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Guild of Usurers

"The kingdom is ours for a ducat. We will lend you that ducat."
— Painted on the wall of an Usurer counting-house, in mock of the Cadwë motto

The most feared guild in Cadwallon. Officially a moneylending and pawn-broking guild. Actually the financial bloodstream of the city's underworld, the secret bank of Sophet Drahas, and the leverage by which half the noble houses and at least three other guilds quietly do as they are told. Most Cadwës who say "the guilds" with hatred are thinking of the Usurers.

What They Do

  • Lending at brutal rates — to merchants, refugees, free leaguers, gambling losers, anyone who walks in. Rates depend on what you can pawn.
  • Pawning bodies — when refugees have nothing else, the Usurers lend against the body itself. Defaulters become "more or less consenting organ donors" in underground laboratories. This is technically legal in Cadwallon. It is also one of the great moral wounds of the lower city.
  • Black market financing — funds smuggling operations, illegal alchemy, banned imports, paid assassinations. The guild itself does no killing. They lend the money to the people who do.
  • Holding noble houses by the purse — by quietly buying noble debts and then never calling them. The leverage is the threat.
  • Shadow banking for Sophet Drahas — Drahas's funds run through Usurer accounts. The Usurers profit. The Duke knows but cannot tackle the Usurers head-on without crashing the Cadwë credit market. This is the central deadlock of Den Azhir's reign.

Headquarters

Officially, the guild has no single headquarters. Counting-houses are scattered through the upper and lower city. The senior council allegedly meets at a rotating set of locations to prevent ambush.

In practice, the senior council has long been hosted in a tower of the [[Ducal Enclave]] whose occupants do not appear on any ducal registry. The Duke is aware. The Duke does nothing about it.

Allies in the Rag'narok

The PHB names them: all peoples of the Meanders of Darkness. The Usurers fund Darkness-aligned operations across Aarklash through Cadwallon's "neutral" banking. The other guilds know. The other guilds do business with them anyway, because the alternative is losing access to the trade network.

The Soma Vendetta

The Usurers have been at open vendetta with the Soma family for over thirty years. The vendetta is the longest-running open conflict in the upper city.

  • Anon Soma, the family's previous head, was killed by Usurer assassins
  • The Soma family responded — the details are vague — and an Usurer chapter master was killed in response
  • The vendetta has not been settled. Cooled, periodically. Never settled.
  • Vanho Soma is the current Peer and inheritor of the grudge
  • Master Ôdril Haarken — a Goldsmith chapter master — publicly asked recently what the Usurers know that keeps Var-Nokkt compliant. The Usurers have not answered. Free leaguers who answer first may earn an ally or an enemy depending on which side they sell to.

Relations

  • Sophet Drahas — primary patron, hidden. Drahas's "fiefdom" of the Shadows finances itself through Usurer accounts.
  • Guild of Thieves — coordinated. Usurer money funds Thief operations; Thief intelligence guides Usurer lending. The two guilds are not formally allied but in practice operate as siblings.
  • Guild of Goldsmiths — public competitors, private collaborators. The Goldsmiths handle legitimate finance; the Usurers handle everything else. Master Ôdril's public question has cracked the truce.
  • Soma family — vendetta (above).
  • Var-Nokkt family — leveraged. The Usurers hold something on Torguir IV. Master Ôdril wants to know what.
  • Duke Den Azhir — deadlocked. He cannot move on them without crashing the city. He is collecting evidence anyway.

The pawned body

A refugee has defaulted. The Usurers are about to collect — meaning, surgically. The free leaguers can buy out the debt, raid the laboratory, kill the loan officer, or do nothing. Each choice has a price.

Master Ôdril's letter

Ôdril Haarken has written a letter naming what the Usurers hold over Var-Nokkt. He has not yet sent it. The free leaguers are offered the letter — by an unknown courier — and told to take it wherever they think it should go. The Duke. Var-Nokkt. The Usurers. Master Ôdril himself.

The Sophet account

A small chapter house of the Usurers in Morgue Street keeps a back-room ledger. The ledger lists transfers to and from accounts that resolve to Sophet Drahas. Anyone who reads the ledger and lives is a threat the Usurers will spend any amount of money to remove.