The Red Cloaks are the most feared, sophisticated, and far-reaching criminal syndicate in all of Aranthaes – a clandestine empire with it’s hands across trade routes, town councils, merchant guilds, and the island’s hidden underbelly.
Recognizable by their crimson cloaks, the organization blends the discipline of a private army with the secrecy of a shadow-guild and the rigid hierarchy of a modern organized crime family.
And they are everywhere.
Red Cloaks Origins and Evolution
The Red Cloaks have been on Aranthaes for hundreds of years, starting as a loose collection of highway raiders preying on highway caravans.
They were a brutal but disorganized rabble, feared for violence but lacking strategic coordination.
That changed with the rise of Robynne, the masked and enigmatic figure who unified the scattered bands, forming them into a structured syndicate.
Under her direction, the Red Cloaks reorganized into several semi-autonomous Houses, each led by its own captain but ultimately loyal to Robynne’s unseen hand.
These Houses operate as families, militia units, and covert guild cells all at once – each responsible for a territory, trade corridor, or specialty (smuggling, debt extraction, intelligence, infiltration, forgery, and so on).
Robynne herself, believed by many to be a half-elf but by few to have ever seen her unmasked, is thought to command from deep within Draktun. Her true identity is one of the most protected secrets on the island.
Membership and Recruitment
Though originally composed of dispossessed humans and half-elves, the Red Cloaks now draw from every corner of society.
Former soldiers, failed merchants, fugitive mages, disenfranchised laborers, and even a few minor nobles seeking power all find their way into the organization.
Recruitment rarely looks like coercion. Instead, the Cloaks offer what the island often fails to provide: Security for the desperate, Purpose for the directionless, and power for the ambitious.
Once inside, members receive rigorous training – far beyond simple banditry. Cloaked soldiers learn coordinated combat tactics, reconnaissance, disciplined retreat, psychological pressure, and the art of disappearing into terrain. Their field units are small, agile, and terrifyingly effective.
Punishment for failure or betrayal, however, remains one of the reasons the Red Cloaks inspire such dread.
Methods and Activities
The Red Cloaks operate across the island with calculated efficiency. Their known activities include:
- Caravan interception along forested and canyon trade routes
- Extortion and “protection agreements” with merchants, guilds, and remote villages
- Smuggling networks moving goods, people, and forbidden substances
- Espionage and political manipulation, often through blackmail or infiltration of civic posts
- Forgery and document control, including trade permits and guild approvals
- Debt slavery, sometimes disguised as “indenture contracts”
- Torture and information extraction when necessary to secure trade intel or punish defiance
Though brutality remains part of their reputation, the modern Red Cloaks favor results over theatrics. Torture is no longer used indiscriminately, but as a surgical tool for intelligence acquisition.
The Draktun Coup
The syndicate’s most audacious operation remains the complete takeover of Draktun fifty years ago.
After years of neglect from it’s Aranthaes rulers, the crumbling Draktun pass and erratic supply lines – the town saw a growing populist resentment that was increasingly directed at the town’s tiefling minority — which led to a highly vocal independence movement.
Aranthaes, frustrated by Draktun’s constant unrest, then granted the breakaway with what many saw as surprising ease.
Within days, the Robynne-led Red Cloaks swept in under the guise of “security assistance.”
The mayor was ousted, council positions quietly replaced, and within 10 days the entire civic structure of Draktun answered to Cloak leadership. It has remained under their full control ever since, controlled from the shadows, but governed in the open – with a mixture of competence, coercion, and absolute authority.
Under their rule, crime inside Draktun is virtually nonexistent — but only because they themselves define “crime.”
Influence and Immunity
Despite decades of efforts by the City Guard and Merchant Police, the Red Cloaks have evaded meaningful suppression.
Many believe they maintain protectors within the bureaucracies of Aranthaes itself. Others argue that they are simply too deeply rooted, too decentralized, and too adaptive for traditional law enforcement to uproot.
Most officials, if honest, admit a darker truth: Removing the Red Cloaks now might cause more instability than allowing them to exist.
Where they rule, trade moves. Where they extort, roads stay open. Where their Houses claim territory, rival gangs disappear. For many merchants, paying the Cloaks’ “fees” is simply a cost of doing business.
Threat to Great Aranthaes
From ambushes to political influence, the Red Cloaks remain the single greatest criminal threat to the stability of Aranthaes city and island.
Their intelligence networks are extensive, their loyalties absolute, and their leadership utterly inscrutable.
Travelers, traders, and towns beyond the central regions are strongly advised not to underestimate the reach of the red cloak – worn proudly by few, but present everywhere.