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Registered: 08-2010
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The Imperial Guilds


 (Update- Put more accessible info in first post, moved other posts down one)

There are many Imperially Chartered Guilds. They are mostly restricted to activities in Avendel though many have some sort of business outside the Capital. The Guilds present a way for those not Noble-Born to achieve more riches than other Commoners. They are also incredibly competitive, beneath a surface veneer of order is a complex web of rivalries and infighting.
Some of the more prominent guilds include:

Guild of Caterers
Responsible for all food put before the Emperor and provided at Imperial Banquets, the provision of food to the Imperial Guard no matter where they are stationed, and running a culinary school. They also have involvement in certifying Inns, Bakeries and other purveyors of food within the city walls. All of this in addition to private contracts.
Their rather expansive workload has been stretched by Courtly demands and providing a supply line to the Imperial troops stationed at Hydra’s Falls.

Guild of Recognised Trades (Trades Guild)
The Trades Guild consists mainly of merchants and product based commerce. This makes it rather dependant on goods it purchases from the caterers and crastsmen, which leave it with a large tax and levy burden. It is an open secret that the guild holds “secret” midnight auctions for goods it is technically bared from selling; however large bribes and attendees of high status keep it from being shut down.
It is also commonly known that the Trades Guild, though it is never admitted, makes heavy use of mercenaries.

Guild of Esteemed Craftsmen & Artificers (Craftsman’s Guild)
A Guild consisting of carpenters, stone masons, carvers and such. Part of its charter includes a remit for aiding in large construction projects set upon by the Emperor though it mostly makes money from private contracts. A wealthy guild and one of the best routes for a common man to make it far in life.

The Avendel Combine
An alliance of Guilds, pooling resources and working together for the combined good of Avendel. The Combine consists of the Guilds of: Street Sweepers, Architects, Planners, Cobblelayers, Pipeworkers and Gondoliers.

The Corsairs
Not a Guild however this mercenary company does a lot of business with the Guilds. Rumour is that the Corsair Company has built up such a storehouse of evidence against the individual Guilds that even where the Company is hired to take action against one Guild by another no one makes a complaint for fear of being themselves incriminated for past contracts.


Last edited by everf, 7/15/2012, 12:20 pm


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Kedri Senderthen- The Spring Storm
Fredegar Bumbleroot - A Happy-go-lucky Halfling
Pug - Half-Orc Dock Worker
2/28/2012, 9:36 am Link to this post Send Email to everf   Send PM to everf Blog
 
everf Profile
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Re: The Imperial Guilds


The Guilds of Avendel are substantially different than organisations bearing that name elsewhere. While a number of organisations do exist which more closely resemble the free association of likeminded skilled workers in other places and some call themselves guilds, this is invariably spelled with a small “G” as they are not Imperially Chartered.

The Chartered Guilds are enshrined in Imperial law, each with a distinct set of duties and responsibilities and are partially funded directly from the Emperor’s treasury. (Besides charging the common person for services and collecting Guild dues, however these pale in comparison to the amounts available to a Guild fulfilling its full duty roster.).

This means that in effect the Emperor, through the Guilds, has a controlling interest in the majority of business done in Avendel.

It is for this reason that individual Guilds have little representation outside Avendel. Local Lords fear the creeping influence of the Emperor. However many of the larger southern towns and Durinham have representatives from the InterGuild Council who acts as a messenger and contract negotiator for all the Imperial Guilds.

Though becoming a Guildsman or even Guildmaster is one of the highest positions a common man may hope to reach it is forbidden for Nobility to have any part in the Guild structure other than commissioning work or trading with.

At present no Guilds do any business within Alliance territory or trading with Alliance interests.

Last edited by everf, 7/15/2012, 11:32 am


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Kedri Senderthen- The Spring Storm
Fredegar Bumbleroot - A Happy-go-lucky Halfling
Pug - Half-Orc Dock Worker
2/28/2012, 10:05 pm Link to this post Send Email to everf   Send PM to everf Blog
 
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Re: The Imperial Guilds


The Imperial Charter of Avendel is a substantial document, running many tomes and dating back over a millennium to the reign of Aarus VII.

At the time a group of dissatisfied citizens calling themselves The Chartist Movement were complaining heavily about the existing Guilds and town Guard. Prices were padded, bribery, stalled projects, delays, protection rackets and fraudulent dealing were rife and the upper echelons of the Guilds were populated by Nobility. The whole system seemed to exist only to make the already rich richer at the expense of the Guild members and the common man.

The Imperial Charter was drawn up in order to address the growing discontent while also clarifying and “simplifying” how the Emperor’s treasury paid for Guild services.

Many Guilds were merged, some were purged before reinstatement and new ones were created. In return for performing a set list of duties and responsibilities (enumerated in excruciating detail by the Charter for each Guild) the Guilds were funded from then on in part by the Emperor.

A good portion of the system is accredited to Dillinger Sundance an experimental mathematician who filled the Charter’s pages with endless formula for working out the tax and subsidy regime in the City of Avendel. A labyrinthine maze of countless checks, countertaxes and payments designed for economic stability and growth are held in place by the Charter. And though few have fully understood their working in a thousand years they are maintained as on the whole they seem to work.

Dillinger Sundance is credited with being the Andrunese inventor of the science of “people-money movement.”


Last edited by everf, 7/15/2012, 11:31 am


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Kedri Senderthen- The Spring Storm
Fredegar Bumbleroot - A Happy-go-lucky Halfling
Pug - Half-Orc Dock Worker
3/5/2012, 9:06 pm Link to this post Send Email to everf   Send PM to everf Blog
 
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Re: The Imperial Guilds


Despite its esoteric and dense nature the Charter became a cornerstone legislation of the city and functioned without change up to the Baron Wars. With no Emperor on the throne however the system collapsed. Many of the Guilds continued to exist in one fashion or another, some failed, some broke apart but on the whole most survived.

Many of the old problems of price gouging and painfully slow work pace returned however. It was for this reason (in addition to a push from the Library) that the Guild Charter was reinstated with only a few minor changes following the end of the wars.
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The Imperial funds provided to the Guilds are fixed into a very complex system, though it eventually amounts to being a fixed percentage of the Imperial Treasury (providing a measure of incentive for the Guilds to grow the city’s economy increasing taxes).

Due to the embedded nature of the Charter to Imperial bureaucracy Guilds cannot disappear while the Charter stands. The Entry for each Guild in the treasuries ledger still stands even if it has only one member and so they endure.

Followinng the Baron Wars the major change to the Charter proposed by the Library were provisions for a failed Guilds to be “looked after” by another group till it was financially rehabilitated. Of course the protecting Guild is then able to collect funds intended for the failed Guild.

In practice since then this has led to the amalgamation of a number of Guilds.

The Library swallowed wholesale four Guilds and their funding.

The Guard has absorbed three.

An amalgam of six Guilds, some being “looked after” some working as equal partners have pooled funding and developed into the “Avendel Combine”.

A number of mostly defunct guilds still exist and have mostly become prizes to be fought over by the larger Guilds for their funding.

Last edited by everf, 7/15/2012, 12:14 pm


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Kedri Senderthen- The Spring Storm
Fredegar Bumbleroot - A Happy-go-lucky Halfling
Pug - Half-Orc Dock Worker
7/15/2012, 11:31 am Link to this post Send Email to everf   Send PM to everf Blog
 


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