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 strangles Everwealth with silken ropes of commerce. It is no mere guild of traders; it is a cabal whose contracts chain the living as surely as iron fetters. Roughly a third of all commerce in Everwealth passes through their hands, each crate and caravan taxed, stamped, and blessed with their sigils of control. Publicly, they claim to safeguard roads, organize shipping routes, and maintain order against the bandits and beasts that infest the wilds. Privately, they are an aristocracy of profiteers: barons who never plow fields yet reap harvests, slumlords who rent hovels at famine prices, magnates who barter not in coin but in lives. Their hands are always outstretched, whether for tithe, tax, or blood. Every city knows the Consortium. Their armed caravans roll like mobile fortresses. Their contracts are etched in arcane ink, self-binding and self-enforcing, impossible to break without forfeiting one’s wealth, or soul. The people spit curses beneath their breath, yet still clutch at the Consortium’s promise, safety from raiders, delivery of grain, the arrival of salt, wine, and medicine. For in the monster-haunted roads of Everwealth, no caravan unblessed by the Consortium survives long. Bandits vanish when the Gilded Chain claims a road, but whispers say many of those same “bandits” were first hired blades, loosed to ruin trade before the Consortium swooped in to sell protection
Career
Qualifications
Membership requires neither virtue nor craft. The doors open for those with lineage, coin, or the right patron. A pauper may buy their way in if they bleed themselves of wealth, while the child of a Chairman may inherit entire provinces of trade without lifting a hand. Initiates are measured not by skill but by leverage: what debts they can call, what secrets they can sell.
Career Progression
The lowest rung, Silvertongues, manage warehouses and caravan routes. Above them rise the Brokers, who control trade hubs and levy tariffs. The Overseers claim cities and ports like personal estates. At the top sit the Chairmen, architects of lawless law. One among them, S’Banthor Leori, a Lizard-Kin whose scaled hand signs every decree, reigns as High Chairman. His race’s history of enslavement by men makes his seat an open wound, a reminder that power forgets old chains but never stops tightening new ones.
Payment & Reimbursement
Coin flows uphill. The Silvertongues scrape survival from surcharges and bribes, while Overseers dine on luxury paid for by tariffs. At the summit, the Chairmen feast from golden tables inscribed with ledgers, every banquet a tally of blood squeezed from below. The more one ascends, the less one must labor, their shares rise, their risks vanish. Profit becomes divine inheritance.
Other Benefits
Membership grants the right to shape law in shadow. A contract sealed by Consortium ink outweighs any crown’s decree. They maintain fleets of ships, legions of mercenaries, and caches of smuggled relics. Their inns serve as spy-nests, their banks as prisons for debtors’ souls, their safehouses as staging grounds for assassins. Perhaps the greatest privilege is impunity, a Consortium man may bankrupt a kingdom, yet so long as goods arrive on time, no judge dares call him guilty.
Perception
Purpose
The Consortium insists it exists to “stabilize trade.” What it truly seeks is monopoly, every sack of grain, every barrel of iron, every wagon-wheel in Everwealth must pass beneath their stamp. They present themselves as custodians of prosperity, but their creed is hunger, better the poor starve than bread be sold unmarked by their seal.
Social Status
Among nobles, they are necessary parasites. Lords despise their grip, yet none can cast it off, for without their caravans, famine and ruin arrive. To the poor, they are the face of exploitation: collectors of impossible dues, sellers of bread whose price doubles by nightfall. To rival traders, they are devils, one may deal with them, or one may vanish from the roads entirely.
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
The Consortium was birthed in the ashes of The Great Schism. When roads crumbled and ports rotted, trade collapsed, and famine devoured entire provinces. Out of this ruin rose a coalition of road-pavers, shipwrights, and merchant barons. Their vow was to save commerce. Their reality was to enslave it. The roads they built still stand, the papers they signed still bind. Generations later, their heirs profit from ancient labor, their bureaucracy ossified into something more eternal than kingdoms. Some whisper the Consortium struck pacts not only with crowns but with cults: that road contracts were sealed with blood, that merchant fleets were blessed by drowned gods. What is certain is that whenever a city sought to cut them out, caravans burned, grain ships sank, and famine stalked the streets. No one dares oppose them twice. The rise of The Saddleborn Guild runs parallel to the Consortium. Some claim the two guilds are entwined more deeply than blood and coin, without the Saddleborn’s monopoly on beasts, the Consortium’s promise of “safe passage” would wither. In turn, without the Consortium’s mercenaries guarding their caravans, Saddleborn reins would be chewed by wolves before the week was out. Their alliance is both symbiosis and stranglehold.
Operations
Tools
They wield not swords but signatures. Contracts written in binding ink enforce themselves, sometimes burning the hands of oathbreakers using runic magic stamped contracts in special cases. Mercenary brokers, bonded couriers, bribed officials, and blackmail serve as their weapons. Route-stamps and arcane sealers are their banners, legitimizing their chokehold.
Materials
Their lifeblood is paper and ink, tax ledgers, encoded scrolls, registry stones. They hoard relics that detect lies, coins that reveal counterfeit, and quills that record secrets whispered in proximity.
Workplace
Their headquarters in Opulence is tiled in gold, a palace of greed that gleams above starving districts. Every major city houses a branch, masquerading as a guildhall, inn, or bank. Behind the doors, trade becomes ritual, and profit a god.
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
Their corruption is legendary. Factions within the Consortium sabotage one another’s routes, poison rivals, or bankrupt entire towns in petty feuds. They protect merchants, yes,but they also strangle small guilds, levy ruinous tariffs, and choke trade until only their banner remains.
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
The Monarchy pretends to regulate them, but in truth, the Consortium is law unto itself. Their contracts supersede royal decrees, their tariffs bleed even dukes. Rumor holds they sponsor the very bandits they promise to protect against, a cycle of chaos and “salvation” too profitable to resist. Cities that refuse their grip find themselves strangled until famine or rebellion forces compliance.
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