Guild Union

The Guild Union (Loncalar Birliği) is the body through which the trade and craft guilds of Aquila work together in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"). It has several buildings in the city, its main one near the house of Professor Galevan.¹

Organisation

On the mainland the guilds of the different trades work separately. In Aquila, scarce resources and the need for close organisation brought them together under one roof and one agreement, though each guild still defends its own interests. The Union plays a large part in transport, production and shipping, and in most of the trading ships that come and go.²

One of the Union's several deputy heads, a thin man in his sixties with a moustache and beard and rich black clothes, told Finli that guilds which work apart in the Empire work together here, and urged him to work with the guilds rather than with the Coalition of Enlightenment. The Union's archive is made up of the records each guild keeps for itself, and is in disorder.³⁴⁵

Trade and registration

In the Empire, trade depends on a guild's permission, and the burden of tax varies with a trader's standing, success and connections. When Finli and Sticks thought of trading together, it was suggested that rather than register a company with the guild they become suppliers to a merchant already established. In the Empire the throne does not intervene heavily in the free market, and prices are set by merchants and trade guilds.⁶⁷⁸

To set up as a barber and tooth-puller, Bruno Rossi needed the Union's registration paper rather than a physician's certificate. After days of waiting he left a gold coin and was given an appointment with a registration clerk, an elderly man with sunken cheeks, ink sleeves and spectacles, named Baden, working in a crowded room while an assistant copied papers behind him. The clerk asked for a surety from a known barber or, failing that, an examination by the guild masters; after Bruno handed him a purse, the examination stage was passed, but the rest of the business went on.^910111213

The clerk listed further dues, among them a payment to the church for a healing service, a window tax and a contribution to the road pavers, and said that the business could go on only if Bruno opened an account at the Imperial Bank. Such an account gives access to credit and lets a depositor draw the money in another great city of the Empire on presenting a document.¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶

The guild records

Seeking the records of a door built for a mage, Finli lunched with the deputy head, who gave him a sealed permit to search the guild records for that one day, until sunset. There Finli found the contract by which a mage had a gnome build a door, and traced the materials: brass, stainless steel and pure iron, with more than forty moving gears. By the records, the door took some sixty to sixty-five days to make and cost about five hundred gold.^17181920

Works

In the Castle Quarter of Aquila stands an old building made from the wood of a sacred tree. To protect it from lightning, a dwarf and a gnome engineer of the Union raised a great lightning rod over it, storing the power it gathers to light artificers' lamps. Gnomes usually live in dwarf cities, where their wit, curiosity and love of craft suit them well.²¹²²²³

The lawyer's package

Before Finli left for the New World, a lawyer asked him to carry secret papers to forge ties with the guilds there. On reaching Canarque, Finli delivered the important package to someone of the Guild Union; its contents were never told.²⁴²⁵