Peek at The Guilds

While there are countless guilds in the world, the two that get the most attention are the Dungeoneer's Guild, and the Adventurer's Guild.  Many who aren't interested in joining either of the two even conflate them as the same guild!  They go deal with dungeons, how different can they be?

Dealing with dungeons is one of the few things they actually have in common.  The Adventurer's Guilds are subject to national oversight, and even compete with each other.  There is no grand adventurer guildmaster, but rather dozens of smaller heads of their own guilds, subject to whatever laws their particular nation has.

Most are regulated as general merchants and left at that, though some nations impose specific growth requirements, party makeup, and so on.  All nations will tend to build, or at least reinforce their armies with former adventurers, so there is debate on which regulation method is the best.

The more relaxed regulation, it's argued, allows for the guildmasters to decide on their potential for military training and growth.  The guildmaster knows their guild members better than any distant bureaucrat, and so can make a more informed decision to help that individual grow.

The more deliberate regulation, on the other hand, allows for a more standardized approach.  Organization is key for a military unit, after all, and if a potential soldier's foundation is too different, it must be broken down and rebuilt, which takes time.

In practice, both approaches have their merits, and wars fought between nations with different approaches don't show one as being inherently superior over the other.

In contrast to how the Adventurer's Guild works and effects the nation they're in, the Dungeoneer's Guild is, at least in theory, politically neutral.  It is also a single, large guild, with many branches.  Long ago, adventurers had to learn of dungeons on their own, and their knowledge was generally focused on ensuring they didn't die, and where the best loot was in a particular dungeon, and they would jealously horde this knowledge.

After all, if you were the only one who knew how to beat a specific boss, you could control the supply of whatever it dropped!  Unfortunately, few adventurers are merchants, so most of this potential knowledge was wasted.  The founder of the Dungeoneer's Guild was a simple glassmaker, who needed various things from dungeons to ply his trade to the best of his ability.

Unfortunately for him, the nearest dungeon was slowly getting more and more dangerous, and so more and more of his adventurer suppliers started dying, or simply leaving to delve in easier dungeons.  In frustration at his dwindling suppliers, he offered to buy the information about how to get the stuff he needed from one of the adventurers.  Ordinarily, an adventurer would never let that kind of secret go... but what harm would it be to sell that knowledge to the glassmaker?  He's not an adventurer.  Besides, with the dungeon getting stronger, he could use all the coin he can get to try to keep his gear up to snuff.

So the deal was made.  And the glassmaker, a true merchant at heart, started selling that knowledge, and offering coin for new information along his interests.  It didn't take long for other adventurers to notice that the ones that talked to the merchant tended to have an easier time in the dungeon, and word of mouth spread.

It also spread among the other merchants, who noticed the glassmaker was flush with coin and materials to make whatever glass he wished.  The other merchants started buying and selling information, and now they could even buy and sell with each other.  It all started to become a bit of a mess, however, with each merchant using a different system, having different prices, having more or less accurate information, etc.

So the glassmaker formed a new guild, and called it the Dungeoneer's Guild, as their business was the dungeon, not adventuring inside it.  The dangerous dungeon grew less and less dangerous, not for lack of trying, but for the abundance of knowledge about how it worked.  Then adventurers started wanting to sell knowledge about other dungeons, and so the guild grew.

Of course, some tried to strong-arm information out of the guild, which lead to the guild offering bounties on these individuals and even groups.  A discount on fees for a time, a bonus for sold information, a free primer or map for a dungeon, or even simple coin; any of these would tempt an adventurer, even without the understanding that threatening the Dungeoneers could make delving harder on Adventurers.

So the early guild was able to very quickly keep powerful people from walking over them by simply having powerful people with vested interests in letting them do their job.  As time passed, even nations preferred to not get on the bad side of the Dungeoneer's Guild.  Still, they can collect taxes, even if the nation doesn't control the flow of knowledge, so the nations are hardly left as the losers in the situation.

Well... in theory.  While the current head of the guild as a whole has been neutral in politics, understanding that gold is still gold, no matter who has put their face on it, various other executives, managers, and so on will often try to get special treatment for their own nations and factions.  Scandals and blackmail abound, as well as rumors of even assassinations or coups!  But the Guildmaster works to keep a tight ship and keep such things minimized.  Not only is it good optics to root out such corruption, but the ones involved always draw a large paycheck.  Employee costs can be lowered by removing them and paying their replacement less, not to mention the replacement will be skimming less.

Thank you again to all of you for reading and supporting me!  Today's Peek was suggested by Maestro!  For the $10 supporters, I'll be posting another nudge with a few topics to see what you like, or continue to post your own ideas for something for me to go over!  Once again, thank you all!

Khenal