Smuggler

Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark -
Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk.
Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie -
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by !

(from) A Smuggler's Song Rudyard Kipling

Basic Information

A smuggler is a person who transports goods (or people) across national frontiers (or other barriers) without legal sanction¹ and/or trades in the black market at source or destination.

Smugglers can transport their cargos by land, sea or air as required - and even underground in some cases - and can work on almost any scale, from single items to industrial scale shipment of raw materials.

The motive for smuggling can also vary widely - the smugglers may merely be avoiding customs duty on an otherwise legal trade or shipping grey market goods against a price fixing regime, but equally their cargo may be contraband at one or both ends of the voyage. Values dissonance may accrue by cargo, destination and era². Import/export of illegal immigrants is also a significant branch of the smuggling trade. Often referred to as "people trafficking" this is sometimes voluntary and usually exploitative at best³ … at worst it is a feeder for slavery in the modern era.

Obviously, smugglers need a good knowledge of their transport route and a talent for stealth or disguise (or both) … and the ability to subvert law enforcement at one or both ends probably helps. In many eras, smugglers are liable to be well armed and fairly ruthless - especially when their trade happens to be capital.

Sources

Bibliography

1. full source reference

Game and Story Use

• If your PCs need to cross a frontier without the appropriate form of authorisation - or otherwise avoid pursuit by the authorities - smugglers are liable to be of use.
• Likewise, if they need to accquire contraband supplies.
• PCs may be smugglers.
  • This may not even be deliberate, if they are in the tramp cargo business and find themselves saddled with a load which turns out to be somewhat illegal.
• Smugglers also make good villains - especially if engaged in the more dissonant types of trade such as slaving/people trafficking or shipping recreational drugs.
  • Turning over smugglers may give the PCs access to contraband treasure - firearms, drugs, black money and duty free goods.

Footnotes

1. If they were transporting their goods with legal sanction - e.g. across an embargo in wartime - then they would usually be called "blockade runners" or something similar)

2. Shipping rum into the US from South America in the 1920s is mysteriously less controversial than shipping cocaine over the same route in the 2010s.

3. Compare, say, the trade smuggling people out of North Korea, to that smuggling Mexicans into the US to that smuggling kidnapped girls from the Balkans into the EU.