The Merchant's Consortium
"Trade is the lifeblood of Everwealth. We merely bottle it, brand it, and sell it back." -S’Banthor Leori, High Chairman
The Merchant’s Consortium is a powerful trade cabal responsible for roughly 35% of all commerce across Everwealth. Publicly, it is a guild of noble traders, logistics experts, and infrastructure managers devoted to economic stability. Privately, it is a tight-knit fraternity of barons, slumlords, and paper-signing profiteers who squeeze extra coin from every road paved, contract upheld, and warehouses built by the hard work of their long-dead predecessors for them, and them alone, to profit from. Their reputation rides a thin line between indispensability and exploitation. Cities and towns pay steeply for their shipping networks, ‘protection routes,’ and overstaffed caravans. Goods reach their destination, yes, but often at a price that leaves local markets strangled and the poor further impoverished. Still, in a world where monsters, warbands, and bandits rule the wilds, the Consortium’s guarantee of safe passage is not one to ignore.
Career
Qualifications
Membership is granted through lineage, capital investment, or sponsorship by an existing Chair. True entry requires neither honor nor skill , only leverage.
Career Progression
New members begin as Silvertongues, managing small contracts or supply hubs. Promotions come through economic performance and political utility. Rank advances to Broker, Overseer, and Chairman, with the rare title of High Chairman reserved for the most connected, or cunning.
Payment & Reimbursement
Members receive shares from trade tariffs, delivery surcharges, and port fees. The higher the rank, the more lucrative the percentage, and the more insulated from responsibility.
Other Benefits
Influence in almost every city. Access to Consortium ships, armed caravans, safehouses, and black-market brokers. Some territories even bend legal codes to appease them.
Perception
Purpose
To manage Everwealth’s trade routes, protect shipments, uphold economic tradition, and ensure their cut of every transaction, whether by coin or clause.
Social Status
Among nobles and cities, they’re seen as necessary allies, or parasites. Among the poor, they're the face of rising prices and disappearing grain. Among traders? A devil’s bargain: expensive, but effective.
Demographics
Dominated by Humans, Dwarfish, and Orcish, the backbone of Everwealth’s commerce since its inception. But uniquely, the High Chairman, S’Banthor Leori, is a Lizard-Kin, a shock to many in a kingdom still haunted by the history of enslavement by his fellow-folk before, in the distant lands of Tarmahc they once shared, swallowed by The Laughing Sea in the wake of The Fall.
History
Founded after The Great Schism during a period of economic ruin, the Consortium was formed to stabilize trade amid chaos. Originally a coalition of road-pavers, shipwrights, and merchant guilds, it grew into a bureaucracy that now controls much of the nation’s infrastructure. The roads were built generations ago. The papers were signed centuries back. But the Consortium still collects its due, and rewrites the rules when the old ones stop profiting.
Operations
Tools
Trade contracts enforced by mercenary brokers, bonded couriers, bribed officials, and armed caravans. Possession of route-stamps and arcane sealers grants legitimacy, even when deals aren’t fair.
Materials
Primarily logistical: carts, crates, shipping markers, encoded scrolls, registry stones, and tax ledgers. Occasionally supplemented by relics that detect fraud or ensure “honest” counting of profits.
Workplace
Headquartered in a sprawling golden-tiled estate in the Merchant’s Quarter of Opulence. Branches exist in every major city, often doubling as inns, banks, or guildhalls.
Provided Services
- Route mapping and patrol coverage.
- Freight and bulk transport.
- Market contract enforcement.
- Tariff oversight and tax estimation (with kickbacks).
- Informational networking on trade-safe zones.
Dangers & Hazards
Internal corruption is rampant. Rival factions within the Consortium often sabotage each other. And while they protect merchants, they also undercut competitors and quietly strangle smaller guilds.
Alternative Names
'The Gilded Chain ', 'The Brass Circle', 'The Coin Lords' (derisive).
Demand
Ubiquitous. Without the Consortium, overland travel would become suicide for most non-militarized caravans. Even the Crown tolerates their abuses, because they deliver.
Legality
Technically regulated by The Monarchy, but their contracts are self-enforcing. Aquiring these contracts however does stretch far over the lines of legality, if-rumor stands true outright hiring criminal factions on-occasion to muscle in on trade routes they have their eyes on as 'roadside bandits' the Consortium promises protection from; Unsubstantiated, but cities that have tried to cut them out before often found their supply lines in one-way-or-another "unexpectedly disrupted."
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