Xanathar’s Thieves Guild is the primary criminal organization in Waterdeep. Such an organization of organized crime and villany throughout the city and regions held under strong influence of sway by their home city. The guild itself was founded by a paranoid elder beholder known as Xanathar though due to the beholder’s paranoia this fact is often unknown to even senior leadership of the guild, whom primarily operate to act as organized crime to a shadowed master or proxies rather than care whom their master is.

Xanathars guild exists primarily to enrich and protect their leader Xanathar and the members of the crime syndicate that serve him. The guild itself is known to operate under a great deal of secrecy and proxies at the paranoia of the beholder to maintain itself as a growing lucrative business in Waterdeep and its proxy colonies. The guild itself engages in smuggling, the slave trade, and as an organized crime syndicate operating the traditional groups, only really known due to its success and propagation.

Membership is dependant on the leadership in question and is convoluted in many cases to act as a security buffer and secrecy. Anyone can join assuming that they’re willing to commit a serious crime in an act of loyalty such as killing a friend or selling a family member into slavery to prove loyalty and pay three hundred gold as an initiation service. Even with this restriction the stable pay of the guild draws many aspirants, and a test is given with a bodyguard typically a bugbear, wear-rat, or other monstrous servant whom would assist the thief or kill them if they failed their initiation or proved themselves a threat to the guild or Xanathar.

The organization is hated by those that know of it in the Lord’s Alliance, Harpers, or Shadow Thieves of Amn and other criminal organizations as it keeps those organizations out of Waterdeep unwittingly with its presence. Acting as a buffer for such illicit groups such as the Zentarim from entering into the city but with networks the way they are who is to say individual agents aren’t in cooperation with groups like the Shadow Thieves or Zentarim to dispose of other groups in proxy or act as conduits for illicit goods…