Moriarty’s Criminal Web
At a Glance
| Type | Secret criminal intelligence network |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | London; no public meeting hall |
| Reach | London and Thames traffic; agents in English towns and continental ports |
| Membership (est.) | About 30–50 regular operatives in London, including handlers, couriers and specialist thieves; a campaign estimate, not an exact census. Casual hires and distant associates are additional and uncounted. |
| Founder and leader | Professor James Moriarty |
| Chief field operative | Colonel Sebastian Moran |
| Activities | Information brokerage, organised theft, blackmail, river smuggling, abduction and contract killing |
| Allies | No permanent allied faction. Paid collaborators include Jonathan Wild, an independent broker, and Charles Hitchen, a corrupt official; neither is a sworn member. |
| Rivals | Sherlock Holmes and John Watson; independent Thames gangs and criminal brokers who refuse Moriarty’s control. |
| Immediate business | Three missing Thames barges and a witness who has escaped |
| Principal opponent | Sherlock Holmes |
| Joining | Through a trusted intermediary; the whole organisation is never offered to a recruit |
London has thieves, killers and smugglers. Moriarty makes them act together without knowing one another. A merchant’s house is robbed for a single letter. A riverboat changes its cargo two nights before an assassination. The murderer is caught, but a stranger pays for his defence. No individual crime seems extraordinary; the pattern is.
Few ordinary members have heard the professor’s name. Each receives a task, a price and the name of one contact. The Web feels impossible to break because there is no gathering of conspirators to raid and no shared banner to seize.
What Is Happening Right Now?
Three Thames barges are missing. Their crews vanish between the river stairs and the bridge. An apprentice chandler has seen one of the secret transfers and recognised the man who paid for it. The apprentice escaped before the Web could collect him. Sebastian Moran now watches the people sheltering the boy while Moriarty arranges a fourth transfer.
The cargo is not the principal prize: the stolen vessels create a way to move a captive merchant upriver without attracting notice. The merchant knows which patrons are paying Moriarty to steal from his own customers. The Web intends to ransom his silence and quietly take over his trading routes.
Characters can follow a missing crew, protect the witness, take a paid retrieval job or become suspects after accepting goods from the wrong boat. The first person they meet is a boatman who has only been hired to row.
Where to Find the Web
In London, its businesses overlap ordinary streets and markets. None of these places is wholly owned by Moriarty, and innocent people live and work beside the guilty.
| Place | What happens there | What gives it away |
|---|---|---|
| Thames stairs and wharves | Boatmen transfer crates and move passengers under other people’s names | A paid hand recognises a distinctive waxed cord on three different boats |
| A counting room near the river | Front businesses settle profits and quietly finance captured operatives | A supplier receives payment for cargo that officially never arrived |
| Private chambers and respectable lodgings | Trusted couriers bring Moriarty observations, never complete plans | Several callers arrive separately with identical arithmetic puzzles |
| Gaming houses | Debts identify possible informants, victims and willing thieves | A gambler who wins a fortune is asked to deliver one innocent-seeming parcel |
| Ports beyond London | Commercial correspondents pass money, messages and selected contraband | Captains carrying unrelated cargo use the same single-use phrase |
Leadership and Members
Professor James Moriarty — The Architect
The professor decides what the Web attempts and what it must never risk. He sees profits, debts, witnesses and reprisals as pieces of the same calculation. He personally authorises its largest operations. He is dangerous in his own right; defeating his agents does not make him harmless.
Colonel Sebastian Moran — Chief of Staff and Master Marksman
Moran commands unusually difficult operations and handles killings that require exceptional fieldcraft. He chooses his position, hires a handful of specialists when needed and reports results directly to Moriarty. He can act independently, which makes both men wary of the other’s ambitions.
Handlers and Trusted Couriers
A handler recruits local thieves, arranges payment and knows how to replace a captured messenger. Trusted couriers transfer instructions between handlers without seeing their employers. A handler may know another handler’s trade, but not his lodging or real name.
Working Members and Outsiders
Boatmen, pickpockets, burglars, informants and hired killers complete individual jobs. Many work for one patron without knowing a larger Web exists. Payment comes through a local intermediary. A failed operative may receive defence money, but nobody receives protection for free: the handler expects silence and future service.
Jonathan Wild trades intelligence and recovered property with the Web but remains an independent broker. Charles Hitchen is a corrupt official who can be paid to divert attention; he is an asset rather than a sworn officer of the faction. Both would betray Moriarty if the advantage became sufficiently clear.
Sample Operatives and NPCs
Most members of the Web have ordinary trades and ordinary faces. Use these existing NPC profiles to put an individual in a scene. The roles describe the work a character does, not an entire new criminal class. Only Moriarty and Moran are confirmed named leaders; Jonathan Wild and Charles Hitchen remain outsiders paid for particular services.
| Role in the Web | Sample NPC | What they do in play | Relationship |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cell handler and receiver | Pawnbroker / Fence | Pays a housebreaker for stolen documents, disguises a payment as a sale and knows the next courier. | Trusted local operative |
| Housebreaker | Burglar | Enters a counting room after dark to take one letter rather than its money. | Regular paid member |
| River smuggler | Smuggler | Changes a barge’s cargo, papers or passengers before it reaches London Bridge. | Contracted operative |
| Boat crew or lookout | Shipmate | Rows a covered boat or watches the river stairs; may not know a crime is being committed. | Usually an unwitting hire |
| Street enforcer | Street Thug | Follows a witness, threatens an apprentice or blocks a narrow exit. | Hired muscle |
| False arrest and recovery | Thief-Taker | Offers to recover stolen goods while quietly locating the person who can identify a handler. | Independent paid asset |
| Specialist killer | Slayer | Eliminates a target when Moran has better uses for his time; does not command the Web. | Rare, costly contractor |
Each sample profile supplies a ready-made encounter role. A captured worker can identify their own hirer and immediate assignment, not the full network. The river crew, especially, might be innocent enough to become a witness or ally rather than another enemy.
What the Web Wants
Open aim: no public political programme. The Web exists to profit from crimes that would be impossible or too risky for solitary offenders.
True aim: control the routes by which news, goods and money pass through London. Moriarty prefers the owner of a valuable enterprise to remain in business, indebted and obedient. A prosperous victim can pay indefinitely; a dead one pays once.
Current priority: take control of the merchant’s Thames traffic before Sherlock Holmes links the disappearing barges to the professor’s respectable associates. The Web will sacrifice a local cell rather than expose its financiers.
What it cannot do: command every London criminal, control the Crown, foresee a stranger’s choices or replace lost trusted couriers overnight. Rival gangs, honest apprentices, unpredictable travellers and a wounded Moran can all break an operation.
Working for the Web
The Web recruits through problems, never through advertisements. Someone offers a stranger gold to carry a sealed case, find a runaway debtor, watch a wharf or remove a troublesome witness. The courier may genuinely believe the errand is lawful. An experienced thief knows the offer is unusually well paid and unusually precise.
| Your standing | What the Web does | Your choice |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | A local intermediary watches before making an offer | Accept the small job, question it or warn its intended victim |
| Useful | Offers safe passage, information, recovered property or quiet credit | Trade a favour, refuse further work or demand to meet the patron |
| Compromised | Collects proof of your earlier crimes and demands another service | Submit, turn the evidence against a handler or confess before being exposed |
| Hunted | Cuts off former contacts, pays informants and assigns a specialist | Disappear, turn a cell against the professor or take the fight to Moriarty |
Completing a task earns money and a chance at more lucrative work; it does not reveal the Web’s leadership. Refusing politely may end a first contact without bloodshed. Stealing the fee, revealing a courier’s identity or sheltering a marked witness makes the characters an immediate problem.
Opponents, Bargains and Fault Lines
Sherlock Holmes recognises the pattern beneath separate crimes. John Watson can preserve testimony, treat survivors and trace injuries to the weapons that caused them. The ordinary city watch is dangerous to low-ranking operatives, even when a compromised officer obstructs an investigation.
Other criminals are not automatically Moriarty’s servants. Wild values his independence; river thieves resent losing their own markets; dishonest officials become fearful when a payment implicates their household. These rival interests are opportunities for the party to negotiate, divide the opposition or secure witnesses.
Moran’s appetite for a worthy hunt is the greatest internal weakness. He may expose an otherwise hidden cell by pursuing someone Moriarty would prefer to ignore. Moriarty, for his part, will never risk the entire organisation merely to preserve Moran’s pride.
Three Adventures Within the Web
The Fourth Barge
Opening: The family of a missing boatman offers the characters his last wages to find him. A riverside seller remembers an unloaded vessel returning at dawn with its draft much deeper than before.
Discovery: The cargo ledger is ordinary and mostly true. The secret is a temporary passenger compartment under the grain. Its next occupant is a merchant about to be taken alive.
Decision: Free the merchant and expose a trading house’s criminal patron, or use the voyage to follow payments toward the professor. Rescuing the captive immediately forfeits the clearest trail of the next transfer.
The Colonel’s Line of Fire
Opening: A youth asks the party for shelter. At the market a passer-by is struck by a silent pellet intended for the youth’s protector.
Discovery: Moran has two firing positions, a purchased lookout and a retreat across neighbouring roofs. His weapon is exceptional but he still needs line of sight, ammunition and a viable escape.
Decision: Pursue the shooter and risk leaving the boy alone, hold the safe house and lose Moran’s trail, or use a decoy to force the Colonel onto ground he did not select.
The Price of Defence
Opening: A burglar captured after the barges vanished is defended by an advocate far beyond his means. His terrified sister asks the characters who paid.
Discovery: The money passed through a counting room connected to several otherwise unrelated thefts. The burglar knows his handler’s voice but not the man’s name.
Decision: Protect the prisoner so he will testify, take the Web’s offer to arrange his flight, or turn its payment trail into a trap for the handler. The sister’s safety matters more to the prisoner than his own.
If No One Interferes
By the third night, the apprentice’s remaining friends are questioned, and the witness must change shelter. Within a week, the fourth barge carries a captive upriver and a rival trader has lost his means of resisting extortion. Within a fortnight, the local cell is quietly dissolved; the professor’s main finances have moved beyond immediate reach. Holmes still has pieces of evidence, but no living witness willing to connect them.
The Web does not stop because someone defeats a handful of boatmen. It stops when its victims can speak safely, its payments can be followed, and its leadership can no longer trust the people between a command and its execution.
Running the Web at the Table
The linked generic NPC profiles above provide Pathfinder 1e statistics; their Challenge Ratings do not transfer automatically to other editions. Use the closest appropriate guard, bandit, scout, spy, thief or assassin rules from the edition in play while retaining the listed job and behaviour. A cell’s name describes its work, not an automatic Challenge Rating. Give an operative a unique character build only when their individual choices and skills matter. Sebastian Moran and Moriarty already have full standalone combat rules; ordinary handlers do not need to become another Moran.
At first, show the faction through what people do: an apprentice with two watchers, a boat with no crew, a thief whose solicitor has already been paid. Once the characters understand one cell, let them decide whether to break it, bargain with it or follow it to the next. Moriarty knows a great deal, but the Web is only as reliable as its frightened, greedy and fallible members.
Origins and Sources
Moriarty’s secret society draws on Arthur Conan Doyle’s description of an unseen criminal organiser in The Final Problem (1893). The close association of Moran and Moriarty, and Moran’s rank as chief of staff, come from The Adventure of the Empty House (1903). The London operations, current smuggling plot and membership methods presented here belong to the campaign.
Original stories: The Final Problem and The Adventure of the Empty House. Explore the Factions Directory, London and the named characters above.
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