Prepared by Tamonir, Master of Secrets for the Queen of Taneth
Now I want to tell you about the sad and unfortunate fate of the fourth major merchant house of Abah's Landing, an organization I like to call, "the Fallen House." Gurges and Associates dates back to a powerful and important Imperial family that has all but disappeared from the Cyrodiil records. It came to prominence during the rise of the merchant lords of Hew's Bane, when Isobel Gurges—known as the Regal Pirate of the Abecean—retired from raiding and pillaging to form a more or less legitimate business.
Of course, legitimate business means something very different in a place like Abah's Landing. Isobel began by making loans with exorbitant interest rates, but it wasn't long before she took Gurges and Associates into gambling, fencing, laundering, and highjacking (where she had her crews steal cargo from merchant vessels so they could sell it back to those same merchants for an immediate profit).
When the merchant house crisis rocked Abah's Landing fifteen years prior, Gurges and Associates was nearly bankrupted. The tumult since, as well as events leading up to the Three Banners War, all but spelled the doom of the merchant house. Today, the Gurges family has only a handful of blood members and vassals, leaving its current patriarch, Martinus Gurges, a bitter and jealous man. He has plans, however. Plans to rebuild his company, reclaim his fortune and holdings, and once again make the Gurges name something to be honored and respected, if not feared, in Abah's Landing. He has a long way to go to make his dream come true.
(NOTE: These dispatches were "recovered" from a Taneth vessel and delivered to an interested party in Abah's Landing. I have published them so we may all know what our cousins across the bay think of us. —Anonymous)
