Guild (AOS)

The Guild is a Creation-spanning commercial enterprise of the Second Age.

History

The Guild was founded by Brem Marst in RY 99, though its began much earlier. Marst studied for a time with the Counters, a merchant cult who tried to follow First Age trading patterns in the belief that they were engraved into the fabric of the world. Marst found their beliefs laughable, but their records of the First Age economy dazzled him — whole industries and sectors that didn't exist anymore, businesses inventing demand for their products and then monopolizing the market, the flow of money and goods from one end of Creation to the other. He aspired to re-create that on a mortal scale, with himself rather than any Exalted at the top of the heap.

In RY 88, he arrived in the River Province in the wake of the failed Realm invasion, and began systematically buying up and consolidating merchant houses and service industries. He made himself indispensable to the rebuilding cities and kingdoms, and in return they supported his monopolies and enforced his contracts — willingly or not. While it ventured as far northwest as Whitehall and as far southwest as the Lap, the Guild was primarily a River Province institution for the next four decades.

In RY 117, Marst established the Guild's present headquarters in Nexus. The two seemed made for each other: the Council of Entities that rules Nexus believed in minimal government oversight and free trade, and the revenue the Guild brought to the city made Nexus rich. At the same time as the move to Nexus, Marst formalized the Guild's present administrative structure, relinquishing sole control of the organization he founded in favor of a council of hierarchs. The move helped establish the Guild's outlook that offices and institutions were more important than the individuals who occupied them; by ceding power, Marst ensured continuity of leadership, so that the Guild would outlive his own death in RY 179.

By RY 301, war in the riverlands persuaded the Guild that they needed to establish a permanent mercenary force for their own protection. When the Arczeckh Horde invaded in RY 364, Guild mercenaries were instrumental in repelling the assault alongside the Seventh Legion and the Hundred Kingdoms. The League of Many Rivers helped underwrite the expense of maintaining the Guild's mercenaries, who could be rented out in peacetime for profit.

The Realm opened a trade war with the Guild in RY 416, which was fought as much with tariffs and boycotts as with mercenaries and legions. After two years, the Guild blinked first, and sued for peace; they were banned from trading on the Blessed Isle and subjected to high tariffs in the satrapies. The fact that they stood up to the Realm at all, however, demonstrated the breadth of the Guild's influence in the Threshold. In RY 618, the tariffs were lifted; the Realm could no longer afford not to trade with the Guild.

Operations

Structure

While many of the details of the Guild's administration vary according to location, the overarching structure is largely the same. Its functions are divided into mercantile, crafts, labor, and administrative divisions.

The mercantile branch ranges from lowly peddlers to powerful merchant-princes who roam vast swaths of Creation in elaborate caravans. The majority of its members, however, are called keeps: the individual proprietors of shops and trade posts through whom most of Creation actually buys or sells its necessities.

The crafts branch is organized into lodges of different trades, such as weavers, smiths, or carpenters. Marst originally envisioned one lodge for every trade in Creation, but in practice they function on a regional basis. The lodges serve to train apprentices, guard trade secrets, and prevent non-Guild competitors from getting a toehold in Guild territory.

Laborers, though indispensable to the Guild's operations, are not really members; they may be temporary hires, slave, or the dream-eaten. Even waged workers are often drawn from the most destitute populations so that they'll accept the lowest possible pay.

The Guild's administration is run by the Directorate, a council of nine hierarchs drawn from its most powerful and influential members. The Directorate oversees hub towns, specially chosen staging points for travel and trade. Each hub town has its own council of nine factors who oversee regional matters, as well as a number of wardens who enforce Guild policies.

Membership

Joining the guild requires a sponsor who is already a member and an application process through the local Guild Council. Applications can be rejected for any number of reasons, but the most common are simple disinterest — the applicant doesn't have anything of value to contribute to the Guild as a whole — or divided loyalties. Few Dyansts, for interest, are accepted, for fear they'll undermine the Guild from within.

Guild leadership is elected, in theory. Particularly in elections for the Directorate, no tactic is to brutal or underhanded to employ in pursuit of victory, as ruthlessness and manipulation are considered positive qualities in a hierarch. These elections come at irregular intervals; hierarchs serve for life, and sometimes well into death as long as meetings can be conducted in a shadowland. Others retire, or pretend to retire for political reasons, but may hang on as consultants with hardly any change in status. Occasionally, if someone manages to amass enough power and influence to challenge the Guild itself, they will be offered a chance to join the hierarchy directly. The alternative is usually open warfare.

Caravans

The life's blood of the Guild is transportation, its caravans and ships. Every caravan is blessed with Ritual of Exodus before it departs, one of the purposes of which is to summon a spirit to act as its patron. The caravan spirit usually has its own shrine on the ship or in a dedicated wagon, tended by a member of the caravan. The merchant prince leading the caravan also gets space to themself, as befits the leader of such an enterprise. In addition to the drovers, guards, and other workers hired onto the caravan, overland routes are usually followed by a few "caravan fleas" — sex workers, entertainers, or other travels just looking to the larger caravan for protection during a long journey.

Hard and Soft Trade

The Guild's most profitable and most controversial businesses are slaves and recreational drugs, euphemistically called "the hard trade" and the "soft trade" respectively. By supplying a steady stream of slaves wherever they're wanted, the Guild perpetuates the institution for its own profit. By dealing in addictive substances, they create a permanent market of junkies from whom they can wring every crumb of jade and silver. They coerce rulers into permitting these sales, and manipulate whole societies by flooding the market with cheap drugs or strategically cutting supplies.

External Relations

The Guild will do business with anyone and anything as long as there's a profit to be had. The Guild is nondiscriminatory on the basis of gender, nationality, and even species; its ranks currently include gods, demons, Exalts, raksha and beings who defy easy definition. They do not, however, allow Exalts to run for the Directorate. This is partly a matter of divided loyalties, but also an echo of Brem Marst's belief that the guild must be run by mortals in order to stay focused on mortal interests.

Exalted

The Guild will deal with Anathema as customers the same as any other customer. If a Solar has the coin, the Guild will supply anything from a finely appointed manse to protection from the Wyld Hunt. These dealings are of course kept secret, and if the Exalt ends up in the Guild's debt, so much the better.

The Sidereal Exalted routinely interfere with the Guild; although they didn't create it, they recognize it as a useful force for keeping Creation intact. The sheer size of the Guild and the relative autonomy of its factors and hub towns makes it difficult to control on any scale, however, and their dealings with beings outside of Fate continually throw wrenches into Sidereal horoscopes.

Lunar Exalted do not reveal themselves to the Guild, and they debate its role in Creation. The majority have reluctantly agreed that, compared to the Scarlet Empire, the Guild is the lesser of two evils, and a useful spoiler against Dynastic ambition. They have no qualms about striking down ventures that aren't blocking or competing with the Realm's influence, however, and they are increasingly worried about what effect the Guild might have on the returning Solars.

Some in the Guild see the Deathlords and Abyssal Exalted as more palatable alternative to dealing with the Timeless Order of Manacle and Coin, in the sense that Abyssals don't actively despise them. They also frequently employ Chernozem as exorcists or bodyguards when dealing with the dead.

Fair Folk

While members of the Guild maintain a healthy fear of the raksha, they also know anyone and anything can be bought. Not long after the Guild's birth, their trade caravans and voyageurs began encountering Fair Folk near the edges of Creation. Largely through trial and error, they established terms of trade, selling slaves to the raksha en masse in exchange for gossamer wonders, enchantments, and the dream-eaten husks of the last batch of slaves.

In RY 547, the Guild attempted to centralize this slave trade in a secret fortress called Revenwald in the far northeast. The result was the total unraveling of that part of Creation, leading to the biggest raksha incursion since the Balorian Crusade. Today, five fairy manors serve as (relatively) neutral ground for exchanges spread all across Creation, and while fae caprice sometimes results in individual tragedies, taken as a whole the balance sheets look good.

Of course, not everyone within the Guild is blinded by profit; the Directorate itself is riven by a debate over whether dealing with creatures that are at best benignly dangerous to all Creation is worth any amount of silver. Those opposed to trade with the raksha spread iron weapons and thaumaturgical talismans throughout the borderlands, and experiment with untested First Age magic meant to pacify the Fair Folk once and for all.

Demons

The Guild has no moral qualms about trade with Hell; in fact, it outright purchased the House of Thirty Seals in Nathir, a school of thaumaturgy and sorcery that specializes in demonology. With the right sorcery, demons can be summoned, bound, or bought off to perform labor for the Guild, including tasks that no mortal craftsman could accomplish. Demons and the demon-blooded are allowed to join the Guild as members as well, if they wish.

Some Guildsmen trade directly with Malfeas, selling slaves to the Demon City in exchange for infernal relics or tainted gold. The Guild controls several of the secret paths from Creation into Hell, and several individual members hold keys that provide access. Makarios is also a Guildsman, and mortals can visit his emporium in dreams. The physical journey to Malfias is mentally and physically brutal, but the profits are excellent; the Yozis allow this trade because it gives them another way to get spies and agents into Creation.

The Underworld

The Guild's expansion into the lands of the dead has been limited both by their own fear of those whose lives they've destroyed in the name of profit, and by the existence of the Timeless Order of Manacle and Coin, a similar trade compact run by the ghost of a First Age Solar.

Guildsmen tend to arrange for the most lavish funerals they can afford, so that they appear in the Underworld well-equipped to defend themselves from the ghosts of their victims. Elaborate grave goods are the norm; the wealthiest factors and hierarchs may arrange to be entombed with effigy soldiers for bodyguards and favored slaves for servants.

Brem Marst still resides in the Underworld, and even operates in the Timeless Order's inner circle, hoping for a hostile takeover. His faction and the Guild coordinate activities, and the Guild has built a small cult around Marst to keep him steadily supplied with prayer.

Gods

Not even the gods exist in a vaccuum, and the Guild is an expert at manipulating them to its own ends. A god that causes trouble for the Guild will be starved of prayers, their cults embargoed or killed, and their physical manifestations abused until they relent. A god who favors the Guild, on the other hand, will be glutted with worship in recompense. The corrupt Celestial Bureaucracy is a boon to the Guild, who are well versed in bribery.