The criminal organizations are like if a bandit camp was spread throughout a town.
People in the same town will often not mention them, probably because they seem to form relationships with them.
The one I found was a group of white snake men. One I found was a star on the travel map, led to an ambush. The offender wasn't just a criminal, but also a vampire snake woman. Even though she was in no quarter mode, she just kept running from me. So I sprinted after her, slashing at her uncontested for several blocks while neighbors were freaking out. Not because of the vampire snake woman in their town, but because of my violence towards it.
So I finally wised up, grabbed her by the nose from behind, and chopped off her head. Immediately following this, a boner (tee hee) starts spitting at me, and draws their knife after I punched him in the face. So I gave his lower body a heavy kick, causing him to vomit, cursing me as the slayer of the vampire woman he loved, spouting off about the grief between bouts off retching. So I chopped his arm off, finally getting him to run away, blood spraying out of his torso, crying for help. Someone else had to die when they went straight to no quarter for attacking his friend.
Amazing to see that loyalty cascades are gone, and now the worst thing from these exploits is that people ask me not to hurt anyone when I show up. This prompts me to brag about the four or so entities I just killed or maimed. All they could say was "It was terrible."
Later, I found the criminal's captain, another white snake woman just hanging out in their house. She had actually tried to kill me....with a blowgun. Everything bounced off my leather clothes, so she was easily dispatched.
Adventure mode is finally becoming the RPG of my dreams