@Mercy's Hand is not merely a criminal gang—it is a blight that festers across the continent of Eldris, operating in the shadows of cities, along trade roads, and within the forgotten corners of lawless territories. Their influence is insidious rather than overt; they do not rule lands, but they corrupt them. Wherever coin flows unchecked and desperation breeds silence, Mercy’s Hand takes root. They sustain themselves through a network of extortion, protection rackets, and the clandestine production and distribution of narcotics that spread dependency through both the desperate and the elite alike.
Yet these crimes, severe as they are, pale in comparison to their most infamous practice, for it is tied to the remnants of a people nearly erased from history. Sixty years ago, the Kingdom of Alveron carried out a brutal extermination campaign against the Vaenori. Mercy’s Hand hunt down the remaining Vaenori wherever they are discovered, killing them and removing their eyes for sale across black markets. These acts are condemned.
For the few Vaenori who remain in hiding, Mercy’s Hand represents something far worse than a common gang. They are a constant, unseen threat that acts against them.
The gang’s operations are decentralized, composed of independent cells that answer to unseen leadership. This structure makes them difficult to eradicate; destroying one branch only ensures another rises elsewhere. Their members range from common cutthroats and smugglers to surgeons skilled in their grisly trade, as well as intermediaries who maintain ties to corrupt nobles, black market dealers, and hidden cults. Many who deal with Mercy’s Hand never meet its true leaders—if such figures even exist as singular individuals.
Across Eldris, the mere mention of Mercy’s Hand evokes quiet dread. Entire villages have vanished after harboring Vaenori refugees. Travelers speak of marked targets disappearing overnight. And in certain markets, far from the light of law or faith, small glass containers filled with preserved violet eyes are traded in silence—each one a testament to the gang’s reach, and the horrors they leave in their wake.
The symbol of Mercy’s Hand is a solid black hand print. It appears on walls, doors, crates, hidden meeting places, and possessions associated with the gang, crude enough that it can be made quickly and unmistakable enough that few mistake what it means. Among ordinary citizens, the Black Hand is understood as the sign of a criminal gang and carries the familiar warnings of extortion, contraband, intimidation, and sudden violence.
Among Vaenori survivors, the same mark inspires a deeper terror. The Black Hand has become inseparable from stories of discovered hiding places, vanished families, and bodies left without their eyes. A mark that a townsman might avoid as gang business can be enough to drive a Vaenori family from a district before nightfall. For those old enough to remember the extermination of their people, or raised by those who survived it, the symbol is a continuation of that fear in another form: not the banner of an army, but the sign that someone is still hunting them.