Forgotten Realms: Difference between revisions

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* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] - Merchants band together all the time, openly or secretly, and as often as not don't care much whether they act decently, or even legally. So merchant cabals include mafia-like ones like Men of the Basilisk, or Rundeen who set pirates against their rivals and dabble in slave-trade.

{{quote|'''[http://wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x{{=}}dnd/dueotr/20101203 Ed Greenwood]''': It has been said that most merchants die not of lawbreaking or lack of coin but of running afoul of a cabal--one they belong to, two or more they belong to that end up having conflicting aims or activities, or just one they happen to be in the way of.}}

** Volo's Guide to the North mentions that the Kraken Society started as one of such cabals. Slarkrethel (the eponymous kraken) with his illithid and aboleth allies took over and expanded the organisation later, turning it into the infamous nest of knowledge brokerage, extortion and assassination it became.

<sup>75</sup>According to Elminster, one of the founding reasons for the Kraken Society was the need of the bargewrights for constant employment. For years, certain agents of the merchants of Yartar have carried on a practice of destroying barges up and down the Three Rivers. They'd do their work at night, [[False-Flag Operation|leaving orc bodies or weapons to suggest that the deed was done by raiders]].

** Then there are groups such as Iron Throne or Knights of The Shield that outwardly (and even for their own low-ranking members) look like "yet another tough merchant cabal", but on the inside are more fiendish. Sometimes, literally.

* [[The Corruption]]: [[Averted Trope|Averted]] with the Spellplague. It's just [[Toxic Phlebotinum]] that can be used for good or evil.