The Cartel

The Cartel is an outlaw organisation who, suring the invasion saw the opportunity and raided many prisons across the country, freeing and recruiting inmates, guards who agreed to serve them, and random people along the way. The members are mostly former inmates and criminals. They are known to take advantage of people, murder and rape others just for their amusement. Despite all this, their society is bound by some rules that ensures these people live in relative harmony.

History
It all started during the invasion. The Cartel took the opportunity to break into a jail and bring out some of their people. The prison fell easily, yet during the attack leeches started falling off the sky in their pods. The attack lasted for 6 hours, and the cartel people hole up inside the prison. They watch the news and the world starting to crumble and most of them, despite criminals and outlaws, are genuinely scared. There they experience the first man turning, and shoot him until he is shot in the head and killed. They stay inside for all these hours, until the power fails. They then realise something terrible has happened, and the leader realises the world is never going to be like it was, or at least it will have some very serious problems getting back on its feet. He then steps up, and among the scared and lost people gives a speech about how they were always the outlaws, how they were always left out of their society, how they were always the ones left behind, and how the society that existed tried to neutralize them by putting them in prisons, and keeping them seperately. Now it's time they turned things around. It's time the world lived under their rule for once. He therefore declares everyone to be innocent from that point onwards, and anyone will remain innocent as long as they do not turn against their brothers and sisters. Everyone is free to go and get their families along in there. Their families will also be part of the empire, and therefore bound by the same laws. Should someone hurt another's family member, his death will be slow and painful.He said they needed to take that chance and assault other prisons around the country and free other potential soldiers to help their cause.

For the next three days, the Cartel's people assaulted prisons, freed more people and laid hell to the surrounding areas. Police and Army staff was among their hit list, as well as anyone who stood with them. Their aim was to weaken the forces of law enough to ensure they would never be able to bring the empire down. The leader had a vision to create his own country within the US. When the cold became unbearable, he stopped sending people after other prisons and stayed inside the prison with everyone, where they endured the rest of the cold days. When the cold subsided, he resumed his operations and receives the first waves of released inmates.

Soon, the prison population grows even more, so he creates more bases around. In due time, his people have cleared a big area and create walls around it. With many expansions over time, the whole city is free from leechers and the majority of the forces live in there.

However, the operations in prisons continue. More and more inmates arrive, and problems keep rising. Supplies are starting to become scarce, different factions are starting to come at odds, and there are even murders within the city. The leader knows that if this keeps up, he will lose control of the situation. So he decides to split the people and send some organisations elsewhere to live. It is there the leader realised that he wasn't talking about a place of their own anymore, but for an empire. He says the prisons they took over have to be still abandoned, and talks with the leders and convinces most of them to go live in these prisons. The arian brotherhood and the black power organisations are forced to leave the city, as some of their members had committed crimes against each other, and had they stayed there would be a problem. About one third of the total inmates remained with the leader in the city, while the rest left to make other settlements around. The areas were split and divided among the organisations (eg the arian brotherhood took Maine and the surrounding areas because they liked the fact that most people were white there before the apocalypse. They wanted their region to have only white people, so they killed or took as slaves any black guy they found. after leaving the military base and reaching the community. The community had previously been contacted by the arian brotherhood, and due to their lack of guns and manpower, they submitted to them and obeyed their rules.

Encounter with the group:
The group first encountered the empire when they were exiled by the military base. Then they decided to heead back where they came from, as the bunker they were holed up inside at first was good to live in, and was in a mountain which was far from lots of leechers. They aimed to build a village around the bunker with other people they would find, and have the bunker in case of an attack. They agreed though that they would first visit each person's hometown (at least those who weren't visited before) looking for any survivors, and they would stay in case they found a community good enough. Then they found one such community and stayed there. This community however had already submitted to the arian brotherhood. So, the science group did so as well, at least for a short while, until they saw the full power of the arians and decided to take them on. A resistance group was at the head of the movement against the arians led mainly by the Davis family. After a little while, and when they found out the arians' full forces, they took out their bases one by one until there was none left. The last watchtower was supposed to be guarded by four people (they were to look out for big leecher groups or human groups) and Jason was sent alone to dispose of them. When he went there they had left and Jason thought that they had ran, however they had headed back to the leader's base. When Jason reached the community, his father had just been murdered.

After the arians' downfall, many of their members survived and headed back to the leader's base. There they inform the leader of what happened, and he prepares his own forces to lay siege to the base. When he reaches the community, the battle is fierce but the community's forces are no match for the Cartel's. In the end, they surrendered since the cartel butchered them and kept them within the walls of the community for days after the supplies ran out. The two groups reached an agreement and the community opened the gates, having no other option. Michael was brutally killed after that to make an example of, among others.

After this the Cartel's dictatorship followed. Things were much harsher during this and at first there was no way out. At some point, james joined the cartel, but he was in fact a spy, James moved to the leader's camp to teach at a university there, the community's leader's wife went there too as a representantive of the community and some people went there too. The leader made an effort to avoid future uprisings in the underlings' bases, so he created a senate in which each community could send one representative. Although he though this was a smart move, in fact he put all the oppressed communities together and helped them create a movement against him. Also, during this time the cartel members are harsh against the people of the community, stripping them entirely of supplies and they even raped people of the community like Joleene Fowler.

Also, at some point some of the remaining arians kill Dorian Pell and there is an uprising. In order to defuse the situation, the leader shows up and agrees to exile all arian members from his empire, because they generally cause trouble with other minorities.He says the community are free to kill any arians they encounter, and from now on they will cooperate on better terms with them, and appoiinted another organisation (the irish and the IRA) to have them as their underlings. The leader of this organisation was a lieutenant of the cartel leader but was not loyal at all. Instead, he always wanted to disband this "cancerous thing" as he called the empire, and he helped the communities he had under his control. He was the one who told them about the deadlands when the community eventually fell, and all this time he helped the deadlands keep their existence secret from him. In the end, he and most of his people helped against the cartel. Making him the master of the community was the cartel leader's second big mistake, as the community now had one more strong ally.

Fall of the Cartel
The cartel eventually fell after the combined attach from many communities, the irish, and the military base. Jack's plan played an important role when the communications tower he built transmitted a signal that attracted every leecher for miles, and all those attached the primary base. Before their fall, the cartel attacked a few underling bases and destroyed most of them. When they reached the community though, they couldn't do anyything so they blew up a nearby factory and polluted the environment around. The remaining people of the community then had to move and they headed to the Deadlands.

Society Laws and Command
Everyone was considered innocent unless they turned against or hurt someone who is member of the empire.

A member of the empire is considered one who has been approved by the leader or one of his lieutenants and their family.

Everyone who lives in a community owned by the Empire is considered an underling. The rights an underling has differ and are rranged by what the each outpost "owns". Each such community of underlings (like the community the group lived in) had to abide by specific laws and rules set by the commanding organisation (for example those communities under the arian brotherhood had to turn in their weapons and couldn't have any minorities live in there. On the other hand, the arians would take care of any dangers that would arise, assuming the community's survival would be more beneficial than the losses they would encounter during the procedure.

Any action against people not members of the empire goes unpunished. When it comes to underlings, each case is different, but generally it goes unpinished too.

Everyone obeyed the leader and his lieutenants.

Each outpost had its own territory and while they could go into gray areas, they couldn't go in territories of other outposts. Any other community or person inside each outpost's territory could be taken advantage of by by the specific outpost's members.

In case of a rebellion, the leaders of it are killed brutally and painfully, as well as those who won't submit after it has been defused. Those who submit become underlings again but usually under harsher rules (this did not happen with the community as the leader saw the potential in a partnership with William)

Notable Members
The leader:

He is the leader of the cartel and the creator of the empire. He is the law and everyone obeys him

The leader's wife: A powerful woman with many ambitions and seduction. She aids the leader and consults him. She is the first one to lead him to create the empire and continuously strengthen his forces. The leader sleeps with many other women, but she doesn't care all that much

Before the apocalypse, when his wife got pregnant, he wanted out of the outlaw life, but the cartel found out and murdered his son in front of him. He retaliated, killed many and took control of the cartel along with others. He refused to hand it over to the fbi though, as they were responsible for his son's death too (info was leaked to the previous leaders of the cartel by the fbi). He founght against the fbi, but eventually the whole cartel was brought down and imprisoned throughout many states. However, the invasion happened, and he and the other inmates took over the prison he was in. His many members cattered along prisons throughout the country helped him take command of many prisons in very few time, and therefore the empire was born.

The arian:

The leader of the arian brotherhood. He is a tyrant, fascist and racist.Whhen he is defeated he is captured because he surrendered. He is set free once more though when the leader attacks the community. When he is last confronted, he will tell william that power will corrupt him sooner or later, indicating the cover up of the boy's murder (if it hasn't happened yet)

The Irish:

A former soldier of the IRA, he has a vision for a free and independent Ireland. Since the outbreak, his ideals have changed and he compromised to have a land to live in with his fellow Irish of America. Now that there was enough room in the country for everyone, he could achieve that. However, he resented the idea of having to be loyal to the cartel, and at the end he fought side by side with William

The Madman:

The Black power leader:

Leader of the black power. They have left and created another outpost far from the arian brotherhood. They are not encountered duing the main series.

The brawler.

He wll be a very strong character, tall and very muscular. He will play an important plan.

The oppressed. There will be women and very few men who serve the cartel. At some point they rise up too.

Secondary characters
A killer

He is a man who kills women after he rapes and guts them. This happens in the empire headquarters, and the leader takes Christine and Sarah there to help identify the killer, as he has killed family of his men. During their stay there, they learn about the organisation of the empire, and identify the killer from his psychological profile (his victims are similar, which gives them a lead to look at his criminal file (blacklist 2x13). After they find him, the leader kills him brutally, and this makes them learn a few more things about the empire's laws. Christine is disgusted as the leader killled her lover (michael) in a similar way, and now she helped him kill another man, although guilty

Events
At some point, during the first days the empire was founded, it is revealed that one of the inmates has raped the relative of another member. The leader makes an example out of him and arrests him. He says the punishment to such crimes will be severe and and will consist of three phases. The first phase is punishment. The second is protection and the third is forgiveness. The criminal whose wife was raped reacted to that but the leader told him to stop. He then initiated the first phase, which was punishment. During this, the punishment will be the same as the crime the offender committed. So, he asks whoever wants to, can rape the offender. After the man is raped repeatedly by many members, the leader says that the next phase is to protect the community from future crimes. Then he takes a baseball bat and beats the man in the tsticles until he passes out. The leader says he won't be able to commit any similar acts in the future. The man has fainted, but the leader says it is time for the final phase, which is forgiveness. He wakes him up, and orders his men to take him up in the walls. They then lower him outside, and the leader tells the man that if he can make it to the main gate without getting bitten, he can once more become a mamber of the empire, with full benefits like before. The man can't even move and barely makes two steps crawling before a leecher overhwelms and devours him. As he screams, the leader tells everyone that this incident should be a lesson to them all. The punishment will be an eye for an eye, then neutralization of the threat and a chance for redemption at last.

Description **OLD
The dominators are a group of ruthless men who have conquered some communities and have taken them under their control. The dominators attacked the group's base and demanded a surrender in exchange for the group's lives. A negotiation took place,  and since Minerva's son was too scared to talk, William took over and talked. He told the group outside that they wouldn't surrender, and the attackers made them an offer. They said that they would come every month, take anything they want, and that if someone from the base made a move against them, they would punish him/her as they saw fit. Also, no guns would be inside the base. They also gave them another choice, those who don't want to live like this could leave their base could just leave and hope that their next base wouldn't be found by them. William counter-proposed them by giving them a choice of his own. He said they could either leave and never come back, or sit there and die. The man in charge said that they will need convincing after all, despite seeing the dominators' numbers, which by far surpassed their own. A fight started during which the dominators used two helicopters to take down the food storage of the base. The leader then said that the base will soon run out of food and water, and the sooner they surrender, the sooner they can go out and find some more. Four days later, no one could climb the wall as there were snipers all over the place. a fight took place during these days, but ended when the  helicopter shot at those on the fence and killed and injured many. The dominator leader then said they don't want them dead, but alive to bring them goods. He also says that they have lots of Molotov bombs, which they will throw in twelve hours should they not surrender. With all those dead and wounded inside the base, the situation is starting to become unbearable. Some citizens then call an urgent meeting and discuss the possibility of surrender. William agrees to call a meeting, and soes so within the next hours. He refuses to surrender, and the people are divided. In the end, it is decided that they must surrender, at least for the time being. As they enter the base, the Dominators collect all the weapons, and lots of other things. The one in charge pulls William in the middle of the town square and says this will be a lesson to everyone who will think of turning against them in the future. He then takes a baseball bat and hits William on the sides, before ordering his men to stretch out his hands, and thens smashes noth of them. William will then be given Mat's weapons which are easier to use

A little afterwards when there will be an incident with the Dominators, Christy will also be raped in front of William's eyes, leaving the family devastated and crippled. This, along with the hanging of Minerva's son will be the catalysts to start the war.