The Underworld
The Crimson Brotherhood has made Sarnath’s underworld its business, collecting protection money and deciding who gets to profit from crime. Its rivals were hunted down years ago, but the survivors are gathering again. Beneath the pressure of lockdown, the struggle for the city’s streets is beginning to stir.
Under the Red Hand
The Brotherhood began as an association of merchants and tradespeople protecting their interests. Today its red hand marks a far harsher arrangement. Thugs collect taxes with their own fees added on, businesses pay for protection, and anyone building a rival criminal enterprise risks a visit. City guards rarely interfere, leaving the Brotherhood free to enforce terms that few people can afford to refuse.
Jacks keeps this business running through informants, stolen goods and favours owed across the city. She is quick to laugh at powerful people and just as quick to notice when someone is costing her money. Beside her stands Arkal Thorpe, a former Darkore smith whose easy manner disappears when she is threatened. Their reach extends into the provinces, where Brotherhood agents pursue interests far beyond a tavern’s protection money.
The Crimson BrotherhoodBusiness at the Ruddy Cloak
The Ruddy Cloak occupies damp cellars near the riverfront, where gamblers and dockside drinkers share tables with people best left unquestioned. Felix Morison watches the room from behind his bar, keeping a careful distance from the Brotherhood while profiting from the business it brings. Twenty years in the army taught him how to recognise trouble, though some of his customers are too well protected for him to throw out.
In the Cloak and Dagger below, bare-knuckle fighters draw crowds eager to turn a beating into a payday. Bets and private arrangements keep coin moving through the cellars, while Jacks conducts business in the backrooms. Along the riverfront, the Brotherhood has also taken over the decaying boatyard, where an unfinished royal barge has found a new use among stolen cargo and criminal dealings.
The Magpies
Seven years ago, the Brotherhood destroyed Sarnath’s Thieves’ Guild with arrests and killings that left its survivors afraid to gather. Now the old mark of a serpent coiled around a flask is appearing again. Some dismiss it as the work of scattered rogues; others speak of the Magpies, a new fellowship built from what the purge failed to destroy.
Those rebuilding it disagree over what the guild should become. Lossa Starling wants solidarity among thieves and bold acts against the people who rule through fear. Heemi Rook measures their prospects in profit and risk, with little patience for gestures that might bring the Brotherhood down on them. Both command loyalty, leaving the Magpies caught between the wish to be seen again and the need to survive.
Thieves & MagpiesSomething Worth Stealing
The Magpies want prizes large enough to make Sarnath remember them. The Black Keep holds the wealth of the provinces, and a theft from its treasury would wound more than Lord Quince’s purse. Among the survivors, rumours about the fate of their former guildmaster give the fortress a more personal significance.
Darkyn Corvid knows what such ambitions cost when planning gives way to bravado. He survived the old guild’s destruction and now works to rebuild a network that can withstand its enemies. Alongside him, Ves Legenlarke brings a lawyer’s knowledge to stolen seals and false papers. They study the records that move money, goods and prisoners through Sarnath, preparing for work that demands more than a quick hand with a lockpick.
The Hunt for the Magpies
Arvenya Dassain has been sent to Rivenshear to find the thieves’ connections. Known within the Brotherhood as the Poison Needle, she combines the education of a wealthy family with a taste for violence that unsettles her own colleagues. Her questions can sound friendly and curious while she studies the names, signatures and small inconsistencies in an answer.
Lockdown has made anyone who can arrange passage or carry a message valuable to the Magpies. Arvenya is working through the officers and dealings around the gates, looking for the favours that keep those connections alive. People helping someone across the city can draw her attention long before they understand whose business they have entered.