The Blades
Structure
The Blades leadership is always made up of a council of the nine highest-ranking Blade members currently on active duty. Achieving the highest rank within The Blades guild is rare so leadership changes rarely happen unless a leading member is killed-in-action, dies, or retires. The council duties are very limited and are based around maintaining the stability of the guild, its branches, and its members. These duties include:
- Maintain relationships with entities that fund The Blades, this includes kingdom governments, large commercial guild organizations, and private investors.
- Inspections of regional branches of The Blades guild.
- Dispute arbitration between guild members, if required.
In a crisis situation where Blade members are either hired or choose to intervene, the highest-ranking Blade on site has the authority to take situational control, however, they may leave it in the hand of the primary Blade member(s) who arrived beforehand, at the discretion of the superior member. Beyond these situations, there is no official structure of leadership. Each member of The Blades is responsible for his/her actions or inactions. When multiple members of The Blades take or are assigned a mission, leadership will usually defer to the highest-ranking Blade or the most knowledgable of the situation.
Branch Managers maintain a Blade headquarters in a city. You will usually find a branch of The Blades located within any major city within Rinas. Branch managers are usually Senior level Blades who have decided to leave the field for one reason or another but still wished to assist The Blades in any capacity possible. All of the branch locations also act as intelligence centers that collect and gather needed intel on current or upcoming missions.
Throughout a Blades career, they grow through a few ranks. The early ranks are earned through a collected point system. Points and records are kept secret and only available to Senior level Blade members or higher. Missions are graded by the branch manager and points are awarded by the grade with bonuses for action required above and beyond at times. The Blade is also judged by each Branch Manager they have worked for before being confirmed for advancement in rank. A Blade can only rise to the rank of Senior on earned points alone. To step above the level of Senior a Blade has shown exemplary effort usually brought about by extraordinary circumstances and actions in which a Blades gets involved with outside of normal assignments.
- Novice - Rank F - Brand new blade, achieved after completing the instructor's training regime. Novices are also supervised by more senior Blades until they have achieved the Apprentice rank.
- Apprentice - Rank E - Blades allowed to performs jobs own their own or with other apprentices, but still limited in the rank of missions they can claim and must work within the region of their application only.
- Journeyman - Rank D - A Blade is considered completely independent and can begin going to working through their entire kingdom of application.
- Adept - Rank C - A Blade can begin taking missions in any kingdom they wish. Many Blades at this point have gained major experience in a variety of situations and wish to spread their abilities to nations to continue improving their skills and knowledge.
- Senior - Rank B - The Blade at this level takes charge of large scale missions, coordination between branch offices, intelligence gathering, and some will take over responsibilities at a guild branch.
- Master - Rank A - *Classified for Council Eyes Only*
- Grandmaster - Rank S - *Classified for Council Eyes Only*
Missions are ranked as well according to their Branch Manager's perceived difficulty of the job. The rank system correlates to the same ranking system that is used for Blade member's career rankings. For example, a Rank D mission can not be claimed by anyone of Rank E or F.
Joining The Blades
The following criteria must be met to become a member of The Blades:
- Must be of ages 16 years old or above. (16 is the age the guild officially recognitions that one is an adult.)
- He/she must possess their own investigation and combat skills.
- If the following 2 above are met, the examined applicant must follow and complete the instructor's training regime to qualify the novice rank as a "Novice Blade".
Culture
The Blade's live by three major code that they try to follow or exemplify in all their work. The three basic codes:
- The Blades are an organization above the borders or nationality. Their duty is the peace and safety of the citizenry.
- If a civilian's life or freedoms are threatened, The Blades' duty is to ensure their safety.
- Blades have no authority against national entities or organizations recognized and authorized by them.
For the most part, the citizenry respect and even try to offer aid when a Blade is working in their area.
Public Agenda
The Blades are a non-governmental organization, that acts to keep the peace and protect civilians with many branches in most nations except Kiyoka. They aid the community in various ways such as exterminating monsters, preventing crime, finding lost items, and escorting people and goods. They work to maintain stability in their respective regions. Due to its international and neutral nature, it often mediates between disputing powers, and it even played a role in ending wars and several large scale incidents.
Assets
Being funded from multiple sources has allowed The Blades to establish Branch Offices in nearly every major city on Rinas, except within Kiyoka. Each branch is given a budget to work through and they are also paid by those who request missions through The Blades. A cut of all mission earnings goes to the branch office that is the mission's originating branch.
History
The Great Realm War had been raging for nearly a hundred years. Kingdoms fighting for more territory, more resources, brother fighting brother, the world was a mess. A group of daring seasoned soldiers from many of the kingdoms were becoming sick of the killing and sick of destroying innocent towns and people for lines on a map. They put aside their differences and focus their efforts in protect civilians that kept getting caught up in the war. They called themselves "The Defending Blades". With their efforts, they would divert armies, cleared out villages before armies arrived, and fought and killed small groups who decided they were above the law. Eventually, an uneasy cease-fire settled over the war, and the leaders of each nation decide to finally meet and trying to find peace once and for all. Whether it was pure coincidence or luck, after taking out a band of what they presumed to be bandits, they found hidden among them a bundle of papers detailing an assassination attempt by elven assassins. Their best investigation and combat skills user used to track down the assassins, however, it wasn't until they tried to make their move at the conference could The Defending Blade interfere. The attacked, cutting off the attacker just before they struck. The conference was in an upheaval, but The Defending Blades leader, Ronan Yanning, was quite the charismatic and glib fellow. He also happened to be fluent in multiple languages. He managed to talk down the members of the conference from their hysteria and, true details lost to time, managed to get the leaders to once again talk and negotiated the final peace and create the Great Hope Treaty which has held in place to this date, though some countries do test its boundaries from time to time. The terms of the treaty also created what would become The Blades thanks to Ronan ingenuity and thoughts of the future and how to protect it.
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