The Dwarfish Cartel

"Take heart, ye be family now." -Spoken initiation into the Dwarfish Cartel.

The Dwarfish Cartel is a covert syndicate of smugglers, shadow-brokers, and merchant-criminals embedded deep within the underbelly of Newforge and beyond. Officially outlawed by the Ironclad Republic, the Cartel operates from a network of hidden tunnels and black halls known only to its own, moving banned goods across Everwealth’s fractured realms. Though best known for trafficking Forge Spice, Hexsteel, and similar dubious substances, the Cartel’s true value lies in its forbidden trade of enchanted weaponry and alchemical goods, items deemed too dangerous, too volatile, or simply too powerful for public hands. Their defiance of The Arcane Coalition, a feared magick-policing regime with a reputation for disappearances and sanctioned executions, has made them both hunted criminals and folk heroes, depending on who you ask. In a kingdom where healing potions are regulated like crossbows and carrying an enchanted ring without license can mean death, the Cartel steps in, not as liberators, but as necessary evil.

Career

Qualifications

No formal schooling is required. Potential members are recruited young, often from debt-bound families, failed apprenticeships, or the underbelly of the Deep Halls. Candidates must demonstrate discretion, courage, and adaptability. Skills in metallurgy, rune-etching, lockpicking, potion brewing, or magickal theory are valuable but not mandatory. Loyalty is tested first, competency comes second. All new members begin as runners, shadows, or sinkhands, trusted only with minor shipments until proven.

Career Progression

The Cartel follows a meritocratic but brutal hierarchy.

• Runner - Delivers minor messages or carries decoy cargo.
• Smudge - Handles real product under supervision.
• Drip-Hand - Works directly with potions or volatile items.
• Nail - Armed enforcer or handler of “problem customers.”
• Broker - Trusted trader or middleman between factions.
• Spine - Regional head; oversees operations in specific territories.
• Gilded Vein - High-level operatives involved in policy, pricing, and smuggling alliances.
  Each rung brings greater wealth, danger, and political leverage, but none are ever safe from betrayal or Coalition raids.

Payment & Reimbursement

Payouts vary widely by risk. Runners earn silver by the trip, while Smudges and Brokers take a cut of each sale. The rarest alchemical payloads or Hexsteel shipments can buy a year’s rent in Opulence, if you survive delivery. Injury, loss, or exposure can mean forfeiture of earnings. Still, the work pays more than a dozen legal professions combined.

Other Benefits

Cartel operatives refer to themselves as Shadows of the Forge, Spicers, or Graysmoke. Dwarfish elites call them Tunnel Rats or Vein-Slugs. Among civilians, they are sometimes praised as Ash Saints, silent deliverers of banned healing goods or protective wards in villages abandoned by the Arcane Coalition. Their forbidden deliveries include healing potions, magickal poultices, and enchanted charms that can save lives, yet are considered contraband due to the Coalition’s ban on unlicensed magick. To some, they are villains. To others, saviors who risk brutal punishment so the sick may walk and the cursed may rest.

Perception

Purpose

The Cartel exists to move forbidden goods, magickal, alchemical, or otherwise, through the cracks of a kingdom rotted by overreach and fear. They enable forbidden healing, hidden resistance, and dark empowerment. Where the Arcane Coalition enforces control, the Cartel enforces access.

Social Status

Openly reviled, secretly respected. Newforge denounces them, but buys from them. Nobles scorn them, then quietly send runners. The Arcane Coalition marks them as heretics and threats to public order. Among the working class and magick-starved communities, they are whispered of with hope or awe.

Demographics

Rough estimates place Cartel-affiliated workers at around 4-6% of Newforge's total population, though numbers swell during times of war or famine. Nearly a third of all smuggling in Everwealth can be traced, if indirectly, to Cartel hands or tunnels.

History

Formed after the Schism, when surviving Dwarfish Exiles from their main band sought to rebuild in the face of ruin, famine, and martial law. The Cartel began as a network of forgers and salvagers skirting ration restrictions. As magickal oversight increased and alchemical materials were outlawed, they evolved into a full-scale resistance economy beneath the Republic’s polished stone.

Operations

Tools

Standard kits include collapsible crates, lead-lined pouches, rune-dampening blankets, false-bottom carts, signal lanterns, and poison vials (for either silence or bargaining). Higher operatives carry ward-broken blades and shadow-slick armor that resists tracking or magickal residue.

Materials

Essential supplies include forged permits, blank scrolls, disguise kits, swamp oil (for transporting volatile goods), binding twine soaked in hexbane, wax-sealed rune capsules, and pre-treated ashcloth used for transporting living alchemical matter such as volatile potions or whispering relics.

Workplace

Their workspaces vary:

• Drip dens - Secret basements filled with potion vials, cursed trinkets, and ventilation for fumes.
• Smuggler’s Pits - Mobile stations in tunnels where goods are sorted.
• Greyledgers - Front-facing businesses like taverns, smithies, or even mortuaries where deals are made with innocents none the wiser.

All smell of cold iron, wet cloth, and something too acrid to name.

Provided Services

Smuggling of potions, relics, enchanted weapons, and forbidden ingredients.

• Cursebreaking (unlicensed).
• Safehouse operation for wanted magick users.
• Acquisition of outlawed healing or enhancement items.
• “Gray fixes” for alchemical accidents the Coalition refuses to address.

Dangers & Hazards

• Death by exposure, trap, or betrayal.

• Brutal execution or experimental punishment by the Arcane Coalition.

• Imprisonment in The Quiet Vaults, where captured mages and smugglers are muted and dissected.

• Volatile goods, cursed items, and spiritual backlash from moving enchanted relics without proper wards.

Alternative Names

'Bearded Brigands'.

Type

Illicit

Demand

Exceptionally high. In war-torn or isolated regions where licensed alchemists are rare and Arcane-approved goods cost a fortune, Cartel services are a lifeline. Healing draughts, cursed item disposal, make them an underground necessity in many parts.

Legality

Fully illegal under Everwealth law. The Arcane Coalition classifies Cartel activity as high treason, necromantic trafficking, and magickal terrorism. The Ironclad Republic outwardly enforces this position but has been caught looking the other way when the Cartel’s services prove politically or economically convenient.