Mercenary Syndicate

Knights

Archers

The Mercenary Syndicate is a guild for those who want to hire out their fighting abilities without the administrative strings of the Guard Coalition. It is one of the three major guilds of House Jackie

## Guild Hubs

The Mercenary Syndicate’s main guild hub is located in the Professional District of Mulladún, House Jackie. While the Mercenary Syndicate conducts most of their official operations from here, they generally prefer to take their training exercises into the amphitheaters of the lower levels or outside the city walls.

In addition, like all of Duilintinn’s officially recognized guilds, the Mercenary Syndicate has a hub representing itself on Guild Row in Cordoire’s Administrator’s District. Here, the guild can advocate for its members in the political sphere of Duilintinn’s national capital.

## Apprenticeships

Like most other guilds in Duilintinn, the Mercenary Syndicate connects students pursuing higher education with members who need additional help and/or wish to pass on their knowledge to the next generation. This mostly involves informal training between an experienced fighter and a student wishing to learn a new skill or improve one they have, in contrast to the training drills of the Guard Coalition.

## History

Prior to the Waldren Occupation, guards throughout Duilintinn were simply hired mercenaries. Then, a training program got started in House Jackie, and people started only hiring people who got certified. That’s how the Guard Coalition was born.

Hired mercenaries have always played a major role in the socio economic landscape of the Feadhainn Valley. Prior to the Waldren Occupation, the mercenary career was well-respected for the protection it provided in the form of guards, escorts, town defenders, and more. However, at some point during the Occupation Era, a training program was developed to “certify” former mercenaries as official knights under a specific group, which would eventually become the Guard Coalition.

Obviously, not everyone in the mercenary world wanted to give up their freedom for a fancy certification and strict hierarchy of authority telling them how to fight and what jobs to take. Many wished to remain independent, taking jobs as they pleased and remaining accountable to only themselves and trusted compatriots. However, as the occupation continued, people began to only hire guards certified by the Coalition, viewing uncertified mercenaries as untrustworthy and brutish in comparison to the noble, disciplined knights of the Guard.

Eventually, the mercenaries knew that they would have to adapt to remake their reputation. Following the example of the Coalition, groups of mercenaries began to cluster together to form mercenary companies, making names for themselves and carving a niche for their role in the local area. Of course, this wasn’t an overnight change, but a slow evolution throughout most of the Interim Years.

From this point, the bands of mercenaries would develop in one of several directions. Unfortunately, some of these groups devolved into roaming groups of bandits and brigands. Others continued to work as true mercenaries, but would get caught up in the huge power-vacuum conflict taking place in the eastern half of the Feadhainn Valley, essentially becoming a personal army for the various factions in all but name.

However, many groups remained true to their mercenary roots, retaining their independence and abiding by their personal codes without losing sight of the respected role they once held in the land. As a general rule, these mercenary bands heavily disapproved of the power-vacuum conflict taking place throughout the valley; for every group that would get swept up in the fighting, another would dedicate themselves to offering their services to those who were threatened by the conflict.

This all came to a head during the Quest for Duilintinn. As word spread about the group of adventurers who were challenging the warring factions in Cordoire, many groups of mercenaries were inspired to do something of their own. As a result, several dozen mercenary bands gathered in Mulladún and decided to join forces, creating the Mercenary Syndicate. They would eventually offer their aid to the future king and became an important source of strength for the rest of the Quest for Duilintinn. After Duilintinn’s founding, they became an official guild of the kingdom.

## Assignments

When you hire a mercenary, where you’re paying for the person’s support. For however long you’re paying them (usually an hourly or daily wage) they will have your back, come hell or high water, like Skyrim followers. This is different from when you hire a member of the Guard Coalition, you’re paying for specific tasks. Once the contract is signed, the knight you’ve hired is only obligated to perform the role described in that agreement. For example, if you hired a member of the Guard to enforce local law, you can’t suddenly demand that they accompany you on a quest across the land, despite the fact that you’re the one who’s paying them. If you want that sort of support, you’d hire a member of the Mercenary Syndicate instead.

For example, say you wanted to take a journey across the mountain pass between Duilintinn and Haneul. It’s a dangerous trip, and you might want to bring some sort of protection. If you hire a member of the Guard, you’d work up a contract where they escort you through the pass and protect you from danger to the best of their ability. If you hire a member of the Mercenary Syndicate, you’d pay them for the duration of the trip, and in return, they’d help with whatever adventures you decided to get up to along the way, no matter the technicalities.

Of course, most, if not all mercenaries have some sort of moral line that they won’t cross in terms of jobs. For example, the vast majority of mercenaries will refuse to kill innocent bystanders. Mercenaries are expected to make these disclaimers very clear in advance, to avoid any awkward conversations mid-job.

### Bounty Hunting

> See Also Banishment
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Bounty hunting is one of the Mercenary Syndicate’s most popular services.

Duilintinn has no government-sanctioned internal or external extradition policies; if you’re willing to permanently abandon everything you once called home in exchange for escaping justice, that’s generally seen as punishment enough. However, this is only an effective deterrent for people who break regional or national laws; it’s not nearly as much upheaval to move to a nearby town to escape local justice, especially if the criminal wasn’t even a citizen of that town in the first place. Therefore, if a victim does not feel as if justice or closure will be accomplished until the criminal is brought back to the town to face legal action, they are within their rights to attempt to drag that person back to the town in which the crime was committed. It’s all technically legal, albeit a bit extrajudicial.

However, if the victim and/or their friends can’t drag the criminal back home on their own, they will usually hire the Mercenary Syndicate to pursue and extradite criminals who fled the town in which they commited a crime. Communities will often help the victim raise reward money so that the person who wronged them can face justice, both to help them feel safe in their home and to give the town itself some closure. In turn, the Syndicate takes pride in this niche role they have in Duilintinn’s legal system, especially since the Guard Coalition, despite dominating the majority of the law enforcement sphere, has absolutely no extradition powers of their own.

## Culture

The mercenary Syndicate is more focused on internal codes over the strict training and organization valued by the Guard Coalition. The biggest rule is to always follow through with the job you were paid for; whether or not you’re willing to take a job is one thing, but once you take the money, you do the job. This goes both ways, and the syndicate provides aid to mercenaries who are taken advantage of by greedy jerks who don’t pay what they promised.

These mercenaries also value resolve and resignation. They’ll like a person who truly believes the job they took was warranted far more than someone who wallows in guilt after each job. If you’re doing mercenary work out of desperation, you’d do better to find allies in the Fellowship of Thieves, but if you take pride in your ability to knock some heads for coin and honor, then the Mercenary Syndicate is for you.

## Inter-Guild Dynamics

Unsurprisingly, the Mercenary Syndicate is considered an active rival of the Guard Coalition. While the reasons for hiring a member of the Guard versus a mercenary are different enough that they rarely come into direct competition with each other, the Syndicate’s culture and history lends itself to something of a rivalry. That being said, animosity between these two guilds has somewhat lessened over the years corresponding with the rise of The Watch as the primary usurper of the Guard’s jurisdiction.

On the other hand, the Mercenary Syndicate has no issue with its members joining The Watch. After all, the primary goal of this guild is to help people get work without having to join the Coalition, and what is The Watch if not a job that needs all the skilled fighters it can get?