Wildcat Initiative, The

"With a cunning mind and a bold soul, two problems can make one solution" - Djiko the Hutt

While UTiCo has undisputedly been the main producer and distributor of Fog since its discovery, they never could entirely prevent flies from landing on their meal. Since any spaceship can provided the sealed environment required to not be affected by Vohd's spore-filled air, it did not take long for smugglers, spice-makers and the like to figure out they could simply land somewhere UTiCo would not be able to reach quickly even if found out, collect the required spores, and create some bathtube Fog, leaving when needed. Those "wildcat colonies" further benefited from the fact that, unlike with spice, most Imperials had no issue accepting bribes in Fog if they were controlled by the Empire's finest. And now that the Empire is gone, UTiCo had to take care of this recurring issue either themselves, or by hiring mercenaries to handle it.

Meanwhile, in Hutt Space, the inability to claim their share of the Vohd pie has always been a sore spot for the different clans. Seeing that it would be too costly and damaging to be worth it to bust  UTiCo's stronghold, yet too prideful to just let UTiCo win, the Hutt Council finally decided to settle the question by putting a small operation on the case, allowing them to claim they were doing something about it, and then forget about Vohd.

Enters Doctor Djiko Dlellar Gadalunda. An unusual Hutt in some respects, they volunteered to lead the mission, and had their request granted. Looking over the intel on Vohd and UTiCo, Djiko noticed several facts. First among them, that UTiCo, due to its root as a legitimate company used to not consider anything but another company as worthy of playing the same game as them, saw the wildcat colonies as parasites to be purged, rather than potential recruits like gangsters would. This gave them the idea of what they'll later call the Wildcat Initiative.

With the help of their two younger brothers, Djiko set out for Vohd with one main objective: regroup the separate wildcat colonies under one banner, allowing them to face UTiCo.

Djiko's secondary objective is to conduct research in order to not only figure out how to cure fung lungs, making living on Vohd a non-issue, but also see what else beside Fog the mushroom jungles of Vohd could be used to make. As a xenologist and biochemist, the Hutt consider UTiCo's singular focus on the Fog of War to be a sign they have no idea of the potential wonders they're sitting on.

Base: the Wildcat Initiative's only actual building on Vohd is a rocky hill they have emptied of its Burnout mushroom, before making it air-tight and converting it into a large throne room/banquet hall/meeting room in the typical Hutt style, with an adjacent weapon range/training room. It is designed to be abandoned easily if things go south, but the Initiative leaders spent some efforts to keep it comfortable as a way to help cope living on Vohd, and just having a relatively large space where they can drink, socialize and listen to music without rebreathers is a luxury most of the members are unaccustomed while on this planet.

The rest of the Initiative's holdings are the spaceships they operate from, which change place regularly to avoid detection. Djiko's personal ship is the newest, biggest and best defended one, possessing among other things a well-equipped laboratory and medical bay, but most of the other ones are old (or even outdated) smuggling ships made for speed and discretion more than anything else.

Members: The Wildcat Initiative's members mostly fall in two categories: the goons the Hutts brought with them, and the actual wildcat colonists who joined the ranks.

The Hutt goons are mostly Kel Dor, Dybrinthe, and others species used to require breathing apperatuses, or species used to life in the jungle. In the eyes of the Dlellar siblings, UTiCo's failure to adapt to the world they claimed due to clinging to the Empire's humans-are-superior views is a major weakness.

The wildcat colonists, for their part, are a diverse bunch of smugglers, spice-makers and criminals of all ilks and silks. Some readily agreed to be part of the Initiative, others had to be threatened to consider actually opposing UTiCo worthwhile, but overall the members do agree that they're better off as an united, coordinated group. Many are confused as to why their Fog-making setups were converted to conduct various experiments, but most assume it's because what they produced was just not up to snuff.

Regardless of how or why they joined, the Initiative members are generally equipped with a variety of melee weapons and flamethrowers, with rarer small bombs/grenades, ion riffles and and immobilizing weapons like nets or bolas thrown in the mix. Many of them keep the blasters they use off-world on them, but the mists of Vohd make such ranged weapons impractical more often than not.

The members lack any insigna or symbol identifying them as such, but each group share hard-to-slice comlink frequencies allowing them to keep in touch.

(NPC faction submitted by unoriginalposter)