Guild of the Sacred Journey

The Guild of the Sacred Journey is a Fairest-only entitlement of messengers and couriers.

Background
"Despite injury, threat, danger or promises of great reward, I shall endeavor to deliver anything in my charge to its appointed destination. On pain of my life and my honor I shall never break the trust that was given to me."

The members of the Guild, given the independence of freeholds from one another, act as a point of connection, delivering messages and packages both within and between the freeholds. While working, Couriers are expected to have a form of immunity from other changelings’ attacks. The Guild will refuse to work with freeholds that police this immunity.

When delivering between freeholds, Couriers are expected to work for free; to all other destinations, they may ask for payment. Once a delivery has been accepted, the Courier must fulfill it unless it is certain that doing so will aid the enemies of the Lost (e.g. Gentry, Loyalists, and Privateers). Such refusals must be reported immediately to the Guild Master for arbitration. Inter-Court politics are not an acceptable reason; Couriers are expected to be politically neutral when on-the-job.

Organization
The Guild bears a formal structure, with each member having a vote on all major issues, including the election of a Guildmaster, which occurs each seven years. Each Guildmaster, the leader of a region containing between five and ten freeholds, deals with immunity violations or guild members’ dereliction of duty. Additionally, the Guildmaster maintains a formal guildhouse, which both offer housing for visiting Couriers and provide a repository for information that the order comes across in their work — information the guild uses to predict threats before they appear.

Joining and Membership
Prerequisites: Wyrd 2, Drive 2, Expression 2, Streetwise 2, Clarity 5+, Fairest only Title: Sacred Courier (more formal), guild member, guildsman or guildswoman

As a prestigious order, the Guild is highly selective in those it permits to join, with extensive interviews regarding entrants’ honesty and loyalty. On joining, new members are apprenticed to an older guild member. These apprentices are not allowed to accept or make their own deliveries, instead accompanying masters on deliveries, being taught the details of guild work, diplomacy, and fast, unobtrusive travel in the meantime. Mentors also do their best to hone both the apprentice’s memory and observational skills. Only Fairest are permitted to enter the Guild, nominally due to their having an easier time with diplomatic work.

Most Couriers favor Social Traits and, due to the constant travel, tend to love to travel. Before being abducted, many worked in some form of transportation, be it cab driving or long haul trucking. Those capable of easily traversing the Hedge are as valued as those who can pilot unusual vehicles.

Mien
Couriers’ miens undergo minimal changes. They all wear the token that is their badge of passage, the winged sash (see below). In addition, at high levels of Wyrd, many develop small suggestions of feathered wings, half-visible like a hologram, that sprout at ankles or wrists or temples when the Sacred Courier invokes Glamour.

Privileges
Action: Instant Drawback: The changeling suffers a -1 penalty to actions unrelated to reaching the target until the package/message is delivered. The only other way to remove this penalty is to find the target’s location and then spend 2 points of Willpower. Catch: The penalty to unrelated actions rises to -3. In addition, the character is mentally compelled to complete the delivery and will not stop until the message or package has been delivered.
 * Courier’s Winged Sash (•••): This token, a blue sash with silver trim and a badge of four silver wings, can be activated when the bearer is asked to deliver a message or package. The user of the token gains an innate sense of how to reach the target — not a specific location, but a general intuition. If the target is dead or otherwise inaccessible (e.g. in Arcadia or the Shadow Realm), the sash cannot be activated. As an additional caveat, it can only be used to target someone with whom the client is familiar.