Archer's Bridge Merchants

The Archer's Bridge Merchants, commonly referred to as the Merchants, are a supervillain gang operating in Brockton Bay. Their gang sign is a capital M with two vertical lines through it.

Modus operandi
The Merchants were a small group of drug dealers with no real aspirations aside from getting rich selling and taking drugs, only using their powers to make their line of work less risky. As such, they were never able to carve out much of a following in Brockton Bay, and did not engender much respect among other cape teams in the city.

In the aftermath of Leviathan and the collapse of the ABB and Empire Eighty-Eight, the Merchants seized the opportunity and shifted their operation, expanding their territory into the Docks and folding the dregs of society into their ranks. In an attempt to bolster their forces, the Merchants held dangerous gladiatorial matches in order to trigger and recruit more parahumans.

PRT Response
As a small-time gang with little ambition, they didn't warrant much PRT attention in comparison to other threats at the time. After their sudden growth following Leviathan's attack on Brockton Bay, the PRT began taking the Merchants more seriously. They made efforts to stop the Merchants from spreading their influence and interfering with the recovery efforts of the city.

Background
Formed when various drug dealers and users gained superpowers. Were relatively small-time. They operated from an abandoned tourist shop modeled after a lighthouse.

Story Start
Following Bakuda's bombing spree and the ABB's expansion pushing them out, the Merchants joined the truce with the Empire Eighty-Eight, Undersiders, Faultline’s Crew and Coil to deal with Bakuda.

Post-Leviathan
In the aftermath of Leviathan's attack, the Merchants took over the Docks. People fell in line with them due to the lack of utilities, public services and supplies. Shortly afterwards, the Merchants began attacking city infrastructure, the airport, grocery stores, and malls and seized medical supplies and food as they came in.Weld took the folders and opened the one for the Wards, glanced through it to memorize the faces of his new team. Then he went to the next file, “Then the top priority as far as opposition goes is… the Archer’s Bridge Merchants? Superpowered drug dealers. A Shaker 2, Tinker 2/Mover 3 and a Shifter 4. These aren’t big numbers. Am I missing something?” “Context. They’ve become a rallying point, representatives and leaders for those on the lowest rungs of society. Too many civilians who were the have-nots think allying with the Merchants is a way to become the haves. People that were angry, disenfranchised or both have gravitated towards the group, are seeking to overturn the social order.” “So they’ve got, what, a following of homeless?”  “Brockton Bay doesn’t, or didn’t,  have many that you could strictly call homeless, as there were so many abandoned buildings to squat in. When the Endbringer attacked, he chose the area with many of these buildings.” “I think I remember, yeah. The area where the fight started didn’t exactly look upscale.” “The sad irony of this is that the defending parahumans protected that area, while other locations were leveled by the tidal waves. That area, known to locals as the Docks, was not under the control of any organized crime or villain organization even before the attack. After the battle’s conclusion, it was swiftly occupied by the Merchants and growing numbers of their followers, and is now one of the areas with reliable shelter. Not entirely, but more than many. By the time our local heroes were finished with search, rescue and minimizing damage, their number of followers had reached a critical mass. In the past several days, they’ve begun attacking the city infrastructure, the airport, grocery stores, malls and they’ve repeatedly seized medical supplies and food as they come in.” “So a big priority will be safeguarding incoming supplies from relief efforts, protecting key areas of the city so it can recuperate from the disaster.”  “Yes, for the time being.” - Excerpt from Sentinel 9.1

Skidmark tried to capitalize on the new membership by forcing trigger events and distributing "powers in a can". One of these events was raided by Faultline's Crew, who stole the power vials and defeated the Merchants with ease. The public loss dealt a blow to Skidmark's reputation.

The Merchants were later completely wiped out by the Slaughterhouse Nine during one of their rallies, ending them as a gang.