the Ledger Guild

The Ledger Guild

“All memory has a price. And some are paid in silence.”
— Archivist Salien Drelt, First Teller of the Deep Vault

Overview

The Ledger Guild is Aeternum’s most feared and respected authority in the economy of memory. Operating as both bankers and blackmailers, historians and harvesters, they are the keepers of the world’s emotional economy—ensuring that every whisper, betrayal, legacy, or regret can be bought, sold, or mortgaged.

They run the Vaultmarkets, massive crystalline banks of memory within high-security strongholds. Here, memory is stored in vials, mirrors, stones, or fractal paper—catalogued, indexed, and cross-referenced by Mnemonic Tellers and Recordwrights. Entire wars have been won or lost based on forgotten debts or a single strategically timed remembrance.

Those who default on their memory-bonds may find fragments of their past repossessed—a loved one forgotten, a skill lost, or even entire years erased and auctioned to the highest bidder.

Core Tenets

  1. Memory is wealth. Protect it. Trade it. Control it.

  2. Secrets are currency. The more hidden, the more valuable.

  3. The mind is a vault. But even vaults can be unlocked.

  4. Forgetfulness is poverty. Record everything.

  5. No oath is stronger than a memory notarized.

Roles within the Guild

  • Tellers – Bankers of memory who oversee deposits, withdrawals, trades, and extractions with strict bureaucratic precision.

  • Scribes Major – Writers of legal and magical contracts that bind memories to conditions or debts.

  • Witkeepers – Spies, blackmailers, and traders in scandal, secrets, and leverage.

  • Echohounds – Hunters of delinquent debtors who track down and retrieve unpaid memories by force.

  • Chronolocks – Agents who specialize in securing time-sensitive memories, freezing them into stasis or delaying their return for strategic use.

  • Deep Archivists – Guardians of ancient memory vaults, some sealed for centuries, rumored to hold truths too dangerous to reveal.

Structure & Influence

The Guild is governed by the Council of Twelve Tellers, each representing a dominion of memory: Grief, Glory, Shame, Joy, Betrayal, Desire, Vow, Fear, Doubt, Triumph, Love, and War. All new mnemonic brokers must be approved by at least three Tellers before earning a sigil and access to the Vaults.

They issue Memory Bonds, legal constructs that allow mortals to trade away parts of their past in exchange for power, gold, or knowledge. These contracts are inviolable, enforced by mental enchantments and spirit-oaths. Few survive breaking one intact.

The Guild maintains outposts in nearly every developed location in Aeternum, but their true seat of power lies in Vaultpierce, a vertical city of crystalline towers rising from a fissure in the earth where memories echo through the stone.

Associated Classes

  • Inkbond – Expert memory contract-writers, able to bind souls to terms.

  • Fragmentalist – Memory manipulators who shape narrative into weapon or tool.

  • Vaultpiercer – Delvers who retrieve or seal away memory caches beneath the surface.

  • Glimmerscour – Inspectors of counterfeit memory and illusion fraud.

  • Veilrunner (rogue type) – Memory thieves, trained to extract secrets without consent.

  • Echohound (non-magical) – Tracker class specializing in reclaiming stolen or lost memories.

Important Locations

  • Vaultpierce – Central HQ, a glittering archive-skyline filled with spiraled towers where memory trades occur constantly.

  • The Mirror Bank – A vault of soul-mirrors that contain full lives stored for trade.

  • The Breach Courts – Legal courts for memory bond disputes. Often held entirely within dream-space.

  • The Black Index – A subterranean forbidden registry of erased and purchased identities.

  • Thornrot Hollow (disavowed) – A sealed guild outpost rumored to house cursed memories, forbidden from public trade.

Relations to Other Factions

  • Allied with:

    • The Prism Wardens, whose soul-reflection rituals help verify memory authenticity.

    • The Altarbound, for their spiritual insight into high-value sacred memories.

    • The Cyclekeepers, with whom they sometimes partner in regulated temporal memory rediscovery.

  • Opposed by:

    • The Emberleaf Conclave, who view memory hoarding as unnatural.

    • The Thornbinders, who guard untamed grief from commodification.

    • The Mire Echoes, who accuse the Guild of violating the spirit of remembrance.

Secrets and Rumors

  • Some say the Guild already owns the names and pasts of half the nobles in Aeternum.

  • It is whispered that the First Debt, a memory so ancient none know what it is, continues to accumulate interest.

  • A forbidden ritual known as The Rewrite is said to allow elite guild members to overwrite another’s identity with their own archived version.

  • The Council of Tellers may be immortal, having bound themselves to the very Vaults they govern.