The Makers and Traders
The Craft Guild represents Silverwick's economic backbone—the artisans, merchants, and laborers who produce goods, provide services, and keep the town functioning through skilled work. They are blacksmiths and carpenters, weavers and tanners, bakers and brewers, hunters and trappers, masons and millers.
While the Guild of Frost Authority controls resources and regulations, the Craft Guild controls labor, production, and trade. This creates constant tension—both are essential, both compete for authority.
Their symbol is a compass rose overlaid with crossed tools—hammer and chisel, needle and thread, knife and awl. It represents precision, skill, and the many trades united under one banner.
The Craft Guild has no single leader. Instead, a Council of Masters governs—representatives from major trades who meet weekly to negotiate, argue, compromise, and set guild policy. Currently twelve masters serve, including Miller Oren Tallow, Smith Kaelen Ironhand, and Matron Bess Warmhearth.
Structure and Organization
The Council of Masters: Twelve seats representing major trades:
The Smith (metalworking, forging, Red Iron crafting)
The Miller (grain processing, bread production)
The Carpenter (building, repairs, furniture)
The Weaver (textiles, clothing, rope)
The Tanner (leather goods, furs, boots)
The Brewer (ale, cider, preserved beverages)
The Hunter (meat, furs, wildlife management)
The Mason (stonework, wall repairs, construction)
The Merchant (trade coordination, import/export)
The Baker (bread, preserved goods, food preparation)
The Healer (medical care, herbal remedies)
The General Trades (miscellaneous crafts)
Each Master is elected by their trade's journeymen and masters. Terms last five years. The Council meets weekly in a large hall near the market plaza—long tables, good light, constant smell of sawdust and leather.
Decisions require majority vote. The system is messy, argumentative, and slow—but ensures no single trade dominates.
Trade Hierarchy:
Apprentices: Young people (ages 12-20) learning a trade. Work under a master, receive room and board, learn skills.
Journeymen: Completed apprenticeship but not yet masters. Skilled workers who can operate independently. Most craftspeople remain journeymen for life—comfortable, skilled, respected.
Masters: Own workshops, take apprentices, vote in guild matters. Achieving master status requires demonstrated skill, ability to teach, and guild approval.
Council Masters: Elected representatives. Not necessarily the most skilled but the best negotiators and trade advocates.
Economic Power
The Craft Guild's power comes from controlling what people need:
Essential Production: You need tools? The Smith makes them. Bread? The Miller and Baker provide it. Clothes? The Weaver and Tanner supply them. Buildings repaired? The Carpenter and Mason handle it.
The Guild of Frost Authority controls resources. But the Craft Guild controls the labor that transforms resources into usable goods. Both are necessary.
Labor Solidarity: If the Craft Guild decides to slow work (rare but possible), Silverwick grinds to a halt. This gives them leverage in negotiations. They rarely use it—stopping work hurts everyone—but the threat exists.
Trade Specialization: Certain trades maintain effective monopolies. Only Kaelen Ironhand can forge Red Iron. Only Miller Oren can efficiently process grain with his ice-liquification Glimmer.
The Guild of Frost Authority wants to regulate pricing, ensure no single craftsperson becomes too powerful. The Craft Guild resists—arguing that skill and knowledge deserve compensation.
Price Setting: The Craft Guild sets suggested prices for goods and services—not mandatory, but strong recommendations. Individual craftspeople can charge more or less, but departing too far from guild rates risks social censure.
The Guild of Frost Authority wants price controls, especially during shortages. The Craft Guild argues markets should determine value. They compromise constantly.
Relationship with Other Factions
Guild of Frost Authority: The primary tension. Constant negotiation, compromise, and mutual resentment.
Recent conflicts:
Authority wants to ration firewood for workshops. Craft Guild argues this cripples production. Compromise: increased cutting in designated forest areas with monitors.
Authority wants to regulate prices during shortages. Craft Guild refuses. Compromise: voluntary price restraint with public shaming for extreme gouging.
Authority wants Glimmer-users like Kaelen and Oren to contribute more to wall maintenance. Craft Guild argues this reduces production time. Compromise: rotating schedules that minimize disruption.
Both need each other. The Authority needs craftspeople to transform resources into goods. The Craft Guild needs the Authority's resource allocation and protection. So they argue, compromise, resent each other, and continue working together.
Solstice Faithful: Functional relationship. The Craft Guild builds and maintains the Chapel, provides goods for ceremonies, receives spiritual services in return. Mutual respect without deep ideological alignment.
Ice-Singers Guild: Economic competitors and practical partners. The Craft Guild would love to break the Ice-Singers' washing monopoly. The Ice-Singers refuse. They coexist through tense equilibrium.
The Craft Guild respects Ice-Singer skill but resents their exclusivity. The Ice-Singers see Craft Guild complaints as attempts to control what should remain independent.
Both provide essential services. Both negotiate prices. Both guard their autonomy. They clash occasionally but avoid open conflict.
The Winterguard: Strong working relationship. The Craft Guild provides weapons, armor, repairs, and equipment. The Winterguard protects craftspeople working outside walls, ensures trade routes stay safe, prevents theft.
The Smith and Carpenter work closely with Watch leadership—ensuring guards have quality equipment. The Hunter coordinates with patrols about Frost-Walker movements.
This is Silverwick's most functional cross-faction relationship—both sides clearly understand what they need from each other and deliver reliably.
Current Challenges
Labor Shortage: Silverwick's population hasn't grown significantly, but work demands increase. Walls need more repairs. Harvests require more hands. Winter preparations take longer. There aren't enough skilled craftspeople.
Apprenticeships take years. You can't quickly create masters. The shortage means longer hours, delayed projects, exhausted workers.
Resource Constraints: Recent harvests have been adequate but not abundant. The Guild of Frost Authority tightens resource allocation. This limits what craftspeople can produce—less metal for the Smith, less grain for the Miller, less leather for the Tanner.
The Craft Guild argues they could produce more with better resource access. The Authority argues resources must be rationed carefully. Neither is wrong. Both are frustrated.
Glimmer Dependency: Key production depends on specific Glimmers. Oren's ice-liquification runs the mill. Kaelen's Red Iron forging creates superior tools. If either dies without passing on their Glimmer (and most can't be taught), production suffers catastrophically.
This makes the Craft Guild nervous. Too much dependency on individuals with irreplaceable abilities.
Succession and Training: Older masters are aging. Finding worthy successors takes time. Some trades risk losing accumulated knowledge when current masters die. The Council debates how to preserve knowledge—written manuals, multiple apprentices, formal teaching programs—but implementation is slow.
Competition for Apprentices: Every trade wants the best young people. But there aren't enough quality apprentices to go around. This creates recruitment competition, occasionally poaching, and resentment between trades.
Why They Matter
The Craft Guild transforms survival from theoretical to practical.
The Guild of Frost Authority can ration grain perfectly, but someone must grind it, bake it, deliver it. The Ice-Singers can maintain the river, but someone must build boats, fashion ice-fishing equipment, create containers. The Solstice Faithful can perform ceremonies, but someone must build the Chapel, forge the bells, weave the ceremonial robes.
Everything physical in Silverwick—every tool, building, garment, weapon, piece of furniture, meal, preserved good—exists because a craftsperson made it.
The Craft Guild represents human capability—the ability to transform raw materials into useful things through skill, knowledge, and effort. This is fundamentally hopeful. In endless winter, humans persist not just by huddling together but by making, building, creating.
Every time the Smith forges a blade, the Carpenter raises a wall, the Weaver creates warm cloth, the Baker produces bread—they declare: we will not merely survive. We will live with tools and homes and clothes and food we made ourselves.
The Craft Guild keeps Silverwick alive through skilled hands and determined labor.
That's power the Guild of Frost Authority can never fully control. And in a world that tried to end humanity, that power matters.