Factions

The Black Blades

The Black Blades are a criminal syndicate operating in Aristonia. Their members are marked by matching tattoos of a black sword on the forearm, and they keep to the back rooms of the places they frequent — chief among them the Sunken Anchor tavern in the Canal District. They trade in information and connections for a price, and the Fixer is said to work with them from time to time. They are not above turning on those who come asking questions.

A group of them holding the Sunken Anchor did exactly that: after taking coin to name where the Fixer might be found, they turned on the party to rob them. The fight went badly for the Blades — several were killed and the rest, including their leader, fled into the night. That leader is known as Bremmick — a slovenly figure held in low regard even within the city's underworld.

House Betony

House Betony is one of the noble houses of the Three Marches. Its seal bears a pink-and-purple flower with dark, serrated leaves and spiky petals. Betony was among the houses that opposed King Callidus of House Foxglove — now the crowned ruler of the Three Marches — in the recent war, and it lost; the house has since been beaten into submission and left out of favor.

Its business, however, goes on. A House Betony noble was seen calling on the widow Maren Ashveil at her estate, and a shipping manifest bearing House Betony's seal turned up among the papers of her murdered husband, Dale Ashveil — annotated in his hand, "G wants this moved before the 14th."

It is now known — drawn from the captured Fixer's own mind — that House Betony was the party that commissioned the killing of Dale Ashveil.

The Council of Six (Pirate Captains of Saltmoor)

The seedy port of Saltmoor, on the eastern continent, is "governed" by a board of pirate captains rather than any crown or council of law. They keep only as much order as it takes to keep trade moving through the cove, and little more — there is next to no policing in the city. The board is the council of six, headed by Captain Mireval, of whom the standing advice is that one does not lie to her. They hold court from the crow's nest at the top of the city.

The council's chief business is the cut. Anything fenced on Saltmoor soil is taxed at somewhere between a quarter and a half of its value, and the exact rate is haggled against a body of dusty written codes — a "pirates' honor" rulebook that a canny seller can cite to argue the rate down (the doctrine of "first finder's rights" among them). A transaction counts as theirs to tax so long as it happened in Saltmoor, even if the goods leave the island. Anyone who takes their earnings and refuses the cut has the unpaid balance set against them as a bounty that grows with interest week over week. Their dwarven assessors — Bevin among them — appraise hauls and report up to the crow's nest.

A Coastal Druid Circle

Somewhere up the coast from Saltmoor, more than a day's hard travel over rocky ground, lives a circle of druids — a peaceful people said to be adept in the druidic arts, who barter fairly and trade in kind. The party learned of them in passing from a Saltmoor shopkeeper and marked them as worth seeking out.