Compared with other factions, Luskan's Arcane Brotherhood had always been devoted to infiltrating and unifying the entire Sword Coast and even the North, and they had done a fairly good job of keeping it secret.
However, perhaps because they had originated as a pirate organization, their upper ruling structure was no great secret to major powers with long histories and intelligence agencies of their own.
Before Li Wei had even arrived, he had already obtained from Kaierben information on the Lord of the West Tower and the Arcane Brotherhood's upper ranks as a whole.
The Arcane Brotherhood was an organization of evil Mages operating more or less openly in Luskan. Although Luskan was ostensibly ruled by five High Captains, all former pirate chiefs who had once run rampant across the Moonsea, the Arcane Brotherhood was in truth the real power behind the city. It was also why the city had always maintained an aggressive stance toward nearly every nation and faction along the North Sword Coast.
Though the Arcane Brotherhood now tried to avoid conflicts with major powers such as Water-Drawing City and Amn, they still actively preyed upon smaller cities and weaker merchants unable to defend themselves.
Besides legitimate trade, the Archmages ruling the Arcane Brotherhood had a hand in nearly every vile enterprise imaginable, including raiding merchant ships, slave trading, addictive potion dealings, and arms smuggling. The Brotherhood conducted these trades not merely for their considerable profits, but also as a means of achieving their goal:
To establish an empire in the North that combined trade and politics!
Ordinarily, recruiting members of such an aggressively evil faction was hardly a wise choice. Killing them outright would have been much simpler.
After all, bringing in some ordinary bastard meant feeding him for nothing while constantly guarding against betrayal. It