Guild of Adventurers

The Guild of Adventurers is a rather grand name for what is, in reality, a glorified employment agency. Urova is dangerous place to live – some areas are more dangerous than others but on the whole it is not a land that smiles upon the weak. Norandor may be by far the most civilised country but the authority and power of the king and his loyal troops only extends so far. Even within that great square of civilisation that links Uris, The Wold, Timberlake and Northmeet one still finds places of great danger and evil such as the Wraith Haunt or the Barrowmoors – areas that Yaddagon XIV has (wisely) not even tried to pacify.

So who do people turn to in times of great danger? The king’s men cannot be everywhere at once, and sometimes things need to be done quickly, discreetly or without giving notice to the authorities. People need adventurers. Whether they want a disreputable thief to steal something from their neighbour, a strong sword arm to put down an orc uprising or a madman with no regard for his own personal well-being to enter a dragon’s lair and return with the creature’s tonsils – the need is there. But how do they get in touch with these men and women? The Arcanum Incognita will cast all manner of magical spells for a fee, but they won’t volunteer their priests for suicide missions….. there must be a better way than hanging around a local pub and waiting for a collection of toughs who appear to be at a loose end.

There is a better way, and this better way is the Guild of Adventurers. The Guild is one of the largest and well-organised societies in all of Urova. They do not have a membership roster, and do not collect dues from their members. The Guild fills the roll of a facilitator, an intermediary that puts those who need help in contact with the appropriate adventurers. There will always be a representative of the Guild in a specific area – often they are the landlords of the local tavern, or the local priest of the Church of Fortune’s Favour. Adventurers in the area can register with this representative, known simply as the Guildsman, tell them their strengths and what they are prepared to do. Anyone in the area wanting to hire a team of adventurers or mercenaries for a particular mission simply gets in touch with the Guildsman, who then assembles or contacts a team appropriate to the task. Equally, adventurers looking for work contact the guildsman from time to time hoping that something has come up in their field. Any payments to the adventurers are made through the Guildsman who takes a percentage of what they make, keeping some for himself and passing some on to the head of the local guild.

A local Guildsman will keep a web of local contacts, and will often know everything that there is to know about a particular area. News travels quickly around the country often because of the extensive network that this guild has in place. Some say it rivals that of the Odyssian Church, but the Sharrashan clergy are playing the comparison down. What this means is that the local Guildsman is a mine of information, although he normally charges for his services. There is one thing that he will never do, however, and that is break the integrity of the Guild. He will not divulge the locations of adventurers who have registered with him, neither will he reveal the identities of employers who wish to remain anonymous. He will act as an intermediary, for a fee, but he will not break the trust placed upon him. The entire Guild is based on trust, and if it is compromised, their position of influence would be harmed.

History of the Guild

The Guild of Adventurers was created in its present form in 168 LE by the three survivors of a group of mercenaries who slew the great blue dragon, Zalcamar. Wisden Kendennis (a rogue), Saramil Vyrn (a wizard) and Jasmin de Bauch (a bard) decided that they had tempted fate enough in their lives, and that they would use the dragon’s hoard to live the rest of their days in relative safety.

The three of them has been successful adventurers for many seasons, and had built up something of a web of contacts throughout Norandor. They used their wealth to purchase a modest building in Uris’ merchant district and steadfastly milked their notoriety for all it was worth. Soon they were able to fill the role as an intermediary for adventurers and patrons in Uris and beyond. As time passed so the sphere of influence of the guild expanded. As strange new lands were discovered so the new guild sent a representative to get the scoop on the area. As the fame of the new Guild spread, strange characters in distant lands contacted the three pledging allegiance and support.

Over the years the Guild became a massive structure, connected by a delicate web of intelligence that stretched throughout the civilised lands of Urova. The founders became deified as the greatest examples of their kind, and many attempts were made to coax them back into adventuring. In 174 LE, Jasmin was tempted to travel into the Gunstadtan Hills and perform before the Dwarven king. She arrived in the middle of a terrible battle between dwarf and orc forces. She is reported to have fought on the dwarven side, but met her death at the hands of an orcish shaman. Wisden Kendennis finally forsook the quiet life the following year, to accompany a Tribraen expedition into the Dragoncrown mountains. He was never seen again. Only Vyrn remained, and he ruled as sole head of the organisation for the next two years. The man was now over eighty seasons in age, and many suspected that only magic kept him going. Towards the end of his life Vyrn was increasingly stressed and vexed by his inability to run the entire organisation on his own. The Guild had become too large and too unwieldy. He died on 34th Coldsorrow 176, and left instructions for a Council of Adventure to administer the doings of the organisation. This was done, per his instructions, within a month of his death. The transition was smooth and the Guild became stronger than ever.

Currently, the nominal headquarters of the Guild of Adventurers is based in the Old City in Uris. In 180 LE they acquired an old and rather dilapidated temple to the Hadradan sun god and began to convert it to their purposes. The interiors were ripped out, new floors were put in, and a some shiny new paint was daubed on the outside. The process took almost two years, but when it was finished the guild had created for itself an administrative hub that is unmatched by any other society on the continent. The organisation quickly moved from its old premises in the merchant district to a far grander headquarters; it was a statement that said that Guild of Adventurers was a powerful player in the affairs of Man. They named their new home Intrepidity, and for the first time had the space, the time and the manpower to truly organise themselves.

By 204 LE the Guild boasts well over one hundred out-posts and guildsmen throughout Urova. Thousands of adventurers are registered with some, or all of the out-posts. Over the years the Guild has grown very close with the Church of Fortune’s Favour and the two work together on many issues.

Structure of the Guild

Intrepidity is home to the Council of Adventure who oversee the running of the organisation. The council has eleven members, one representative of each of the countries where Guild maintains a presence. The countries represented are Norandor (obviously) as well as Calclafique, Eldagaire, Genbasson, Junos, Kerikal, Salmaynak, Sorostrae, Tibrai, the Gunstadtan Hills and the Five Colour Kingdom. Ten of the eleven members are natives of the country they sit for. The member for the Gunstadtan Hills is not a dwarf – the dwarves have thusfar refused to take part in the guild. Instead, Guild activity in Gunstadtan is overseen by Durlan Withers, a human with close links to the dwarven ambassador, Niergan.

Each member of the council is technically equal, and members hold the chair for one month before handing it over to a colleague. In reality the member for Norandor has significantly more influence than the others. This causes a little bad feeling within the group, but by no means enough to work against the interests of the Guild. New members of the council are normally proposed by outgoing members, and voted in by the remaining ten council members. It has always been the case that the candidate suggested by an outgoing members is accepted. In the event of the death of a member, the remaining ten must select a replacement as best they can.

Seeing the Guild as an organisation run by the Council is probably a mistake. In actual fact, the organisation works completely in the reverse. At a local level, throughout civilised Urova, it is the Guildsmen who set the agenda. Guildsmen are always individuals who know the local area very well. They have either lived in the place for generations, or they are engaged in a profession where they find things out very quickly – taverners, innkeepers and priests of the church of Fortune’s Favour are the most common Guildsmen. The Guildsman is responsible for finding out as much information as he can about the local area and assimilating it. He holds information about the adventurers who have registered with him, and the patrons who have gone to the Guild for help. The Guildsman takes all this information and creates ‘news satchels’. These satchels are parcels of information, sealed with a the Guildsman’s unique moniker. The contents of each satchel are in a code that no-one has been able to decipher. Each guildsman sends six identical satchels to six other Guildsmen in the immediate vicinity. Each one of those Guildsmen sends the information on to another six. This way news is quickly disseminated across a network of Guildsmen throughout Urova. Guildsmen living on the borders communicate with their fellows in different countries and so the word spreads. There is significant overlap in the six destinations of any one information package, so that (all things being equal) most Guildsmen can expect to receive the same information twice from different sources. All things are seldom equal, however, and many satchels are lost or stolen.

Theoretically, every guildsman should eventually receive all the news from all over Urova. However, only Intrepidity in Uris has the space and the staff to deal with it all successfully. Some Guildsman may have trunks and trunks full of old memos and wouldn’t be able to find anything, but in Intrepidity everything is catalogued and ordered. It is for this reason that the Council of Adventure sits in Intrepidity. They have an army of administrators and archivists at their command who spend their time received and filing despatches from the Guildsmen in the field. The Council have easy access to all the information, to all the intelligence reports that they receive. Using all these reports they are able to make decisions that affect the entire organisation, and they then have the means to send that information back along the chain to all their outposts in temples, in and public houses.

The entire system is a self-perpetuating and works very well. At least one of every news satchel makes it back to Intrepidity where the archivists decide what needs to be done with it – whether they have already received the information or not. The Guild doesn’t openly sell intelligence as the Odyssian Church does, but they would happily negotiate a price if someone was interested in buying.

For information, the current members of the Council of Adventure are: Aldous Wrardin (Norandor), Jenwell Selendus (Calclafique), Ogan Renus (Eldagaire), Yanosh (Genbasson), Emile Vandif (Junos), Ugluk Morningstar (Kerikal), Artur Melabonn (Salmaynak), Cerecee Incantos (Sorostrae), Galvin McMuir (Tibrai), Durlan Withers (Gunstadtan) and Diamond Hilbin Jan Guneetherish (the Five Colour Kingdom).

Major Places of Influence

From the above text it is easy to get the notion that Urova has been civilised by the council, and that no matter where one goes, it is no more than a hop, skip and jump from the nearest Guildsman – this is not the case. The truth is that the Guild is strongest in Norandor, and probably always will be. In every human settlement of any size within the civilised square, one could expect to find a Guildsman. In major cities such as Vrex Cross, Timberlake and Northmeet there will be more than one. In Uris there are a dozen, not counting Intrepidity itself. Beyond the square, out toward Narrisham and the Úngorn representation is a little thinner on the ground. Out in this part of Norandor a settlement would have to have a thousand souls in order to see a guildsman. New Guildsmen are appearing all the time, but the process is a slow one.

Beyond Norandor, the guild becomes a little more insular. The Guild of Adventurers in Tibrai considers itself to be a Tibraen organisation, with Intrepidity as little more than a useful resource that they haven’t the opportunity to plunder. They send information and they receive it, but that’s about as far as it goes. This doesn’t work too badly for either side, but it should be realised that outside Norandor, Guild representation is less common. One would find them in the major cities of Salmaynak, Calclafique and the others but probably not beyond. As a result, information about countries outside Norandor is less complete and reliable.

Allies and Foes

The Guild maintains as neutral an outlook as it can to all strata of Urovan society. As far as they are concerned, anyone can be a client and anyone can be an adventurer. Whether or not the Guild involves itself in evil and underhand schemes is normally up to the discretion of the individual Guildsman, however there are two credos that most Guildsman would never break.

The first is that they would not involve themselves in a scheme that was directly against the legitimate (i.e. ruling) government of any Urovan country. Getting involved in politics is too much hassle than its worth, they say. Secondly (and similarly), they will not support any action directed against any particular religious faith. Individuals wanting to hire assassins won’t go to the Guild of Adventurers, neither will revolutionaries or religious radicals.

As a result, the Guild has managed to minimise its enemies. As far as allies are concerned, they have a close working relationship with a number of the religions. The Church of Fortune’s Favour and the Guild are close for obvious reasons, but many of the other faiths view the Guild as a useful tool for its members. Many religions want their young clerics to get out into the world, spread the words of their god and generally come back with slightly more nonce than they had when they left. There are no religions who actively oppose their members being registered with guild and some (such as the Fortune’s Favour and the Church of Fire) openly encourage it.