SWINDLES OF WATERDEEP, WITH NOTES ON JUSTICE (Free Tier) (Patreon)

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Shady Dealings
Waterdhavian investors have become quite familiar with swindles involving investing in the recovery of non-existent treasure discovered on just-located islands far out in the Sea of Swords, or found in Skullport, or even within the walls of nobles’ mansions. Fictitious cargoes, ships, and even fleets are less popular, and imaginary ports or entire countries have become really rare in recent centuries, though there was a brief surge during the upsets of the Sundering; Waterdhavians consult maps often, and are interested in trading news from distant shores.

Occasionally, city-states (notably around the shores of the Shining Sea; in the Border Kingdoms in particular) will send envoys selling the equivalent of bearer-bonds, to help finance a new wharf or shipyard or shipping fleet, and these tend to be high-risk, “long-paltry-return” ventures at the best of times. It’s increasingly rare for an impostor among such envoys, but not unheard-of, particularly when someone is quietly rebelling against current rulership and really wants to use the funds to finance a takeover, or backers for a new regime if they assassinate an incumbent.

My shady-neighborhood PCs faced a constant barrage of these sorts of solicitations, a few bad apples among them.

Most swindles originated close to home, mainly in Castle Ward or Sea Ward in Waterdeep itself, where swindlers establishing rented-office-and-on-paper-only trading costers with names and blazons confusing close to established and successful costers, and solicited partnerships or bond purchases in these fictitious concerns by tricking the gullible into thinking they were investing in a known, “solid” Waterdeep-based coster.

More modest swindles involved guild members or even courtiers at the Palace paying small sums to citizens to send “demand scrip” (invoices) to them for goods or services never actually provided, enabling the swindler to draw on substantial funds to pay all of these bills. Or, in a twist on this scheme, reselling actual goods in Dock Ward alleys and taverns that just disappeared after being ordered and paid for a larger concern (sometimes the lack of any real ropes or nails or pulleys or potatoes was covered up by unfortunate warehouse fires in which unwanted refuse was burned instead of the goods supposedly immolated).

Yet another sort of swindle involves steeply overcharging the Palace for harbor wharf repairs or breakwater rehabilitation (street resurfacing or civic building roof repairs are less popular, because the work can more readily be overseen without obvious inspections, and military maintenance—that is, repairs to the Castle or city walls and gates—are even less so, because such work is only given out to a small circle of approved businesses, and their work is always watched closely). The work is done, but the city treasury pays far more than it really cost, and the difference simply vanishes.

Ahghairon, way back when, stamped firmly on widespread corruption in city spending (usually of this sort: “the city buys sixty oxen to pull carts, or sixty smoked boar carcasses for a feast, but three or four vanish, actually ending up for the use of, or resold/bartered by, city officials”), so Waterdeep has never had the Realms equivalent of a full-fledged Tammany Hall, but as Laeral has recently discovered, such corruption was occurring, in small but constant ways, during Lord Neverember’s time as Open Lord.

My fledgling players were running characters in Piergeiron’s Waterdeep, when corruption seldom lasted long—but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t tried, especially when “the Serpent” (Elaith Craulnobur) flourished.

Add to this shady doings the legitimate but genuinely risky ventures, and fierce price-undercutting competition, and the gals’ characters led very interesting lives—especially as veteran Waterdhvian sharks loved to “frame and blame” ambitious rising novices.

And after you'd been framed by folk, they often tried to blackmail you by offering you their sworn testimony as to your innocence...if you'll just do this little burglary for them: this noble mansion or wealthy Waterdhavian's house, and steal these papers, or this jewelry...

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