Vadim was one of my best. Resourceful, adaptable, and capable. If a client says they want a set of Paccaret Lenses, or a Nejiri Dueling Dagger, he'll tear the black markets apart to find one. If one isn't for sale, he'll find one that can be stolen. He's good at getting people to do things... knows how to press people, either by calling in favors, paying them off, or making sure to tell them exactly what'll happen to them if they don't dance to his tune. It's nice working with a thug with an actual brain.

Lord Adernav, senior fellow of the Taskan Syndicate

Name: Kursa Vadim
Species: Armadillo
Gender: Male
Faction: Watchtower Guild
Campaign Chapter Appearances: 2
Background: Hardened by a youth growing up on the streets of the port city of Khorratan, Vadim was never one to let himself be pushed around. His entire life involved illicit activity, from petty theft, to racketeering, to gang activity, every experience a learning experience. Vadim was not only tough, but he was also smart, and had a natural talent for leadership (or, at least, bullying others into accepting his leadership). His gang eventually formed something of a rough alliance with a number of smuggling outfits, providing information on which routes to take, which officials to bribe, and occasionally, making sure people stayed out of the way. Several of his smuggler contacts saw potential in the young armadillo, and offered him a seat at bigger and better tables, which Vadim eagerly accepted.

He ended up working for the Taskan Syndicate, a black-market outfit that specialized in the acquisition, sale, and transport of recovered Nejiri artifacts. It was a mixed bag of assignments and clients, from the idle rich who wanted some rare antiquity as a wall decoration, to academics wishing to study the secrets of the past without the hassle of proper channels, and even certain shadowy organizations who were seeking more powerful and active artifacts as tools or weapons. The Syndicate maintained an extensive network of contacts and observers, and strived to maintain an extensive inventory on hand. Business was good, and Vadim fit in well, quickly figuring out who needed to be handled with a stern word, who wanted bribes, and who might require a kick to the head to get them to play ball. He became well known not only as someone who got results, but someone who wasn't averse to getting his hands dirty to get those results.

Eventually, a power vacuum opened up at the upper reaches of the Syndicate, and Vadim saw himself as the strong hand to take the spot. Several of the other players said that they would back him for it, but when the time came, many of his former backers instead made their own plays for the top role. Infighting ensued, backs were stabbed (metaphorically and literally), and the once-powerful Syndicate splintered, with the various factions grabbing up what inventory, cash, and clients they could before striking out on their own. In the mix, Vadim had the misfortune to come away with virtually nothing, and his former colleagues had either betrayed him, or weren't interested in working with him.

Vadim ended up once more doing low level work for various smaller smuggler groups, remaining bitter about the good life that had been taken away from him. He spent most of his free time in various port bars, sullenly drunk. Things changed a few years later... a foreigner from the far-off emirates, a caracal named Khassar, had come to Govorya with an ambitious new business plan, and he was local to recruit locals to his cause, but had thus far had difficulty attracting interest. Vadim caught part of the pitch secondhand... notions about creating of a large network of observers, magicians and thaumaturges using arcane abilities and mathematics to provide smugglers with current position information, the courses of Govoryan patrol ships, weather forecasting, and news of other hazards.

At first, Vadim considered the notion laughable, but the more he thought about it, the more potential he saw. And with the outbreak of war, and establishment of the Imperialist blockage of Loyalist territory, smuggling was about to become even bigger business. Vadim was able to track down Khassar and get the details, as well as feeling out the man as well. It became clear that Khassar indeed had a natural knack for patterns and deduction, useful given that even being able to magically obtain a rough bearing of a ship's position, there was still a fair amount of filling in the gaps that required a keen mind. What Khassar lacked was people skills... he was aloof and somewhat distant, which tended to turn away most of the more blunt and gritty underworld types. Vadim proposed a partnership... Khassar could coordinate the actual work, and Vadim would work the people and the market. Even in his diminished position, he still knew who to talk to and how to talk to them. Khassar agreed, and the two set to work.

It took nearly a year of laying the foundation, recruiting enough people, gathering enough intelligence, and establishing a base of operations, but things began in earnest. Vadim, through no small effort on his part, had managed to recruit a few clients who were willing to give this idea a try, and things immediately began to pan out. Receiving magical communications over long distances was a bit unsettling at first for captains unaware of it, but the fact that they had almost no encounters with the blockade was proof enough, and they were more than willing to pay the fee to be routed around potential trouble. Word spread, and soon new clients were eagerly looking to purchase the services of the newly christened Watchtower Guild. With this influx of wealth and connections, the Guild was able to expand further, establishing secret observers all along the coasts and scrying the movement of nearly every ship in the blockade fleet. In all, things were going very well.

That part actually worried Vadim. He was getting flashbacks to the times just before the Syndicate collapsed, and was nervous about such a thing happening again. While he had a working professional relationship with Khassar, the two never particularly liked one another, and now Vadim worried that Khassar, with a bulging ledger and full list of clients, might decide that he had everything he needed from Vadim and toss him aside. Worse still, Vadim had proposed the notion of cutting out the middleman... using the guild's superior intelligence capabilities to route the leadership of the various smuggler cartels straight into ambushes... with them out of the way, the Watchtower Guild could scoop up what was left and consolidate it all under their own banner, becoming their own client and reaping rewards such a monopoly would bring. Khassar adamantly refused... he was not going to betray their own clients for the sake of ambition, finding the idea of such a dishonorable act thoroughly abhorrent. Vadim privately ranted that his partner didn't see the bigger picture past all of his precious patterns.

Based on this, Vadim decided that he needed to be the one on top, and he needed to be the one to make the first move. Based on his own people skills, and Khassar's relative aloofness, he had little trouble recruiting supporters from all ranks of the organization, and told them that the plan was for this to be a bloodless coup. Khassar would inevitably protest a forced change in leadership, but Vadim was confident that his partner lacked the spine to seriously resist, and would eventually be content to return to his work. Khassar's supporters would, likewise, realize that they were in the minority, and would similarly accept the shift. It would just be a matter of winning over a few more members of the Guild's senior operating structure and moving everyone into place.

During all of this preparation, Vadim was privately contacted by covert elements of the Black Dragon... they flatly told him that they knew about the existence of the Guild (and were even a little impressed by it), and were prepared to help keep it a secret from their supposed Imperialist masters if he was willing to do them a favor, utilizing connections from his former days as an artifact dealer to track down a very specific item for them. They even offered to provide him with a supply of weapons, just in case his 'bloodless' takeover was anything but. Vadim was initially cautious, but also realized that these were the sorts of people that didn't generally react well to being told 'no', and the possibility of having inside help from the Imperialist side to keep his operation hidden was too tempting to pass up. It didn't even take that much effort to track down what they were looking for, considering that a minor noble was even flaunting it as part of their gallery. Applying a little pressure, extorting a thief, bribing the right people, it was just like old times, and soon enough the artifact in question was headed back to base, ready for handover to its new masters. Whatever they wanted the thing for was their business.

It was at this point that things began to go wrong. Trailing in the wake of the artifact was a group of interlopers who seemingly also had their eye on it, and in their company was one of Khassar's supporters, a particularly troublesome lynx magician, one of the mind mages adept in mental communication who may have picked up a stray thought or two that could compromise his planned takeover if she talked to Khassar. Attempts to waylay them failed, so, despite not being entirely ready, Vadim decided the takeover needed to happen now, and he retrieved the supply of weapons to start arming his people. Things got worse as the interlopers arrived at the Watchtower Guild's secret island wanting to talk to Khassar (who knew nothing of coups or stolen artifacts). Vadim put his insurrection into motion, but the interlopers quickly sided with Khassar, and the peaceful takeover quickly turned into anything but. Guild headquarters turned into a battlefield as Vadim's and Khassar's supporters clashed, while neutral individuals just tried to keep their heads down. The interlopers proved martially adept as well, and tipped the balance in Khassar's favor, eventually catching up with Vadim and rendering him unconscious before bringing him before his former partner.

In a first, Khassar actually showed anger, beyond his usual placid state, expressing his disappointment and his confusion. He had no plans to cut Vadim out of the hierarchy, and had considered him to be an integral part of the operation. The fact that one disagreement had prompted an armed uprising had shaken Khassar's confidence in their ability to work together, and both their headquarters and many of their personnel lay in ruins. While the Guild was not destroyed, it was definitely crippled for awhile, and would have to be rebuilt. Khassar could barely look at his former partner, and bluntly said that he was turning Vadim over to these interlopers, along with the stolen artifact, as they wanted to have a few words with him about his Black Dragon connection. Everyone else was evacuating to one of their fallback holdings... Vadim's partners would soon realize that they weren't going to be getting their prize, and would undoubtedly not be happy about that.

Vadim, the thug turned smuggler turned intelligence chief, ousted from two successful organizations (one by his own doing) would spend the remainder of the war held in a cell, occasionally sullenly answering questions. Ironheart's Legion, his captors, would release him at war's end, but by now he had no connections to draw from, and none of his former friends would talk to him. He was periodically seen, once more, nursing drinks in various seaside taverns, but eventually departed to parts unknown.
Fate: Unknown. At the conclusion of the war, he was left on his own and seemingly moved on.
GM Thoughts and Comments: The whole Khassar/Vadim schism during the Watchtower Guild arc was largely inspired by the SHIELD/HYDRA split, just less brutal (on paper anyway). Vadim was intended to be something of a tragic figure, paranoid about losing his station (again) and willing to do anything to keep it. He fared surprisingly well in combat against the party when they eventually caught up with him, managing to give one PC a rather nasty bruising, but eventually succumbed to the rest of them.

Artwork by  milosdinostand of Vadim watching his back.

Main index of campaign factions, plot, notes, etc can be found here.

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