D&D Wandcraft: Guilds & Brotherhoods

Return to Wandcraft:

Part 1: Initiative, Deflecting, Disarming, Wands’ Natures
Part 2: Wand Allegiance, Improvement, Attitudes
Part 3: Pliability, Requirements, Preferences, Affinity
Part 4: Otherworldly Wands
Part 5: Character Class--Wand Making, Setting up Shop, Fame and Fortune
Part 6: Character Class--Wand Makers' Advancement and Special Abilities

Wizard Guild, unknown author or source

These organizations’ purpose is to protect their members and to promote their brand of wandcraft. Protection most often consists in keeping an eye on closed shops while their owners are away searching for samples and components. To promote the craft, they proffer guidance for wand makers seeking advancement (i.e. training to earn new experience levels). In the event of a dispute between wand makers or should a client submit a complaint, they act as arbitrators to enforce fairness and business integrity. Typically, members in good standing will have an advantage over non-members. Depending on its ideology, a guild may house and support long-time members no longer able to care for themselves due to old age or adventuring mishaps.
            The entry retainer is 100 gold when joining. Yearly membership dues often amount to 10% of shop profits, which entitles the organization to audit their books to ascertain correct amounts are disbursed. Members without a shop pay 10 gold monthly. This fee does not affect the experience wand makers earn. Dues are negotiable if members bequeath their wandcraft books to their guilds in the event of their deaths. Inherited books are kept at the headquarters’ library; members may consult these works on site. Failure to pay up or getting caught cheating results in banishment from the organization. Collected fees serve to pay for the organization’s quarters, its services, loans to members, and hired hands. Top members (i.e. founding members and those with the highest Prestige and seniority) split profits, if any. They elect a guild master for day-to-day business and conduct votes on important or controversial decisions.
            Although there could be rival organizations, wandcraft guilds are very few (not more than two or three active in each realm), and usually based in separate towns. Wand makers cannot operate in urban areas with more than 30,000 inhabitants without joining a guild. Their emissaries travel the land to address their business with members living away from their guilds’ headquarters. It isn’t uncommon for guilds to operate one or more skyships to help move emissaries and hired hands where they are needed. A guild’s influence on heads of state and local officials can be surmised based on the overall Prestige of its members. It may be stronger in some regions than others. Part of the profits can (and often are) paid as bribes where Prestige falls short in order to make sure local laws favor the guild’s interests.

The Star Shadow Guild
            This organization favors non-evil members (or non-Chaotic members in b/x or becmi terms). It operates under the auspices of a benevolent deity, especially one with a sphere of interest including magic, wizards, spellcasting, or the crafting of enchanted devices. It is known only among a few that the Star Shadow possesses an artifact. It transforms the guild’s Prestige into magical energy feeding its divine liege. The process does not affect members, since their Prestige already lies in the minds of the public. In return for this gift, the patron deity bestows a +15% bonus on earned experience to the faithful among the guild’s members. The Star Shadow counts several chaplains whose proselytizing efforts can be intrusive at times. It is said that the oldest founder has long since departed the Prime Plane, and may have attained immortality or perhaps godhood.

The Circle of Blood
            Its members are generally of a neutral or malevolent philosophy (non-Lawful members in b/x or becmi terms). As may be guessed, they favor a malevolent deity as their spiritual liege, possibly a monstrous being strong in dark magic. To remain in good standing among the cabal, trusted members participate to a black mass once yearly. These services are held secretly in various places in a realm, during which participants proffer an ounce of their blood, one at a time, and solemnly renew their undying oaths of obedience. The sanguine gifts are used in rituals at the cabal’s headquarters to summon a fallen prince of darkness. The process, if uninterrupted, may take decades or centuries, after which the summoned soul is bound to The One Wand, a legendary device able to bend to its evil will all other wands it encounters. In exchange for their offerings, members receive a +1hp bonus with every new level earned. Death is the only way out of the cabal. Betraying its secret will lead to an equally swift end. The souls of departed members (and ex-members) are harvested to enhance the cabal’s dark rituals.

The Free Company
            It beckons unscrupulous or discredited wand makers, spell hackers, fences, and anyone who didn’t fit in the other two guilds. The Free Company is generally associated with local thieves’ guilds. They charge whatever they think they can extort from members so long as they don’t go broke. There is no quitting the Free Company. Only death will sever that bond, which will soon follow for those who fail to pay up. The guild will however use its resources to move a fugitive out of town and set up shop elsewhere, under a different identity. The Free Company is a secret outfit that has been outlawed in many places. Its members wear small wand-shaped tattoos on their left forearms.

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