The Eighteen Guilds of Sulamir

The operational and shadow-coordinating layers of Sulamir’s three-layer political architecture. The guilds publicly function as trade lodges, discipline schools, and specialist orders sponsored by the great houses; secretly, their eighteen senior figures coordinate as the Council of 18, the shadow government that shapes outcomes at the deepest layer behind the Senate of Great Houses. This document defines all eighteen guilds, the two outlaw orders that operate outside the Council, and the three-layer logic that makes Sulamir’s politics what they are. For the senate of houses at the public political layer, see 04A-HOUSES. For the class pyramid the guilds operate within, see 04B-CLASS-AND-CONTROL. For the historical sequence that led to this arrangement, see 06-HISTORY.

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1. The Three-Layer Architecture (locked)

Sulamir’s politics operate on three simultaneous layers. The guilds are load-bearing at two of them.

Layer one, public political: the Senate of Great Houses. Approximately thirty-six seats held by the heads of the thirty-six senate-seated great houses. The senate is what an ordinary citizen of Sulamir thinks of as the government. Public oratory, public records, continent-wide authority. The guilds do not sit in the senate; they serve it operationally and shape its outcomes secretly. Full canon: 04A-HOUSES.

Layer two, public operational: the Eighteen Trade Lodges (the guilds). For roughly seventeen of the eighteen guilds the guild is a great house’s own institutional domain rather than a body it merely sponsors, so the guild’s ruling line and the house’s ruling line are the same people under two names for two audiences (this is the fusion, and the head who carries the guild Leadership, the province’s dominant senate seat, and the Council seat as one bundle is a Fused House); the other senate-seated houses keep the older relationship of affiliation to a guild they do not lead, and the Temple of the One alone cannot fuse, because its authority descends from ordination rather than a founding-contract lineage. The guilds publicly operate as trade lodges, discipline schools, religious institutions, banking houses, merchant companies, craft orders, or martial schools. The guilds employ the working population, train discipline practitioners, run the visible economic infrastructure, and serve their sponsoring houses’ interests. Guild Leaders are publicly known figures. The full list of operational guilds and their charter domains is in section 2.2 below.

Layer three, secret coordinating: the Council of 18. Behind the operational layer, the eighteen senior guild figures (usually but not always the public Leaders) coordinate as a secret council. The Council is not publicly acknowledged. Its existence is rumored among the educated and the paranoid, officially treated as conspiracy theory, not in any registered document of the senate. The Council shapes policy at the deepest layer, manipulates senate votes through its members’ sponsoring houses, coordinates intelligence and influence operations across all eighteen guilds, secretly maintains the dome over Sulamir (04-CONTINENT section 7), and makes the actual deepest decisions about the direction of Sulamir.

The Council member is not always the Leader. For most guilds, the Council seat is held by the public Leader (Lady Summer of Emphemere, Singh of Bavit-vita, Fitran Mihran of Multani, and so on). The exception of structural significance is the Temple of the One: Alont leads the public Temple guild; Niska holds the Council seat through the inner teaching. This split is rare and reflects the Temple’s particular dual-doctrine architecture (07-RELIGIONS section 2). The deeper reason the Temple stands apart is that it alone among the eighteen cannot fuse: every other guild’s charter descends from a Founding-era contract bound to a human lineage (01-COSMOLOGY.md section 4), so a house can be its guild, but the Temple’s authority descends from ordination and inner teaching rather than blood and contract, which is why it holds no house and no senate seat. The Temple is the exception that proves the fusion is the rule. Other guilds may have similar Leader-and-Council splits that the public register does not see (the Order of the Spider, whose Leader means never to hold a title that names him, is the strongest candidate).

The two-oath structure (locked). Trade-lodge members swear the Universal Guild Oath (09-CULTURE section 3) at induction. Council members additionally swear the Council Oath (also called the Old Oath in private register) at their initiation into the cabal. The Council Oath is the deeper layer of the same formula the Universal Guild Oath simplifies for trade-lodge use. The Council Oath text is OPEN. Senators swear a separate Senate Oath at the assumption of their seat (04A-HOUSES section 6).

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2. Guild Officer Structure

Each guild is headed by three officers:

• Leader. Holds final authority on guild matters at the operational layer, manages the trade lodge’s public business, sits at the Council of 18 in most cases (Temple of the One excepted).
• Right Hand. Second in command. Typically handles interior matters: operations, membership, discipline, and succession.
• Left Hand. Third in command. Typically handles exterior matters: diplomacy, negotiation, representation, and the guild’s dealings with other guilds and the great houses.

The Right and Left together are called the lieutenants. Between them they hold near-absolute authority over the guild’s day-to-day affairs, and they often outweigh weaker Leaders in practice.

Some guilds layer additional senior offices below the lieutenants: the Marshal corps’ captaincy structure, the Bavit-vita Mother Hall’s senior teachers, the Temple of the One’s regional Abbots and Mothers. These additional offices are documented per guild in sections 6 and 7 below.

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1A. Historical note: the Council and the Senate

The Council of 18 predates the Senate of Great Houses. After the Senate that survived the defeat of Zar Valareth, the surviving guild leaders coordinated quietly to preserve continental stability while the political register was rebuilt; that coordination crystallized over generations into the Council of 18. The Senate of Great Houses formed later, when the surviving noble lines petitioned for formal representation and the Council allowed the public political register to be reconstructed under house headship. The Council let the Senate crystallize as a useful screen and as the load-bearing public face of continental authority. In the Current Age the Council is the deeper power and the Senate is the visible one. Most senators do not know which of their peers is on the Council; most citizens do not know the Council exists.

A permanent cold war simmers between the guilds at the operational layer. Open conflict is rare and ruinous. Proxy conflicts, shadow games, funding of rival adventurer parties, cultivation of favored houses, and manipulation of the criminal underworld are constant. The Council coordinates these tensions to prevent any from breaking the larger system; the same Council whose members are warring with each other through their guilds is the Council that meets in private to prevent any of them from winning outright.

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2. Powers of the Guilds

The government of Sulamir runs on the three-layer architecture of section 1: the public Senate of Great Houses is the formal sovereign, and the Council of 18 is where outcomes are actually decided, because seventeen of its eighteen seats are held by Fused Houses that also hold their province’s dominant senate seat. The guilds’ individual powers are not identical. Every guild holds a baseline set of legal authorities by Council charter. Each adds to that baseline through the informal leverage it has accumulated over generations. The gap between the baseline and what a given guild actually wields is where politics happens.

2.1 Baseline Legal Powers

Every guild on the Council holds the following by formal charter:

• Provincial sovereignty. Each guild rules one of Sulamir’s eighteen provinces. Within that province the guild sets the tax rate on trade and residence, administers infrastructure, licenses trade, oversees civil law, and appoints the province’s militia.
• Council seat and vote. One seat, one vote, on every matter that rises to Council level. Council votes decide inter-provincial disputes, charter renewals, Marshal dispatches of the highest class, continental treaties, and the authority to declare Sulamir in a state of war.
• Charter monopoly. Each guild holds a charter for at least one industry or infrastructure system. Alum-sidek (through House Corveliss) holds the magnerail. The Iron Coin holds banking. The Masons hold construction. The charter is the single most concrete asset a guild carries, and the full domain map is catalogued in section 2.2.
• Marshal petition. Every guild may call on the Marshal corps for cross-province enforcement. Marshals are formally independent, but the guild that petitions first often shapes which facts the Marshals find.
• Militia command. Every guild directs the law enforcement of its own province. Militias are paid by and loyal to the provincial guild and operate inside the province line.
• Treaty authority. Every guild may negotiate agreements with foreign city-states, other guilds, and the great houses, subject to Council ratification for agreements that bind Sulamir as a whole.
• Court of first instance. Civil cases within a province are tried in that guild’s courts. Criminal cases rise to Marshal courts when they cross province lines or when a guild Leader is implicated.
• Right to coin, license, and validate. Contracts executed within a province carry the guild’s seal and are enforceable under that guild’s law. A contract signed in one province is enforceable in another by inter-provincial reciprocity, but a guild may refuse reciprocity in specific cases, which is one of the standing grievances between weak and strong guilds.
• Right to raise a guild force. Every guild maintains members-under-arms, subject to a Council cap on force size. The cap has been quietly renegotiated several times. The most aggressive guilds routinely exceed it and dare the rest to audit them.
• Veto on hostile expansion. A guild may block another guild’s commercial operation from establishing inside its province. Vetoes are rare because reciprocal retaliation is fast, but the power is constantly cited in trade negotiations.

2.2 Charter Domains

Each guild’s charter domain is the practical reason it retains its seat. Losing a domain to another guild is the fastest route to losing the seat. The current domain map:

Guild	Charter Domain
Alum-sidek Alliance	Arterial transit (magnerail, inter-provincial movement)
The Masons	Construction and architecture
Emphemere	High-noble society and long-cycle political memory
Torrus Ectos	Shock enforcement and brawler markets
Order of the Blue Cross	Death rites, inheritance, undertaking
The Red Dragons	Martial training and academy-grade discipline
Temple of the One	Religious doctrine and heterodox legitimacy
The Iron Coin	Banking, credit, and sovereign currency
Multani	Diplomacy, foreign contact, and influence brokerage
Abyssal Fires	Intelligence, archives, and covert inquiry
Bavit-vita	Life sciences, medicine, and agriculture
Alyu’amare	Marriage, alliance brokerage, and household relations
The Core	Contemplative practice, mind disciplines, and mediation
The Sulamir League	Institutional memory and long-horizon civic works
Prodigus Group	Engineering, logistics, and technological resilience
Order of the Spider	Stealth, espionage, and sanctioned assassination
The White Legion	Entertainment, pleasure industry, and celebrity culture
The Hand	Luxury trade and high-wealth finance

Several of these domains overlap and are the root of standing rivalries, catalogued in section 3.3.

2.3 Informal Leverage

Every guild also holds powers outside its charter. These informal assets are what separate the strong guilds from the weak:

• Discipline specialization. Certain guilds have cornered practitioners of specific disciplines (see 02-DISCIPLINES). The Red Dragons field the continent’s deepest Weight-discipline talent. Abyssal Fires trains Knowing adepts. Bavit-vita carries Heart lineages. Alyu’amare is the quiet home of the living Dream tradition. Talent migrates, but these concentrations, once established, have persisted across generations.
• Great house alliances. Noble houses marry, inherit, and lend credit across guild lines. The house registry is its own map of power, often more durable than the guild map. House Corveliss belongs institutionally to Alum-sidek, but cousins sit across five other guilds. This permeability is why no guild can maintain internal secrecy for long.
• Intelligence networks. Every guild runs informants inside every other guild. Some are mutually known. Abyssal Fires and Order of the Spider deal in this at an industrial scale. The others improvise.
• Financial leverage. The Iron Coin lends to everyone. The Hand finances high-cost ventures outside the banking system. Any guild in debt to either is politically constrained. The Iron Coin’s restraint in foreclosing is the main reason the Council still functions.
• Founding-era artifact custody. Angel feathers, mirrors, and active Founding-era machinery are concentrated in a few hands. These objects confer strategic weight disproportionate to the holder’s formal rank.
• Religious legitimacy. The mainstream pantheon’s priesthoods are not themselves on the Council, but they can bless or withhold blessing from a guild’s actions, and a guild that loses religious cover suffers real damage. The Temple of the One is the exception, holding a seat directly. Its doctrinal weight is leveraged for political ends by Alont with varying success.
• Sponsored proxies. Adventurer parties, gangs, bounty hunters, and outlaw orders are all sponsored, subsidized, or quietly directed by guilds for deniable action. Most violence between guilds runs through proxies. Direct action is rare and punished.
• Marshal standing. Marshals are formally independent of any single guild, but they work more easily with some than with others. A guild with long-cultivated Marshal relationships receives faster response and more favorable findings.
• Knowledge of rivals’ internal instability. A Right Hand quietly unhappy with a Leader. A succession contested between siblings. A doctrinal drift in a Temple cell. Every guild hoards this kind of information about every other, waiting for the moment to deploy it.

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3. Sources of Cold War Tension

The cold war between the guilds is permanent. It has not escalated into open conflict since the stabilization at eighteen seats because escalation is ruinous to all, and because the structural pressures balance. The pressures themselves do not diminish. They shift. The following are the principal drivers in the Current Age.

3.1 The Zero-Sum Seat

There are eighteen seats and there will be eighteen seats. The Council’s founding agreement fixed the number at the count of surviving parties after the war. No expansion, no addition. For any guild to gain real power on the Council, another must lose it. This is the root structural fact. Every other tension listed below operates on top of it.

3.2 The Absent King

The Council is legally the senate of a monarch who does not exist. The vacancy is not a technicality. It is the organizing absence of Sulamiri politics. Any guild Leader who reached for the crown, or who was seen to reach, would be immediately opposed by the other seventeen. Prophecies 5 through 10 are watched with particular attention because some of them can be read as naming a figure who rises above the Council (see 08-PROPHECIES.md). The threat of a restored monarchy is paradoxically stabilizing: the guilds stay in cold war in part because they all fear the alternative more.

3.3 Overlapping Charter Domains

Several of the charter domains catalogued in section 2.2 overlap and produce permanent rivalries:

• Iron Coin vs. The Hand. Both operate in finance. Iron Coin holds sovereign banking and credit. The Hand holds luxury trade and high-wealth lending. The line between them is contested and frequently crossed.
• Alum-sidek vs. Multani. Both move people and influence across provinces. Alum-sidek holds the physical arteries. Multani holds the social ones. Multani has attempted, generationally, to buy into the magnerail charter. Alum-sidek has always refused.
• Blue Cross vs. Bavit-vita. The opposite ends of the human lifespan. Blue Cross presides over death, inheritance, and the rites of passage out. Bavit-vita presides over birth, medicine, and the rites of passage in. Their priesthoods are oppositional by theology and by profession.
• Order of the Spider vs. Abyssal Fires. Both deal in secrets. Abyssal Fires holds the archival side. Order of the Spider holds the active intelligence side. Each considers the other to be encroaching.
• Red Dragons vs. Torrus Ectos. Both sell violence. Red Dragons sells disciplined, trained martial excellence. Torrus Ectos sells brutal, unrefined, high-damage combat capacity. The two run incompatible training cultures and have never been on good terms.
• The Core vs. Temple of the One. Both claim the contemplative tradition. The Core claims it secularly, as mind discipline. The Temple claims it theologically, as access to The One behind the gods. Alont and Creven, whose shared surname may or may not indicate family, represent the pole of this conflict.
• Alyu’amare vs. Emphemere. Both broker marriages. Alyu’amare does so in the language of love and elemental compatibility. Emphemere does so in the language of ambition and long-cycle noble memory. Every great house in Sulamir receives competing proposals from both.

These rivalries do not go away. A strong Leader on one side can press advantage for a decade, but the underlying opposition is permanent.

3.4 Charter Renewal

Several of the oldest charters are formally perpetual, granted by Council seal at the founding of the eighteen-guild era. Others are renewable at fixed intervals. Even the perpetual charters can be challenged on grounds of malfeasance or dereliction, and challenges have succeeded before. Every guild watches the charter calendar the way a besieging army watches a wall.

The rumored upcoming review of Cloud-network security arrangements, currently informally held between House Nhanga and Prodigus Group, is one of the flashpoints of the Current Age (see 10-TECHNOLOGY section 3).

3.5 Succession Fragility

Every guild’s succession is a moment of cold-war opportunity for the rest. When a Leader dies or steps down, the Right Hand ordinarily ascends. Contested succession (between Right and Left, between a Hand and a rising Member, or between branches of an allied noble house) is common, and the other seventeen guilds become involved at whatever register the situation permits. Weak or contested succession is one of the few reliable paths by which a guild’s power can shift downward.

Nathia Tolleman’s silence, Alont’s advanced age, Gren’s reputation, and the persistent uncertainty around several smaller guilds’ internal politics are all watched with this in mind.

3.6 Hollow Accusation

Accusation of Hollow practice is the most destructive weapon available short of open war. An OCTA finding against a guild officer, member, or sponsored adventurer party taints the guild broadly, justifies hostile regulatory action, and can sever noble alliances. The OCTA is formally independent (see 07-RELIGIONS section 5), but the referrals are not. Every guild cultivates OCTA relationships and monitors every other guild for opportunities to refer.

A false accusation that does not stick damages the accuser. A true accusation ends careers. The tension is in the uncertainty.

3.7 Cross-Loyalty Through Noble Houses

The great houses marry across guild lines. A given house may have cousins serving five guilds. Every oath of loyalty a noble takes to a guild is shadowed by prior oaths to family, older oaths to ancestral pacts, and quiet side-agreements with the house’s creditors. No guild commands the undivided loyalty of its noble members. Information crosses the lines faster than the lines can be redrawn.

3.8 The Temple’s Restructuring Doctrine

Alont of the Temple of the One has advocated for a restructured Council in which an inner circle of “better guilds” would hold primary authority. He has been voted down repeatedly. The doctrine has not been withdrawn. Every vote against it reinforces the threat for the next vote. Any guild that suspects it would be excluded from the inner circle has a standing interest in keeping Alont weak, regardless of its view on the theology itself. This is one of the few issues on which unexpected alliances form. See section 2 of 07-RELIGIONS for why the Temple’s doctrinal wing is increasingly separable from Alont’s political wing.

3.9 The Outlaw Orders

The Iosan Serpents and the Heralds of the Sunborn both operate at guild scale outside the Council. The Heralds in particular, led by Valareth, are the threat that haunts the council chamber. If the Heralds can be proven to be what working canon suspects they are, the Council will be forced to act together in a way it has not acted in generations. Every guild is therefore incentivized to either bring the proof or to suppress it, depending on how the findings would affect that guild’s standing.

3.10 The Steam System Workers

The Steam System Workers are the one power in Sulamir that no guild commands. Their strike can dim the city to candles within hours. They are formally neither a guild nor a union. They are a multi-generational community with lifelong service to the grid. The Council treats the Workers with public contempt and private dread (see 12-ROLES.md section 3). Every guild has attempted, at some point, to place a loyal asset inside the Worker community, and every such placement has failed or been quietly reabsorbed. Oen’s lineage there is a fact no guild yet understands.

3.11 Marshal Loyalty

The Marshal corps is the Council’s shared enforcement arm. Its independence is theoretical and constantly tested. Any guild that gains disproportionate Marshal sympathy can, in effect, militarize the Council’s own police against its rivals. Every guild therefore cultivates Marshals, funds Marshal training, and monitors Marshal appointments for signs of tilt.

3.12 Secret Artifact Caches

Angel feathers, Founding-era mirrors, and active celestial machinery (see 10-TECHNOLOGY) confer strategic weight disproportionate to the holder’s rank. Cyl holds at least one angel feather and has at some point held a cache of mirrors. Any rumor of a significant artifact recovery causes the cold war to visibly heat for a week or two, after which the incident passes into private memory and is filed for later use. Possession of the right artifact at the right moment could rewrite a century of balance.

3.13 Foreign Contacts

Several other city-states on Merretia maintain relationships with Sulamir’s guilds. Multani holds the formal foreign portfolio. In practice, every guild that can afford it runs its own channels. A guild caught running an unauthorized channel can be sanctioned by the Council. A guild whose unauthorized channel succeeds can gain leverage that is very hard to reverse.

3.14 The Archons

Unseen by most of the Council, the deepest source of tension in the Current Age is that two of the archons have returned in human form. Cyl serves as Left Hand of Alum-sidek. Oen lives among the Steam System Workers. Neither guild fully understands what they are. If the rest of the Council realized, the political map of Sulamir would overturn overnight, and every calculation in sections 3.1 through 3.13 above would be rendered obsolete by a cosmological fact that the senators of an absent king have no framework to include.

See 03-ARCHONS.md and 08-PROPHECIES.md.

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4. Guild Goals and Leader Ambitions

Every guild on the Council pursues a specific institutional goal, shaped by charter domain, ideological tilt, and the current Leader’s inheritance. Alongside the institutional goal, each Leader carries a personal ambition. Goal and ambition often align. Where they diverge, the lieutenants feel the difference first.

4.1 Alum-sidek Alliance

Institutional goal. Preserve the magnerail charter as the indispensable arterial of the continent, expand its reach where reach can be expanded, and ensure that nothing significant moves on Merretia without Alum-sidek knowing. The secondary institutional goal is to protect Nathia Tolleman’s silence, a fact the guild treats as sacred even though most of its members do not know why.

Nathia Tolleman’s ambition. Personal to the point of opacity. Working canon: Nathia is protecting someone or something whose safety would be endangered the moment she speaks. She is holding her guild’s seat and its political weight in reserve, waiting for the hour that will require her voice. When that hour comes, the other seventeen Leaders will learn what she has been saving it for.

4.2 The Masons

Institutional goal. Rebuild what was unmade in the lich wars. Ensure that no tyrant can ever again unbuild a city the way Zar Valareth unmade Aldasen. Every project the Masons accept carries a quiet clause: they know how it comes down as well as how it goes up, and they will, if necessary.

Callum Stoneheart’s ambition (publicly known as Kane). Live long enough to see Aldasen partially raised again and to carry what he remembers of the old city into the next generation of Masons before his voice gives out. He has opinions about the Current Age that he has never shared with the Council. He intends to share at least one of them before he dies. The deepest commitment running underneath the ambition is his marriage to Tara Trapper; Aldasen and the line stand together with her at the center.

4.3 Emphemere

Institutional goal. Concentrate the wealth and political legitimacy of the great houses under Emphemere’s quiet patronage, such that the Council’s formal power remains balanced at eighteen while the real governance runs through Emphemere’s private parlors. Render every house an Emphemere client, and the Council an audience.

Lady Summer’s ambition. Extend her life indefinitely, including through disciplines that tilt toward edges her peers would condemn if they knew. Place one of her line on every Council in every generation for as long as the Council exists. Never, under any conditions, be forced to name her age.

4.4 Torrus Ectos

Institutional goal. Remain the Council’s hammer. Keep the brawler markets that pay for the guild vigorous and loyal. Continue being the guild that other guilds call when a physical problem needs a physical answer. Preserve the Red Octopus’s fighting culture against the disciplined martial reformers of the Red Dragons, who would tame it.

Gren’s ambition. Be loved by his fighters, his wife, his neighborhood, and his gods, in roughly that order. Finish every day with stories told and wounds dressed and the men at his table laughing. He does not know how thoroughly the other Leaders use him, and if he learned, he would be hurt in a specific and unreasonable way that would surprise no one who knows him.

4.5 Order of the Blue Cross

Institutional goal. Prepare Sulamir for good deaths. Keep inheritance, legacy, and the rites of passage out of the world uncorrupted by politics. Hold the peace whenever and wherever the peace can be held. The Blue Cross is the only guild that publicly advocates for restraint at Council, and their advocacy is pragmatic: wars are bad for the undertaker’s trade, only in the sense that they flood it.

Vaz’s ambition. Die well, whenever that comes, having prevented at least one war the other Leaders would otherwise have started. Find an heir who understands that generosity and sharpness are not in tension. Keep his rapier clean. Never give a mourner a reason to regret coming to him.

4.6 The Red Dragons

Institutional goal. Hold Sulamir to a higher standard than the Council holds itself to. Train the next generation of the city’s martial talent in disciplines that could, if needed, hold the line against a returning existential threat. The Red Dragons believe quietly that the next Zar Valareth-scale war is coming, and that they are the only guild treating training like a response to that fact.

On the name. The guild took its name from the tavern the Red Dragon (see 04-CONTINENT section 1), where the founding lodge first met. The guild’s original charter names the tavern publicly as “our first hearth.” The tavern predates the guild by an indeterminate span that is almost certainly longer than recorded history, and the Red Dragons acknowledge this in their founding documents. The guild is aware, and does not forget, that it is named after a building older than the city above it.

Quinton Marvelous’s ambition. See Sulamir’s common people protected from guild predation and external threat in equal measure, even at personal cost. Prove, by the standard he imposes on himself and his fighters, that discipline is a form of love.

4.7 Temple of the One

Institutional goal. The doctrinal wing of the Temple seeks to guide souls across the provinces toward the truth that lies behind the Eight, without pretending to name what that truth is. The political wing, dominated by Alont, seeks to restructure the Council around an inner circle of guilds that would effectively rule Sulamir from behind its formal government. These two goals increasingly pull in opposite directions, and the lieutenants know it.

Alont’s ambition. Become the first First Leader of a restructured Council, and hold the authority to name who sits at the inner table. Be remembered as the reformer who ended the Council’s paralysis. He would prefer to be remembered kindly. He would accept being remembered at all.

4.8 The Iron Coin

Institutional goal. Keep Sulamir economically sovereign from any foreign influence. Ensure that no great house, no rival guild, and no continental power can ever corner the city’s credit. Build financial instruments that would outlast any individual guild, including Iron Coin itself.

Pershaun’s ambition. Found a bank durable enough to outlive every current guild. Die knowing the institution she built will still be refusing the wrong loans and making the right ones a century after her grandchildren’s grandchildren are dust.

4.9 Multani

Institutional goal. Hold the foreign portfolio in perpetuity, such that every other continental power must go through Multani to reach Sulamir. Make each guild on the Council dependent on Multani for at least one relationship it cannot maintain on its own. Be the indispensable intermediary.

Fitran’s ambition. Hold agendas inside agendas such that no one, not his own Right and Left, not his spouses, not his enemies, ever knows his true intention. The ambition is not secrecy for secrecy’s sake. It is the conviction that a mind fully legible to another is a mind that has already lost.

4.10 Abyssal Fires

Institutional goal. Possess the most complete archive on the continent and the most capable investigators to add to it. Answer more questions than any other guild asks. Make Abyssal Fires the guild other guilds must come to for the truth they cannot find in their own books.

Rhys’s ambition. Answer one specific question he has asked himself his whole life. OPEN on what the question is. Working canon: the question concerns the identity of something he encountered as a young gnome and has never been able to name.

4.11 Bavit-vita

Institutional goal. Reduce mortality in every province. Increase the population’s vitality so Sulamir can carry whatever comes. Keep birth rates high and plagues contained. Defend the life disciplines and their practitioners from every guild that would prefer them instrumentalized.

Singh’s ambition. Be the Leader who is finally listened to when she says what she actually means. Her flippancy is armor, her exuberance a test, and the trap inside both is that she is more capable than her audience. She intends, quietly, to outlive the Council that mocks her and to attend Alont’s funeral.

4.12 Alyu’amare

Institutional goal. Realize Skylar’s dream of Sulamir as a beacon to Merretia: a continent united through alliance and marriage rather than conquest. Broker the unions that will outlast the current cold war. Keep the elemental and emotional disciplines within reach of the people who need them.

Skylar’s ambition. Be remembered as the Leader who began the continental reconciliation, even if the work takes generations beyond her own and her name is lost from the histories. The less charitable Leaders believe her naive. She has not corrected them, because the correction would be rude.

4.13 The Core

Institutional goal. Prevent the cold war from ever going hot. Mediate every Council dispute that can be mediated. Teach the mind disciplines to the widest possible audience, so that a reasonable population can resist manipulation by the guilds that would manipulate them.

Creven Alont’s ambition. Reach understanding with his own life before time runs out, including understanding of whatever divides him from Alont of the Temple. Privately, reconcile the shared surname into a shared history, or learn the difference and stop hoping.

4.14 The Sulamir League

Institutional goal. Preserve the long memory of the city across ages. Maintain the archives, treaties, and institutional continuities that the Council relies on without knowing the League is the one keeping them. Be the guild that is still standing when everything else falls.

Berreldin’s ambition. Outlast every other current Leader and be the last voice the Council hears before the next realignment. OPEN on personality details. Working register: patient to the point of geological.

4.15 Prodigus Group

Institutional goal. Keep Sulamir’s technology functional through any crisis. Build redundancy into every critical system. Be the guild that quietly survives what breaks the more ambitious ones. Resist being treated as a specialist caste by the political guilds.

Fidi’olliana’s ambition. See Prodigus recognized at Council as peer to Alum-sidek and the Masons rather than as a technical convenience. OPEN on the specific path. Working canon: she intends to be asked onto the restructuring committee Alont wants to form, and to answer yes on terms only she will fully understand.

4.16 Order of the Spider

Institutional goal. Know everything first. Act without being seen. Hold the leverage that makes the other guilds cautious even when no specific threat is named. The Spider’s official domain is sanctioned assassination, but the real work is information flow.

Jinto Sien’s ambition. Control the flow of secrets across the continent and, in time, the Council itself, silently. Never hold a title that names him. OPEN on specifics. Working canon: the ambition extends further than even his own lieutenants suspect.

4.17 The White Legion

Institutional goal. Hold the emotional attention of Sulamir’s populace across all classes. Make the Council’s dramas secondary to the stage’s. Use public affection as political currency the Council cannot directly contest. The Legion believes, plausibly, that the guild that writes Sulamir’s songs outlives the guild that writes Sulamir’s laws.

Elacole Stone’s ambition. Be the Leader whose performances, speeches, and final scene are quoted for a century after her death. Die onstage if she can arrange it. OPEN on her private life. Working register: the public theatricality is a discipline, not a personality.

4.18 The Hand

Institutional goal. Concentrate the continent’s wealth, rarities, and luxury trade in Sulamir and in the Sulamiri diaspora. Ensure that what is rare, exquisite, or dangerous flows through The Hand’s fingers before reaching any market. Maintain the liberal posture that lets the guild profit from every ideology without committing to any of them.

Dru Danum’s ambition. Own at least one of every classified artifact, legal or illegal, before he dies. OPEN on how close he is. Working canon: closer than the OCTA suspects, with at least one angel feather of Founding-era provenance already in his private rooms.

4.19 Cooperative Pairings and Structural Conflicts

The goals above produce predictable alliances. The Blue Cross and The Core cooperate on anti-war positioning at Council. Bavit-vita and Alyu’amare share a constituency in the common people and often vote together. The Sulamir League and Prodigus Group share the quiet-survival posture and quietly advise each other on matters neither raises to the full chamber. Abyssal Fires and The Masons maintain an old understanding on the handling of pre-war records. Iron Coin sometimes backs the Temple of the One against Emphemere, when Emphemere’s noble-house consolidation threatens the independence of the credit system.

The goals also produce predictable conflicts. Iron Coin and The Hand compete permanently over finance. Multani and Alum-sidek compete over influence and arterial access. Red Dragons and Torrus Ectos compete over the Council’s demand for martial services. Emphemere and Alyu’amare compete for the brokerage of house alliances. Temple of the One and The Core compete for the contemplative tradition. Abyssal Fires and the Order of the Spider compete over intelligence. These competitions are structural and do not soften when the personalities change.

Cyl’s personal goal, to protect Oen at any cost (see 03-ARCHONS.md), sits outside this map entirely and supersedes Alum-sidek’s institutional goal whenever the two pull in different directions. The other guilds’ Leaders do not yet understand that the Left Hand of Alum-sidek is operating on a priority scheme no Council member shares. They will learn.

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5. Ideology Registry

Each guild has an ideological tilt described by a word-pair: the quality the guild claims as its virtue, and the disposition it tends to express while pursuing that virtue. These are the cultural fingerprints that members of a guild tend to share, even across races and classes.

Guild	Tilt
Alum-sidek Alliance	Shrewdness / terrifying
The Masons	Wisdom / vengeful
Emphemere	Ambition / ruthless
Torrus Ectos (The Red Octopus)	Brutality / blissful
Order of the Blue Cross	Death / generous
The Red Dragons	Discipline / pure
Temple of the One	Elegance / natural
The Iron Coin	Independence / gallant
Mulitani	Influence / tactical
Abyssal Fires	Intelligence / skeptical
Bavit-vita	Life / chaotic
Alyu’amare	Love / elemental
The Core	Mind / serene
The Sulamir League	Perseverance / singular
Prodigus Group	Resilience / logical
Order of the Spider	Stealth / swift
The White Legion	Pleasure / dramatic
The Hand	Wealth / liberal

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6. The Eighteen Guilds

Alum-sidek Alliance

Province. Tonja (far east, Waste Lands frontier). Contains House Corveliss’s ancestral holdings. See 04-CONTINENT section 5.

Tilt. Shrewdness / terrifying.

Leader. Nathia Tolleman. Young noblewoman. Does not speak. Her silence has never been publicly explained and is the most closely guarded fact in the guild. She does not appear weak. Most observers who sit with her for an hour come away convinced they have been measured exactly.

Right Hand. Haymond. Career enforcer. Known throughout the city for a specific finishing maneuver, the “Scorpion move,” which exposes the vital point of an opponent who thought themselves armored. The Right Hand title is civic cover for Haymond’s actual role: Cyl’s sworn bodyguard by soul pact. See 11-CHARACTERS.md and 07-RELIGIONS for the mechanics. If killed in the line of that duty, he returns to life in a pre-designated safe space. Unnervingly silent. Much of his prior personality has gone thin since the pact.

Left Hand. Cylenna of House Corveliss, known to a small circle as Cyl. Speaks on Nathia’s behalf in royal formal register. Cyl’s public voice is the voice of Alum-sidek.

Disposition. All three officers of Alum-sidek terrify the other guilds for different reasons. Nathia by what she refuses to reveal. Haymond by what he has done. Cylenna by what she is.

Corveliss connection. House Corveliss holds the charter for the inter-provincial magnerail. Corveliss’s trains are effectively Alum-sidek’s arteries. The two are separately named but functionally intertwined.

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The Masons

Province. Hakkar (east, Waste Lands frontier). Great-War memorial country.

Tilt. Wisdom / vengeful.

Leader. Callum Stoneheart, publicly known by his Hakkari Mason war-name Kane. Low-voiced. Deliberate. Speaks slowly because his words tend to settle like stones and people listen for the next one. The war-name Kane is a hereditary tradition of the Stoneheart line, given to whichever Stoneheart reaches Mason-Leader stature in a generation; Callum’s earning of the name is reserved for staging. Tara, his wife, uses Callum in private and Cal in the most intimate register.

Right Hand. Tara Trapper.

Left Hand. Titus.

Historical weight. The Kane Stoneheart of the Great-War generation was instrumental in the events that destabilized the slave-holding region that would ultimately be consumed by Zar Valareth’s war (see 06-HISTORY section 6). The current Kane (Callum) carries the name in that line’s tradition. He is old enough to remember Aldasen standing. He has opinions about the current age that he does not share with the Council.

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Emphemere

Province. Yisk (north-central). Where Summer’s gloom was first staged.

Tilt. Ambition / ruthless.

Leader. Lady Summer, called “Lady Winter” behind her back. Elf. Very old, presenting as roughly forty under subtle cosmetic aging. Flowing conservative robes, a pair of slender regal bracers. Great unbridled ambition. Speaks slowly and weakly, which contrasts with and disguises her appetite.

Right Hand. Heathcliff. Human. One of her twin Fey advisors. Voice effeminate and harmonically clean.

Left Hand. Sergey. Aarakocra. The second Fey advisor. Mirrors Heathcliff’s register.

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Torrus Ectos (The Red Octopus)

Province. Julin (northwest, coastal). Gren’s home ground.

Tilt. Brutality / blissful.

Leader. Gren’o’nos’n’offak, called Gren. Human, stout and strong, fifties. Grizzled and happy. Lines and tattoos cover him, each with a story he will tell if asked. Armor that permits free movement and leaves his arms exposed to sun and air. Wields a short sword in one hand and a gauntlet in the other. Russian accent.

Right Hand. Amber. Asimarr, angel-touched lineage.

Left Hand. Rolinda. Asimarr, angel-touched lineage.

Standing. Gren is the least respected of the Council Leaders and is regularly used by the other guilds as a wedge against each other. He does not fully understand that he is used.

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Order of the Blue Cross

Province. Antodinera (southwest-central, coastal). Healing-houses and hospices.

Tilt. Death / generous.

Leader. Vazzerin Ohn, called Vaz. Vampire presenting as late-thirties human. Kind-faced. Soft spoken. Moves with poise and purpose. Obsessed with living generously and dying well. Svelte, sharp-featured. Long white and blue coat. Rapier.

Right Hand. Nell. Vampire.

Left Hand. Hayzek. Gnome.

Disposition. Vaz is the principal Council voice for peace between the guilds. His register is that of a master tailor or a generous steward.

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The Red Dragons

Province. Creko (east-central, bordering the Waste Lands).

Tilt. Discipline / pure.

Leader. Quinton Marvelous. Human, forties. Strict, eccentric, relentlessly curious. Impeccable flamboyant suit and cape. Carries a cane. Reserved of temperament, holds himself to an impossible standard, and expects Sulamir to rise to it for the sake of its people. Enormous reservoir of compassion behind the severity.

Right Hand. Dante. Half-elf.

Left Hand. Fyerre. Dwarf.

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Temple of the One

Province. Entoyo (north-central-east). Doctrinal heartland.

Tilt. Elegance / natural.

Leader. Alont. Elf. Japanese-style curt syllabic register. Elitist. Believes the Council should be restructured to give “the better guilds” more power, and advocates for an inner circle that would effectively rule Sulamir from behind the Council. Has been voted down on this repeatedly.

Right Hand. Niska.

Left Hand. Uing-Wei.

Important note. The Temple of the One is both a guild and the closest surviving heretical theology to the true cosmology. See 07-RELIGIONS for the Temple’s doctrine, which is largely separable from Alont’s political ambitions.

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The Iron Coin

Province. Lupan (west-central interior). Banking country.

Tilt. Independence / gallant.

Leader. Pershaun. Human. Scottish register. Believes in Sulamir’s independence through economic sovereignty. Only interested in other city-states insofar as they can be leveraged to Sulamir’s benefit. Full of love for those who earn her trust. Holds women in higher regard than men.

Right Hand. Jaka. Dwarf.

Left Hand. Ban. Vampire.

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Multani

Province. Sahthan (center-east interior). Caravan-and-intelligence country.

Tilt. Influence / tactical.

Leader. Fitran Mihran, called Fitz or Fitran. Human. Flamboyant, a touch theatrical, dangerous. Machiavellian. Wants the favor of every powerful entity in and out of Sulamir and will allow no one to know his true mind. Always holds multiple agendas at once.

Right Hand. Ptolemy. Human.

Left Hand. Vera. Human.

Standing. Regarded by insiders as the most politically dangerous Leader on the Council, though he rarely appears so at first glance. A favorite manipulator of Gren.

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Abyssal Fires

Province. Nolekkelon (far northeast, Waste Lands frontier). Library-and-archive country.

Tilt. Intelligence / skeptical.

Leader. Rhys. Gnome. Spanish register. Sees every person and institution for the threat they are. Holds an enormous store of knowledge across many subjects. Insists on asking more questions than he answers.

Right Hand. Baith. Goliath.

Left Hand. Montroy. Half-elf.

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Bavit-vita

Province. Merjaya (southwest, coastal, at the river mouth). The province named in the guild’s oath.

Tilt. Life / chaotic.

Leader. Singh. Human. Northern register with a Harley-Quinn tilt. Flippant, rude, exuberant, always ruffling feathers and stirring the pot to get a reaction. Loves attention. Is more capable and competent than she appears, which is the trap.

Right Hand. Bathemel. Orc.

Left Hand. Gwen. Halfling.

Oath. Singh’s personal guild oath begins: “I, Singh, swear to uphold the Guild Trade / My life for many, for all, or for one / In Merjaya or wherever calls for aid / To stand with you each a sister each a brother / Overlapping shields and torches and swords.” See 09-CULTURE for the full text.

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Alyu’amare

Province. Illibill (southeast, river-country). Skylar’s proof-of-concept province.

Tilt. Love / elemental.

Leader. Skylar. Human. Believes in the guilds’ ability to make Sulamir the best place possible for her people, and wants Sulamir to be a beacon to Merretia that unites the continent in harmony. Sincere to the point that less charitable Leaders find her naive.

Right Hand. Harthero.

Left Hand. Chale.

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The Core

Province. Pogus (center-north interior). Monastic, contemplative.

Tilt. Mind / serene.

Leader. Creven Alont. Human. Southern register. Believes that understanding one’s self leads to understanding the universe and everything’s place in it. Currently spending most of his political capital trying to keep the cold war between the guilds from escalating.

Right Hand. Thervo.

Left Hand. Kadazaki. Tabaxi.

Note on the surname. Creven shares a surname with Alont of the Temple of the One. The question of whether they are related, the same lineage in different branches, or coincidentally named is OPEN.

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The Sulamir League

Province. Ahlgenadin (center of the continent). Contains the city of Sulamir itself. The Sulamir League is therefore the guild whose provincial capital is the capital city, and whose province is the host territory for every other guild’s seat-house in Sulamir.

Tilt. Perseverance / singular.

Leader. Berreldin.

Right Hand. Tefeska.

Left Hand. Perym.

OPEN. Personalities, race, register. This guild has not been fleshed out in source material.

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Prodigus Group

Province. Ockallaka (center-west interior). Resilience-coded interior.

Tilt. Resilience / logical.

Leader. Fidi’olliana.

Right Hand. Ralana.

Left Hand. Luqa.

OPEN. Personalities, race, register.

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Order of the Spider

Province. Udlimill (far southeast, river-country, bordering Sulamir Forest). Thin-populated, stealth-coded.

Tilt. Stealth / swift.

Leader. Jinto Sien.

Right Hand. Elonzo Besk.

Left Hand. Safiya Chinue.

OPEN. Personalities, race, register. The name and tilt imply a guild of spies, assassins, and intelligence-gathering, but this is not confirmed.

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The Hand

Province. Bolanbi (south-central, river-country). Merchant-administrative, sits astride the river crossings.

Tilt. Wealth / liberal.

Leader. Dru Danum.

Right Hand. Imril.

Left Hand. Olamae.

OPEN. Personalities, race, register.

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The White Legion

Province. Frewna Nurrelle (west-central coast). Port-heavy, theatrical.

Tilt. Pleasure / dramatic.

Leader. Elacole Stone.

Right Hand. Cemenda.

Left Hand. Wynjaren.

OPEN. Personalities, race, register.

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7. Outlaw Orders

Two organizations of guild-scale power operate outside the Council and are formally outlawed across Sulamir’s provinces. Both are older than the current eighteen-guild Council, and both survived the wars that produced it.

Iosan Serpents

Leader. Shaesahn.

Nature. OPEN. Working assumption: a secretive order descending from the pre-Triarchy age, operating in the gaps of provincial law and in the spaces beneath Sulamir’s infrastructure. If the working canon holds that ten original angel-demon pairs once shaped the world, the Iosan Serpents may be one of two remnant orders (the other being the Heralds) preserving lost practices.

Heralds of the Sunborn

Leader. Valareth.

Concern. The name of the Heralds’ Leader is the same name by which the lich-king Zar Valareth was historically known in softened form. The Council has not officially acknowledged this coincidence. Working canon is that Valareth of the Heralds is the returned lich, operating behind a cult mask.

Nature. The Heralds present publicly as a reverent order devoted to the memory of the celestial founders and the hope of their return. In private, the order’s purposes are believed to run in the opposite direction of their public face. They are watchful for signs of angel-demon power returning in the world, and Cyl and Oen will eventually register on that watch.

The book-one operation (locked, 2026-05-19). The Heralds deliberately orchestrate the Hollow seepage in the Steam Tunnels at book one opening (see 14-KAIJU-AND-HOLLOW.md section 2.1 and 13-SCENES.md section on seepage response). The working is a test of the dome’s metaphysical vulnerability plus a deliberate lure designed to surface unregistered practitioners across the continent. The Heralds expect that an in-dome breach this significant will draw responses from every faction with native faith-shape; those responses are the data the Heralds want, including practitioners outside the academy gate and any cosmologically anomalous figures who register on their watch (Cyl and Oen unknowingly register through the band’s response). The metal-armed prescient Herald (working canon antagonist from the Prologue, 21-INSPIRATION-AND-PREVIOUS-WRITING.md) is the operational figure on the ground in Sulamir, conducting the test and reading the response in real time. He recurs across book one as the immediate antagonist of the band’s investigation; his full identity, name, and position within the Heralds hierarchy are OPEN and reserved for staging. Valareth himself does not appear in scene at book one; he is the figure behind the figure. The band’s investigation surfaces the Heralds connection across the descent, with the full reveal landing at the climax or the close. The Iosan Serpents are the partial counter-force (undercover-OCTA-agent program hunting the Heralds; see 00-INDEX.md 2026-04-24 entry); their counter-operation is one of the threads the band crosses.

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8. Guild Enforcement Bodies

Marshals

A collectively guild-approved body that enforces guild law throughout the entire city. Federal police and investigators. Homeland-security-grade authority. In extreme cases, Marshals can indict guild Leaders. Their independence from any single guild is theoretical and fragile; in practice the body is constantly leveraged by the stronger guilds against the weaker.

Militias

Each guild approves law enforcement for its own province. These are local police, paid by their guild, loyal to their guild, often corrupt to the benefit of the great houses of that province.

Steam System Workers

Not a police force but an enforcement class in effect. The workers who maintain Sulamir’s electric grid and steam tunnels live underground in vast lifelong-service communities. Their cooperation or non-cooperation can strangle any faction above ground. Oen grew up among them.

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9. Social Relationship to the Great Houses

The wealthy noble houses of Sulamir are not themselves guilds. They are, in the language of the current era, “members” of guilds, or “allied to” guilds. In practice, a few houses carry more political weight than smaller guilds. House Corveliss’s magnerail makes it functionally inseparable from Alum-sidek. Other houses of comparable weight include House Jukaggle (Azhandian-Sulamiri family, preservationist), House Brackun (factory operators), House Nhanga (cloud network concerns), and the entrepreneurial House founded by Master Enwith (freed Azhandian slave and self-made magnate). See 11-CHARACTERS.md and future 11-HOUSES.md for the full registry.

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10. Cross-References

• Historical emergence of the Council from the Senate after the defeat of Zar Valareth: see 06-HISTORY.
• The Temple of the One’s theology (distinct from Alont’s politics): see 07-RELIGIONS.
• The prophecy concerning the Council and the Maw (Prophecy of the Twenty-Two-Year Celestial): see 08-PROPHECIES.md.
• Cylenna of House Corveliss, her silent Leader Nathia Tolleman, and Haymond the Scorpion: see 03-ARCHONS.md and 11-CHARACTERS.md.
• Provinces and places of the continent: see 04-CONTINENT.
• The Marshals, Militias, Steam System Workers, and all other social roles of Sulamir: see 12-ROLES.md.

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11. Open Questions (Guilds)

1. Personality, race, register, and ideological specifics of The Sulamir League, Prodigus Group, Order of the Spider, The Hand, and The White Legion.
2. The question of whether the shared surname between Creven (The Core) and Alont (Temple of the One) indicates family relation.
3. The precise founding contract of each guild with its original angel-demon pair, if any.
4. The question of whether the Iosan Serpents and Heralds of the Sunborn represent two surviving halves of a single older order, or always were separate.
5. The identity and fate of the guilds that existed between Senate and current Council, if the Council number has shifted from its initial post-war count.
6. Which province each guild administers, and the names of those provinces.
7. Nathia Tolleman’s silence: oath, condition, discipline-cost, or something stranger.
8. The precise calendar of charter renewals, and which charters are perpetual versus time-limited.
9. The Council’s current cap on guild force size and the degree to which each guild exceeds it.
10. The current debt map: which guilds owe the Iron Coin and The Hand, and in what amounts.
11. The Marshal loyalty distribution, and the means by which individual Marshals are cultivated.
12. The roster of unauthorized foreign channels currently run outside Multani’s sanction.
13. The question of which guild, if any, currently holds the largest cache of Founding-era artifacts.
14. The last successful charter challenge on grounds of malfeasance, and which guild brought it.