The Finders Guild oversees a range of different services. The most lucrative of these is the prospecting division. In addition to locating dragonshards and other precious resources, the guild undertakes more mundane tasks, such as helping villages find sources of water or helping archaeologists locate relics. The guild has even worked with Riedrans in Xen’drik, finding the crystals that the Riedrans use in their architecture.

The Finders Guild also dominates the urban inquisitive trade, providing a wide range of investigative services. Its primary competition in this field is House Medani, but whereas Medani provides counterespionage to wealthy clients, the Finders Guild makes its services available to the common folk. Finally, the Finders Guild trains and licenses bounty hunters—both those who hunt fugitives (and who must compete with the Sentinel Marshals of House Deneith) and those who eliminate dangerous monsters.


Across Khorvaire, the inquisitives of House Tharashk have a reputation for discretion and cunning. Members of that house operate the Finders Guild, a loose collection of independent inquisitive agencies. Dragonmarked heirs of House Tharashk own and operate some of these agencies, but each employs unmarked inquisitives as well, leaving the heirs free to take on the most difficult cases. A connection with the Finders Guild is viewed as a mark of high quality, a guarantee that a particular agency numbers among the best in the business.

In the city of Sharn alone, four inquisitives with the Mark of Finding lead agencies in different parts of the city: Kurt Karr’Aashta’s Investigations in the neighborhood of Deathsgate, Information Acquisition in Underlook, Thuranne Velderan’s Investigative Services in Warden Towers, and Globe Information Agency in Dragon Towers. Your party might be associated with any of these groups, or you might operate your own affiliated agency. In any case, your connection to the Finders Guild means you have a sterling reputation to uphold.

Magic of Eberron

House Tharashk, the bearer of the Mark of Finding, founded the Finders Guild. Centuries ago, the dragonmarked members of the house decided to market their unique services to tribes and nations that neighbored their native Shadow Marches. While the dragonmarked inquisitives and explorers of House Tharashk were quite adept at their trade, they discovered many other individuals offering similar services. To capitalize on the entire market, the house created the Finders Guild, inviting others to join so they could benefit from each other’s knowledge and provide a network of resources across the continent.

Now, the Finders Guild is still primarily composed of House Tharashk members, but it also includes many independent inquisitives, bounty hunters, explorers, and prospectors. House Tharashk manages the operations of the guild from its enclaves in major cities across Khorvaire. If something needs to be found, the first place to turn is the Finders Guild.

Dragonshards and the Finders Guild

Dragonshard prospecting isn’t the only function of the Finders Guild, but a significant part of the income produced by the guild comes from the acquisition of dragonshards of all varieties. The Mark of Finding gives Tharashk prospectors a leg up on the competition, since they can use their dragonmark magic to more quickly locate dragonshard deposits. Through the Finders Guild, House Tharashk has control of, or at least prospecting rights for, most Eberron dragonshard fields in western Khorvaire, including the most lucrative fields in the Shadow Marches and Droaam. The guild maintains a presence in Stormreach, organizing expeditions into the wilds of Xen’drik to acquire Eberron or Siberys dragonshards.

Even expeditions into the depths of Khyber usually involve the Finders Guild in some way. Either the expedition is following a map provided by the guild, is led by a guildmember guide, or will sell unearthed Khyber shards to the guild, provided it returns to the surface.

Even if the Finders Guild isn’t directly involved with a dragonshard prospecting expedition, it is likely that the guild soon learns of its existence. The guild pays competitive prices for unattuned dragonshards, with a premium if the origin of the shards is also provided. Of course, with the inquisitives and bounty hunters at the guild’s disposal, a new Khyber cave or Siberys fall zone won’t stay secret for long, at least within the guild.

The Finders Guild in the World

“Looking for somethin’?”

—Braak’akka, Finders Guild mercenary

The Finders Guild sponsors a number of activities that draw the interest of adventurers. Exploration, investigation, bounty hunting, and the search for wealth are all fine endeavors for a PC. Add to this the fact that House Tharashk maintains enclaves throughout Khorvaire, and characters would always have a source of potential employment and adventure.

The Finders Guild is operated by House Tharashk, and the leaders of the guild are humans and half-orcs that bear the Mark of Finding. The headquarters of the guild is located with the house headquarters in the city of Zarash’ak, in the Shadow Marches. There, a council convenes to discuss all aspects of the guild’s business: mining, prospecting, bounty hunting and tracking, investigation, and the new mercenary enterprise.

The head of dragonshard acquisition, which includes mining and prospecting regarding dragonshards, is Vurlaak d’Tharashk (N male half-orc rogue 4/dragonmark heir 3). Vurlaak has a particular knack for judging market conditions, and he has kept the dragonshard business profitable since before the end of the Last War. He is keenly interested in expanding guild operations into Q’barra and Xen’drik, because he fears that the Eberron shard fields in the Shadow Marches will eventually be depleted, and looks to those locations as new sources of revenue.

Vurlaak is well respected by other members of the guild and the house. He proved his dedication to the success of the Finders Guild by once personally leading a team of prospectors on a Khyber shard reclamation mission. Only half the team returned, but the spoils of that mission alone funded the operations of the guild for many months. When not in the Shadow Marches, Vurlaak attends to guild business throughout Khorvaire, flying from city to city on an airship on loan from House Lyrandar.

Most members of the Finders Guild are happy to be a part of it. The guild provides consistent leads for work that the members would have a difficult time arranging independently, due to the capricious nature of the professions that the guild represents. With the Finders Guild, a bounty hunter can start off after a new mark, a prospector can get a new lead on a lode, and an investigator can start the trail of a new mystery.

NPC Reactions

The citizens of most of Khorvaire’s nations treat the Finders Guild with the same measure of respect they have for the other dragonmarked houses. Even though many members of the Finders Guild are independent contractors, when on guild business they are afforded a higher level of cooperation, and membership in the guild confers some validity and authority to a guildmember’s position. The common people of the Five Nations are generally indifferent to the guild, and they do not go out of their way to work against the guild’s aims.

The Finders Guild in the Game

The Finders Guild provides a perfect means to start an adventure for PCs of nearly any level. Low-level PCs could register with the guild to gain information on adventuring opportunities, such as locating a missing person or escorting Eberron shard shipments. At mid-levels, PCs might be contracted to lead a Khyber shard mining expedition. Even high-level PCs might be contacted by the Finders Guild to assist in artifact retrieval or to track down a particularly dangerous fugitive.

As members of the guild, the PCs not only would have to deal with the missions they are assigned, but would need to make positive impressions on other, more senior guildmembers. Completing missions not only successfully, but also in a timely fashion, is important to ensure future work.

The Finders Guild could also represent competitors of the PCs’ group, racing toward the same goal, which could be a dragonshard deposit deep within Khyber or a fugitive marked for death whom the PCs know to be innocent. In these cases, conflict need not be deadly, but can still be suspenseful.

Any character who bears the Mark of Finding is eligible to join the Finders Guild. All others must pass a cursory background check before the guild will provide anything more than menial tasks, such as guarding caravans or finding lost pets. The guild doesn’t pay any bounties directly, but acts as an intermediary between those who have lost someone or something and those who find that same person or object. In the case of dragonshard acquisition, the Finders Guild collects and purchases the shards at the behest of House Tharashk, which then sells the dragonshards to other interested parties.

In nearly all instances of business arranged by the Finders Guild, the guild assumes a commission on every bounty and sale equal to 15% of the bounty’s writ or the sale price of the item in question. Since any money exchanging hands for these services passes through the guild, this fee is automatically deducted from the payment.

Dragonshards are a different matter. The Finders Guild pays the market prices given earlier in this chapter for unattuned dragonshards of all kinds. In addition, if the selling party also indicates the source of the dragonshards, a 10% premium will be paid upon confirmation of the source. In a well-defended location deep within the House Tharashk compound in Zarash’ak, the Finders Guild keeps records of all known dragonshard harvesting locations, including Khyber caves, Siberys fall zones, Eberron fields, and ancient ruins of the daelkyr and the giants in Khorvaire and Xen’drik, respectively.

As a Patron

Allies. While the Finders’ Guild’s greatest strength is its internal connections, it lacks many strong allies beyond House Tharashk’s holdings. That said, the following groups have had numerous interactions with the guild and generally view inquisitives in a positive light:

  • Droaam. Since the rise of the Daughters of Sora Kell in Droaam, members of House Tharashk have served as intermediaries between the realm of monsters and the east, bartering the services of monstrous mercenaries across Khorvaire. The house takes great pride in having forced mainstream Khorvaire to recognize that orcs and half-orcs are worthy of the same courtesies and opportunities as races long established in society, and house members are now using their status to do the same for various other races from Droaam. As a result, members of the Finders’ Guild can expect at least a modicum of respect while traveling in Droaam
  • Gatekeepers. House Tharashk and the druidic sect of the Gatekeepers share common origins in the Shadow Marches, and the druids remain friendly with the house and its Finders’ Guild. In the Marches, the guild often helps the druids locate stray aberrations and open portals between planes of existence. For their part, the Gatekeepers offer the support of their magic to aid guild members in whatever ways they can.

Enemies. The work of inquisitives naturally creates enemies, mostly on a local scale: con artists, gangs, and others who have had their unsavory deeds uncovered. Such groups are inclined to hold grudges against the guild as a whole. The guild’s enemies on a larger scale are few, but include the following groups.

  • Daask. The Finders Guild has a difficult relationship with the criminal organization called Daask. On the one hand, Daask is a violent criminal gang whose members are often targeted by Finders Guild inquisitives. On the other hand, Daask is a gang of monsters, many of whom actually left Droaam under the auspices of House Tharashk. Finders Guild inquisitives who pry too deeply into Daask business often feel pressure to back away coming from higher in House Tharashk. Those who ignore that pressure tend to end up the targets of Daask assassins.
  • House Deneith. For centuries, House Deneith cornered the market on mercenary forces in Khorvaire. It was an unpleasant surprise for them when House Tharashk entered the mercenary market in the later days of the war, bringing monsters from Droaam to bolster Five Nations armies. House Deneith still resents House Tharashk for this, and the animosity between the houses only increases when Finders’ Guild inquisitives stick their noses into Sentinel Marshal business.

Patron Benefits

With an inquisitive agency as your group’s patron, you gain the following benefits:

Compensation. You can collect fees from your clients when you undertake investigations on their behalf. You can set those fees, and clients will often pay higher fees as your reputation and prestige increase. A fee of 5 sp to 10 sp per inquisitive per day, plus expenses incurred as part of the investigation, is a reasonable starting rate.

Contacts. Through the Finders’ Guild, each associated inquisitive agency can benefit from the knowledge and experience of not only other inquisitives, but also bounty hunters, explorers, dragonshard prospectors, and others who make use of House Tharashk’s talent for finding. Thus, an affiliated agency might find helpful allies not only in cities throughout the Five Nations, but even in remote corners of the wilderness where trackers and prospectors ply their trade. At the DM’s discretion, your contacts might direct you to new cases, offer you leads in the case you’re working on, put you in touch with their own network of contacts, or show up suddenly to pull you out of the fire. You can call in a favor from your agency to draw on the resources of any of your contacts. At the start of the campaign, roll twice on the Contacts table to choose two contacts. You will certainly acquire new contacts in the course of your adventures, who might or might not fit the descriptions of contacts on this table.

Contacts

d12 Contact
1 A friendly law-enforcement officer sends clients your way and gives you inside information about the workings of the watch.
2 A satisfied former client with a minor position in local government can pull strings for you.
3 A lieutenant in a crime gang knows the underworld and will help you so long as you don’t interfere in that gang’s affairs.
4 A bitter, more experienced inquisitive spends a lot of time telling you who you could have talked to ten years ago—if that person hadn’t died—but still knows a lot about the city’s inner workings.
5 The owner of a tavern or other business that attracts clientele from the seedy parts of society has an ear to the ground and often feeds you leads to more work.
6 A wealthy former client can get you into high-society parties and put you in touch with other rich people.
7 A nosy journalist always wants to write stories about your cases, but also helps lead you to new work and key contacts.
8 A local priest appreciates the work you do and provides you with minor magical assistance.
9 A tough-as-nails street urchin will carry messages for you, lead you anywhere in the city, and squeeze into tight spaces for a meager reward.
10 A brooding warforged can connect you to an extensive network of former soldiers.
11 A kalashtar seer might be a fraud, but also occasionally provides you with valuable leads.
12 A curious changeling always seems to show up when you least expect it.

Build Your Group

A wide variety of talents can be useful in the work of an inquisitive, leading the Finders’ Guild to employ specialists with diverse skill sets. Many inquisitives come from backgrounds such as criminal, sage, soldier, or urchin, regardless of the role they play in a group. Consider some or all of these roles for characters in your party:

Client. When a routine investigation goes sideways, sometimes innocents get unwillingly caught in the action. The common artisan who hired the party to find her missing partner might find herself and her hired inquisitives on the run when things take a deadly turn. Such a Client is often a nonplayer character whose connection with the party is dissolved at the end of an adventure, but sometimes a Client develops a taste for excitement and becomes a fixture in the campaign. A perfectly ordinary background such as guild artisan or folk hero often work well with this character, who otherwise needs no specific proficiencies or capabilities.

Consultant. Sometimes skilled individuals end up working alongside inquisitives for a time. Such Consultants might work for a newspaper, study an esoteric field, or write crime fiction for a living. This character is usually similar to an Investigator, but typically has an unusual background or expert knowledge. The relationship between a Consultant and the rest of the party can be a source of drama—or comedy.

Interrogator. The Interrogator specializes in interaction with suspects, witnesses, or others who need persuasion to reveal what they know. A high Charisma combined with proficiency in both Persuasion and Intimidation prove helpful in this role. Bards, paladins, and sorcerers have both the requisite talents and the ability to supplement their interrogations with magic.

Investigator. Investigators piece evidence into a coherent whole that explains a mystery. This character combines a high Intelligence score with proficiency in skills such as Investigation, Perception, and sometimes Medicine. The Investigator might also use divination and other forms of magic to supplement those skills, making wizards a natural fit for this role.

Tough. An inquisitive’s work is inherently dangerous, so it’s often important for their group to include someone who can physically intervene when situations devolve into combat. The Tough’s role might include fighting criminal thugs, kicking in doors, and even roughing up suspects, all of which suggests a high Strength score and combat ability. The Intimidation skill can also helpfully supplement the Tough’s work.

Types of Inquisitive Work

Much of the work done by inquisitives is relatively mundane: collecting evidence of marital infidelity, investigating insurance fraud, or finding runaways. Sometimes these relatively innocent investigations can lead into the shadowy underbelly of society and become more dangerous, but most adventurers prefer the more dangerous kinds of inquisitive work. Your group might specialize in one particular kind of work, or it might take whatever cases come its way. Roll or pick from the Investigative Expertise table to determine your agency’s specialty.

Investigative Expertise

d6 Investigation
1 Find People. You seek people who are lost, in hiding, on the run, or victims of foul play.
2 Find Items. Whether it’s a stolen painting or a family heirloom, you excel at finding lost items.
3 Justice for All. The powerful often escape justice due to their wealth and influence. Their victims sometimes turn to you, hoping you’ll help set things right.
4 Help Law Enforcement. The city watch must obey the rules to bring criminals to justice. When the rules need to be bent or broken, they turn to you for help.
5 Uncover Secrets. You put your inquisitive skills to use inquiring into others’ mysterious backgrounds.
6 Private Security. You provide services for a specific organization. Perhaps you travel on airships to provide security or work in a casino to catch cheaters.

Signature Case

Inquisitives occupy a significant place in the popular imagination, both in their real-life exploits (as reported in the newspapers) and in many fictionalized accounts. As romanticized heroes of many tales, they shed the light of truth into the shadows to uncover secret misdeeds. Equally romanticized as self-serving muckrakers, they often use questionable methods to bring to light secrets that might have better remained hidden, causing untold harm in the process.

Whether true or false, stories like these tend to cling to inquisitive agencies and color their reputations. What big story is associated with your agency (and possibly your party)? Are the stories accurate, or do they reflect only one side of a complicated situation? Roll on the Signature Case table or choose a case that cemented your reputation.

Signature Case

d6 Case
1 Case of the Century. You uncovered key evidence in a sensational case. You made headlines, but some parties involved carry grudges against you.
2 The Set Up. You uncovered evidence of a high-profile figure’s misdeeds. At trial, that evidence was deemed false, but by then the accused’s career was ruined.
3 Scandal. Your work uncovered a deeply embarrassing scandal that ended a powerful politician’s career.
4 Underdog Champion. You brought justice to a sympathetic victim, proving yourself a champion of those overlooked by society.
5 Genius. You resolved a case that baffled others, and now you are celebrated for your brilliance.
6 Bungler. You bungled a case, badly. The guilty party walked free, and everyone blames you.

Clientele

Inquisitives tend to acquire a reputation for working with a certain type of person. Some are known for discretion, attracting wealthy clients who trust them to keep a secret. Others are known to have a soft spot for a sad story, drawing the type of client who has plenty of troubles but little money. Roll on or choose an option from the Clientele table to determine who tends to show up at your office with a case.

Clientele

d6 Clientele
1 Wealthy Socialites. Your discretion and low-key approach to cases make you the perfect team to handle cases best keep out of the public eye.
2 Underdogs. Whether deserved or not, you have a reputation for doing the right thing even if it comes without a reasonable fee. Anyone pitted against the rich and powerful knows to come to you for justice.
3 Magnet for Trouble. Maybe you trust people too easily or it’s just bad luck, but every client who walks into your office has some double deal, hidden agenda, or scam they’re running.
4 Desperate. You have a reputation for taking on clients who can’t afford your services. Every hard-luck case ends up at your door, whether you want them or not.
5 Warforged. In a world where the rights of warforged are not always certain, you take up their cause.
6 Criminals. When a criminal has been wronged but doesn’t want to be brought to justice they come to you, trusting (rightly or wrongly) that you won’t turn them in.