People, I'm GMing for a group that has a Smuggler, and I'm wanting to read some ideas about what kind of stuff do you think is usually smuggled in the Old World, and ideas about tecniques smugglers often use. I can't think of many things that are illegal in the Empire other than Chaos materials (which wouldn't interest the PC in my group) and probably some drugs and poisons.

Another thing: goods must be taxed by the Empire, right? So maybe one could build a smuggling career just by dealing with untaxed goods. How cheaper those would be? I'm thinking about 75% of the regular price. And hjow often could you find untaxed smuggled goods? I'm thinking that in large cities such as Altdorf and Nuln you just had to know the right people, but elsewhere, in Towns of 5000 people like Auerswald? And even smaller towns, but closer to the Empire borders, like Ubersreik?

At last: what would be the common punishment for smuggling? Ilegal goods would certainly mean one thing and untaxed ones another. What about messed things, like beer mixed with water and sold as the real thing and marked cards and dices? A friend of mine told me that in medieval Germany mixing ale with water could mean a death sentence. That would probably be true for dwarfs. Also, itens that appeared to be dwarfen and really weren't.

Thanks for your help!

In my games I've used Bretonnian brandy a lot. It's a quality product with a high mark up and is also taxed to the hilt by Imperial excisemen. The stuff either comes to the Empire through Marienburg or over the Grey mountains, so there's lots of potential in either place to run smuggling games.

I have Averland brandy as a poor substitute, so one game my party spent an entire session buying Averland brandy and sticking Bretonnian labels on the bottles and trying to sell that.

I also have a tradition where river smugglers leave a bottle or two of Bretonnian brandy 'hidden' in their boats which is easy enough to find, which is effectively a bribe to the excisemen not to search any further.

There's stuff in M:SdtR iirc which has Black Lotus (some generally recreational drug) being smuggled through Marienburg inside balls of wax. I did a variation once, where the stuff was put inside wheels of cheese, setting up a complex network of cheese trading which the PCs had to track down.

I think tax avoidance, generally was where smuggling was at, historically, but there's nothing wrong with adding a more modern illegal goods/ drug running sort of feel. That works just as well. And that's without going anywhere near seriously proscribed stuff like dark tomes and warpstone. Putting a Chaos cultist smuggling warpstone inside a 'legit' smuggling operation smuggling Lotus, say, might be a good way to go.

I would suggest also death bodies/ bodies parts smuggled for study purpouse...or other illegal magical activieties...

i will reserve death sentence only for murder, rustle and of course consorting whit chaos.

Historically, local governments were very "tax happy" with tariffs on everything. The tariffs will be particularly in evidence between provinces of the Empire but will also be at a town gate etc.

For example, the reason the historical section of the Rhine River is so beautiful to take a tour down, with a castle ever 15 minutes, is that those castles were largely built to charge tolls just because, well they could.

So pretty much "everything" has a tariff on it, though smuggling will focus on larger value items because they have larger proportionate markup.

I think smugglers would differentiate between "your general trade in ale that doesn't have a customs brand on barrel (by time it has travelled 40 miles starting to look like a passport with multiple stamps), Bretonnian wines etc." (the stuff where it's a straight trade/commercial crime) and "trade in body parts, warpstone etc." (chaos - witch hunter interested crime). It's all going to get you hanged probably but the kind of attention you get and ease of bribing your way out differs between them.

Rob

thanks a lot, fellas! great ideas!

what you generally consider to be the tax part in the total value of listed itens? 25%?

irch, my country taxes something as 60%...

Pedro Lunaris said:

I know how you feel, being outside EU can be a *****. But that is the price for our freedom (Norway).

I visited your lovely webpage. And the picture with the girl standing in the midst of carnage and destruction of a town (I think the name of the picture is griminihagen), is quite good. Do you remember where you got it? loved the picture.

This picture:

Helpful thread, seeing as I'm about to start playing a Smuggler myself

In my backstory, my Smuggler was bringing a case of expensive Brettonian wines through Marienburg and onwards to a contact in the Empire. Well, until there were som riots in the city and the wines were lost in a fire Now he's onward to another town where he's planning to buy some beer to make up for his lost profits.

Personally I envisioned my Smuggler as someone who brings luxery items into cities without dealing with the pesky toll booths. This can be done through hidden passages, disguise or simply knowing which palm to grease. He might smuggle outright illegal objects, but the profit would have to be pretty high.

A Smuggler seems like a pretty handy character to have in a group from a story perspective. It's a career who's allways on the move, allways looking for ways to make money, and who can easily be explained as having contacts in the underworld in any city or town the players visit.

BTW: Isn't "Weirdroot" the most known "illegal substance" used in the Empire? I have feeling that's the most obvious substance for a drug-runner to be smuggeling.

I played a smuggler in 2nd edition, and we kinda divided smugglers in two groups. The ones who smuggle goods to avoid tariff (95%, this include stuff like Bretonnian brandy and such), and the ones smuggling illigit goods (5%).

Illigit goods included:

Religious relics of any kind. These belongs to the respective churches (or estate if said estates family church had relic in possesion), and failure to deliver relics to proper authority (church) was punishable with public whipping and/or prison. If relic was of greater importance (Sigmar's breastplate etc...), punishment could be death penalty.

Many rich (and zealious) people were of course interested in getting their hands on such things, thus a market emerges.

Dwarven property. Dwarves reserve special priviligies in the Empire, and it's thus been deemed that any items belonging to dwarves, that has been taken from them unrightfully in the course of history, still belongs to the dwarves. Thus adventures stumbling upon an orc holding, who comes upon things the orcs stolen from dwarves, in theory still belongs to dwarves. This law is hard to enforce, but sometimes dwarves hear of items of greater value (runesmith items, books of dwarven history etc...) and then they turn to the Empires and demand these things returned.

Drugs and poisons.

Corpses. Huge market for this, illigal of course, a nice niché for a smuggler who's not afraid to get his hands dirty.

Erotic materials. These 99% of the time deemed to be Slaneesh stuff, and is thus illigal even if it's fairly harmless. Many many and many nobles greatly desire stuff like this.

Magical artifacts will often be claimed "of greater interest and concern to internal security" by the magical colleges, and thus they are free to confiscate said artifacts.

Finally... All stuff of chaos and necromancy.

Mal Reynolds said:

Thanks for visiting the site, Mal! It has ben quite a while since I posted there, there is two adventures of my own to post and then the group entered Paths of the Damned. They almost finished Ashes of Middenheim when we took a break.

Man, I don't recall where I got the picture... It was on an internet search, but I'll try and see if I find it in any of my books - I have a feeling I had seen it in some of the Black Library ones...

Some other items you might be interested in:

Banned books: Books might be outlawed for being indecent, blasphemous, seditious, or otherwise unethical. Scholars tend to be well-funded and hungry for knowledge. It might be fun to see how gritty smugglers take to dealing with more high-minded and cultured clients.

Stolen goods: One way to make money in the black market is to start with free products. Burglars steal the stuff and sell it to fences. Fences are good at finding (legitimate and illegitimate) buyers for stolen goods, and might contract smugglers to transport those goods.

People: Some people need to move in or out of a city without any questions asked. An escaped convict, spy or saboteur might need to hire smugglers to help them across.

Mal Reynolds said:

Mal! I found where I took the picture! It's in the Darkness Rising book from Black Library!

If you want I can upload it to rapidshare or somewhere else.

Cheers!