Guilds

“Let the Guild hereafter be unto you as your mother and father.

Let this house stand with you as a friend in need.

Let this home forever take pride in you as a lover who delights in your prowess.

Those who bore you may betray the Empire tomorrow.

He who friendship stands by your side may slide the blade in all the easier.

She who shares your sleep may seek to strangle you in it.

After all forsake you, only the guild shall remain to fortify and protect you.

Only your guild understands exactly who and what you are, and dares to care about you just the same.”

-Star Wars: “The Bounty Hunter Code”

Guilds are defined as any formal organization with a common goal that deals in goods or services (legal or otherwise). They first grew to prominence in Daymore but have since spread across the world in one form or another where men and women of like mind and interests band together to make a little coin and find some common ground. The power of guilds ranges the gamut from non-existent to near total domination for the local political and economic landscape. Guilds are especially powerful in Daymore where the idea first took root but almost every culture in the world has some variation of people gathering to protect their various commercial interests. Guilds may draw their power from the sheer number and talent of their guildmembers, from political alliances or even religious sponsorship.

Some examples of guilds include:

Mercantile Guilds: Guilds that focus on the trade and regulation of various legal goods and sundries. They are occasionally likened to Trade Houses however an important distinction is that Trade Houses are nobility whose traditions of commerce go back generations and who tend to view their guild counterparts as “Peasantry pretenders and upstarts”. An antipathy that is returned in kind.

The most powerful and widespread Mercantile guild is the Collegium of Mercator Tempus Imperium (more commonly known as simply “The Collegium”) which is ruled by the Triumvirate of the Imperial Senate, the Church of Imperius and the Noble Houses. Because it has no competition within the empire from aforementioned Trade Houses, the Collegium has become extremely powerful and influential and has more than a little sway in regional politics both domestic and abroad.

Adventurers Guild:   Also referred to as ‘The Guild of Expendables’, Adventurers Guilds fall into no other niche with any amount of comfort and instead occupy the unique position of consisting of men, women and…other who are willing to risk certain death confronting all manner of monstrosities in far-flung lands for coin and glory.   There is some professional rivalry between Adventurer Guilds and Mercenary guilds as there is  some area of overlap in the “travel to far off exotic places, meet new and exciting people, and then kill them” business model.  However Mercenaries tend to view Adventurers as overenthusiastic amateurs who are no substitute for proper paramilitary order.   Members of the adventurers guild tend to view mercenaries as overpaid and over-hyped crybabies who run screaming with their tails tucked between their legs at the sight of the first hungry creature that outweighs them by a few metric tons. Making contact with adventurers guilds is typically done on their traditional meeting grounds since time immemorial: the Tavern where bulletin boards, chatty innkeepers and mysterious old men (all sponsored by the guilds) are ready and available to offer or accept any number of strange and suicidal quests for both the novice and veteran adventurer alike finally answering the ages old question about why so many epic tales of glory and danger seem to have their roots in various dingy bars (the other fact being the copious amounts of cheap alcohol present notwithstanding).

One of the most notorious Adventurer Guilds is the oddly mundane sounding “Farwakers Guild”: a dispossessed group of former adventurers gathered from parts unknown and currently operate primarily in Reaverlund.  What sets them apart is that every member of said guild is, in fact, FORMER everything.   The guild consists almost exclusively of the undead adventurers who died various and calamitous deaths that nonetheless failed to prevent them from returning from the grave to continue with their grand quests.  At first daunted by the concept of existing as ‘abominations trapped forever in the limbo between life and death’ (as one of their more pious members phrased it), the Farwalkers have instead made the best of their situation as wailing ghosts and shambling corpses to make a bit of coin on the side and earn more renown.  They prove elusive to find (all the better to avoid Necrobanes and other various organizations dedicated to the extermination of their kind) but those who do succeed to find a representative of their order in the flesh (so to speak) are able to hire explorers and wanderers who quite literally laugh in the face of death.