Mapper Guild

## Functions of the Guild

### Resourcing

The city moves. This makes travel and the environment both much more important than it is to a static city.

Resources are transient. The danger and hostility present changes like the weather and the weather changes more than usual too. From one year to the next the city can go from scorching plains and desert to snowy mountain to and freezing tundra.

The city moves.

They map the surrounding and oncoming terrain as well as inhabitants, geopolitics, trade, etc that the city will traverse. This prepares the inhabitants for terrain, hostile encounters, trade opportunities and also serves as a meta history for the city as a whole. The cartographers are trained to explore the surrounding and oncoming wilds creating detailed informational records that are geographic as well as geopolitical. This function of the guild acts as a informational and news service. In this sense they are scouts and see the oncoming troubles and difficulties that the city will encounter before anybody else.

This requires a number of skills, including ranging and wilderness survivability, knowledge of complex code systems designed to convey rich and detailed accounts through maps, communication skills - generally through magical or animal means.

Carrier pigeons are commonly used to communicate between Mapper squads and HQ.

Although trainined in combat which is essential for hunting in and exploring the sometimes hostile territories that the city travels through. The mappers guild are not a fighting group and do not engage in hostility without necessity. The main bulk of the cities fighting force remains with the city and acts almost entirely defensively. With no lands to conquer or rival powers that remain in the cities vicinity - there is little need for an attacking force.

### Diplomancy

However as the mappers guild are likely to be the ones to come into contact with any other village, city, camp, etcetc which is in the area of influence of the city, their second function is one of diplomacy and espionage. They act as a proverbial face of the city and are required to act in its interests. They are in this sense the point of ‘Contact’ and have members that specialise in bardic and rogue like social skills. A city passes within the aura of Uruk. Mappers investigate and are required to quickly insinuate themselves within the cities social hierarchy to generate trade opportunity, or something more sinister.

### Librarians (sister guild)

The Librarians of the Great Uruk Library a sister guild of the cartographers collect and maintain an immense library of maps. This is the third function of the cartographers- to feed the obsessive and ongoing collection of the library. They buy interesting and unusual maps at any opportunity. Maps not only help in the future but also serve as a record of progress and inform us of the past. The detailed maps in the library explain to those who can read them tricks and secrets necessary to keep the city alive. The oldest maps are dated before the guild existed and are though to document a place at a time not long after the event. Of course so much time has passed that this place is unlikely to be recognisable by this map now. Time moves as the city does but the maps capture a snapshot of time past and act as a moving history of Uruk as a whole. This began as an mark on the prison cell wall - documenting time passing in hopes of an eventual end. But this was long ago, now the map keeping has become an almost ritual component of society and its worth is rarely questioned.

## Structure

#### Guild master

- x1 - a guild figurehead is required to act as a political representative of the guild. They attend council meetings with other guild leaders and decide big shit for Uruk. This role is usually taken by a head of school.

#### Heads of Schools

The sub council. Within the cartographers guild- there are specialist training schools in which a recruit can specialise. these include:

- Wilding

- Mapping

- Magicking

- Talking (espionage and diplomacy)

- More?

#### Directors

The first behind the desk tier. The Directors manage a number of squads and basically give orders to them. They are in communication with other directors and school heads and act generally in the same direction. Each director does have some discretion and especially in ‘peace time’ has quite a lot of freedom and privacy in what he feels as though his squads should pursue.

#### Recruit

- In training pre admittance to the guild