Trygalle Trade Guild

The **Trygalle Trade Guild** was the most effective and most expensive courier service on any continent. It was renowned for using the Warrens to travel from place to place, saving a great deal of time as the Warrens reduced the amount of time needed to travel great distances. The Trygalle Guild did not, however, request permission of the Warren residents before travelling through them, and so Trygalle Guild caravans were frequently attacked by all manner of creatures or demons. This made Trygalle Trade Guild missions extremely dangerous, and hence expensive.

Despite the cost, their services were so highly desired that they did not need to advertise openly. The Trygalle Guild's High Mages were so powerful that it was said they could access Warrens that not even the Malazan Empire's best mages could enter unaided. Among the Guild's most prized possessions was the work of their Surveyants—maps of the Warrens and the connections between them. With each trip, these maps became more complete. Details of the Guild's journey were kept strictly secret as client confidentiality was part of the service.

Trygalle Trade Guild caravans were composed of one or more enormous, gaudily painted six-wheeled carriages, each usually pulled by six, nine, or even as many as twenty horses, depending on the quantity and weight of what (or who) was being transported. The carriage was entered through a side door which contained a barred window and a shutter. A speak-tube near the roof allowed the high mage inside the carriage to give instructions to those outside. The roof was protected by a sheath of copper. The Daru thief, Crokus, recognized the Trygalle Guild carriages as having been manufactured by "Bernuk's", located near the Lakefront in Darujhistan.

To reduce the risk, Trygalle Guild caravans' transit through Warrens were conducted at breakneck speed, and the Trygalle Guild equipages tried to stop for nothing. The Guild carriages were guarded by a large number of heavily armed and armoured shareholders, stationed upon the roofs, flanks, and ornate projections of the carriages, to which they were strapped in place by leather harnesses attached to iron rings. The Trygalle Guild caravan guards carried crossbows and other weapons whose edges were sometimes darkened and smeared with unknown substances. Despite this rate of travel, the Guild carriages were usually scarred and fire-scorched from encounters within the Warrens. Karpolan Demesand (mage-merchant and original Trygalle Trade Guild caravan master) suspected that the Trygalle Guild horses were in the process of acquiring a taste for wild terror.

The unofficial motto of Trygalle Trade Guild shareholders (even after a particularly disastrous mission) was "We've had worse trips." On the other hand, the most common reaction of those new to travelling via Trygalle Trade Guild caravan was (along the lines of) "These people have all lost their minds." The Guild shareholders referred to their trips through the Warrens as "the Ride".

The Trygalle Trade Guild, itself, originated in the small fortress city of Trygalle, situated south of the Lamatath Plain, on the continent of Genabackis. Councillor Coll of Darujhistan thought that Trygalle was located near Elingarth. The Trygalle Trade Guild was born of a dubious alliance of mages (one of whom, a Trygalle Trade Guild founder, was Karpolan Demesand), as well as a motley collection of local pirates and wreckers. At the time of the march of the Chain of Dogs in Seven Cities, the Trygalle Guild had only recently opened an office in Darujhistan. All employees of the Trygalle Trade Guild were made shareholders, which, as intended, increased their loyalty to the business' success and shareholders' willingness to take the necessarily dangerous risks that were fundamental to Trygalle Guild missions. In addition, there was a popular policy (known as "earning the spike") which meant that if a particular shareholder *was* killed in the course of active duty, that shareholder's family would be awarded twice the payback than the shareholder would have received for that particular mission if he or she had completed it alive.[20][21]

Kruppe was a well known shareholder within the Trygalle Trade Guild, and was the only shareholder not known to actually travel with it.