Smugglers, Black Markets, and the Criminal World

In truth, the art of trade is a complicated and expensive profession. Most trade is legally taxed by local lords, entering a city via gate or port costs a small fee, and dealing in the market can also require a fee. This is all the legal taxation, as there are plenty of illegal taxes from bandits, protection rackets, and more. With so much costs just to sell one's goods, prices are high to make any sort of profit. However, there exists a unique type of criminal willing to risk the inspections and ire of guards for maximum profit: enter the smuggler.
In truth, many of the goods smugglers deal in are actually perfectly legal. The reason they smuggle them is to avoid the taxes levied on the sale of such goods. Selling the finest Arditan wine is not illegal, but doing so without paying taxes is illegal. Some romanticize smugglers as "charitable helpers selling goods where customers pay less and merchants make more". While some might delude themselves with such flights of fancy, the truth is smugglers are merely shrewd profit seekers, willing to engage in less than legal activity to turn a coin. The various goods smugglers can deal in are:

• ⁠unlicensed/untaxed goods (grain, liquor, spices, game)
•  ⁠knock offs/castoffs that might spoil the quality reputation of the city's goods (wine, cheese, pottery, crystal, glass, weaponry, jewelry, instruments)
•  ⁠quality goods from the wrong producer
• ⁠gold from unregistered transactions (laundering cash)
• ⁠untaxed income from a wealthy citizen
• ⁠slaves
• ⁠undead laborers/chattel
• ⁠failed necromantic experiments
• ⁠bodies from a recent hit
• ⁠magic items used in a crime (assuming they could be traced)
• hallucinogens
• dangerous animals
• illegal weaponry⁠
• ⁠a VIP
• ⁠purveyors of a recently banned service
• ⁠children/families of imprisoned criminals
• ⁠escaped prisoners
• witches and magic users seeking to escape persecution and hunting
• ⁠high-born lovers looking to elope
• ⁠blueprints for new weaponry or the city defenses
• ⁠cursed items that were scheduled for destruction
• magic items smuggled out of Lunerra or the magical academies

Smugglers are rarely picky for what business they will dabble in, and those who have a sense of morality rarely keep it for long. Smugglers can transport things in many ways: on their person, in large cargo wagons, hidden compartments in wagons, river boats, sea boats, the rare airship, anything that they can use really. While most smugglers transport specific cargo for clients, some of their goods they will offload and sell in parts around a city they arrive in to lower the chance of being caught. The goods then make their way through various means to perhaps the most wild and dangerous part of any city, the black market.
Many cities have a black market, a seedy corner in an alley or perhaps built in the sewers, or even hiding in plain sight. Those goods sold in the black market are rarely legal, and is also a place for unscrupulous individuals to meet and even advertise services. Rogue spell casters, mutants, thugs for hire, assassins, and other various scoundrels are popular faces to see advertising services for quick coin. Black markets have a few unspoken rules: never ask where something came from, never ask if its illegal, keep fighting to a minimum, and do not talk about the market.
Smugglers are the lifeblood of these black markets, and without them, these markets would be far less profitable than they are. City and town guard are always on the lookout for traces of these illegal markets, and so knowing where to find the market requires someone to know someone.  Smugglers must be shrewd, knowing when to bribe and when to put on their best shark smile, and when to take care of "business rivals". Thus, the criminal world flourishes, and the daily lives of cities is kept as wild and unpredictable as it always will be.

Type

Illicit