Traders Guild
Commerce Binds Us All
The Traders Guild is one of the most powerful forces on the moon of Kenshi, not through armies or temples, but through coin, contracts, and control. More than a merchant’s union, it is a sprawling economic machine, binding distant cities and warring factions together with the invisible thread of commerce. From slave caravans to salt routes, they oversee the movement of goods across every region, often profiting from both sides of a conflict. Unlike the zealots or warlords of Kenshi, the Guild worships wealth alone, measuring power in ledgers, not blood. Their only true allegiance is to the balance of trade, and their place at the top of it.
Guild Structure
The Trader's Guild is a highly organized and hierarchical faction, with a clear chain of command centered around a powerful group of merchant lords who direct its activities. These leaders, known as Guildmasters, are responsible for overseeing the Guild’s many operations, from trade negotiations to economic policy and enforcement of contracts. At the lower levels, the Guild consists of countless merchants and caravaneers who handle the day-to-day operations of buying, selling, and transporting goods.
Culture
At its core, the Trader’s Guild is a mercantile faction that exists to facilitate and control commerce. They operate under the belief that wealth and trade are the true foundations of power, and they use their vast economic resources to influence politics, military movements, and other factions. Though they do not directly engage in combat, their ability to manipulate economies and supply lines makes them a formidable force, able to starve entire regions or arm entire armies depending on where their interests lie.
The Black Vein
Beneath the polished halls of merchant houses and customs offices lies the Black Vein, a network of smugglers, poison peddlers, and shadow brokers sanctioned by the Traders Guild, so long as the coin flows and the silence holds. These black market traders specialize in goods deemed illegal in one region and indispensable in another; drugs, toxins, forbidden tech, and improvised explosives among them. A Guild caravan may carry sacred medicines to a Holy Nation temple by day, and crates of hashish or nerve gas to the highest bidder by night. All of it taxed, catalogued, and protected, just discreetly. Some among the Guild practice a crueler craft, the slow breaking of debt-bound souls. Addicts are cultivated like crops, given their first taste freely. Once hooked, their tabs grow faster than their coin, and when the weight of debt surpasses worth, the debtor vanishes into a slave cart bound for the mines or worse. To the Guild, it’s not cruelty. It’s profit in motion.
Slave Block
The Slave Block is not a single place, but a sprawling network of auction houses, holding pens, and bureaucratic offices scattered throughout the United Cities and beyond, all operating under the Traders Guild’s iron-clad authority. It is the heart of the legal slave trade, legitimized by guild contracts, noble charters, and a quiet nod
from the Empire’s nobles who profit from its cruel efficiency. Each major city has its own Block office — a grim marketplace where the fate of the enslaved is bartered behind polished desks and reinforced bars. In the opulent capital of Sho-Battai, the Slave Block looks more like a merchant's palace, its stonework gilded, its pens hidden behind silken curtains. But in Catun or Bast, it’s a rawer affair; open pits, collars stacked like wares, and blood-smeared floors cleaned hourly by the very merchandise on sale. The Guild’s justification is simple, labor must flow for society to grow. Criminals, debtors, drifters, and the conquered are all “processed” and assigned a monetary value. Some Blocks even provide “premium” slaves, trained servants, battle-hardened warriors, or skilled artisans for nobles and warlords with deep pockets. Beneath the surface, whispers persist of illegal captures, falsified debts, and entire outposts “cleared” to supply the trade. The Guild calls these claims slander.
The Trader's Seal
To bear the Trader’s Guild Seal is to hold a silent treaty in your pocket; recognized by nobles, warlords, and tyrants alike. The Guild is indiscriminate in its membership: Shek, Scorchlander, Hiver, even Skeletons can earn their place through commerce and cunning alone. This seal, a stamped medallion of brushed brass, is proof of allegiance to gold over god, law, or blood. It offers safe passage in most lands, even the Holy Nation will grit their teeth and allow a Skeleton entry, so long as that seal hangs heavy on their chest. But protection is never perfect... and sometimes accidents happen.
Towering and lumbering, Cagebeasts are the backbone of the Slave Block's mobile infrastructure massive, beaked beasts bred for endurance and temperament, trained to carry reinforced iron cages strapped to their broad, scarred backs. These creatures are both transport and deterrent; a symbol of the Guild’s power and a grim reminder of what awaits those who resist.
Iron holds the body.
Fear holds the mind.
A Cagebeast holds them both.
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