Post by Sire Halfblack on Feb 11, 2012 12:30:25 GMT
The Guild of Hundreds
The origins of the Guild of Hundreds, possibly the single most influential of The Hundred, lie with the Mercers. Prior to the completion of its re-establishment in Summer IM 1014, it had become known as The City Guild. Amongst Deci’s infamous Hundred Guilds it, as its very name might suggest, holds primacy.
Originally concerned with wool and its products, the Mercer’s don’t actually collect or weave it themselves but rather are a collection of wily men and women who together form an effective Merchant House. The Mercer’s are no one’s fools – a Guild that itself produces nothing it is expert at being the power-in-the-middle of all the others. It trades, gathers and stores goods like any Merchant House. It’s most immediate impact though is felt in the way it actually draws people together – always, it seems, ‘for the good of the city…’
Over time it became clear that the Guild has less to do with cloth and wool than its peers elsewhere are, for such trade is merely the foundation of their power and one which they have long left behind in the manner of actually trading themselves. Merchants of a very hard-edged kind, the Mercers deal most commonly in the hearts and minds of people. They attend, they adjust, they deal and sway in the mystical currency of their elevated ‘trade’.
Eventually any pretence at engaging in the wool trade was forsaken due to the often absent wool but it was never cloth that motivated the Guild in any case and now this Hundred is seen more pertinently in the meeting Halls of the city, of which their Guildhall is just the most prominent.
Their Guildhall, even before reaching its pinnacle, was overly grand and those within by nature fat, grease spotted and indolent it is very much the case that though already four members of the Guilds take the title of Sire and three times that of Master, these merely see out the common duties of the Guild and more importantly are far more obvious than their oddly similar advisors. Deci’s Guild of Hundred’s is frightfully powerful, often far more scary bodies bow after a faint whisper and a subsequent raised eyebrow. The Prince Kitty Kat thought to demand to know what it was they did, and look what happened to that now long lost ruler of Old Deci and it is rumoured that its tendrils of influence snake out beyond insular Deci.
A Trip to the Mercers
It was possible to lose the Guild on the skyline of Deci for other than its turrets and the bell towers, weather vanes and chimneys that were the fashion amongst the Hundred it was a building given more to weight than height. A Guildhall that enjoyed its own square and one faced on every side with ornamentation upon ornamentation, tiny statuary that made up larger statues. It was said that there was a tiny person there for every citizen of Deci, each a part of someone greater. The work was exquisite, the materials dressed wood and stone, warm, deeply varnished and hard.
That square now boasted a cart that looked like a guildhall itself and again made up of so many thousand tiny models of people that the Puppeteers had they the wish might probably have made it dance.
People in Deci were notoriously skinny, sallow – ‘pointy’ was the politest term a visitor might have used. But these Guildsmen had more of the King about them. There were as many chins as there were eyes, and hands thick with rings were pinched like so many sausages. Not that the Guildsmen were doing any actual work, wastrel they always employed (they were very particular) stood now harnessed like horses, a hundred of them in Guild patch and strangely proud to be there.
This was a Guild with many Masters. These were the Mercers, though no one called them that any more. This was the City Guild of Deci.
By Alan Morgan
The origins of the Guild of Hundreds, possibly the single most influential of The Hundred, lie with the Mercers. Prior to the completion of its re-establishment in Summer IM 1014, it had become known as The City Guild. Amongst Deci’s infamous Hundred Guilds it, as its very name might suggest, holds primacy.
Originally concerned with wool and its products, the Mercer’s don’t actually collect or weave it themselves but rather are a collection of wily men and women who together form an effective Merchant House. The Mercer’s are no one’s fools – a Guild that itself produces nothing it is expert at being the power-in-the-middle of all the others. It trades, gathers and stores goods like any Merchant House. It’s most immediate impact though is felt in the way it actually draws people together – always, it seems, ‘for the good of the city…’
Over time it became clear that the Guild has less to do with cloth and wool than its peers elsewhere are, for such trade is merely the foundation of their power and one which they have long left behind in the manner of actually trading themselves. Merchants of a very hard-edged kind, the Mercers deal most commonly in the hearts and minds of people. They attend, they adjust, they deal and sway in the mystical currency of their elevated ‘trade’.
Eventually any pretence at engaging in the wool trade was forsaken due to the often absent wool but it was never cloth that motivated the Guild in any case and now this Hundred is seen more pertinently in the meeting Halls of the city, of which their Guildhall is just the most prominent.
Their Guildhall, even before reaching its pinnacle, was overly grand and those within by nature fat, grease spotted and indolent it is very much the case that though already four members of the Guilds take the title of Sire and three times that of Master, these merely see out the common duties of the Guild and more importantly are far more obvious than their oddly similar advisors. Deci’s Guild of Hundred’s is frightfully powerful, often far more scary bodies bow after a faint whisper and a subsequent raised eyebrow. The Prince Kitty Kat thought to demand to know what it was they did, and look what happened to that now long lost ruler of Old Deci and it is rumoured that its tendrils of influence snake out beyond insular Deci.
A Trip to the Mercers
It was possible to lose the Guild on the skyline of Deci for other than its turrets and the bell towers, weather vanes and chimneys that were the fashion amongst the Hundred it was a building given more to weight than height. A Guildhall that enjoyed its own square and one faced on every side with ornamentation upon ornamentation, tiny statuary that made up larger statues. It was said that there was a tiny person there for every citizen of Deci, each a part of someone greater. The work was exquisite, the materials dressed wood and stone, warm, deeply varnished and hard.
That square now boasted a cart that looked like a guildhall itself and again made up of so many thousand tiny models of people that the Puppeteers had they the wish might probably have made it dance.
People in Deci were notoriously skinny, sallow – ‘pointy’ was the politest term a visitor might have used. But these Guildsmen had more of the King about them. There were as many chins as there were eyes, and hands thick with rings were pinched like so many sausages. Not that the Guildsmen were doing any actual work, wastrel they always employed (they were very particular) stood now harnessed like horses, a hundred of them in Guild patch and strangely proud to be there.
This was a Guild with many Masters. These were the Mercers, though no one called them that any more. This was the City Guild of Deci.
By Alan Morgan