The Velvet Reef

Underworld Fraternity — Azure Isles#

"The painting in the governor's hall is a copy. Has been for eleven years. The Reef sold him the original twice." — Anonymous note left in a White Wake Office dead drop

The Velvet Reef operates from a network of hidden wine vaults beneath the respectable waterfronts of the Azure Isles, their entrances concealed behind legitimate cellar doors belonging to vintners and merchants who find the arrangement profitable and the alternative worse. The Reef's membership is drawn from blackmailers, art thieves, document forgers, and vice brokers whose clientele includes, with uncomfortable frequency, the same aristocratic families whose public virtue the Reef is positioned to contradict. Stolen correspondences are the Reef's specialty commodity — they hold the letters that explain the gap between what Azure Isles society professes and what it does.

The art theft operation is equally sophisticated. The Reef maintains relationships with collectors in four separate jurisdictions who purchase masterworks they are legally forbidden to own, and with forgers whose copies have passed Glass Bloom expert authentication on at least six documented occasions. Several prominent institutional collections are believed to contain Reef substitutions, a belief that the institutions in question address by not investigating. The Reef does not threaten to expose this; it merely ensures the relevant administrators know that it could.

Adventurers who need to retrieve a document, locate a stolen object, or identify who sold a particular secret to a particular party will find the Reef accessible if they have something worth trading. The Reef's interest in adventurer business is professional: they represent both potential buyers and potential leaks, and the Reef's opening price for any transaction is the adventurer's own history, which the Reef will have begun assembling during the introductory meeting.