The Functioning of the Guilds

Dorromee Ado, Grand Scholar, the Central Guilds, Tarnath

The Guilds, which teach Channels how to master The Six Energies, are one of the most powerful forces on the Tamarran continent. While they largely stay out of mundane politics, they are still a massive organization, and require a good deal of structure just to run.

While many think of The Guilds as one monolithic entity, they are actually six separate organizations, each with some unique traditions and rules, under one umbrella. However, in the interest of Energetic research, and of supporting all Channels across the continent, The Six Guilds have established ways of working together (described below), and consistently showing a united front.

Guild Governance

The Guilds of the Continent are governed by a central body known as The Guild Council, made up of six individuals who are the head of their respective Guild.  They operate out of the Central Guildhouse in Tarnath, and meet with each other on a biweekly basis (or more frequently, when necessary).

The Guild Council is also supported by an Advisory Board and an extensive staff of wards. Wards (sometimes called “foundlings”) comprise most of the non-channels in the Guild structure. They come from all of the Ten Races (and sometimes other species, as well), and are generally brought into the Guilds at an early age and given training and education. There has been some controversy over the practice of taking in these wards. Some charge the Guilds with forcible abduction and brainwashing, while others contend that most of these individuals are orphans or otherwise abandoned and lost children, who are given opportunity far beyond what their lot in life would have otherwise offered. But this is a discussion for another day.

Within each individual Guild a head Channel has top authority, making all necessary decisions.

Funding

Each local guildhouse is responsible for collecting tithes and other sources of income from individual members, with the regional guildhouses ensuring collection from these guilds themselves. They then pass on this funding to the Guild Central Council, which allocates the money. Some of this funding goes towards special departments, such as the GERC and the Aegis of The Six, but the majority of it is divided evenly amongst The Six Guilds.

Research

Since each Guild specializes in one Energy, research efforts are primarily handled by each Guild individually, with cross-Energetic research projects being the province of the Guild Energetic Research Coalition. (See previous blogs for a more in-depth discussion of the GERC.)

Security

Security is also a shared matter for the Guilds. Guildhouses are generally built together — either in one building, in the case of smaller locales, or in a single large compound, for more important centers.

The Guilds make use of Energetic effects in their security, and depending on their size and importance, Guildhouses are assigned security forces from the Aegis of The Six — often a number of combat-specialized Somans and Evokers, supplemented by Mentarchs specializing in detection. Some guildhouses also provide their own security personnel, drawn from member volunteers. All Guildhouses have at least some non-Channel guards (drawn from the Guild’s wards) dedicated to their security. These guards, too, are members of the Aegis of The Six.

The Central Guildhouses are also the home base of the Enforcers, making them some of the safest places on the Continent.

Dorromee Ado, Grand Scholar, the Central Guilds, Tarnath

Sula 26, SP~5,022

Acquisitions and Archival is one department that every GERC division consults regularly. A&A gathers and catalogues everything from rare materials for imbuing Energetic objects (and for using Spells, in the case of the Non-Guild Energetic Division) to historical Guild documents, to unexplained Energetic objects found in the world. A&A is also the division that maintains the GERC libraries spread throughout the continent; while there are smaller libraries at almost any GERC research outpost, each of these borrows their books from the massive central library located in Naldrin City. Referred to simply as “The Vault,” this library contains approximately 800,000 texts that are maintained by a small army of archivists.

A&A is unique among GERC divisions in that, because of the sheer number of workers employed, the majority of its active members are not Channels. While members of every Guild are a part of A&A – Mentarchs, Mystics, and Evokers are especially useful, the former for library and information-related tasks and the latter two for analysis of Energetic artifacts – the Vault is staffed by over 100 members who maintain order in the library at all costs. These archivists are highly trained and highly knowledgeable – and given the reverence of most GERC members for knowledge in general and books in particular, they are treated with deference by even the highest-ranking GERC members.

One of the treasures stored in the deeper vaults of the A&A’s archive are some of the original texts from Lissalana, a Zweyjen sorcerer who founded the semi-religious, semi-scientific sect known as “Wholewalkers.” After Lissalana encountered a rather unusual daemon who showed her Ethem in Its entirety, as if viewed from miles and miles above Its surface, she reported that it was possible to walk north through the icy wastes of Tamarra and reach a kind of hub. This hub connects to other continents, she says, and you can reach them all on foot. These documents, of course, are kept under close guard. It’s not known whether they’re true, but they have intrigued researchers and browsers alike.

The current division head of A&A is Mevvar Akcher, a low-Barrier dwarven Mentarch who nevertheless has an astounding breadth of knowledge across a variety of academic fields. Mevvar, at 34 years old, is quite young for a division head, but has proven himself to be an outstandingly competent administrator.

How it All Works

By Mekreen Dronnaal, Professor, Naldrin’s First University

The IC is exactly what it sounds like: it comprises several members from each major GERC division. The IC serves two primary purposes: first, to encourage constant cross-disciplinary communication within the GERC. That is the purpose of the Coalition, after all – to unite researchers from all Guilds, races, and disciplines. Second, the IC serves as a balance to the Resource Dispersal and Governance’s (RDG) executive power.

If the IC decides that one of the RDG’s rulings is unjust or, in more extreme circumstances, that an RDG member is corrupt or incapable of performing their duties, they can vote to overturn the decision or oust that member from governance. The former takes a 2/3 majority vote, while the latter takes a 3/4 vote. The former is not common but certainly not unheard of; the IC veto is usually just a bargaining chip in the pocket of the GERC division heads, but if there are substantial disagreements between the two groups it can come into play. The latter, ousting a Governance member, has only happened a handful of times in the last several centuries. Perhaps the most notable was in SP~4,909 – which astute readers may recognize as the beginning of the Wars of Sorcery, the beginning of the Guild’s formal outlawing of the practice of sorcery. Sorrel Kehn, a human Mentarch, swayed the council to eject Nahru Urua, a heolas Mystic who was staunchly opposed to what sahn* described as “nothing short of genocide.” Urua’s ejection from the council was the tipping point in favor of the Wars’ inception.

There is no “head” of the Interdivision Council, but a Speaker (who has equal power with every other member) moderates meetings, and is elected annually from among the division heads. The current speaker is Lihanu, head of the Sojourners. The head of each GERC division is automatically included in the IC; each then receives up to five additional representatives (voted in every two years by the division in question), based on the number of members they have and their seniority.  

*The gender-neutral pronoun used for heola.

“The history of the Kings of Tarnath is long and is both good and bad. Falfosta was, generally speaking good. For a human.” — Achrovach, Ushen Teller of History.

Falfosta: The Absent King, or The King Who Watched. Born in the year SP˜2,740 and coronated SP˜2,764. Falfosta was known as one of the great rulers of Tarnath; he brought peace and prosperity to the city, kept it free from war for his reign, and was instrumental in the founding of the GERC.

Falfosta was also one of the last human kings in Tarnath. Until his rule, humans enjoyed a kind of passive privilege over other races. Humans were the primary movers in constructing multi-race cities millennia ago – sometimes building cities from the ground up, as they did with Tarnath, and sometimes simply occupying and diversifying a city built by other races (this is precisely what they did with Naldrin, which used to be almost one hundred percent dwarven). Now, this diversity was a great thing in principle, but in practice it was not instrumented terribly well. Humans brought in other races with promises of jobs according to their perceived specialties: they hired dwarves and ishiris almost exclusively as stoneworkers, ushens as gardeners, wellyns as tinkerers and repairmen.

Many of the stereotypes the humans based their hiring on were accurate to an extent; of course ishiris are creatures of stone, and of course ushens have a natural bond with the earth and its flora. But these are not the only things each race can do; to say that ishiris are only ever stonemasons is ridiculous. How would ishiris eat if they had no farmers, no cooks? How would kamaris build houses without architects and laborers? Thousands of members of the Ten Races were brought into booming cities only to be categorized exclusively by their race.

Over the centuries, by virtue of the demand for these skills, each of the Ten Races was pigeonholed into stereotypical jobs, whereas humans were free to occupy most any profession or caste.  Most notably, the realm of politics was almost exclusively theirs. This system of privilege continued for millennia, becoming more and more deeply ingrained in societal perceptions until most people thought an ishiri gardener was simply ridiculous, or an ushen magistrate was a fish out of water. Er. A… bull out of pasture? I suppose that’s more of a zweyjen phrase, come to think of it. Anyway. Hm. So the most pernicious part of this system was that most people were convinced it didn’t exist: ask someone and they would tell you, “Well, dwaheelies do have some public offices! And one of my best friends is a zweyjen carpenter!” – and the system kept on its merry way.

And then, well, Falfosta came along.

Falfosta was the first king to actively hire against these norms: he employed ushen advisors, wellyn cooks, zweyjen scholars. While he didn’t create any legal requirement to go against the norm, he subverted it through his actions. Some scholars argue – and I must admit, I did touch on this in my thesis graduating from Naldrin’s First – that Falfosta set the stage for the first non-human ruler of the city, the kamari queen Lemesta, who took the throne in SP˜2,876. Lemesta was extraordinary. She was the first… well. Yes. I can get into her later.

Dorromee Ado, Grand Scholar, the Central Guilds, Tarnath

Sula 33, SP~5,022

The Guild Energetic Research Coalition, commonly known as GERC (that’s GURK, not JERK), is the largest research organization on the Tamarra Continent, as we discussed in an earlier blog.  In this blog, and following blogs, we will discuss some of the various parts of this vast organization.

Resource Dispersal and Governance

While this division might have the most boring name of any GERC division, it is in fact the main governing authority for the Coalition. Overall, the main mission of the RDG is to temper the individual passions of division heads in favor of a more balanced, “big picture” view of the research the GERC should be doing.

To be clear, the power in the GERC is decentralized; each division has its own directors who can make many decisions without ever consulting the RDG, and who can even overturn some of the latter groups’ decisions for their own division (see Division Head Council below; there are checks and balances in place to prevent particularly egregious corruption). The RDG does, however, set policy for the GERC as a whole, and they control the allocation of funds within the Coalition; while division heads can overturn many decisions, this tends to boil down to politics. Each division has a minimum funding requirement that depends upon their size, average materials costs, and so on, and is quite hard to change; it takes a 3/4 majority vote of the RDG to change established funding minimums. Even so, the minimums usually come out to around 60% of a given division’s necessary costs in actual terms – so it is in most divisions’ best interest to find a halfway point between the RDG’s requests and their own planned projects if they want enough funding to keep all their members happy.

The RDG is composed of fourteen members: two members of each Guild (who cannot be full GERC members, but have usually been with the GERC in some capacity before election), plus two non-Channels. These last two places were controversial when they were first added in SP~4,864, but the RDG at the time had just recovered from a period of bureaucratically crippling internal division. The DHC convened an emergency council and cast a rare unanimous ballot to add two members of Governance who were completely unaffiliated not just with the Guilds, but with any solidarity at all around Energetic channeling. In the century and a half since they were added, the two non-channels have grown to be valued additions to the RDG – even if there are still some members who grumble about them behind closed doors.

The current president of the RDG is Amovar Kagu, a human Charismatic who was raised by an ishiri family in Naldrin City. Kagu is generally respected as a skilled administrator and mediator, able to piece together the various requests and demands of each division to make everyone, if not ecstatic, at least content. She is a veteran politician, having served time on several of Naldrin’s many legal councils, and it shows; while she has not crossed the line into outright corruption, she does not hesitate to roll up her sleeves and get her hands dirty when necessary. Given that she tends to use her maneuvering for results that are beneficial overall, most GERC members turn a blind eye to it.

Wyrd (WEErd) Division

Most GERC members agree that the Wyrd Division is a little… off. Almost every member of the Division has transcended at least one Barrier in Shadow. They study Wyrd energy, a corrupted version of one or more of the fundamental Six Energies that make up the world.  They also examine more practical, applied areas like automaton development.

The current head of the Division is Kemmfaut Lap-Kep, a wellyn who has achieved the remarkable feat of transcending two Barriers in each of the six Energies. One of her eyes has a bright purple iris, while the other is completely white, with no iris or pupil at all. She has no tongue – she speaks in Quen sign language – and scars cover her face and body. Stories abound throughout the GERC of how she came to be this way: was she born with those eyes, or were they the result of some strange ritual? Did she remove her own tongue, or was it taken from her?

The Role of the Aegis of the Six in the Guilds

Dorromee Ado, Grand Scholar, the Central Guilds, Tarnath

The Aegis of the Six (the Aegis, for short) is an internal security force maintained by all the Guilds collectively. Because the Guilds are neither a political nor a military organization, they do not have any sort of standing army.  However, Guild houses contain many valuable items, and can sometimes be the targets of attacks by Sorcerers, rogue Channels, or anti-Channel groups. That’s where the protection of the Aegis comes in.

The Aegis consists of both Channels and non-Channels. (Channels have an affinity with, and can therefore manipulate and control, at least one of the Six Energies.) There are about 150 Channels and 2,500 Guild Wards (non-Channels who work for the Aegis) spread across the continent of Tamarra. They are trained in the arts of both combat and detection, with the sole purpose of defending the Guild houses from everything from covert infiltration to overt assault.

Command Structure

The Aegis of the Six has adopted a quasi-military hierarchy, with a General in charge of the Aegis as a whole and a Lieutenant overseeing each of the four regions of Tamarra. Interestingly, the Guild Charter stipulates that these positions must be held by Wards, who are not Channels. As strategists, they must be well-versed in the use of every conceivable type of Power, weapon, and mundane tactic that could be used.  These five commanders are said to be among the greatest military minds on the continent (there are some rumors that the Mentarchs Guild has given them enhanced mental prowess for this purpose).

Currently, the Lieutenant overseeing the Southern Region is a dwaheely named Teesu, the Lieutenant overseeing the Northern Region is a crawn named Daz Trakh, the Lieutenant overseeing the Central Region is an ushen named Kholein, and the Lieutenant overseeing the Naldrin Region is a dwarf named Tork, of the Steelsmith Clan. The General is a crawn named Vizzex Rizisz.

The Enforcers

There is one small group within the Aegis dedicated to offensive missions that could best be called “special operations.” This group is known as the Enforcers, and their purpose is to put down rogue Channels who pose a threat too difficult to be dealt with by local governments, to infiltrate and destroy violently anti-Guild organizations, and to hunt down and destroy sorcerers.  (Historically, there has been a long and often violent conflict between Channels, who use scientific methods to control the Six Energies, and Sorcerers, who use non-scientific methods, such as chants or words of power, to manipulate each of the Six Energies.)

The Enforcers are made up of 36 Channels — 6 from each Guild — all of whom must have overcome at least the 12th barrier in their primary Energy, and the 6th barrier in that Energy’s opposing Energy. These Channels are specialized in combat, all have at least some proficiency with weapons and armor, and some are highly talented warriors even without using their Powers. These Channels are joined by 150 Guild Wards, some of the most highly trained (and, it is strongly rumored, Energetically enhanced) warriors in Ethem. They are specifically trained in fighting Energy users and resisting Energetic effects.

The Enforcers are led by a Commander, who answers only to the General of the Aegis. While the Commander takes broad orders from the General, they are generally given great autonomy to deal with situations as they see fit. The current Commander of the Enforcers is known as Ordon of the Whirling Blades.

There are some occasions when The Enforcers are utilized in other ways. Large political entities or organizations will sometimes hire them to deal with other problems  — helping to defend a city from an army of rampaging julkas, for instance. The Guilds do this only rarely, as they try to stay out of politics, and only do so when they feel they are safe from repercussions. Their most extensive involvement in non-Energetic affairs was in The Stillness War, when all the nations of the continent recognized them for their heroic contributions to defeating the undead scourge.