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The Red Compact

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The Compact smiles, shakes your hand, and makes you a fortune. It’s only after the deal is done that you realize your soul was part of the bargain.
—Jafar Faht, Memoirs of a Merchant

The Red Compact is a powerful merchant guild operating under the auspices of the Empire of Arcadia. By leveraging the Empire’s financial might and its fortified trade routes, the Compact thrives as an economic juggernaut, extending its influence across the known world. While ostensibly loyal to the Emperor’s theocratic vision, their true allegiance lies with profit, and they are willing to broker deals with anyone—be they friend or foe—if the price is right.

The Compact’s members, known as Red Companymen, are shrewd, efficient, and pragmatic. They are deeply embedded in the machinery of the Empire, often serving as intermediaries for those who dare not approach the Emperor directly. Sometimes the safest way to gain an audience with the Emperor (without risking immolation) is to speak with the Compact instead. Their access to advanced Clockwerk technology and magical tools, rivaling the marvels of the Nim in Telrain, ensures their dominance in trade. This technological edge allows them to operate in small, mobile units, executing deals, sabotaging competitors, or extracting valuable resources with surgical precision.

Despite their allegiance to the Emperor, the Red Compact flout his ideology whenever it suits them. They pay lip service to the Emperor’s doctrines, using his rhetoric to justify their expansionist goals while quietly engaging with factions beyond his reach. This duplicity of allows the Compact to function as a bridge between the Empire and the wider world, providing a path to its inner workings for those bold or desperate enough to negotiate.

The Red Compact’s blend of economic prowess, technological superiority, and political cunning makes them both a valuable ally and a dangerous adversary. They are the Empire’s left hand, subtly shaping the world to their design, one deal at a time.

Adventure Hook

The tenor of your campaign will dictate how the party interacts with the Red Compact, since they are especially efficient, amoral colonizers. Stealing from the Red Compact may require going undercover by taking on the identities of Companymen: if the party is made up of Robin Hood-like pirates, they might lure in a Company dingy on one of its trade routes to take its crew by force. But the real danger for the party is keeping quiet while the Red Company inflicts all sorts of indignities upon the cultures it comes in contact with, before they get to the target of their heist.

A defector from the Red Compact approaches the party with blueprints for a revolutionary Clockwerk invention. They claim it could destabilize the Empire’s dominance if made public, but the Compact’s agents are hot on their trail. The party must protect the defector and decide what to do with the dangerous knowledge they carry.

Can the party trust the defector, or are they part of an elaborate Compact ploy?
What ethical dilemmas arise from spreading or suppressing such powerful technology?
How far will the Compact go to recover their secrets, and at what cost to the party?

Tags: Guilds

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