Piracy and Smuggling

Life on the water is a dangerous affair at the best of times, but the added test of protecting yourself and your goods from pirates and smugglers raises the danger level significantly.

There is an unspoken understanding amongst most of the river men and dockworkers that a certain percentage of goods and wares evaporates on any river passage. As long as the losses are minimal, they all look the other way. Occasionally, too much goes missing, or a particularly valuable or important bit of cargo disappears, and action is expected against the culprits. Generally, this is a tolerated interruption of activity, and quickly calms down to business as usual within a matter of weeks.

But how is it done? Such activity requires organization, far-reaching organization. This is the territory of the Thieves' Guild. They have chapters in most large towns, and tendrils in every town. They have developed a system where goods are siphoned off most transports and redistributed for their own gain. This is a sophisticated system that is highly structured centrally, but dispensed to loosely associated groups in every town or area. In this way, the system is protected when individual bodies get greedy or careless and overstep their mandate, drawing the attention of the law.

It is also a protection against an unraveling of the entire operation by the capture or exposure of any individual cell. As such, these river pirates tend to operate fairly openly, blending in with the normal citizenry of the town. They take care to conceal their nefarious activity, working late at night or early in the pre-dawn hours to avoid exposure. They generally tend to utilize fords and bridge landings to swap cargo between land and sea routes, and a rotating dock assignment to randomize the losses to traders in port. The goods are often stored in secret areas of abandoned or overstocked warehouses to avoid detection.

Open sea piracy tends to be carried out by organized gangs of well-trained and disciplined groups holding no ties to a greater organization. There are always those pirates powerful enough to command more than one ship, but even that is rare, as it requires too great a strain to maintain control over too many individuals. It is far easier to bind one ship and crew to their will than many, and likewise easier to manage dissent. These pirates tend to operate out of well guarded, heavily concealed harbors and cave locations on the many islands and coves around the bay. A popular area are the natural caves along the Shore Road leading east out of Bayport. These are popular because they allow the pirates to connect with networks of smugglers and bandits operating on land throughout the countryside. These groups work independently of each other, but in cooperation so as to properly fence stolen merchandise.

These groups are more direct in their thefts, as well as more apt to take everything they can get their hands on. They store goods in secret and fence them as wholesalers or any way they can. As a result, they tend to sit on greater stores of goods at any time.