Midgard - NPC Factions

Guilds

Midgard’s society is organized into many factions, some of which are playable and some of which exist only to provide non-player support of the game. The Guilds are one of these latter groups.

There are actually many different guilds of various sorts, each with only local hierarchies of authority, but they can all be described in generally the same way: they are there to provide infrastructure to the world of Midgard and everyone in it. For instance, everyone is probably familiar with the Heliographer’s Guild, but there’s also the Banker’s Guild, the Shipwright’s Guild, the Longshoreman’s Guild, the Merchant’s Guild, the Healer’s Guild and others that provide skilled and impartial support to the population of the world at large. There’s probably a Thieves’ Guild and an Assassin’s Guild, too, but we don’t talk about them too openly.

For instance, the Banker’s Guild provides banking and money-handling services of all sorts while the Merchant’s Guild oversees most of the markets and organized trade. The Shipwright’s Guild builds ships for anyone who can pay and members of the Longshoreman’s Guild are in charge of ports all over the world.

There are other, even less formal, groups that can be found in nearly any city performing common trades of all sorts. It’s not difficult to find loosely organized groups of skilled and semi-skilled people almost anywhere working as farmers, ranchers, fishermen, foresters, weavers, knitters, quilters, tailors, butchers, blacksmiths, tinkers, silversmiths, coppersmiths, tinsmiths, armor smiths, weapon smiths, brewers, bakers, millers, cobblers, chandlers, merchants, peddlers, basket weavers, leatherworkers, woodworkers, carvers, potters, painters, artists, sailors, sculptors, miners, stonemasons, guards, bounty hunters, teamsters, healers of various sorts, and on and on. These do not officially qualify as structured guilds but generally perform local services for pay or barter in a similar manner. Other groups may also be around but may not be desirable to interact with for game play, such as beggars, prostitutes, soothsayers/oracles, "wizards", alchemists, astrologers, cults, etc.