The Guild
It happened that there was a Guildsman who scorned Heaven with his wealth.
Where he made his stronghold, he raised a tower so that he might look down upon the world. There he minted silver rupees from his treasury and drove nations into poverty. Soon there were no kings but for the Guildsman, whose power was vast, his empire great. As he swallowed up neighboring regions, deposed kings, flattened temples and placed the populace in shackles, he watched the strength of his money grow, and boasted that his empire would last forever, for his fortune was immense and growing, and his coin would carry his name to the far corners of Creation and keep it long after the pillars of Heaven had fallen down.
When word of this reached Saturn, she stood up from the Games of Divinity and said, "Vast is your wealth and far is your reach, but nothing under Heaven may stand if those pillars fall. All the world is dust in time." Then she made the sign of Endings against the Guildsman's house, and his tower fell, and all of his interests crumbled. The mines that pulled his wealth from the earth were filled in and forever lost. Fires raged through his storehouses. His slaves aged and withered but did not die. His coins tarnished and turned to lead. Those who traded with him struck his name from their books and he lost all credit.
In the ruins of the tower laid a young Solar swordsman who was the merchant's protector. Glimpsed through curtains of dust he saw a silhouette of billowing robes and flowing hair, a figure untouched by the miasma of destruction. The Sidereal reached out to him and said, "Come now."
The Solar's eyes swept the rubble for signs of his employer.
The Sidereal took his hand to secure his attention. She shook her head no. "This is not your Ending."
When they were gone, the shadows moved, and through them came the ghosts of the Timeless Order of Manacle and Coin.
The Birth of the Guild
The Guild was born in the time after the Contagion, to a world decimated by the Balorian Crusade and rocked by wars and terror that were only assuaged by the power of the Scarlet Empress. More an idea than an organization, the Guild—much like its founder—saw fortune in a shattered world. But more importantly, the Guild saw a chance to seize something that had been long held out of the reach of mortal hands. It was a chance for continuity.
One man can claim credit for the Guild. In the wake of the apocalypse, where others were concerned with rude survival, Brem Marst was a man of ambition. A carpet-bag carrying swindler and failed politician, Marst's true birthplace is unknown. Some accounts claim he hailed from Whitewall or Gethamane. A shrine near Marst's tomb in Great Forks claims that his family was a merchant concern located in the area almost three hundred years before the foundation of the city. This claim is a conjecture almost completely derived from questionable evidence. The only supportable account of Marst's time in the region that would become Great Forks is when he stopped overnight in the shadowlands (then ruled by the Princess Magnificent), got drunk and taught the ghosts how to keep a ledger, freeing them from a temporal loop that prevented them from moving on. His entombment in the area remains a source of speculation.
What is known is that Marst traveled thousands of miles, and that one of his journeys brought him to the Lap. There he came into contact with a cloister of merchant-philosophers and market-spiritualists called the Counters. The Counters were in the possession of antique treatises on the function of trade, many of which spoke of the Order-Conferring Trade Pattern and its role in stabilizing reality and perpetuating market enterprises to keep the Pattern strong.
Surrounding the Counters were dozens of merchant cults that had sprang up in interest of these teachings. These groups believed that they could supplement their business practices with prayers to the Pattern, following the rituals and coda of the First Age, and that wealth would simply come to them; that they only had to sit back and wait. But in his travels, Marst had seen the truth: that world was gone, and the old rules—and the old magic—no longer applied.
Still, Marst studied the Counters' manuals on ancient trade. Originally he'd intended to gain their trust as an interested student and use his influence to rob them blind. Instead, he found himself feeling indebted. Exposure to their cults had shown him how helpless mortals had grown at the beneficent tit of the Exalted, such that without them, and in a world where Exalted magic was failing, people would cast about, praying for the trade that would never come, and waste their lives building idols to money instead of going out and reaping it from a world that was bleeding wealth into the air. Given such easy marks, the formation of the Guild began with Marst turning his sights from flensing the Counters of everything they had, to overturning and conquering every merchant cult in the Lap.
Moreover, Marst's time with the Counters showed him the scope of what the world had lost when the First Age collapsed. He saw a vacuum of power; entire industries and Creation-wide trade made possible by sorcery and artifice that had vanished. He saw markets for goods that no longer existed, and entire realms of services no longer rendered. He saw more than just pathways to trade that seemed impossible, but the way the ancient Exalts had of inventing new markets and then being the sole purveyors and regulators of the industries they had created. On top of that, they could make people want anything, to the degree that people believed their lives would be incomplete without said services rendered. As Marst continued to read, he saw the absolute dependence the Exalted had on money, and the ends they went to accrue it.
Marst could not help but feel that the real power of the Exalted was money, and so the roots of the Guild took hold in his mind: It would be a Creation-spanning organization, pushing products to the end of the world and beyond. It would corner every available market and be the sole source of goods and the services needed to produce or maintain them. It would control public interest, constantly opening new markets, cultivated and driven by salesmen who could sell water to the drowning. It would resurrect the lost markets of past ages, and it would seek to fill all the voids of fortune and production vacated by the Exalted in the wake of eschaton. Thus the Guild would wield a power to contend with the Exalted, for it was the very power they sought, and the one which held them up. He saw that now was his chance to make something for men which had previously only been for the gods: to become indispensable, to build that which lasts and must be supported, and to have the power to deny the Exalted their birthrights, or sell them—if the price was right.
Marst traveled to the River Province in RY 88, arriving in the wake of the Empress's failed invasion. With reconstruction spurring business, Marst used his newfound capital to test his idea. The experiment that birthed the Guild began with Marst systematically buying out or running out all of his competition, turning all service industries into formidable lodges to control the production of goods. Where others were trying to use money to build kingdoms, Marst was using his to control the roads between them, and the movement of materials and goods those wealthy rulers would need to survive. Almost overnight, the most powerful nations of the River Province were dependent on Marst's favor and willing to back his contracts and support his monopolies. After all, everyone feared the return of the Empress with an even greater army. Even at its inception, the Guild seemed like an impossibly strong ally, which could spur reconstruction and build up the strength of the region through organized trade and development.
Marst's experiment grew fast, rolling up merchant houses and trade leagues and spreading out to the Hundred Kingdoms in the east and west into the Threshold. It grew so suddenly at first that none could unite to stop it. Those who were bought out did not realize what they were selling to. Others tried to buy out competing interests to grow their own and stem the flow of Marst's power, only to find out that they themselves were already owned by his conglomerate, which had purchased their creditors and taken over their debts. Effectively, for a time, all attempts to hold off Marst's experiment only served to grow it larger. Willing support from merchant houses in Chaya, Sijan, and Nexus only further cemented his lock on regional trade, and the formation of the League of Many Rivers in RY 95 allowed Marst a stable platform for the formalized binding-together of all the organizations and unions he now controlled. Thus, in RY 99, the Guild was born.
While the Guild would travel as far as Chiaroscuro and Whitewall, for the next forty years it was based primarily in the River Province, where it was protected in its growth by a network of stable, powerful nations that could stave off the Realm and would not be easily overrun by hordes of barbarians. From this region, Marst began to plot the future of the Guild, which, even in his own lifetime, would begin to spread its way across Creation, reaping a harvest of wealth that had fallen from the fingers of dying god-kings.
During this time, Marst's resolve would be tested. The Empress saw that the Guild could hand her the keys to the Scavenger Lands. She sought to entice Marst into a partnership with the Realm. He responded by offering to buy Arjuf. Bribes notwithstanding, she coupled her offers with threats. Marst then began to funnel money and weapons to Threshold states that were in rebellion to the Scarlet Empire. As a result, these nations would break away from the Realm and join the League of Many Rivers. Thus Marst established an example of resistance that the Guild would follow throughout its history.
Organization
The Advent of Silver
Late in his life, Marst wrote about the need for a different material currency than jade. For all its value, jade brought undue attention to Guild movements. Spirits are drawn to it, and the Dragon-Blooded seek it with maniacal force. Furthermore, jade's production value is much higher as a constructive element, limiting the amount of jade coinage that can ever be in circulation. Marst saw that the Guild would never be able to arrest total control of the world economy from the Dragon-Blooded as long as jade was the dominant currency. So he called for the introduction of a new standard. It would need to be a precious metal that held no special value to supernatural interests and could not be so readily traced by relevant magic.
It took nearly 600 years before the Guild would introduce the silver standard and presage the end of the Realm's death grip on the Threshold. But the work of the Guild is never finished. Silver stands on shaky legs. It has yet to be accepted in many economic circles, and Guild alchemists fear that the sorcerous power of the Exalted may suffice to poison a mundane metal so that the material can no longer be traded with. Indeed, many Guildsmen hold onto Realm-based investments and ventures backed by jade, and such resistance from within prevents silver from being the strongest standard in Creation. After all, if the Guild were to put all of its interest in a metal that might be mystically converted to lead or might give off a luster that infects the body with hemorrhagic fever, the Guild would collapse almost overnight.
Marst's final testimonies also describe the mystical resonance in mundane silver which might allow it to be attuned to what remains of the Order-Conferring Trade Pattern. Supported by a mystic infrastructure that was burned into the framework of reality by the Solar Exalted, no magic would suffice to universally alter the nature of coins linked to the Pattern. To that end, Marst also described how detailing currency was necessary to link it to the Pattern: legends, seals, coats-of-arms, and the faces of figures with great destiny all aid in the Pattern's recognition of standard and scrip. Unfortunately, Marst's theories were based on conjecture fed by things he had read almost a century before, during his time with the Counters. Of these things, his memory was incomplete, and in the centuries since Marst's death, the Counters were dispersed by unknown assailants, and all of their records were burned.
The Guild forms a chain that links nations across Creation. It employs thousands from diverse backgrounds, hailing from lands whose only connection is the presence of the Guild within their borders. Such a vast enterprise varies in administrative style and aesthetic by region, but the overarching structure of the Guild is the same in every part of the world.
The ranks of the Guild break down into four rough divisions—administration, mercantile, crafts and labor.
Merchants are the public face of the Guild and its most prestigious members, running the gamut from lowly apple-cart vendors to mighty merchant princes crossing the Threshold in their perfumed and gilded wagons. Sedentary merchants known as keeps (as in: store keep, bar keep) form the reliable lower and middle ranks of the merchant class; their profits individually pale in comparison to the Guild's mighty caravans, but collectively combine into an endless stream of revenue. Above the keeps, enjoying far greater prestige, are traveling merchant princes. The most successful such princes rise to become factors—the investors of the Guild and managers of its hub cities and regional interests.
Administrators are held in less esteem, but are nonetheless vital—clerks, accountants, reeves and chars perform work that merchants have little time or inclination for. They have little opportunity to amass a fortune or gain authority in the Guild, but their pay is as reliable as they are, and they enjoy the full protections their seasonal dues afford them.
The Guild could hardly function without its countless craftsmen, from fletchers to smiths to wagon-makers, but holds little respect for most. Those who rise to the rank of master artisan form a notable exception—the masters of the Guild's various craft lodges often treat with merchant princes as equals, their workmanship and trade secrets coveted by one and all. Lodges are trade compacts within the Guild, working to pass down tradecraft secrets from master to apprentice, to force competing local craftsmen out of business, and to discover and protect vital trade secrets—the weavers of the Lodge of Black Silk, for example, are the only organization in the Threshold who know how to weave subdued ghosts into a cool, lightweight, sorcery-resistant fabric. In Brem Marst's day, lodges were universal—all blacksmiths belonged to the Lodge of Red Iron. In the modern Guild, the identities of various lodges have splintered by Direction, and the practices of Guild smiths in the South bear little resemblance to those in the West.
Laborers are never afforded true Guild membership, but are nonetheless an indispensable part of Guild operations; the Guild requires a prodigious amount of lifting and hauling. Most laborers are cheap contract or conscript workers, preferably recruited from destitute regions—they work for the Guild until a job is done, and are then turned out to go on their way. Other merchants prefer slave labor, or use of the dream-eaten, finding pay negotiations with ditch-diggers and freight haulers tedious.
The Guild itself is a pyramid, the affluent elite supported by a vast horde of laborers, craftsmen and junior members. The Directorate floats atop this edifice, an unblinking eye that oversees the overall operations and policies of the Guild. Nine hierarchs sit on the Directorate, drawn from the Threshold's most powerful and influential merchants—almost all are former factors.
Below the Directorate, the Guild radiates policy and authority through its hub towns. While the Guild owns real estate and business in most of the noteworthy population centers of the Threshold, hub towns are something else— Guild-friendly cities positioned at important crossroads or along major trade routes, where the Guild assembles its caravans, stores its goods, amasses its master craftsmen, and hosts Guild Councils.
Guild Councils are Directorates-in-miniature, assemblies of the nine most powerful and influential factors and master artisans residing in a hub town. They meet to determine overall trade strategies for the Guild within the surrounding region, rig markets, speculate on investments, and otherwise discuss profit and politics. Guild Councils also deliberate over petitions to join the Guild, resolve internal disputes among members of the Guild, and maintain the Guild's position within the hub city itself—the Guild rarely outright controls its hub cities, so keeping the local government friendly is vital.
Finally, each hub city hosts between one and twelve Guild wardens. The Guild contains a staggering number of powerful, wealthy members—and even more individuals who wish to be powerful and wealthy. While every factor worthy of the title employs investigators to weed out corruption within the ranks of his merchants, craftsmen and administrators, Guild wardens hunt more elusive prey. They look for signs of subversion to outside powers among the ranks of the factors themselves, or for conspiracies with the potential to damage the Guild's monopolies, compacts, or even its continued well-being. In RY 528, Guild wardens discovered that Night Eyes, a Lunar Exalt, was simultaneously impersonating the entire Guild Council of Caraban Crossroads; in RY 698 the merchant prince Chöm Chanap was found to have been selling rival traders to a noted raksha seductress; in RY 712 an Outcaste warden named Arryo Mirabilis uncovered a conspiracy by four young Guild engineers to flood Great Forks and hold the city's temples ransom; factors still shudder when the tale is recounted, imagining the reprisals the stunt would have provoked.
While individual Guildsmen may resent the intrusions of wardens, the Guild itself tolerates no threats directed at them. The presence of wardens and investigators helps keep the Guild focused on its primary goal: profit.
Slavery – the Hard Trade
Across the vastness of Creation, the Guild's legendary caravans trek through storms of snow and dust, drawing lines of human cargo across the backs of nations. Bid by whip and wheel, the Guild transports goods to the distant edges of Creation. It comes back with slaves, in coffles and in cages, and loaded into the hulls of ships bound for ports in lands that sound like places in a dream: Windgate, Zalakar, Kirighast, Yane, Chiaroscuro…
The Guild's trade in slaves is Creation-wide, and the backbone of the Guild's vast wealth. Where independent slavers and slave nations merely subsist on the benefits of forced labor, the Guild perpetuates slavery as an institution, and the need for slaves creates a desire for trade and the progress in industry that drives the Guild.
The hard trade is made possible by the Guild's vast and almost peerless network, which allows it to easily acquire raw materials, trade goods and services and move them to places where they are scarce or otherwise wholly unavailable. In these places, it is likely for the Guild to foster a trade in human chattel. In return for the materiel needed to support one's infrastructure or the goods to advance one's own industry, many turn to slaving as an alternative to paying from their own coffers. The benefits to the slaver are manifold.
But slavery of the few is just a first step toward the slavery of entire nations. By supplying a people with the goods they need to advance their civilization, the Guild makes people dependent on the taking of slaves. Slave states run the risk of owing their whole civilization to the Guild, and when the supply of slaves runs low, or the Guild fabricates a disinterest in slaves, a nation's goods and industries can be turned toward the Guild's service in order to cover the cost of supplies they must buy from the Guild when slaves are not in demand.
The viability of slavery comes from a surplus in the populace. Where people outnumber the natural resources (such as arable soil) or number of jobs available, it is less valuable for a farmer with only a small amount of land to hold a large number of slaves. Similarly, the owner of an ironworks may have more than enough hands to forge steel, but not enough ore to process. These are the conditions that lead to slave taking. Debtors, criminals, undesirables, and the unlucky are thrown into chains and sold to Guild slavers, who move them to Nexus and Chiaroscuro, where they are sold to places all across the world, including the Blessed Isle and the courts of the raksha.
But slavery also forms a social stratum that is almost as important in many societies as its economic benefits. In these places, the most undesirable roles and tasks are performed only by slaves, the extremes of which vary by culture. In many places, the main trade in slaves is a flesh trade, dealing wholly in slaves to be imprisoned in brothels or to be sold as courtesans to interested princes. In other places, slaves are made to herd goats and sheep, or to count apples and tend vines. The social attitude toward slaves, and what makes a task so horrific, is as variable as the slave's own opinion on his subjugation. For some, it is a never-ending torment. For others, it is the way of their culture. The latter tend to be slaves who are lucky enough to hope for manumission. The third kind of slave is the one that finds himself carried into the dominion of the Fair Folk. These slaves soon cease having any sort of opinion.
Drugs – the Soft Trade
The Guild is an empire built on vice. There is no service which the Guild will not try to provide for the right price. Part of its power has been its recognition that the harvest, production, and synthesis of drugs is key in maintaining its presence throughout the world. Even where slavery is reviled, and the Guild pennant is seen as nothing more than a flag of piracy, the demand for drugs means that the Guild will always find its way into cities whose borders it has been warned not to cross.
At the simplest level, the Guild's drug trade provides an enormous source of income—drugs are a luxury good, a vice, and the Guild has always known that an addict will eagerly spend what he can't afford to get what he doesn't need. While addicts welcome their next fix, rulers are generally less willing to allow the Guild's drugs to debase their populace. Met with such resistance, the Guild often uses necessity as a lever to force the permission of vice: A city-state that refuses to let the Guild sell opium and qat will be met with initial compliance—but also a reciprocal refusal to sell seven bounties paste to the sick, maiden tea to wealthy women, or age-staving cordial to the ruler and his court. When the principality relents on the matter of vice, the Guild's more desirable services return.
Drugs are more than a simple source of revenue to the Guild, though. The drug trade is one of the Guild's most potent political tools for assisting those it wishes to court or manipulate, as well as one of the strongest weapons with which it can punish those who have incurred its wrath. Well aware of the effects its various drugs have on a populace, the Guild has used fast, underpriced infusions of cheap, pacifying drugs such as qat, marijuana and opium to calm rebellious populations many times in the past—it has even used this method to subdue unruly satrapies at the Realm's behest. (Where the Guild does not extract political concessions or favors for such efforts, it simply sticks around to profit off of its newly-created customer base over the following decades.) There are many similar tricks for adjusting the attitude and energy of a populace: a moderate flow of opium and marijuana into a region indicates that the Guild is simply making money as usual, whereas an infusion of rock cocaine is an act calculated to destroy lives and induce economic devastation.
The Guild knows that flooding a city-state with affordable drugs is one of the most effective ways to hobble a government. With clerks showing up to work with opium smiles and guards standing watch in qat-induced dazes, efficiency drops, crime rises, and important projects slow to a crawl. The Guild uses such displays as threats—messages that wise rulers heed by giving the Guild whatever it is they want.
Those who persist in angering the Guild, or who are already beyond reconciliation, find that a pharmaceutical assault has a second, nastier phase: once the people are firmly addicted, the Guild cuts the city off. With the populace suddenly crashing into withdrawal, business grinds to a halt and violence spikes as desperate users tear the city apart looking for the next hit. The Guild sometimes seeds rumors suggesting that a government crackdown is responsible for the shortage, but usually doesn't even have to bother— populations are quick to turn their eyes to their leaders when someone needs blaming. Riots and burning buildings serve as a warning to other, more observant principalities: the Guild does not need to bestir a single company of its vast mercenary armies to destroy its enemies.
Even supernatural leaders possess little defense against such tactics—the miracles of the Exalted are many and splendid, but even they find it a difficult task to convince people to control or deny their vices. Indeed, few in number are the gods or Exalted who manage to instill such discipline in themselves.
Joining the Guild
Anyone with talents fitting one of the Guild's three member branches may petition to join the organization. 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.
An applicant must present his petition in one of the Guild's hub towns, with the assistance of a sponsor—a Guildsman in good standing who has not acted as a sponsor for another applicant within the last year and a day. The application process usually takes a month, during which time the sponsor meets with the local Guild Council to argue for the applicant's inclusion. The Guild doesn't simply accept any beggar off the street; the sponsor must provide evidence of the applicant's usefulness, often in the form of examples of the individual's craft, or letters of recommendation from persons of relevance. In other cases, the Guild Council may pose tests or challenges the applicant must overcome as proof of worth.
Applicants rarely meet directly with the Guild Council; the sponsor acts as the petitioner's advocate throughout the process. This is especially true in the case of supernatural applicants—the Guild learned long ago to sequester the silver tongues of Exalts and raksha away from those sitting in judgment over them.
When the Guild denies candidates it is most often on the basis of lack of interest—the applicant has no skill the Guild finds sufficient or useful—or conflicting ideology, rejecting applicants they believe will abuse their membership to further the goals of another organization to the Guild's detriment (very few Dynasts hold Guild membership for this reason). If the Guild Council accepts the petition, the applicant must pay initial dues generally equal to Resources •• (for unpopular or troublesome petitioners, bribes sometimes raise this value to Resources ••• or even ••••). The new member is then directed to a senior member likely to make good use of their talents.
Becoming a Hierarch
Achieving the highest rank in the Guild is no mean feat. One must lie, cheat, steal, murder, and accrue more capital than any one mortal should ever amass and still be considered to espouse humanity. In short, one must win an election.
There are few certain circumstances which lead to the election of a new hierarch. Most believe that the death of a hierarch heralds the elevation of a Guildsman to the ranks of the Directorate. Given the mortality of most hierarchs, death forms the most convenient and believable reason for such an induction. In reality, death holds little power over these proceedings. Often, the death of a hierarch sees the movement of his consciousness, his mental and material properties, and even his name, to a recipient who has been prepared to receive them. And though the Guild strenuously denies it, there has been a time where a living hierarch's death saw no change in his position. Because of the nature of his contribution to the Guild, he could not be replaced; Directorate meetings moved to a shadowland; the spectral hierarch continued to serve.
In light of this, not every election of a new hierarch begins with the death of an old one. A new hierarch might be elected to conceal the life, or continued existence (or service) of a hierarch who wishes to retain control over the Guild while effectively disappearing from the Directorate. He may be doing this to avoid the continued aggressions of a god or the Exalted, thus removing Guild interests from the warpath of the divine. Or he may be absenting himself because his direct control over the Guild is no longer favorable; perhaps he has married a demon or chosen to consort with a raksha whose very consciousness may wrap itself around his soul. In either case, his interests may be compromised. Such a hierarch may remain on as a consultant to the Directorate, with vastly reduced authority, but retaining all the material power of a veritable titan, making him an irreplaceable, individual piece of the Guild infrastructure. In such a case, the hierarch's powers must be passed on.
But sometimes the elections are set off by the emergence of a player with such financial power that his standing alone threatens the purview of one or more hierarchs. Such a player cannot be incorporated as a mere factor, because his presence in a region could see him take over the action of multiple Guild factors, wiping them out or stealing them from the Guild to join his organization. A figure who can open new markets to the Guild due to connections with the infernal or the divine, a figure who has somehow attained the nebulous support of the Lunar Exalted or who is backed by the Realm or an Eclipse Caste Solar are examples of such a person. When encountered, such a man must be courted and incorporated into the Guild's hierarchy, or driven out of business. If the Guild feels that such a figure would be impossible to control, the Guild goes to war in an effort to remove him. Indeed, the Guild functions to prevent anyone who is not loyal to the Guild from gaining such power in the first place. But if such a person would make a valuable addition to the organization, the Guild approaches him with the offer of incorporation or destruction. In essence, the approached party learns that he must win the election or be destroyed. There is no other option.
When such a party accepts these terms, elections are held.
The elections are decided by a vote of factors and master artisans in hub cities across Creation. Generally, when the Guild opens such elections, many powerful candidates for the role from inside and outside the Guild arise to announce their candidacy for the position. Sometimes factors unite, and take the risk of pooling their resources, effectively dissolving their own interests to create a person powerful enough to challenge the target of the elections. Other long-time Guild rivals or business partners, often backed by the gods or the Exalted, or indeed one of the Chosen themselves may also emerge to bid for a position on the Directorate. And to use that phrase is not a metaphor; like all positions of power in the Guild, membership on the Directorate is always for sale to the highest bidder, and many elections are spurred by the appearance of a person with the right price in mind.
Such elections are an exercise in vast corruption, murders both quiet and blatant, sabotage and epic acts of bribery, espionage, and theft. The Guild has no incentive to discourage such corruption; rather, these actions are the yardstick for a candidate's success. In a government election, the same actions would be reprehensible. In a Guild election, the ultimate victor is the one who not only bribes the most votes, but also has enough flair to convince the factors and the master artisans that they will be remembered once he has ascended to the Directorate. He must be a person who can manipulate, influence, and intimidate his benefactors without alienating himself. He must ensure the couriers of his rivals never reach their destinations, and that his bribes are always better than those of his opponents. In the Guild, someone who campaigns ruthlessly and charismatically, who convinces people to not only accept his bribes but to look the other way while the cities of their business partners burn, is someone who has mastered all the talents that make a legendary Guildsman. Invariably, to pull off such a coup requires obscene wealth, a web of favors and reputation spanning an entire Direction and more, and the influence and material resources necessary to wage a continent-spanning war of sabotage, threats, and murder. Often, the winner is the last person standing.
A Hierarch's Ascension
Exalts in the Running
An Exalt who seeks a seat on the Directorate has an epic battle ahead of him. Most concerned with the Guild's interests simply will not allow an Exalt to triumph in an election, no matter what bribes are on offer. Mortal opponents for the position will band together to dismantle an Exalt's power bases and knock him out of the running. Dominating the Guild is the belief that the organization is mortal-run so that it will always remain a harbor for mortal interests. Gods and the Exalted have a way of overlooking the plights of mere mortals, whose lives seem gadfly to those who will see infinite ages, or ride on death's back to take new breath and open eyes in a Creation that will not have forgotten them. In short, the Guild represents a clear example of mortal continuity, and proof that the actions of men and women can be as indelible and perpetual as those of the gods and the Chosen. Simply put, at some point the founders of the Guild decided that rather than be pawns enslaved by dispassionate immortals, that they would be the ones doing the enslaving. This attitude, unspoken, carried by actions, became the fever-heat behind the Guild's relentless drive for profit. Like the raksha who toil endlessly to break through the walls of the world so that they might bleed over Creation until there is nothing left, the Guild spreads out to the borders of Creation, reaping profit and devouring all who stand in their way. For both, it is a matter of survival.
This is why the Guild is resistant to the ascension of an Exalt to the Directorate. Where gods can be predicted, bought, and made to agree with the Guild's never-ending quest for profit, the Exalted more often seek to use the Guild as a puppet to some other end, twisting it away from its purpose to support their own agendas. The Guild knows and fears its own dissolution under the control of a divine hierarch who might see the Guild only as a massive engine of capital to fuel his war with whatever demons haunt his ancient memories. Therefore, any Exalt who seeks a seat on the Directorate has to be dedicated to profit before any other concern. Hierarchs who have realized the power of the Solar Exalted have often dreamed about what such a figure, when dedicated to the interests of the Guild, might do to push the Guild beyond the wildest dreams of Brem Marst. To date, no known Celestial or Solar Exalt has ascended to the Directorate.
However, such a hero might one day appear, for even within the ranks of the Guild there have been those who were Chosen. Yet, even if an Exalt were to disguise his nature, a bid for the Directorate brings added danger. The Bureau of Destiny closely monitors all Guild elections for the signs of Solar or Lunar activity, and the Wyld Hunt has, even in its failing years, had a way of being close to the most violent epicenters of the election. Sidereals who could have easily hidden their natures to vie for a seat on the Directorate have simply never tried. As the Fallen Era continues on toward schism, and as the Celestial Bureaucracy grows more indolent and corrupt, there are fewer eyes watching the agents of destiny to keep them in check. The Guild may yet see the rise of a Sidereal hierarch. But to what end would she bend the Guild?
Before assuming his duties, custom demands a newly-elected hierarch make a long, ceremonial procession from his place of residence to the great Guild Hall of Nexus. The purpose of this procession is to display the wealth of the one elected, and thus the Guild; and so it resembles a constant, months-long parade of jugglers, courtesans, musicians, dancing bears, charmed serpents, alchemical fireworks and faerie glamours. The procession passes through hub towns along the way, where the hierarch-elect is celebrated and feasted by factors looking to make a good impression—or poison their guest.
The procession also acts as a final test of the candidate's suitability for office. He must remain visible throughout the celebration, but he must also remain alive. This may be the new hierarch's first experience of the Game of Masks; whether by bodyguards, body doubles, misdirection or magic, he must display his opulence and guard his life on the long road to Nexus. By the time he arrives, he is sure to have already experienced some of the travails of the job.
Upon arrival in Nexus the new hierarch is introduced to his retinue—typically a lawyer, a multilingual translator, a cultural and political advisor, and a secretary—all of which were the personal staff of his predecessor. The first task of his retinue is to verse him on the dossiers of important factors, actors and agents within the Guild infrastructure, and to bring him up to speed on current plans of the Directorate. This is a process that continues throughout the hierarch's first year, but his first induction is a cram session where he learns who needs to be killed, who needs to be bribed, and who needs a job (sometimes all three at once). Then, very unceremoniously, he is brought mid-session into a Directorate meeting, introduced, and expected to shut up, listen, and be in pace with the topic by the end of the meeting.
Beyond that, accounts of the induction ceremony differ. Some claim the new hierarch is anointed with blood and spices, and swallows a silver coin that binds his spirit to the Guild. Others speak of meditation and attunement to an ancient First Age device that shields the hierarch's mind against magic, or of the solemn memorization of coded command-poems to permit interaction with ancient animated intelligences warded against the power of She Who Lives in Her Name and hidden away in a floor of the Guild Hall that doesn't exist.
Afterwards, the new hierarch inherits the remaining ledgers and concerns of the individual he has replaced. These may or may not correspond to his existing power base, and so a hierarch's first year is likely split between tending ongoing affairs, trading regions of authority with other hierarchs, and sitting meetings of the Directorate to discuss and vote on matters of Guild policy. During this time the new hierarch will discover unseen hands interfering in his project even as he occludes his own plans and workings from his fellows. He will come to wonder if he is seeing the rest of the Directorate meddling in his affairs, factors quietly attempting to push their own agendas into his work, or if perhaps his predecessor is not as departed as everyone has been led to believe. He refines his own masks and deceits in response, and the Game plays on.
Sitting the Directorate
What draws a mortal to seek a seat on the Directorate?
What powers does a hierarch command?
The reward of a seat on the Directorate is simple—wealth and influence surpassing that of any other mortal in Creation. Hierarchs can set policy and deliver pronouncements for vast regional swathes of the Guild in the name of increasing profit, promoting dominance, and preserving autonomy. They can throw their support behind those they wish to see rise, and need not even personally orchestrate the downfall of those who earn their ire—seekers of a hierarch's favor are quick to pull down those known to have displeased him.
Like factors, hierarchs invest in projects from their own coffers and reap the rewards of their business acumen; but the opportunities that present themselves to a hierarch are as far beyond a mere factor as the Exalted are beyond mortal men. Who else could personally finance the construction of cities and trade routes to connect them? Who else would the Guild's mighty factors approach on bended knee, bearing gifts and considerations?
Who else would be such a target? The bill for wealth to shame Heaven comes due in treachery, paranoia, viciousness; in a hierarch's endless struggle to keep grasping hands free of his fortune; in living within the Game of Masks until the hierarch comes to doubt his own identity. This is the price that awaits a mortal who would live as a god.
Against the Chosen
A Guildsman stays an Exalt's daiklave with a promise of his family returned. A merchant prince tempts a Lunar to give up her protectorate by whispering the name of her Solar mate. A Night Caste folds a factor three times and pins his body together with knives; without the password only the factor knew, a dam explodes, and all the evidence against him is washed away. The Night is now hunted by his allies, who believe he staged the flood because he had no evidence against the factor, who was blackmailing him, and that Night flooded the town to hide his own skeletons. Their idea is supported by information from mysterious sources, backed by coin from an obvious party. A god-king stands upon the highest wall of his city, staring out into the night, shedding the terrifying radiance of an angry sun. His answer to the Guild's offer is no. The darkness beyond the city walls fills with the torchlight of his enemies, their armies amassed and placed at his gates by Guild coin. A Twilight's lifeless corpse is dragged through the streets by a team of horses. She refused to assemble weaponry for the Guild, and the Wyld Hunt found her hidden workshop. These are just a few of the ways in which the Guild has orchestrated the downfall of the Chosen. For all of their individual might, as soon as an Exalt cares for something or someone, the Guild has a lever to bring him to his knees.
The Guild can threaten the Chosen because of one simple realization: the Exalted are human. Just like any other client, the Exalted have weaknesses that can be exploited: a love of vice, dependence on infrastructure to maintain their holdings, friends and family less powerful than themselves, an inability to be everywhere at once (one weakness the Guild does not share). The Exalted are not immune to temptation, extortion, or fear. What they care for can be used against them. But the Guild does not hate the Exalted, nor is it dedicated to their eradication. Rather, the Guild seeks to treat with the Exalted on its own terms, from a position of strength. This requires that the Guild sometimes come down hard on those Chosen who threaten in time to become major competitors for control in regions dominated by the Guild.
More often than not, the Guild seeks to offer power to the newly-returned Solars. Where a Solar might bankrupt himself on the cost of a single manse, the Guild can help him build a city cornered and lined with fortified manses. It can pave his streets with gold-flecked marble, run water through his wells and fountains, and people his markets with the best artisans and entertainers the world over. It can man his walls with the finest soldiers available. It can offer countless boons if only the Solar will uphold Guild trade and use his talent for politics in the Guild's favor. A Solar who rejects such an offer might not be attacked by the Guild, but he will have to watch as a rival takes the Guild's offer. That the Guild can place a Solar's enemy high above him can give pause to even the most virtuous Lawgiver. Many must consider partnering with the devil they don't know to prevent the ascension of the one they do.
As a general rule, the Guild wears a façade of support to the sun's Anathema. Given that they do business with demons and mortwights, they hold no taboo about a client so long as there is opportunity for profit. Misgivings about the dangers to their souls aside, Guildsmen rely on the Solars themselves believing any given merchant will automatically hate and fear them, and will seek to out them to the Wyld Hunt. Most Guildsmen are aware that the Realm is beyond answering their calls for help, especially with as often as the Guild instigates communication with elements the Immaculate Order has deemed blasphemous or unholy. Others simply will not call on the Wyld Hunt purely out of a desire to see the Realm waste its time and resources chasing legends. In essence, Guildsmen try to keep their personal feelings out of it, and take the long view. That is, at some point the Directorate deemed it safe to approach the Solars and see if the stories were true, if they were indeed monsters. And when Guildsmen more regularly walked away safe from those meetings than they did from those with raksha or barbaric clientele, the hierarchs mandated secret and solicitous trade with the sun-kings.
Not every Solar is interested in building a kingdom for himself. But the Guild is resourceful: Solars have been offered jobs, safe passage, and anonymity. These services, like any other the Guild renders to the Exalted, have a high price, and will always put the Exalt in the Guild's pocket for the foreseeable future. More recently, the Guild has begun to approach Solars with boons to entice them on a personal level. Amongst the things offered to Lawgivers: a collar which will pacify a Lunar Exalted; a hearthstone which could save a fiefdom from the spread of a shadowland; information on all members of the Wyld Hunt within 500 miles; the location of the Solar's own First Age tomb.
The secret nature of the Guild's dealings with the Anathema has several advantages. It makes them deniable to economic regions who despise the tainted ones. It also makes it possible for the Guild to conceal its methods from the Exalts in question, citing that to reveal their secrets would open the Exalt himself to scrutiny; as agents, the Guild can work for the Exalt without raising suspicions. The duplicitous nature of this claim gives the Guild a large advantage.
Just last year, the Guild received a letter written by an Infernal Exalt seeking the whereabouts of his mother. The Guild realized they had sold the woman to the Fair Folk. They quickly bought her back, but her soul had already been partially consumed. Instead of returning the woman and risking the Infernal's wrath, they took her to a sorcerer who was able to divide her now-pliant soul into seven distinct parts. Each was sealed into a yasal crystal, which the Guild then set about hiding across Creation.
They then approached the Infernal and claimed that an angry sorcerer split his mother's soul in seven and sealed it in crystals hidden across Creation, and gave him the one crystal they had already "found." The Slayer then practically begged their favor if only they would help him obtain the rest.
By this point, the yasal crystals had of course made their way into the hands of enemies of the Guild, whom the Infernal destroyed. The Guild made itself indispensible to the Exalt's quest, aiming him at their foes and pulling support when he hesitated. Later, the Guild simply ordered the Infernal to drive away a Lunar whose territory was nearing a hub city, a task that brought him no closer to his mother's return.
By now the Infernal realizes that the Guild has used him. But he has his mother's body and six shards of her soul. He now consorts with the demon Munaxes, and believes he will soon find a way to replace the seventh shard of his mother's soul with the hollow-imbuing power of She Who Lives in Her Name. In the meantime, he continues to pretend to be a loyal ally to the Guild, just as the Guild pretends to be a loyal ally to the Infernal.
In the Southwest, a Guildsman named Shura Kukai unearthed a relic built by Kimbery during the Time of Glory. Employing a conjurer, he interrogated one of the barzinoa and learned that Dukantha was now reviled by the Great Mother, and would go to great lengths to secure her favor once again.
Hiding the relic, he then conspired with the raksha Niaza to eat part of his memories so that he could not be forced to give away his plans. With nothing more than a sketch of the relic, Kukai was able to gain an audience with the Lintha lord. Now acting as Dukantha's agent in securing the relic—with Niaza as arbiter of his memories—Kukai directs the power of the Lintha navy against his rivals, and has been granted permission to open markets in Bluehaven.
Of course, this is all a ruse for his true ambition. Kukai's partner, Niaza, is a raksha on the path to becoming ishvara. Her peculiar powers include the ability to eat memories and to shape sorcery. Working through Kukai, she has convinced many Lintha she could devour the impurities from their minds, ridding them of their half-blooded mentalities to bring them closer to Kimbery. In reality, Niaza bites deep into the racial memories of the Lintha, going far into their mimetic past in order to touch Kimbery and get inside her power. As a consequence, Niaza has the appearance of a beautiful and hateful naga, and grows more a thing of the ocean's depths by the day.