4A. Prominent City Guilds

Assassins Guild

The Assassins thrive on secrecy and deceit; masking their actions and intentions in layers of subterfuge – even among their own. Joining this guild is next to impossible.

Beggars Guild

Once no more than a collection of beggars sticking together to avoid persecution, beatings, and robberies from others, the Beggars’ Guild has grown into a minor  power in the City State of Khromarium. Beggars frequently overhear bits and pieces of various conversations and turn some of this information into power. Some of this information leveraged the Oligarchy into acknowledging their right to existence in exchange for silence. The Beggars’ Guild controls several criminal operations in Khromarium and are thus considered rivals by the Thieves’ Guild. The  Beggars’ Guild maintains a precarious existence through careful dissemination of information. Beggars are expected to turn over 20% of their earnings to the Guild. In return, they get gruel twice a day and a place to sleep on a first-come first-served basis.    

Brewers Guild

This guild has only 44 members, but it produces a prodigious amount of drink for Khromarins and for export. Guild members annually turn out thousands upon thousands of barrels of wine, beer, and various liquors, including the distinctive “Tsarrk”: a ​Khromarium​ fortified wine that is fiery, orange, slightly almond flavoured, and equivalent to sherry. Tsarrk is 2 silver pieces per jack, or 7 silver pieces per bottle. This is a difficult guild to join; years of apprenticeship to a member are  necessary (or outstanding credentials in other brewing guilds). The Master is careful to keep the membership low so competition will not hurt guild members. The  guild has also gone a long way towards standardizing sizes of alcohol for sale:   

● Jacks are large drinking horns sealed with wax, usually purchased for a household's consumption.

● Bottles are ceramic or glass, with wax-sealed corks; they are about the equivalent of a jack in volume, but inevitable are for finer brews.

● Small Keys are small hand-kegs of 2 gallons; about 10 lbs, 12" long and 8" across 

● Casks hold 12 gallons; about 2' long and 18" across.

● Barrels hold 30 gallons and are the most common containers for shipping;  3-5' long, 2-3' across 

● Butts are 100 gallon barrels; 6-7' long and 3-5' across.

● Tuns are the massive 250 gallon barrels usually set directly into the walls of a taproom, with taps driven directly into the tun; 8-10' long and 6-7' across.   

The Courtesans Guild

The guild’s members are women with training and skills in many areas, both social and erotic. Its members are always in demand throughout the city as companions, escorts and lovers. Few know that the Guild is in fact a network of female spies, assassins, thieves, and mercenaries. The guild is run, with merciless efficiency, by Lady Amphisbia. She wields considerable influence through a web of favours, prestation, and intelligence-gathering; this influence allows her to remain neutral in the war between the Assassins and Thieves Guilds. Lady Amphisbia maintains luxury apartments for a bohemian clientele of successful artists, performers, courtesans, assassins, and adventurers. This helps her keep a finger on the pulse of the city and ahead of any trends. Only women can join this guild but joining is next to impossible, new members are normally recruited.

The Magician's Guild

The Magician's Guild wields tremendous political and financial power despite counting only a few dozen sorcerers in its ranks. Along with the Hyperborean noble families and inquisitors of the Xathoqquan Orthodoxy, the Magicians' Guild maintains a legal monopoly on sorcery. It has wealth in lands, persons, and businesses. It has its own internal laws that trump local law and binds all  associated lesser guilds*. Various cabals scheme and compete against each other within the guild; some say this is the only reason the Guild doesn't rule the city. Each magical school save necromancy is represented and each school hoards knowledge to the extent that some spells are virtually unknown outside a particular school. Aside from the Guild hierarchy, wizards are grouped into houses, cults, and secret societies that are frequently at odds with each other while presenting a unified front to the outside world. As a consequence, spells are jealously guarded and rarely shared between members (and always for a dear price). Thus, enterprising young wizards often take to adventuring to increase their repertoire of spells with the encouragement of the Guild.   

Apprentices enter at age ten and are subjected to a brutal weeding process, with failures doomed to a life of labour in an associated lesser guild. Apprentices are taught the basics of their craft, enough to qualify them for journeyman status at the age of 18 but not enough to threaten the status quo. Membership is reserved for those that start as an apprentice.  

*Associated lesser guilds encompass trades vital to the practice of sorcery such as bookbinders, alchemists, jewellers and procurers of reagents.    

Brotherhood of the Ashen Worm

A Cryomancer cult within the Magicians' Guild that venerates Yikkorth, "The Ashen Worm". The Brotherhood has been in a slow decline for centuries and most of the current members are past their adventuring years. Of late, promising apprentices have been cultivated in the hopes of  invigorating the cult. The Brotherhood are enemies with a Pyromancer cult of Helios called the Conventicle of the Eternal Flame.   

Conventicle of the Eternal Flame:    

Illuminates of the All-Seeing Eye:   

Mariners’ guild

The mariners’ guild serves all the towns along the coast, providing a bunk and a  meal for sailors passing through. Sea captains in search of a crew stop here, as do others seeking news from afar. The guildhall is an excellent place to discuss seafaring, as well as the various threats to navigation along the coast. The Guild represents the interests of ship captains and merchant-fleet owners who were based in or often travelled to the crown jewel of Hyperborea. This guild lists as members ship captains, seafaring merchants, and fleet owners based in Khromarium, or who often trade with Khromarium. The Guild represents the members' interests before the oligarchs. It provides them with sailing and navigation training, maintains emergency warehouse space, and provides lodging and a private bar for visiting members at the guild's headquarters, the Mariners' Hall. The guild's uniform was red hats with white plumes and red shoulder cloaks.   

As the members' ship captains sail into Khromarium's harbour, they are assigned a Guild pilot. The sign that the ship needs a guild pilot was it lowering all sails and  running a red signal. The docking fees and pilot fees are waived for paying members and the pilot is always accompanied by a guard patrol. The City Guard always inspects the ship's crew and cargo once they enter the harbour to protect the city from hostile elements and highly illicit substances and activities.    Mariners' Hall is located on Cedar Street, in the Dock Ward. The guild offers entrance to everyone who can afford to pay the 50gp entrance fee. The members of the guild pay 10gp a year.   

Mercenaries Guild

The Mercenaries Guild of Khromarium operates under a special permit from the city. Mercenaries hired directly from the guild are loyal to their jobs, skilled, and  can generally be trusted. They will undertake a range of specific tasks for a fixed salary – guard this camp while we're gone, escort us from point A to point B, guard the packhorses outside a dungeon entrance, escort any treasure back to safety. etc. Exploring and looting a monster-filled dungeon is typically not one of the services  the guild offers.   

Many adventuring parties purchase a charter from the Mercenaries Guild for an annual fee, 50gp, granting them legitimacy in the eyes of local lords who frown on armed commoners.   

Merchants' Guild

The is by far the most important guild of Khromarium. This is  mainly because it is the merchants who are largely responsible for the prosperity of the city. Although the guild does not tolerate outside competition, they generally take a laissez faire approach to the business of their own members. The Merchants' Guild is dominated by three mercantile families- Haagen, Ruggbroder, and Steshian. Until recently, a fourth family, Taugan, was an important player in trade. However,  their power was broken forever after their head was caught up in a scandal involving a Chaos Cult. To become a member of the Merchants Guild is time consuming and can be very expensive.

Ratters' Guild

Rat Catching in Khromarium. The Ratters’ Guild in Khromarium is based in a room above one of the many drinking holes just outside the industrial area. This organisation looks after its members’ interests and deals with the occasional contract from Khromarium’s City Council for Health, Education and Welfare to exterminate vermin in public buildings (in fact the City Council is meant to  permanently employ a body of Rat Catchers for this work, but since the Mayor seems reluctant to fund them, the Catchers of the city are left to operate on a freelance basis). The guild also has long-standing contracts with the city’s mercantile concerns, for dealing with the rats that infest the merchant’s warehouses, which line the docks. Rat Catchers in Khromarium may often be  distinguished by their high-crowned hats of rat-skin, this is just a popular fashion amongst members of the Guild, not a uniform as such, though it is so ubiquitous an article that it can be safely assumed that anyone wearing such a hat will be one of the city’s Catchers - and that all the city’s Catchers wear such hats. Some years ago stories circled the city of an individual who was able to coax rats out of their holes by playing a bright and lively air upon a flute. Reports regarding the man differ, but most agree that he came to a bad end, exposed as a worshipper of a proscribed deity. FULL