The Janissaries, a clandestine faction that keeps to the shadows of Constantinople, answer to the formidable Ahra "the Wolf." Once an elite corps of arms bound close to the Ottoman Empire, they now pick their way through an uncertain hour in the wake of the Caliph's death. Their chief aim is to recover their old strength and standing amid this troubled passage of power, and to set themselves up as a needful bulwark against the thieves and cutthroats who prey upon the people.
In former days the Janissaries were famed for the discipline of their order and their weight in the Empire's arms, holding a rank in Turkish society that approached a caste unto itself. Yet they were formally disbanded above a generation ago, in a quarrel with the Second Bands that ended in their destruction and the razing of their headquarters. The remnant of their legacy has since been succeeded by the Imperial Guard, which serves the present regime. For all their official dissolution, the Janissaries echo still in the affections of the populace. At a recent public gathering, men cried out their loyalty with shouts of "This gold belongs to the Janissaries," and never more so than at the coronation of Abd-ul Mejid, where the citizens' declarations of allegiance heightened the tension and drew a sharp response from the security detail of Osman Hamdi Bey, who insisted that the Janissaries no longer exist.
Under Ahra's hand the Janissaries have earned a name for resourcefulness and discretion alike. They were lately set to recover a stolen journal belonging to Osman Hamdi Bey, an errand that carried them into the confidence of the underworld's chief men — Giannis the Cut, Hano "the Widow," and Chique Manu among them. This work is but one part of a wider strategy to remove the dangers threatening the Ottoman Empire, a matter that lends real urgency to their collaboration with allies from without.
Chique Manu, a wealthy fixer and poet, would finance the Janissaries the better to loosen his own house's dependence upon outside support and raise up a more self-standing power. His ties to the faction come to light in talk of such financing with Gizem Faruki and Jean-Zera Mongé at a clandestine gambling club, a resort where sundry factions and persons converge. The setting well reflects the competitive world in which the Janissaries move, as they thread a knotted political landscape to strengthen their hand without falling too far into the debt of any single ally.
The faction's reach runs down into the Undercity, where the bounds between the magical and the mundane grow thin. Here they have won respect and recognition, not least from patrons such as Hano "the Widow," who praised Ahra for her fresh recruits. The Janissaries' members prove skilled not only in arms but in the delicate navigation of society, as was shown in a recent brush with an albasti, a creature that feeds upon dreams. In that encounter, such members as Miray, Jean-Zera Mongé, and Sidra al-Najjar made a fine show of their gifts, wedding bodily prowess to magic to subdue the thing, which they afterward delivered to Hano 'the Widow' for their reward.
For all their successes, the Janissaries meet with trials that persist, among them the remarks of Chique Manu upon their reliance on outside resources — a plain sign of the faction's struggle for autonomy. An attempt to abduct Chique Manu was foiled by Gizem Faruki and Jean-Zera Mongé, a fair illustration of the high stakes that hedge the Janissaries and their allies about. This affair, together with their successful intervention touching the Scavengers and certain mischievous fae stirred up by a witch who had disturbed their home, shows the Janissaries labouring still to press their influence while managing threats of every kind.
Their members are ever about the business of gathering intelligence and opportunity to shore up their standing, as when Ahmet sought guidance of Hano 'the Widow' on the navigating of the Undercity's complexities. The Janissaries' intricate web of alliance and rivalry mirrors their unending quest for power and stability in a world thick with danger and intrigue, as they strive to reclaim the place they once held in a society that both honours and fears their legacy.
Most lately, the Janissaries have widened their care to the shelter of non-human and magical beings, setting themselves as a counterforce to a certain community's labours to stifle pluralism and set human interests above all. They keep a partnership with the enigmatic Ghost of March, who holds a run of interconnected buildings within the Thieves Bazaar, both factions being of one mind against the community's designs. The Janissaries carry a modern military cast that recalls the historical Sekban, with Alemdar Mustafa Pasha — a reputedly dead commander of the Sekban — now at their head. Alemdar has asked for help in forging an alliance with Ahra, notwithstanding their former enmity, and has let it be known that the keeping-up of an appearance of ongoing conflict between the Janissaries and the Sekban would serve their strategic interests.
In a recent turn, the Janissaries have become entangled in the underworld and its political intrigues, engaging in covert operations that further cement their sway. A member named Alexander defected and went missing after venturing into the catacombs, which set Sidra al-Najjar and Jean-Zera Mongé to seeking word of his whereabouts among Janissary contacts. Their inquiries brought them before the Padisha and the Sultan, where they were recognised as assets of Osman Hamdi Bey. The Sultan charged them to name an assassin sent by Kavala Pasha, furnishing a scroll contrived to wipe all memory of their meeting from the assassin's mind. The episode underscores the Janissaries' address at threading political machination and covert work, and further roots their part in the shifting powers of Constantinople. The discovery besides of a fresh corpse — a young Janissary — in the catacombs bespeaks a conflict still afoot; and Alexander's warnings of the perils within, as of his own hunger for revenge against those who wrought his wife's death, mark out the dangerous ground upon which the Janissaries move.
The Janissaries are bound as well to the military and political frame of the Ottoman Empire, tied to the enforcement of the Sultan's authority. They are known of old as an elite infantry, with a hand in secret operations and policing both. The faction shows itself yet through shadowy, half-corporeal soldiers met with in the course of inquiries touching a recent attempt at assassination — armed men and hostile, a token of the threat the faction may still pose. A commanding officer among them bore a blade of the sort described by the Ghost of March, much like a sword seen at the Janissary headquarters.