Amn

Amn – Current Events, 1496 DR

In 1496 DR, the merchant princes of @Athkatla should be enjoying an age of unrivaled wealth. Instead, the streets are buzzing with unease, and the city’s famed Council of Six has not appeared in public for nearly two months. In their place, proclamations are issued by masked heralds, bearing the sigil of the Black Chalice, a previously unknown symbol—an upturned goblet overflowing with ink-black liquid. Rumors vary: some say the Council has been taken hostage by an internal coup; others whisper that the Black Chalice is a secret society of merchant princes who have pledged themselves to an extraplanar benefactor in exchange for “the death of debt” across @Amn . Whatever the truth, the city’s banking houses have been placed under strict new seals, allowing only certain marked caravans to deposit or withdraw coin.

In @The Docks (Athkatla), cargo manifests show impossible variety—crates of moonstone powder, cages of wingless griffons, amphorae of oil that never ignites—all entering @Athkatla from routes no captain will describe. Dockside taverns murmur that these goods come through the Veiled Wake, a shadow fleet that sails between the waking world and the Plane of Shadow. Supposedly, the Wake’s captains can moor their ships beside any harbor in Faerûn without ever touching water, vanishing into fog the moment danger nears. In recent weeks, entire galleys of legitimate merchants have disappeared after paying “protection fees” to the Wake. The few sailors who returned alive swore they’d been released in completely different seas than where they were taken.

Beyond @Athkatla, @Amn's inland trade routes have been upended by the Coinburners, a rogue guild of saboteurs who melt down Amnian gold and silver into unrecognizable ingots before smuggling them north and selling them as raw metal. While they are crippling the economy, their methods hint at military discipline—raids executed with clockwork precision, caches booby-trapped with alchemical fire, and messages left in flawless legal script quoting Amnian trade law. Some believe the Coinburners are defected agents of the Council itself, burning @Amn's wealth to prepare for some massive restructuring. Others fear they are foreign agents sent to destroy the nation’s financial dominance.

And yet, @Athkatla's grandest plazas are not empty—they’re full, with daily auctions of strange treasures never before seen in Faerûn. Gilded chests filled with maps of coasts that do not exist, star charts with moving constellations, and blades that hum when held toward the west. The city is on the edge of something vast, whether it’s prosperity or ruin, and the only certainty is that whatever force now guides @Amn's heart is invisible, patient, and in no hurry to show its true face.