Bar ThugsReport
English：Bar Thugs · Factions
A faction found only in The Swamp whose entire roster is one character type — the Swamper Bar Thug in Shark's bar. No leader, no territory, no diplomacy, and no world state ever hands it anything.
'ey, hairbrusher. Yer in my spot. — Swamper Bar Thug
Bar Thugs is a faction that exists only in The Swamp. It is a proper faction entry in the game data, but the contents are small enough that it barely behaves like one: a single character type, spawning in a single town.
The roster is one character
The only character this faction can spawn is the Swamper Bar Thug. He is randomly named and not unique, so every one you meet is a different roll of the same template.
He is a Greenlander, 40% chance female, carrying a Ringed Sabre. Armour is Shoddy grade, with a 15% chance of Standard, and his headgear and clothing are drawn at random from a pool of bandanas, Rattan Hats, tin cans, Dustcoats and leather jackets. He has a 1% chance of carrying a bounty between 500 Cats and 1,500 Cats. Beyond that there is nothing on him worth a detour.
Where you meet him
The bar in Shark, and nowhere else. This faction patrols no zones and does not spawn as a Homeless Squad, so you will never run into them in the field.
They also hold no settlements. No location in the game data is controlled by this faction, and no Town Override will ever hand them one. That is unusual in Kenshi, where most factions have at least a base or a patrol route. For what it is worth, even if Shark is overridden after its gang bosses fall, the Swamper Bar Thug still spawns.
The other people with the same name
Here is the part that catches people out, and Shark happens to be the town where both kinds turn up.
Kenshi has a whole family of characters called bar thugs — the Drunken Bar Thug, Crazy Bar Thug, Ugly Bar Thug, Twitchy Bar Thug, Traitorous Bar Thug and so on. Every one of those belongs to the Vagrants faction, not to the Bar Thugs faction described here. They appear in bars in The Hub, Waystation and Shark.
So when someone picks a fight with you in Shark's bar, which faction he belongs to depends on his name. This faction takes only the Swamper Bar Thug; the rest sit under Vagrants.
What it means for you
Very little, directly. The faction cannot be allied with, and no dialogue in the game moves your standing with it. It sits at 0 with Anti-Slavers, Empire Peasants and Rebel Farmers, which is to say it is on nobody's list.
The thing to watch is not the man but the room he is in. Street fights in Shark spread, and a drunken argument can pull the whole street in within seconds. One drunk is not a problem. Whoever is still standing around when you finish him might be.