Guilds
You shiver as the cold wind bites at exposed skin on your face and hands. Stamping your feet in a futile effort to keep warm, you wait impatiently for your father. Finally, he comes out of the office, and you both saddle the horses and head for home.
Making occasional small talk with your father about the war, you suddenly notice a figure lying face down on the side of the road. Jumping off your horse and hurrying over to him, you turn him over to see if he is still alive. The man groans in pain as you move him, and with a shock you notice that he wears the badge of Keplerstan on his tunic.
- "Father! He's from Keplerstan!"
You have never seen one of the hated enemy of your realm before, being too still too young to be sent off to fight. The man groans again as you continue.
- "We have to take him back to town to the garrison! They'll know what to do with enemy scum like this."
Your father nods in agreement, and bends down to see if the man was fit enough to be tied to horseback. With a sudden start, he grabs one of the man's hands and examines it carefully.
- "By the gods, he's a Hawk...Right, I want you to listen very carefully to me son, I won't repeat this. We're going to take him back to our house where your ma can fix him up. No-one will hear of this. Understand? No-one. This man belongs to the same guild that I do, and we're going to do all that we can to help him"
You look confused. Then you notice that on the man's hand is a silver ring, with a symbol of a hawk embossed onto the surface. Why, your father has an identical ring!
- "What's a guild?"
Guilds are a relatively new addition to BattleMaster, which allow like-minded players to band together in a common cause, regardless of their realm. A guild is formed by a local lord who constructs a guildhouse within his own region at a certain expense. Other nobles, of any realm or class, are then free to join the guild if they so desire - after paying the entrance fee of course. Potential members are required to travel to the guildhouse in particular to join. However, once the first guildhouse is built, more may be created elsewhere by fellow members who command regions, spreading the influence and reach of the guild throughout the island.
Guilds have an interior hierarchy, with the Founder at the top, going down all the way to aspirants seeking entry at the bottom. Higher ranking members may promote, or demote, other members below them at their whim. Each guild has a guild treasury, and the gold is distributed among all the guildhouses according to the size of the guildhouse. Here, members may deposit or withdraw, depending on how much they are allowed by the Founder, physical gold. Through the use of an extensive network of messengers, guild members may communicate with each other just as though they were in the same realm.
Because the gold is kept in the guildhouse and not in a bank, it is at the mercy of the region commanders in which the guildhouses reside. It is therefore imperative to maintain good relations with the region commanders in question -- or to exert the guild's influence to ensure that only friendly troop leaders command guildhouse regions.
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