Zhentarim

This article related to Dungeons & Dragons is a stub. You can help 1d4chan by expanding it

The Zhentarim, or "Zhents" for short, are one of the most instantly recognizable villainous factions in the Forgotten Realms after the Red Wizards of Thay. In fact, they're arguably more recognizable because they featured a lot as default bad guys throughout the Realms' glory days in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

The Black Network, as it's also known, is a combination of mercenary company and mercantile empire founded by the evil wizard Manshoon as a tool to provide him with wealth, resources and general muscle. Over time, it expanded through an alliance with the church of Bane, and has basically become the go-to network for power-hungry wizards, evil clerics, and money-grubbing mercenaries who are interested in achieving world domination. Though they do serve as legitimate mercenaries and traders, they deal heavily in contraband or downright illegal goods (slaves, poison, drugs, smokepowder weaponry, etc), and often resort to blatantly illegal tactics to secure both employment and service dominance in the areas they visit.

Think the Faerûn mafia and you're more right than you are wrong.

One of their most defining features is that they have the closest thing ever seen to a race-wide peace treaty with the Beholders of the Realms, often recruiting them as magical muscle.

Enemies of the Zhentarim are widespread, since their goals and methods piss off just about everybody, and so their foes span the spectrum from the Harpers to the Cult of the Dragon.

For a long time Manshoon and the clerics of Bane controlled the Zhents, but after 2nd ed Bane died, and Cyric took over with Manshoon gradually becoming more disconnected with the wider world and his organization as all aging archwizards do until his eventual death (and the start of the Manshoon clone wars). Between 4e and 5e, After brushing hairs with the approaching return netherese agents and forming an alliance with thier greatest enemies flying tubesocks, the netherese declared a shadow war on the Zhents and kicked them out of thier original base of power in the Eastern Heartlands and destroying their Black Network.

5e's the Zhents was rebuilt by Pereghost from Darkhold, the enigmatic leader of the Zhent's military arm. As a Military person rather than a paranoid wizard, they rebuilt the face and fragments of the Zhents into a seemingly more neutral-aligned mercenary organization that several factions on Faerûn now found are atleast indispensable, though they are still trying to rebuild the Black Network behind the scenes. (Now being that international Mafia faction a player be a part to fit with a crime background without them looking stupid for parting with goody-to-shoes while also enabling "obvious" mustache-twirling villains.