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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jimmifett" data-source="post: 5615771" data-attributes="member: 55006">Lightning rail is not the only source of Orien income. They are at heart, a trade organization. They organize caravans, mundane couriers, magical couriers, they can arrange for the right interests the use of teleportation circles to move large, heavy goods for a hefty sum if the rail is down. There are no other vultures. Orien has forced them out of business centuries ago. Sure you might have local competitors and independent couriers and caravans, but the populace only hires them when they can't afford, or can't deal with Orien. They are the guild navigators of Dune. The houses are not friendly in the slightest, they allow the five nations to exist because it's profitable to NOT manage the common folk.The different from our world's criminals and Eberron criminals, is the Mark of Finding and the Mark of Warding. After a few missing stones, the house hires those with magical abilities to track down the thieves, thieves who probably can't afford magical detection prevention. The Orien has Kundarak start placing wards on stones, wards to allow tracking of stones (perhaps to show up as red dots on a map of khorvaire, how they show their routes), or to simply outright kill any person or creature that tampers with a stone without some sort of key to temporarily disable the wards.No, Orien's stones are only threatened by governments, who can be pressured to pay for replacement or lose Orien priviledges. It's Taggart Transcontinental with Wesley Mouch and Fred Kinnan at the helm.</blockquote>

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