1. Organizations

Black Highway

Crime Syndicate

The Last War was a time of fear and pain, but the chaos of the conflict also provided opportunity for a select few. One such “lucky” population was the criminal element across the Five Kingdoms and beyond. Not only did the need for warriors on the borders thin the ranks of law enforcement throughout the cities and the countryside, but the conflict itself offered substantial venues for profit. Petty crime rose in almost every city, but of more direct relevance to the Last War was the growth of war profiteering. An underground network emerged, weblike, across the continent. Indeed, many of the Five Nations’ criminal organizations proved more able to keep the peace with one another than did the governments themselves.

War Profiteering

At the start of the war, profiteering was a simple, impulsive affair. Merchants who were contracted to provide materiel shorted their shipments, selling the excess in open markets or to criminal fences. Soldiers scavenged weapons, armor, and magic items from the battlefields and sold them rather than turning them over to superior officers. Crafters used cheaper materials in their construction than they promised. All this activity was fairly common, as it is in all wars, and of relatively little consequence. Perpetrators who were caught were punished, sometimes severely, but otherwise no concentrated effort was made to put a halt to these practices. The governments had more important matters to address.

This situation changed dramatically in 907, when Cyre made an open proclamation: The Cyran military, well funded but not nearly so well armed as its rivals, would purchase scavenged weapons and magic from any source. Soldiers, Cyran and otherwise, began collecting goods from foes, and even fallen comrades, in unprecedented quantities. Many could not reach Cyre to sell their goods, of course, so merchants and smugglers made the exchanges for a share of the spoils.

The warring nations could do little about this practice. Even after Thrane and Karrnath began executing profiteering soldiers as traitors, the smuggling continued. The sale of stolen or scavenged war goods, no matter how dangerous, was simply too profitable to be ignored. In order to keep up with Cyre—or at least to slow down the flow of weapons into that country—the other nations were forced to purchase black-market goods as well. This led to a hypocritical and ultimately futile practice in which each military would purchase weapons from enemy nations’ soldiers while executing its own troops for selling to others.

The Underground Alliance

With the governments cracking down on war profiteering, perpetrators had to find more secretive means of selling their stolen goods. Naturally, they turned to thieves’ guilds and criminal organizations. This left the criminals with a problem. The monies in war profiteering were tempting indeed, but the guilds didn’t want to draw the wrath of governments that were on a wartime footing. All but the most powerful and largest crime organizations knew that the military could wipe them out if they so chose. Particularly at the height of antiprofiteering mania in Karrnath and Thrane, where mere possession of goods that could be traced to the military or a battlefield was a death sentence, the guilds were reluctant to take that sort of risk.

The White Hand Guild of Sigilstar, in Thrane, claims credit for first coming up with the notion of an international web of smugglers and fences, though this boast cannot today be verified. By a process of passing stolen and scavenged goods back and forth across national borders, items that could be linked to a nearby battlefield or installation could be cleared out swiftly, in exchange for an equal value of goods that could more safely be sold in local markets. One of the White Hand’s guildmasters, Branthus “Rooftop” Corwall (NE male half-elf rogue 4), served as the guild’s spokesperson, traveling to other cities and nations. Although many of the organizations he approached were understandably suspicious, several immediately saw the value in his proposal. The more farsighted initial adopters were the Boromar Clan in Sharn, the Fist of Mabar in Vedykar, the Six Serpents in Passage, the Golden Crow in Thaliost, and the (prophetically named) Ghost-Walkers of Metrol.

Within mere months, lines of communication ran across a dozen criminal guilds in half a dozen nations. In addition to weapons and armor (magical and mundane), this growing network transported a variety of items including dragonshards, foodstuffs, foodcreating magic items (which commanded a premium price during wartime shortages), drugs and alcohol, raw ores, letters and personal parcels (many of which had no other means of transport due to regular channels being reserved for official use), soarwood and similar rare materials, and, in a few cases, inactive constructs and warforged.

Wartime Smugglers

The network of communication and smuggling became known as the Black Highway in criminal parlance, though it involved far more than mere streets. Given the military crackdown on weapons and wartime goods, the guilds needed to be clever in finding ways to move stolen material across the borders.

Skilled wilderness travelers could cross borders fairly easily, avoiding trade routes and major patrols, but it was impossible to move large quantities of material this way. Some guilds used merchants, paid or extorted into cooperation, to move stolen goods under falsified papers. Hidden compartments in wagons and ships became popular, as did items such as bags of holding with spells on them to prevent easy magical detection. In some cases, guilds used soldiers themselves to transport goods, working a few extra blades into this unit, a few more wands into that.

Many smugglers were caught, but some grew so skilled at their trade that they banded together into an international smugglers’ guild—called the Black Highway, after their network—that hires itself out to thieves’ guilds and governments to this day. In the modern era, the Black Highway is led by Sillet Phelar (N female elf rogue 4/aristocrat 1). Although many of the goods the organization transported during the war are no longer worth its time, it is still expert in moving large quantities of restricted or expensive materials. From soarwood to eternal wands, dragonshards to raw mithral, and even (according to rumor) brand new warforged, the Black Highway boasts that it can provide almost any material or item imaginable, to any buyer—so long as the price is right.

 

The Markets

Given their desire to avoid the attention of the military and law enforcement, the guilds could not simply hold large “black market bazaars” out in the open. Yet it did them no good to have these wartime goods if they couldn’t sell them.

In many cases, the organizations funneled illicit goods into legitimate marketplaces. They might, for instance, sell a few swords to a merchant here and there, which the vendor could then offer alongside his more legitimately acquired goods. Although this process was relatively safe, it was inefficient and didn’t turn a huge amount of profit. The real money was in selling large quantities of goods to mercenary companies, houses, noble families, and some governments. The guilds involved in the Black Highway needed areas of neutral territory where they could arrange meetings without (much) fear of arrest. Of all these black markets that existed across the length and breadth of the continent, four were large enough to be worth individual discussion. Each of these areas still has something of a thriving black market, even if it’s far smaller than it was during the war’s height.

All characters that are members of this organization.