Though the Qin Dynasty seeks to stamp out all resistance and the Sorcerer-Kings demand servitude, six great guilds endure in Evil Land—each a world unto themselves. Some work in shadow, some in markets, some in blood or flame, yet all shape the tides of survival. None can ignore them, for their reach stretches across cities, wastelands, and ruins alike.
Leader: Mistress Veyra “the Black Dagger”
Goals: Control all illegal trade routes across Evil Land, topple rival guilds, and blackmail the powerful into dependency.
Alliances: They often ally with the Guild of Assassins, and sometimes the Merchants for laundering stolen goods. They feign neutrality with Qin, but secretly smuggle to Dagoth cultists and Baron's rebels.
Resources: Hidden safehouses, smuggling tunnels beneath ruined cities, spy networks embedded in taverns and markets. Treasure hoards drawn from centuries of theft, caches of pre-ruin artifacts.
Tactics: The Thieves use precision rather than brute force. They silence guards before alarms sound, swap originals for forgeries, and manipulate black markets to destabilize rivals. Their “Silent Cloak” units infiltrate enemy strongholds weeks before assaults, mapping defenses for allies or simply selling the knowledge to the highest bidder.
Mistress Veyra herself is a legend—a master burglar said to have once robbed the vaults of Baron itself. She rules the guild with whispers and threats, rewarding loyalty with fortune and punishing betrayal with an untraceable death.
Leader: Chancellor Harun al-Merrek
Goals: To dominate trade, stabilize commerce under guild regulation, and replace monarchs and emperors as the true rulers through wealth and debt.
Alliances: They maintain fragile accords with all factions, selling arms to Qin one day and food to the Ashlanders the next. Their closest ties are with the Commoners’ Guild, whom they quietly support to maintain public goodwill.
Resources: Caravans guarded by mercenaries, fleets of river and sea craft, banking halls with iron vaults. Access to coin, credit, and rare artifacts. Spies in markets track the prices of grain, fuel, and magical reagents across Evil Land.
Tactics: Economic warfare is their blade. They manipulate scarcity, corner markets, and bankrupt foes. Armies starve when the Merchants cut food shipments; kings bow when debts come due. In open conflict, they fund mercenary bands—often from the Guild of Fighters—to do their killing indirectly.
Chancellor Harun al-Merrek is famed for his silver tongue and calculating mind. A former caravan master, he rose to power by brokering a truce between warring factions with nothing but a ledger and a promise of credit. Now he rules not with swords, but with contracts inked in blood.
Leader: General Rurik Stonehand
Goals: To be the shield of those who can pay, the hammer of those who defy them, and to maintain their reputation as the premier source of trained warriors.
Alliances: Their mercenaries fight for any who meet their price. Still, they hold long-standing pacts with the Merchants for protection and with the Commoners to provide training.
Resources: Fortified compounds such as Brickhall Barracks, armories stocked with steel, and training fields where mercenaries hone their craft. Veteran instructors turn farmers into pikemen, mercenaries into generals.
Tactics: The Fighters excel in organized warfare—shield walls, cavalry charges, disciplined formations. They hire themselves in small detachments to reinforce armies, but in great wars they sell entire companies. They also thrive in the gladiatorial arenas of Evil Land, where their champions display martial skill to remind the world that no faction can rival their blades.
General Rurik Stonehand, named for his maimed left hand bound in steel, is a warrior who fought in dozens of wars before seizing control of the guild. He believes loyalty is forged only through pay, not honor, and has never lost a contract war.
Leader: “The Faceless Master” (true name unknown)
Goals: To maintain absolute control of the murder-for-hire trade, eliminate rival killers, and wield assassination as political leverage.
Alliances: Frequently intertwined with the Thieves’ Guild, though their truce is fragile. They occasionally align with Sorcerer-Kings, who value their skill against rival tyrants.
Resources: Poison laboratories, black archives of contracts, safehouses hidden in every major city. They maintain “the Black Ledger,” a tome listing debts of blood owed across Evil Land.
Tactics: The Assassins never fight fair. Their killings are planned weeks in advance, blending disguise, poison, trap, and silence. Entire armies have been defeated by the Assassins’ blades before battles even begin, for without their generals, men falter. They excel at psychological warfare: leaving symbols, staged murders, and bodies in public places to incite fear.
The Faceless Master is a phantom of rumor. Some say he is a council of assassins acting as one; others claim he is immortal, having faked his death countless times. What all agree on: when the Master decrees a kill, no fortress is too secure, no ruler too powerful.
Leader: Archmage Seraphel the White Flame
Goals: To preserve arcane knowledge, expand magical supremacy, and act as the keepers of balance between factions. They believe only they can prevent Evil Land from collapsing entirely into chaos.
Alliances: They remain aloof, often brokers between warring powers. Still, they supply magical wards for the Merchants, and their apprentices are sometimes trained in the Fighters’ compounds.
Resources: Tower libraries filled with grimoires, enchanted forges, leyline observatories, and academies hidden in ruins. Stores of rare reagents such as demon bone, phoenix ash, and voidstone.
Tactics: Their strength lies in raw sorcery—conjured firestorms, mass illusions, wards that turn arrows to dust. Yet their true power is strategic: foreknowledge through divination, control through enchantment, manipulation through prophecy. When threatened, they simply vanish entire fortresses in shimmering veils of unlight.
Archmage Seraphel is both revered and feared, known for her silver hair that burns like fire when she channels magic. She speaks of restoring Evil Land to a “higher order,” but many suspect her true goal is dominion cloaked as balance.
Leader: Elder Branwynn Oakfist
Goals: To defend their communities, ensure survival of the ordinary folk, and resist the oppression of empires and guilds alike. They are the voice of the people, rising as a quiet rebellion.
Alliances: Strong bonds with the Merchants for supplies, the Fighters for training, and occasional truces with the Thieves who protect villages in exchange for food.
Resources: Their strength is numbers: farmers, craftsmen, bakers, smiths, and builders. Though they lack wealth or sorcery, their guildhalls double as armories of improvised weapons—pitchforks, hammers, hunting bows, and shields made of plowshares.
Tactics: Their tactics are guerrilla resistance and mass mobilization. They swarm invaders in desperate militias, sabotage supply lines, and fortify villages with clever traps. Their power is unity; no tyrant expects bakers and smiths to stand as an army. When they do, their fury is unmatched.
Elder Branwynn Oakfist is an old blacksmith who once broke a Qin general’s sword on his anvil during an invasion. He preaches that survival itself is resistance, and that every hammer swing, every loaf baked, is a weapon in its own right.
The six guilds are not equal, nor are they united. They bicker, ally, betray, and maneuver constantly:
Thieves and Assassins rule the shadows.
Merchants and Fighters dominate wealth and war.
Mages claim authority over knowledge.
Commoners embody the will of the many.
Yet together, they form a counterweight to empires and kings. Without them, Qin would already rule Evil Land unchallenged, and the Sorcerer-Kings would enslave all beneath obsidian whips.
The guilds endure because Evil Land itself endures—scarred, cunning, brutal, but unbroken.