Factions
Dark Bargainers
The Neriak market guild. Evil-neutral merchants and the rogue-aligned commerce layer of the dark elf nation.
Dark Bargainers is the Neriak market guild — the merchant cartel that controls the foreign quarter trade, the goods movement between Neriak and the rest of Antonica, and the gray-market routes that pass under the surface trade routes the Coalition of Tradesfolk doesn't formally see. The Bargainers are evil-aligned but transactional: they sell to anyone who can pay, they extend faction-gated discounts to the right standing, and they coordinate informally with the city's rogue and assassin networks.
The Bargainers are the canonical home faction for Dark Elf rogues and a stable foothold inside Neriak for any character who wants to bank, train, or fence inside the dark elf capital without burning standing with the Indigo Brotherhood or the broader Neriak nobility.
Lore
The Dark Bargainers organized in Neriak's Foreign Quarter as the practical answer to the dark elf nobility's distaste for direct commerce. Where the noble houses prefer to ignore trade as beneath them, the Bargainers run it — pricing it, taxing it, routing it, and skimming the difference. They handle the goods that pass between Neriak and the surface world, the contraband that needs to move without the Coalition of Tradesfolk seeing it, and the discreet acquisitions the noble houses publicly disclaim and privately fund.
The Bargainers' relationship with the Indigo Brotherhood is informal but stable: the Brotherhood handles the work the Bargainers won't directly touch, and the Bargainers handle the goods movement the Brotherhood needs to make liquid. Both report up the same political shadow structure beneath the dark elf nobility, and both treat external good-aligned authority as a shared problem.
For canonical-era Dark Elf rogues, the Bargainers are the home merchant faction and the foothold from which the rogue progression actually works — fence access, gear access, and the contact tree that flows out into the rest of the evil-aligned trading network.
Why grind it
Positive Dark Bargainers standing unlocks the Neriak Foreign Quarter merchants without aggro and grants discounts on the merchant tier most rogue characters care about: poison components, lockpicks, throwing weapons, and the rotating stock of rogue-aligned consumables that the Bargainers move. For non-Dark-Elf characters who want to use Neriak as a hub, Bargainers standing is one of the cleaner entry points because the faction is transactional rather than ideological.
The faction also affects how the Nektulos Forest caravan NPCs behave and unlocks several gray-market hand-ins inside Neriak that other characters never see. For an evil-aligned trade-focused character, Bargainers is the merchant identity layer the rest of the city's content sits on top of.
Notable NPCs
- Foreign Quarter Bargainer merchants — the visible commerce face of the cartel, primary point of contact for new positive-standing characters
- Caravan contacts — Bargainer-aligned NPCs along the Nektulos Forest and Commonlands routes handling goods movement
- Senior Bargainer fence contacts — handling higher-tier hand-ins inside the Foreign Quarter
- Bargainer house contacts — the political-economic layer connecting the cartel to the dark elf nobility
Faction path
+faction
- Completing Bargainer-issued errands in the Foreign Quarter
- Turning in items to Bargainer contacts along the Nektulos Forest caravan routes
- Killing Antonican good-aligned guards in specific quest contexts
- Specific Indigo Brotherhood hand-ins that flag dual-faction with Bargainers
-faction
- Killing any Bargainer merchant or caravan contact
- Completing Coalition of Tradesfolk hand-ins that flag as anti-Neriak commerce
- Aligning with Knights of Truth or Marr temple orders against Neriak interests
The Last Camp any-race-class adjustments
The Last Camp's any-race-any-class doctrine means a Half Elf Rogue or a Dwarf Necromancer can pursue Dark Bargainers standing the same way a canonical Dark Elf rogue would. The Bargainers' merchant checks are faction standing only — they will sell to anyone with the standing to qualify, and they will discount to anyone with high standing regardless of race or class. The race-flagged dialog from Bargainer NPCs is flavor only and does not gate the underlying merchant access.