmark
Kontor	Falsterbo	Kingdom of Denmark
Kontor	Kaunas	Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Kontor	Pleskau (Pskov)	Pskov Republic
Kontor	Polotsk	Principality of Polotsk

Society for the Reformation of Manners

Soka Gakkai

The Bavarian Illumminati

The Brotherhood of Set

The Daughters of the Flame

Order of Santiago

The Witches of the Howling Moon

Vehmic court

The Vehmic courts, or simply Vehm, is a “proto-vigilante” tribunal system of Westphalia in Germany, based on a fraternal organisation of lay judges called free judges. The original seat of the courts was in Dortmund.

After the execution of a death sentence, the corpse is hung on a tree to advertise the fact and deter others.

The Vehmic courts are the regional courts of Westphalia receiving their jurisdiction from the Holy Roman Emperor, from whom they also received the capacity to pronounce capital punishment. Everywhere else the power of life and death, originally reserved to the Emperor alone, had been usurped by the territorial nobles; only in Westphalia, called the Red Earth because here the imperial Blutbann was still valid, were capital sentences passed and executed by the Fehmic courts in the Emperor’s name alone.

Membership and procedure

The sessions are held in secret, whence the names of secret court, silent court, etc. Attendance of secret sessions is forbidden to the uninitiated, on pain of death, which led to the designation forbidden courts.

A chairman presides over the court, and lay judges pass judgment. The court also constituted a Holy Order. Any free man of good character can become a judge. The new candidate was given secret information and identification symbols. The knowing one (German: Wissende) had to keep his knowledge secret, even from his closest family.

Lay judges must give formal warnings to known troublemakers, issue warrants, and take part in executions.

The organization of the is elaborate. The centre of each jurisdiction was referred to as a free seat, and its head or chairman is often a secular or spiritual prince, sometimes a civic community, the archbishop of Cologne being supreme over all. The actual president of the court was the free count , chosen for life by the Stuhlherr from among the Freischöffen, who formed the great body of the initiated. Of these the lowest rank were the Fronboten or Freifronen, charged with the maintenance of order in the courts and the duty of carrying out the commands of the Freigraf. The immense development of the Fehme is explained by the privileges of the Freischöffen; for they were subject to no jurisdiction but those of the Westphalian courts: whether as accused or accuser they had access to the secret sessions, and they shared in the discussions of the general chapter as to the policy of the society. At their initiation these swore to support the Fehme with all their powers, to guard its secrets, and to bring before its tribunal anything within its competence that they might discover. They were then initiated into the secret signs by which members recognized each other, and were presented with a rope and with a knife on which were engraved the mystic letters S.R.G.G. (stone, rope, grass, green).[2] The Freistuhl was the place of session, and was usually a hillock, or some other well-known and accessible spot. The Freigraf and the Schöffen (judges) occupied the bench, before which a table, with a sword and rope upon it, was placed. The court was held by day and, unless the session was declared secret, all freemen, whether initiated or not, were admitted. The accusation was in the old German form; but only a Freischöffe could act as accuser. If the offence came under the competence of the court, meaning it was punishable by death, a summons to the accused was issued under the seal of the Freigraf. This was not usually served on him personally, but was nailed to his door, or to some convenient place where he was certain to pass. Six weeks and three days’ grace were allowed, according to the old Saxon law, and the summons was thrice repeated. If the accused appeared, the accuser stated the case, and the investigation proceeded by the examination of witnesses as in an ordinary court of law. The judgment was put into execution on the spot if that was possible.[2] The secret court, from whose procedure the whole institution has acquired its evil reputation, was closed to all but the initiated, although these were so numerous as to secure quasi-publicity; any one not a member on being discovered was instantly put to death, and the members present were bound under the same penalty not to disclose what took place. Crimes of a serious nature, and especially those that were deemed unfit for ordinary judicial investigation, such as heresy and witchcraft, fell within its jurisdiction, as also did appeals by persons condemned in the open courts, and likewise the cases before those tribunals in which the accused had not appeared. The accused, if a member, could clear himself by his own oath, unless he had revealed the secrets of the Fehme. If he were one of the uninitiated it was necessary for him to bring forward witnesses to his innocence from among the initiated, whose number varied according to the number on the side of the accuser, but twenty-one in favour of innocence necessarily secured an acquittal. The only punishment which the secret court could inflict was death. If the accused appeared, the sentence was carried into execution at once; if he did not appear, it was quickly made known to the whole body, and the Freischöffe who was the first to meet the condemned was bound to put him to death. This was usually done by hanging, the nearest tree serving for gallows. A knife with the mystic letters was left beside the corpse to show that the deed was not a murder.[2] It has been claimed[by whom?] that, in some cases, the condemned would be set free, given several hours’ head start and then hunted down and put to death. So fearsome was the reputation of the Fehme and its reach that many thus released committed suicide rather than prolonging the inevitable. This practice could have been a holdover from the ancient Germanic legal concept of outlawry (Acht). Legend and romance have combined to exaggerate the sinister reputation of the Fehmic courts; but modern historical research has largely discounted this, proving that they never employed torture, that their sittings were only sometimes secret, and that their meeting-places were always well known.

Maroons

Thuggee

Frances Anne Hopkins (1838-1919) Shooting the Rapids

Voyageurs

The voyageurs are the people in New France who engage in the transporting of furs by canoe for the fur trade.

Gangs

Jazz Cats

GI Joes

Knights of the New Riech

Hells Angels