Zhentarim

Maintain an air of control over the local population, while also preserving the organization's own secrecy

## General

The Zhentarim are an enigmatic, ancient, and powerful criminal organization currently based within Waterdeep. Their motives are little-known (beyond their desire to manipulate the innermost workings of the city to their own ends), but their methods are infamous: the Zhentarim deal in assassinations and blackmail and deception, and for centuries they have made their dealings surefire and discrete.

## Activities

In October, 497 H.F., the Zhentarim were contacted by Baradad Zzzzaxatroph to assassinate Vjara Saphir, the current Blackstaff of Waterdeep. With an exorbitant down payment from Baradad to rush the contract, a team was dispatched to perform this task quickly and quietly. However through surveillant means Watchguard's Strike Team had been made privy to this contract, and they rushed to intercept the Zhentarim assassins. A battle ensued within Castle Waterdeep where the Zhentarim's assassins, undeterred by Watchguard intervention, pressed on to make an attempt on Vjara's life.

This assassination squad would prove unsuccessful in their mission and would ultimately be dispatched - one and all (most via combat, but one died to suicide rather than allow themselves and their secrets to be captured). Further, the presence of Zhentarim agents, a common myth in the modern day, was proved true to Waterdeep's political higher-ups with the failure of this mission. Still, the client Baradad disappeared shortly after paying the Zhentarim to assassinate Vjara; a loose end was covered up, there, and thus a silver-lining boon for the Zhentarim.

Following this failed contract, the Zhentarim's current activities remain unknown.

## Agents

### Assassins

When an assassination contract has been given, the Zhentarim spare no expense - using only the best and brightest resources available. Their assassin squads have, for those few who have survived them, been described as quick, quiet, and clever agents one-and-all. Each agent is equipped with a shimmering garb that blends into shadows and befuddles those who look at it, allowing them to slip about undetected and making them harder to focus on even in the throes of combat; they wield a peculiar blade which imbues every one of their strikes (whether via direct hit or skimming miss) with dire acid; every assassin is equipped with a set of bound, invisible shuriken which they use to great effect to leave no visible traces of their attacks. Together, these tools make Zhentarim assassins a difficult entity to locate and track, let alone face in combat.

But what makes these agents truly dangerous is their minds and their mindsets (as can be gleaned when these agents' minds are read via magical means). In every scenario they find themselves in, each assassin maintains a clinical tally of who to kill, the step-by-step process on how/why to kill them, and what order to kill them in. These assassins are intimately prepared with facing a diverse range of targets, from armed groups of security officers to arcanists to hand-to-hand combatants, and so their killing strategies can adjust at a moment's notice.

And subterfuge is their priority: if the murders they commit/attempt can be pinned on other sources, these assassins are fully capable of quickly manufacturing all the incriminating evidence/scenarios necessary to sell that lie. The coordination practiced by these assassins has proved more than a match for similarly skilled squads, as seen when Watchguard's Strike Team intercepted the Zhentarim's attempt on the Blackstaff's life; in these encounters, the Zhentarim assassins made every effort to separate the Watchguard agents in order to eliminate them more easily, and they very nearly succeeded.

Finally, each Zhentarim assassin is prepared with a poisonous capsule hidden in their mouths; they are each trained to die by suicide rather than risk interrogation, in the event of capture. What this means is that each assassin is prepared, mentally and physically, to kill as efficiently as possible while leaving no trace.