They were here first. They intend to make that mean something.
Citavas Port City's assassins’ guild, refusing to kneel to the thieves who moved in on their city.
The Night Runners held their own ground in Citavas Port City long before the Roof Runners ever set foot in the city. When the Roof Runners' Guildmaster absorbed the local thieves' guild and effectively claimed authority over the city's underworld, the Night Runners refused to fall in line, and the resulting feud has bled the city for it, numerous deaths piling up on both sides.
The conflict grew serious enough that the Monitors intervened directly, sending word that if the two guilds didn't settle their differences themselves, the Monitors would settle it for them: permanently, and with the full force of a policing order neither guild wants to test. Rather than stop, the war simply went underground, its skirmishes now fought in the sewers beneath the Isle and the forgotten tombs past the Old South Wall, where the Monitors' attention is less likely to fall.
Once, the Night Runners held to a strict code: no political interference, no contracts against religious leaders, no Monitors as targets, whatever the coin on offer. That code has eroded badly since the war began. Blades that used to answer only to a contract now strike the Roof Runners on sight, and even a rumor of sympathy for the other side is enough to earn a visit in the dark. Whatever discipline once defined the guild, suspicion has mostly replaced it.
What's since come to light is that the war was never organic. Deor'c Aelf, an autochthon infiltrator who'd spent years passing as an elf inside the Night Runners' own ranks, spent that time feeding the guild a steady diet of manufactured grievances against the Roof Runners, all while running the identical play on the other side.
The guild has also gone by Night's Death, an older, unofficial name that surfaces occasionally in rumor and older records. It never meant a second organization, and the Night Runners themselves have mostly let it fall out of use. Any mention of Night's Death elsewhere, in old field notes, in a traveler's tale, or in a stray remark from someone who hasn't kept up with the guild's current name, refers to the same guild described on this page.