T1: Turin's Servant Agency

This service agency, located as it is just within the Old City at the Black Gate, is popular with many of the wealthier citizens of the better quarters. Turin's offers butlers, maids, cooks, laborers, garden ers, valets, and most other sorts of servants for hire, on a temporary or permanent basis.

The service is profitable, and almost legitimate. However, the owner is Turin Deathstalker, Guildmaster of Assassins. See "The Assassins' Guild," Ch5 FFF, for further information about Turin and his activities.

The only nefarious goings-on at Turin's involve the use of the company seal and letters of recommendation used as cover identities by assassins, and the occasional scouting of a noble mansion or merchant's estate by a servant of the agency. Such scouting reports are then sold to the Thieves' Guild, or kept on file in case a resident of the house should become a target for the Assassins' Guild.

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T1: Turin’s Servant Agency. When Turin Deathstalker left the Directing Oligarchy for a job as commander of Safeton’s garrison, he maintained this business, which he purchased in 578 cy. Still called Turin’s Servant Agency, it offers trained and obedient servants for the city’s wealthier clients. Butlers, maids, cooks, laborers, gardeners, valets, and most other kinds of servants can be had on a temporary or permanent basis, Many in the Old City regard a job with this business as their only chance for a better life.

The agency is careful to screen prospective servants to get only the best of them, those who are reasonably trustworthy and polite. This task has been magnified by the Greyhawk Wars and their aftermath, as the refugees who filled the Old City were often neither trustworthy nor polite. Things have improved now, however, and good help is easier to find.

Turin Deathstalker (see F1) is almost never seen here. Instead, the business is efficiently run by a 26-year-old woman who previously worked as a waitress and minor actress. Her name is Xerien Albhart [N hf T4; hp 18; Dex 17; dagger +1], and she enjoys her work, as it allows her to maintain contact with the city’s upper crust and patrons of the arts. Xerien was not a very good actress, as most people in the city know, but she is prone to periods of depression and no one wants to bring her down. Xerien came to Greyhawk in 579 cy from Admundfort, after the Shield Lands were invaded by the Bandit Kingdoms and Horned Society prior to the Greyhawk Wars. She says little about her past, though she thinks the Knights of Holy Shielding are obnoxious, dictatorial, and mean. Xerien says her father is someone “important,” but she won't say who he is. (He and her mother weren't married, and he vanished before she was born, though she rarely speaks of this.) Her mother died giving birth to her; Xerien was raised by relatives who were lost when Admundfort fell to Iuz almost a decade ago, She has no known relatives now.

DM’s Notes: What no one realizes is that some of the servants sent into the New City are actually spies for the Guild of Assassins. These “servants” are unarmed and very helpful, but they report back everything they see and hear to the guild, which sells their reports to interested parties, particularly the Guild of Thieves. Other reports are kept on file in case they are needed for a future assassination. Also, letters of recommendation and the agency seal are used on occasion by assassins on special missions.

Perhaps more important is the story of Xerien Albhart. Xerien was a thief in Admundfort, struggling to survive a rough childhood and many conflicts with her mothers’ relatives, who eventually threw her out. She retained a strong interest in the arts and wished to better herself in any way possible in order to be accepted by high society, but she had little luck doing it until she got this job. Her only fear is that she will meet people who knew her in Admundfort as a grubby little fruit-stealer and cutpurse. She still has her old habit of picking up things when no one is looking, opening locks with pieces of wire, and so forth, but she does not belong to the Guild of Thieves and is trying to make a legitimate living.

The story about her father is one she made up. She has no idea that it is actually true. Her father was a rogue who traveled around the Nyr Dyv when he was a youth; a romantic dalliance with Xerien’s mother led to her birth. The rogue was a thief from Greyhawk named Nerof Gasgal — the current Lord Mayor (see H14). He has no clue that the young woman he knew in Admundfort died in childbirth less than a year after he left her in 564 cy, much less that Xerien even exists. On impulse, Nerof gave Xerien’s mother a small silver medallion and chain to remember him by (an item he had stolen earlier and was quite proud of). Xerien still has the necklace, all that she has left to remember her mother. She wears it often. She does not know it is a magical item (medallion of protection +2).

Nerof occasionally tells stories about his early days as a thief to close friends, and he remembers the silver medallion because he stole it from a wizard who never knew where it had gone. Possibly, a character might overhear this story if sitting near Nerof in a high-class tavern in Greyhawk, then later see the necklace on Xerien. Or a criminal or cultist might make the same connection, and lay a plot against the Lord Mayor using Xerien as bait.