Underworld Status & Rank

Every character involved in the criminal underworld has a certain status; a place in the pecking order of the underworld, from the lowly muggers and pickpockets upwards. This is known as his Underworld Rank. The rank of every character in your personal organization is determined purely as a result of your own Boss Rank. The higher & faster you climb up the Underworld hierarchy yourself, so will all those owing you personal allegiance also rise in rank in the eyes of rival organizations and the underworld in general. A Character's rank in the underworld as a whole is something of very great importance to him. By nature a greedy individual, the typical criminal is rarely content with what he has, he almost always feels that he deserves better and that he has yet to reach the station in life which is his true destiny. It is this basically greedy & grasping nature of the average criminal which will cause you no end of problems if you're not very careful in how you develop your growing organization. Underworld Rank will be the underlying cause of many of the organizational problems you will face, by itself being the cause of greed, jealousy, discontentment and even, perhaps, disloyalty. The first important consideration is the 'Leadership Qualities' (a natural Ability) of the men whom you choose to reward with higher rank within your organization. Promoting men beyond their capacity to control - through Leadership abilities - the men now ranked below them, will certainly be a cause for discontentment. It's through possession of superior leadership Qualities that higher-ranked members will gain the respect, trust and loyalty of those below them. Bear in mind that each character pays a sizeable percentage of his weekly income in Tribute to the character placed above him - his immediate superior in the organization - and it is for this reason that he must respect him, or he will simply become increasingly unhappy about having to pay him anything at all. The second consideration is personal wealth - literally, the income each man draws each week in comparison to those above him, below him, and of equal rank in the Underworld. Especially below and equal to him. If a 'Buttonman' in your employ earns significantly less than do other Buttonmen in your employ, or even significantly less than do Buttonmen in most other underworld organizations, then you have a potential traitor in your midst. His Attitude will become increasingly discontent and unhappy, making him vulnerable to such as large bribes offered by rivals for information. Perhaps he will even become unhappy enough to consider assisting your rivals in their 'hit' or kidnap plans, if the price is right. Essentially, you need to be sure that the income your men earn is higher than those below them, not as high as those above them, and roughly on a par or even better than the income of all those of equal underworld rank. Achieving this careful balance is by no means easy as income levels are constantly changing as new rackets are developed, but you disregard this consideration at your peril. The third, and perhaps most important, consideration, is every criminal's belief that he deserves more recognition and greater respect; in short, higher rank - regardless of whether or not he personally qualifies (in your opinion). There is in truth little you can do about this factor except to offset the negative morale effect it causes, by simply doing your best with the first two considerations mentioned above. If you fail to handle the first two considerations well enough this third one will eventually rise up & bite you in the ass, so it's essential that you do everything you can to ensure that your men are generally content with their current station in life. They must be happy with the men promoted above them in rank, and happy with their own personal weekly income in comparison to others of their station, in order to be truly content with their own current rank within the underworld hierarchy as a whole.