SOME SECRET SOCIETIES IN THE REALMS (Patreon)

The successful secret societies are the ones you’ve never heard of, not “not-really-secret” groups like the Wearers of the Purple or the Twisted Rune, and not religious cults like the Cult of the Dragon or those who venerate a hundred half-remembered maybe-gods (some of whom receive spells from another deity opportunistically doing so to gain the cultists as unwitting agents).

The Realms is also home to countless cabals, thousands upon thousands of them: little groups of merchants or seacaptains or criminals who meet to make pacts (I won’t attack your smugglers using yon warehouse if you don’t underprice me on the flagons we sell in our competing shops—or more often, non-compete agreements on the order of “I won’t carry bowls if you’ll refrain from selling cups”). These are everywhere, always operating, and best left to Dungeon Masters to create, so they’re utter mysteries PCs can stumble across in play.

Which leaves us with real “secret societies.” The most frequent reason for these, in the history of the Realms, is regime change: sometimes rebels who want the king swept away and merchants to rule in a voting council instead, but more often nobles who are rivals of the ruling family and want to replace it with themselves—working along with others who see themselves or their country as benefitting from such a change, and so secretly meet to support it.

And of this sort of secret society, I offer three (if your Realms campaign is set at the current official date, the late 1490s DR, in the Sword Coast):

The Chalice

This group of sixteen wealthy, successful Sembian merchants, plus a few trusted servants and hired bodyguards working under them, has lots of funds but no particular desire to expend them all in the long, arduous, and distasteful-due-to-bickering ongoing process of rebuilding Sembia to greatness, post-Shadovar invasion and the associated war.

Not when they can secretly use that same wealth to enrich themselves now and in the future, by corrupting or blackmailing courtiers across the Heartlands and up and down the Sword Coast to do their bidding—so as to make the Chalice the power behind the throne in a dozen cities or more, and then in vital resupply waystop centers along the trade routes between. If, on your overland journey, you should need new wagon wheels, remounts, firewood, clean water, new lanterns and oil for same, or even wagons, the Chalice controls the supply and the prices, and it’s their coffers you’re filling.

Right now, the Chalice is busily trying to arrange “accidents” for stubborn courtiers who won’t play with them, and get dirt on courtiers who might, and tighten their hold on courtiers and officials (such as tax collectors, guards, inspectors, and viziers) who will and have, in scores of places large and small in the Sword Coast and Heartlands regions.

The Chalice has hiring needs for adventurers to be their agents (or dupes, framed for deeds their agents have done), and wants adventurers who get in their way to get wiped out by rival adventurers they do control.

Led by “Lord” Baeraedran (“Bay-er-RAID-renn”) Anamanthur of Selgaunt, who seems to act in accord with his longtime friends and fellow Chalice leaders Daernthan Skornadarr and Haztrar Vanthran (both also of Selgaunt), the Chalice has resident agents (contacts) in Athkatla, Scornubel, Beregost, Waterdeep (several operatives and at least one hired adventuring band, the Circle of Daggers Drawn), Neverwinter, and all Sembian cities. Something fatal recently happened to their agent in Westgate, so their “gloves” (armed and dangerous field agents) are very active there right now, trying to find out who beheaded Pheldryn Orskan in an alleyway, and avenge him. The most formidable of these gloves is a sorcerer by the name of Cordran Vulk.

The Tamers

The name of this group is short for “the Beast-Tamers” (not to be confused with the ancient Myth Drannan organization of the same name whose work we saw remnants of in the original 1987 Realms boxed set).

The modern Tamers are dedicated to capturing monsters for resale to wealthy patrons who want guardians, or a menagerie to boast about, or “hit teams” of marauding beasts to cause problems for rivals by raiding them.

The Tamers are former mercenaries (so, veteran adventurers in their own rights) who work with rakshasas to get the monsters they need. These rakshasas are petty rulers in various locales in Veldorn, who use the Tamers to take away what one such ruler called “troublesome tentacled things too mad or brutish or self-important to control their depredations, think of others, and work within any hierarchy that doesn’t have them at the top.” The rakshasas all rule cities, and give themselves various grand and fanciful titles as rulers, such as The Exalted Of Kraunthar and The Vizier of Viziers and The Satrap Undying. They employ kenku as their spies and go-betweens with the Tamers. Increasingly, these kenku are taking part in all Tamer activities, almost certainly at the behest of the rakshasas, and the Tamers don’t quite know what to do about this—but seem silently pleased when something bad happens to a kenku.

The Tamers themselves are active up and down the Sword Coast, and inland southeast from the Tashalar down to (and east, along) the Great Sea coast, as far as Ulgarth. Most of their clients are around the Shining Sea, in the Vilhon, and up the Sword Coast.

The Tamers are led by a warrior of prowess (and a small arsenal of battle-useful worn and borne magic items) named Brost Rornadar; a wizard by the name of Izkand Sarrdult (whose tutor, the beautiful but aged wizard Zaela Hoondanth, sings idly to herself like an old woman happy in a kitchen, but hurls deadly spells in a fight, and has mastered the means of “hanging” multiple spells to “go off” in swift succession when she needs to slay many foes—which she often does when Sarrdult gets into trouble; she’ll show up without warning and lay waste to his foes); and a usually silent, bald-headed rogue and fashion designer hight Davonthan Bralast.

Lesser Tamers are known to include the rogue Rild Taethur (who can never safely return to Athkatla undisguised, for reasons), the cleric of Mask Undryl (“OON-drill”) Malattam, and the sinister, sardonic alchemist (and poisoner) Alvur Zorsoun (who’s believed to be a doppelganger).

Moror’s Mirror

Named for a magical gate or portal that the now-dead founder of the group (Archel Moror, fat merchant and wizard of Tashluta, who perished in the 1370s DR) had behind a curtain along a back wall of his palatial bedchamber, that looked like a floor-to-ceiling mirror, this group is dedicated to controlling gates/portals between the worlds; its members can be found in Oerth, Krynn, Toril, Abeir, and even Athas. They want to be the sole folk who know how to open, close, entrap, or destroy gates/portals, so they alone can control trade and migration (of desperate, high-paying fugitives and refugees, or of armies) through them, and profit from these flows. This is often as simple and coin-grubbing as rushing plentiful grain to drought-stricken places where it can be sold for high prices, or charging someone on the run a stiff fee to step through your gate; do either of these often, for years on end, and you’ll be much, much richer than everyone else.

Members of the Mirror can be found literally anywhere, and so can the hidden gates they always watch, and usually guard (so where you find a Mirror member, a gate is never far away).

Knowledge of the precise locations of gates, how to operate them, and how to deal with any traps upon them, are the closely guarded secrets of the Mirror.

Whose members all use aliases, often maintaining several guises in life, and “watchwords” (pass phrases) so they need not know each other all that closely.

The leaders of the Mirror know the entire network of membership and where the gates the Mirror controls are located, as well as where the society is currently searching for more (adventurers who are hired to aid in those researches, for example looting old libraries, are often eliminated by the Mirror after their tasks are done, to guard secrecy about the group). The current leaders are a stout, saturnine, and ruthless cleric of Talos, Emmer Ontrar; a handsome, aging but still dashing adventurer Marandrar Amtanthar; and a longtime caravan merchant, marble and metals trader, and rogue of sly smiles and a purring voice, Skalos Orboutlyn (Skahl-oh-zz Oar-BOOT-linn”).