Across Faerûn, goods arrive by wagon, barge, and caravan. Some come from trusted partners. Others arrive with false seals, watered contents, short counts, or missing permits. The Waterdeep Trading Company treats receiving as a line of defense, not a courtesy. Before any crate becomes sellable stock, it must pass controlled checks that protect coin, customers, and reputation.
This article explains how receiving controls work, why they matter, and how they are applied in daily trade. It includes a fully expanded worked example that shows how minor warning signs, when taken together, lead to a clear stop decision before bad goods ever reach the ledger.
What Receiving Controls Are
Receiving controls are the checks performed when goods first arrive at a warehouse, dock, or yard. These checks occur before inventory is posted, invoices are approved, and payments are released.
Every delivery must answer four questions.
- Is the good correct?
- Is the quantity correct?
- Is the quality and origin correct?
- Is it reasonable to accept and sell?
If any answer fails, the process stops.
Why Receiving Controls Matter
Bad goods cause damage long before a sale occurs. Counterfeit items erode trust. Smuggled goods expose the company to fines and seizure. Short shipments distort inventory counts. Poor quality alcohol or unstable potions can injure customers and trigger guild action.
Strong receiving controls stop loss early. They also create records that support vendor disputes, insurance claims, and guild reporting. Rejecting a shipment at the gate costs far less than recalling it from customers or correcting posted inventory.
Core Receiving Checks
Each delivery passes through the same structured sequence. Some checks are visual. Others are measured or documented. All outcomes are recorded.
Visual Inspection
Visual inspection is the earliest and least costly control. It requires no tools, no opening of goods, and no ledger activity. It exists to catch deception before responsibility can be shifted. Once a crate is opened or a seal is broken, disputes become harder to resolve.
In Faerûn, counterfeiters often succeed by forging trust rather than goods. Outdated seals, reused casks, and copied markings are meant to pass a glance. Visual inspection slows the process just enough to expose mistakes. Anything rushed, mismatched, or slightly wrong stops the shipment.
Clerks compare what they see against expectations for the vendor, the season, and the route.
Many counterfeit shipments fail at this first step.
Quantity Verification
Quantity checks protect against silent loss. A shipment that is short by a few units may not raise an alarm at sale time, but it will distort inventory, margins, and trust. Counterfeit and smuggling operations often rely on small shortages spread across many deliveries to stay unnoticed.
By verifying quantities at receipt, the Waterdeep Trading Company assigns responsibility at the correct time. If counts do not match the delivery record, the discrepancy belongs to the shipment, not the warehouse. This prevents later disputes in which loss is attributed to storage or handling.
Repeated short counts across containers indicate planning rather than an accident and trigger deeper review.
Any variance places the shipment on hold.
Quality and Authenticity Checks
A shipment can be complete and still be wrong. Quality checks exist to protect customers and reputation, not just coin. In Faerûn, watered wine, unstable potions, and low-grade materials cause real harm.
Authenticity checks confirm that goods match known profiles on record. Established producers leave consistent signatures in taste, clarity, weight, weave, balance, or aura. Counterfeiters often copy appearance but fail to replicate substance.
This step ensures the company sells what it claims to sell and creates defensible evidence when a vendor disputes rejection.
Alcohol and potion goods are tested using methods approved by the Faerûn Brewers & Distillers Association. Weapons, armor, and tools follow Black Anvil Guild standards.
Failed goods are never added to available stock.
Compliance and Permit Review
Not all risk comes from bad goods. Some risk comes from illegal goods. Compliance checks ensure the company does not become the point at which laws are broken, tariffs are avoided, or restricted items are traded.
Permits tie goods to routes, cities, and guild authority. Smugglers often rely on missing paperwork, reused certifications, or outdated registry numbers to slip through busy gates.
By verifying permits before acceptance, the company avoids fines, seizures, and guild penalties that often exceed the shipment’s value.
Missing or altered documents stop the process immediately.
Holds, Quarantine, and Rejection
Receiving is not binary. Not every issue means fraud, and not every failure implies rejection. This step exists to apply a proportional response.
A hold allows clarification without escalation. Quarantine isolates risk while preserving evidence. Rejection removes known threats from the operation entirely.
Clear outcomes prevent informal decisions at the dock or gate.
Quarantined goods are locked, labeled, and excluded from counts.
Expanded Worked Example: Intercepting Counterfeit Wine at Receiving
This example follows a single shipment from arrival to final disposition. It shows how receiving controls work together as a layered system where minor inconsistencies accumulate into a decisive stop.
Scenario Overview
A river barge docks at Waterdeep just after dawn. The cargo includes wine consigned to the Waterdeep Trading Company, marked for resale to noble households ahead of a seasonal feast. The vendor claims the shipment originates from Salington Vinyards, a respected producer with strong demand.
The delivery appears routine. That is precisely why the controls matter.
Shipment as Declared
The receiving clerk reviews the declared details before any physical action is taken. This establishes the expectation against which every later check is measured.
No inventory is posted at this stage.
Step 1. Visual Inspection: Setting the first line of defense
Before seals are broken or casks moved, the receiving clerks walk the shipment. This moment fixes responsibility. If something is wrong, it must be found while the goods are still untouched.
Clerks know how Salington shipments typically appear. They see the stamp style used this year and the wax color adopted after the last guild update.
The failed seal breaks trust and triggers a temporary hold.
Step 2. Quantity Verification: Testing whether the paperwork reflects reality
Once visual issues appear, quantity checks become more than routine. Short shipments are a common way to extract value without drawing attention.
Two casks are opened under supervision.
The repeated short fill suggests intent.
Step 3. Quality and Authenticity: Confirming whether the goods are what they claim to be
The question now shifts from how much wine arrived to what wine it actually is.
The wine does not match known profiles on file.
Step 4. Documentation Review: Determining whether the shipment is legal to accept
Paperwork is examined line by line.
Risk escalates from quality concern to legal exposure.
Step 5. Receiving Decision: Applying control without negotiation
The combined failures trigger quarantine.
Casks are sealed and moved to a secure holding area.
Step 6. Ledger and Operational Impact: Protecting the books by doing nothing
Because the shipment was never accepted, there is nothing to reverse.
No write-off is required later.
Step 7. Follow Up and Risk Management: Turning one interception into lasting protection
The goal is not only to stop this shipment, but to prevent the next one.
The guild confirms the wine is counterfeit. City authorities seize the casks. Loss is limited to the inspection effort.
Realms Aware Considerations
Controls vary by city and route. Major ports apply stricter inspection. Smaller towns rely more on paperwork and trust, increasing risk. High-value or regulated goods undergo more thorough checks, while staples move faster.
The Waterdeep Trading Company adjusts controls by vendor history, route risk, and product type.
Final Thoughts
Receiving is not unloading. It is protection. Strong receiving controls prevent counterfeit and smuggled goods from reaching the ledger, the shelf, or the customer. Once inventory is posted, every correction incurs additional costs.
The cheapest loss is the one that stops at the gate.
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