Mariner's Guild

The Mariner's Guild is an association of ship Companies and seafaring businesses operating throughout the Avadian Sovereignty.

Structure

The Mariner's Guild is made up of a number of branches operating in each major city or port in Avadian territory. Each of these branches elects a Representative from among themselves, who represents the group in the Conclave, a regular gathering of the Representatives in a rotating roster of cities. There they act to advance the agenda and interests of their particular branch. 
There are two types of by-laws decided upon by the Guild; local by-laws, which govern the local rules of maritime trade and are decided upon by popular vote of all members of a branch, and universal by-laws, which govern the entire Guild and are agreed on by a vote of all Representatives. Each branch also has other officers should they need them, such as treasurers, market specialists, etc.

Public Agenda

The Mariner’s Guild’s public agenda is to advocate for the interests of captains, Companies and trade endeavours related to the seas.

Assets

The guild has vast coffers; not only from the percentage of earnings paid by each member to enjoy their services, but also from donations from wealthy and powerful individuals who want to ensure their co-operation. Officially the Guild has no standing army or navy. Unofficially, the general rule seems to be that an attack on one guild member is seen as an attack upon all, and raiders and enemy navies can expect reprisals from anybody within the guild. It is also of note that while the Guild does not have an official navy, many of its more prominent members do happen to own armed penteconters and even ex-Admiralty biremes, which may just happen to come across raiders.

History

During the late third century DoM, commerce in the Calinan Sea was at an all-time high, especially with the Avadian Colonies giving the Sovereignty the foothold on the Arikandan and Calinan mainlands it needed to trade in a variety of goods not easily available to them. With that boom in commerce, however, came an unprecedented boom in violent crime on the seas, with unscrupulous raiders taking to the seas and attacking merchant shipping. The Admiralty proved too slow to respond, so in the summer of 220 DoM, a group of independent traders assembled in Port Avadia and agreed to operate as vigilantes. While the act of attacking a vessel unprovoked was illegal, self defense of a vessel was not, and as a result, if armed penteconters through a twist of fate happened upon pirate vessels, they would be obliged to protect themselves. The fact that such raiders were at large for attacking associates of said penteconters was purely a coincidence, naturally.
By the time the Avadian Admiralty determined that these events seemed to be co-ordinated and the result of traders taking the law into their own hands, the Calinan Sea had seen a massive reduction in piracy, to the point where the Assembly would never vote to prosecute these defenders of the seas, and to send them before the Council of Peace would cause a public outcry. So it was that the Mariner's Guild became a tolerated body for the protection of mariners and sea traders.
Throughout the decades, the Guild expanded to take on other aspects of protecting the interests of mariners of all stripes. Ship Companies benefited from association with each other, and all sailors and traders benefited from the negotiation of mutual aid, and agreed standards and practices across Companies and crew. New branches of the Guild opened in ports throughout the Beyan Archipelago, and then further abroad again to the Avadian Colonies. During this time, the concept of co-operation across branches was negotiated, and the Conclave system was proposed to ensure certain global rules throughout the Sovereignty.
In the Three Empires era, the Guild is as influential as it has ever been, with enough money and powerful members that even the Admiralty has to tread carefully around them or face crippling supply and service shortages. To this end, it has come under criticism from particularly large Companies and wealthy independent traders, who argue their rules and regulations are stifling the operations of their own businesses, and the Admiralty itself, who argue that the Guild is overstepping its bounds and encroaching on matters of state. In the last twenty years, there has also been a recent up-surge of independent traders who choose to operate without observation of or membership of the Guild, forming a minor challenge to their hegemony. Finally, the Guild are also butting heads with the new arrivals in the Calinan Sea, the traders of the Kingdom of Kjoqvist, with many Mariners uneasy at what they see as intruders into their rightful waters.

Influence

Officially, the Guild has no real political power as an entity, and is subject to the same laws and political control as any group of citizens in the Sovereignty. In practice, however, the Guild has both strength in numbers and political power by having a large number of Captains, who have increased voting power in the Assembly, under them. This allows them to affect legislation proposed in the Assembly by voting as a bloc if need be to approve or block certain legislation.
In addition, the Mariners simply have so much control over the maritime trades that to anger them would risk disruption of supply chains and trade across the Sovereignty, bringing the economy crashing to its knees. As a result, the Mariners can simply suggest that a particular action or lack thereof would impair their abilities to do their job to the best of their abilities, and their will is usually appeased. This can even see particularly wealthy individuals donating large amounts to the Guild- in effect a bribe - to keep them from interfering with a particular agenda. This can sometimes work, but can also backfire catastrophically and incur the wrath of the Guild, especially if betrayal of other members is suggested.

Founding Date

220 DoM

Type

Consortium, Business

Related Ethnicities

• Avadian