Fen held a slight smile.
"It depends on how you define these three words. The Triad Gang is nothing more than slashing people and collecting protection fees. But people like Aran and Pedan are also nothing more than waging wars and taxing. Essentially, they are all interest groups, just presented in different scales; when magnified to a macro level, some synonyms get replaced.
The reason why organizations like the Thief Guild attract so much infamy is because their targets are mainly civilians. But once their targets are external and there are no fundamental conflicts internally, isn't it a qualified government? Since a thing exists, there must be a foundation supporting its existence, which might even be of a natural law nature. There isn't much difference between them; it's just the micro and macro levels operating the same set of practices and revealing the truth in different forms.
