Water bending Cartel 
Tread Lightlies
Maybe when all this is over my Ganger can retire with their own Leman Russ.
Iron Riders is Red. Thus I am riding with the riders.
I’m still deciding. Initially I was thinking Iron Riders for the red drip, then The Show for the more flamboyant drip, but then Water Cartel since they’re the most relevant gang to the story of Darktide.
It’ll come down to the cosmetics I supposed but still it’s hard to pick one.
Adeptus mechanicus
Do their trains go faster?
They must.
literally just watching the movie on amazon after being tilt from serving the emprah.
let’s say I remember it “better” from when I was a kid 
I take Iron Riders because
I normally try to stray away from obvious/popular choices, but in this instance, my headcanon revolves around The Iron Riders and their logistics network. The Show is an obvious link for the chem-based gameplay, with The Water Cartel also having links that could work. Unfortunately The Tread Lightlies simply don’t have the narrative hooks needed to feed the gameplay fanatasy we’re being sold.
They somewhat do to the Boom Bringer/Rocket Launcher
So when is the Emperor coming back? The world is clearly ending if that’s the case xD
From all Scum weapons, I like Crowbar the most. Not only for those Gordon Freeman vibes, it fits nicely with The Iron Riders.
I’m not a massive fan of “chems”, especially that I expect those aspects of the class to be the most broken / OP 
I must be dreaming, because I agree.
I’ve actually changed my mind. I quite like the aesthetics of The Tread Lightlies, and while they’re an unusual and unpopular choice, I think I can make the story work: as a Manufactorum Mudlark the Hive Scum turns toxic runoff into profit, this is where the chem elements are learned. The Tread Lightlies “have their fingers in everything they can surrounding this industry”, which likely includes black market profiteering from the runoff, so the Scum works with the Cartel to keep trade flowing. From there, they go from Riches to Rags, lose what meagre wealth they’ve earned and fall into the Cartel fully to survive.
Will the two of you get a room?
Someone on Reddit posted some additional lore.
There’s actually a pretty good amount of Lore on the Water Cartel, one of the factions you can play, as well as a bit for the Show.
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The Water Cartel, as listed in Wrath and Glory: Darktide Extraction, runs a water decontamination plant which you visit to destroy a demon wedged in it (Silo Cluster). Almost all the water of the hive ends up The Torrent, and they make their money by “purifying” it and selling it to the people of Tertium. It’s not clean by any means, and unfit for human consumption, but it’s the best they can do. This water is seen as extremely holy (Like Zam Zam water for the Muslims) and is the main source of recycled water for the hive. The chems they extract from the water, they either use as biological weapons against other cartels, or they sell them to the many manifucatorums on Tertium for them to utilize.
Zola was a member of the Water Cartel, and had a bounty put on her head because she was skimming from the top, what she owed to the Ragged King. This was before she was taken in by Grendyl who had taken in interest in her.
The leader of the Water Cartel was the Ragged King. Just before the events of Darktide, he set up shop in a prison. For context: The Magistery Enforcers (Or Mags) were the main police force of Tertium, and they had a courthouse/prison established in the Torrent, but were forced out due to the Water Cartel and politicking. The Ragged King is most likely dead, as a faction of the Water Cartel sided with Admonition (The Dregs) who then backstabbed that same faction. Though the Ragged King was persuaded to work with the Inquisition, he was killed by Rodin Karnak, who declared himself to be the new Ragged King. With him now being dead, who knows who’s in charge?
Their gang colors are purple, and their sign is an upside down triangle, with a skull at the top, and 2 waves beneath
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The Show runs out of The Carnival, the hives lawless Red Light district, which fell into Chaos extremely quickly and relatively uncoerced for obvious reasons. They dealt in making stimms, primarily the hallucinogenic Obscura, and one of the levels is us infiltrating their former drug lab in a brewery, which the heretics took over and began putting plague into the product.
The leader of the Show is “Your Host”, and the Show tends to be very over the top, dealing in drug trading, prostitution, gambling, liquor and the like. Because the Carnival is a shithole and the Mags stay out of it, they functionally act like the local government and police force.
Another note about the Water Cartel is that the Ragged King was the one that was initially in cahoots with Admonition. During this time the Cartel was splintered into several subfactions and the Ragged King made the deal with Admonition to establish dominance over the other subfactions of the Cartel.
The dialogue in Zola’s memories supports this, as the ganger Makko reveals that the Ragged King has backers in the Hourglass, a confirmed hotspot for Admonition. The Ragged King also backs this when he states how “they’ll have me killed” when Zola forcibly recruits him into her service as a spy, it’s not explicitly stated but I think that it’s Admonition that the Ragged King is so scared of.