The Merchants Guild
Across all of Aelamos you would be hard pressed to find a merchant, trader or supplier not registered with Merchants Guild. A unifying force that protects its members across the world, providing benefits to those members as well as the communities they work in. The Guild also has close ties with the artisans Guild as it is quiet often for a sole trader to be a member of both when they create and sell their wares at the same time.
Structure
The guild typically operates through an administrative representative located in the local government building. In larger cities, such as a country capital you can instead find a whole building dedicated to their affairs. The guilds headquarters however are located in the Winterwinds Isles. It is here you will find the leaders of the guild.
Public Agenda
The purpose of the Merchants Guild is to ensure fair trade across the land. This works both for the merchants and traders themselves, but also for the general public that would be buying their goods or services.
The guild works with the local government to adjust taxes paid on all transactions within their borders and in turn ensure that profit margins are kept reasonable to prevent extortion from the buyers.
History
Before the guild was formed fair trade was non-existent. Traders would sell valuable commodities to vulnerable communities for huge mark-ups, bleeding entire communities dry of their coin. At the same time different countries would apply heavy taxes on traders from their neighbouring kingopdoms that they had bad relations with. This lead to those trades either not making or even losing money on ventures into those kingdoms.
After a group of large merchants and suppliers banded together in the year 495 the guild was formed and they quickly went to work recruiting as many others as possible. Once establishing a large network they went to the government's of Aelamos and demanded a change to the way tariffs were applied to any trader working under their banner. It was only after the threat of a cease to all trade in the kingdoms that an agreement was finally met.
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