Trade Guilds

 

The Black Sappe League

The Black Sappe League began in the year 378 or 379 not as a trade guild, as an insurgency operating in the goblin controlled mines of the Iron Ridge Mountains in central Golanicja. Largely comprised of dwarves, but also including many canis, rodian, human and halfling slaves who were mining to supply the Orcish armies with coal, iron and other useful metals.

In the beginning, these insurgents were collapsing tunnels and sabotaging mining efforts to kill orcs and goblins and undermine their strategic industries. As they attempted to counter the insurgents the goblins began to refer to the saboteurs as the 'sappers', and the insurgents adopted the name the Black Sappers from there. By 380, the Black Sappers had won multiple victories and were becoming a serious problem for the orcish war machine, and many attempts were made to root the Black Sappers out of the mines which were quickly transforming from the base of orcish industrial might into the impenetrable fortress home of a resistance movement. Many attempts were made by the orcish armies to root the Black Sappers out of their tunnels, but every single attempt ended in massacre. The orcs were forced to largely abandon their efforts to control the mines in their own heartland, and to attempt to fuel their expansist needs in newly occupied lands.

By the time King Torbjorn recaptured Kovstepovi in 383, the Black Sappers were well positioned to organize and support a push to fully reclaim the Iron Ridge Mountains and liberate the above ground towns and villages of central Golanicja, and by 388 the orcish armies had been all but completely ejected.

With the formation of new noble houses by King Torbjorn, there was also a push to reopen the mines of the Iron Ridge Mountains, this time worked by paid miners, in service of a new Kingdom. The Black Sappers reconstituted themselves in 389 as a trade guild supporting the interests of miners and those working in related industries in the Iron Ridge Mountains. The renamed themselves the Black Sappe League, and were given official license by Torbjorn himself.

By the end of the Imperial Era, it was common knowledge in Golanicja that King Torbjorn himself was one of the founding members of the Black Sappers, even before it became a cohesive organization. With the end of the Imperial Era, the Black Sappe League sought to distance themselves from this association. By the Englightenment, historians question the veracity of the legend, and there seems to be no surviving evidence that Torbjorn was ever directly affiliated with the group in its early days. He never claimed to be, or even mentioned the group in his writings until after he captured Kovstepovi and began collaborating with the group militarily as King.

The Northeast Whaling Company

Also in Year 1259, came the sudden release of the sextant as a commercial product by the Northeast Whaling Company which introduced significant efficiencies not only in navigation and transportation, but also in construction and urban planning. These process improvements would ultimately act as force multipliers on the reconstruction of Shahaifor, amplifying the importance of the city, and leading to the development of many best practices that would cascade around the world.

The sextant had been invented three years previously by Caprice Salalae, a Tauran sailor working for the Northeast Whaling Company (a very unusual career for a Tauran). Her double-reflecting optical device, which she first described as an ‘advanced astrolabe’, was obviously ingenious, and would make ocean travel and navigation by nautical chart much more accurate, safer and predictable.

Realizing the value of this device, but unprotected by any kind of law copying its design, the company bought the design from Salalae and swore her to secrecy. They then contracted the manufacture of different parts of the device to three smaller companies, keeping the design and purpose of the device secret while they manufactured thousands of them.

In 1259, they released their sextants for sale in ports around the world, selling directly ship captains, while simultaneously taking orders for thousands more from other Companies. Competitors immediately began to copy the device, but the Northeast Whaling Company had already cornered the market.

While the introduction of the sextant did not lead to a step change in ocean transport, it did introduce significant efficiencies that benefitted dozens of companies and lead to the construction of ocean going galleons that were much larger than had been built before. These galleons mounted dozens of sails, both square and lateen, that enabled them to make a steady pace in almost any weather. These new, dependable, long-range vessels allowed companies to plan and schedule continuous point-to-point transport across long distances instead of needing their ships to stop to load and unload cargo along every leg of a journey.

In parallel, engineers of the Guild of Obrum began using sextants for land-surveying, and while Master Engineers were buying up as many sextants as they could find and trying to build their own, the Northeast Whaling Company was already developing a tripod mounted version of their sextant adapted for land surveying. The new tool massively accelerated the ongoing project to rebuild Shahaifor, and massively reduced the costs of the development underground storm drainage and sewage removal.

The Stone Union

The

The Stoneharbour Whalers Guild

The

The Copancevic Engineering Company

(mudinak)

The Typesetters Guild

The

The Pipefitters Guild

The