The Gilded Hands are run by a married Boraelan couple from Sarra. Once young hustlers with the Sarran guild, they were run out of town by an influential gang leader over a personal grudge. They moved to Skeene and took on the aliases of Borvius and Robella Autumnwhite to avoid pursuit and continuation of the vendetta. In public, Borvius runs Autumnwhite’s Storage & Hauling, a cartage company that ships goods and stores cargo, and Robella owns Mistress Robella’s Curiosity Shoppe just next door. In secret, they jointly strive to control all the serious criminal activity in Skeene.

The arrival of the Umbra Carnival presented an opportunity for them to do away with some of the thorns in their sides while having a scapegoat on whom to pin the crimes. With the circus in town, the Gilded Hands quickly planned to perpetrate their boldest schemes and pin the blame on carnival folk, who are seen by the townspeople as even less trustworthy than regular Southrons.

The day the circus arrived and started to unpack, the Autumnwhites dispatched spies to circulate among the curious local onlookers to search for a likely mark to set up. They chose Jherizhana, a gynosphinx and the carnival’s main attraction (and also, unknown to anyone outside the circus, an elaborate illusion). The guild rightly assumes that if the murders appear to be perpetrated by the sphinx, the circus will be blamed for the subsequent robberies and for bringing such a dangerous and uncontrollable creature to town.

Borvius and Robella are currently being held in dungeons beneath the Watchhall in Skeene and are accused of conspiracy, murder, robbery, kidnapping, and a host of other crimes.