Mundane Guilds
Adventure Advisor
Adventure Advisor is a service provided to many adventurers and travelers that ranks taverns, inns, marketplaces, smithies, and even chapels according to different metrics. Each location that has an adventure advisor review is ranked on a scale of one to five shields, coins, and stars. The more shields, the safer the location is; the more coins, the greater its expenses; and the more stars the greater the overall quality and enjoyment reported by its patrons. These rankings are created using specially cultivated arcane Signatures and are only visible to people who have purchased an Adventure Advisor Assistant, which is a magical whittled owl that reveals these rankings on an establishment’s main door.
Adventure Advisor is administered by a handful of mages and arcane casters who developed their unique application of the signature cantrip to create such rankings.
Artisans International
Artisans International certainly has a legitimate side, but is essentially a front for an enormous crime syndicate. This company maintains showrooms, exhibits, and auctions of fine art of many varieties. Patrons can easily find paintings, fine jewelry, and elegant sculptures at these events and storefronts. Artisans International keeps detailed records of all of their transactions and has curated an elaborate system of small and large organizational operations within the umbrella company. Their international status and complicated business practices enable them to easily source, acquire, and resell fine art across Gathandia. Their methods of acquiry generally include extortion, blackmail, and burglary, and Artisans International is careful never to resell a work of art in the same city that they acquired it.
The Golden Road
The Golden Road is not literally a road that connects Kendaria to Anedonia, but it may as well be for how effective it is at facilitating international trade. Based and administered in Bridgemore, the Golden Road is a collection of affiliated inns, taverns, and marketplaces that facilitate international trade. Participating locations offer deals and discounts to traveling merchants of any nationality who opt into the business.
Such merchants must pay an annual dues. The administration of the Golden Road use these funds to finance renovation and monetary aid to participating locations that need such services. Locations that are members of the Golden Road must maintain a clean and safe space, lest they lose membership. The Golden Road has enabled spices, raw goods, ideas, and finished products to be disseminated across broad swathes of Gathandia.
Historians Guild
The Historians Guild is an independent institution that catalogs historical artifacts, transcribes and translates recorded histories, and offers presentations to educate the public on historical matters. They often work in collaboration with the Order of Discerning Prewritten History and with Artisans International, both of whom are institutions with overlapping interests. The Historians Guild is controversial among people who are already deeply in touch with their historical roots because the Guild frequently buys or otherwise acquires artifacts of historical significance, removing them from their original context and placing them on display in museums. Some members of the Guild are also secretly soldiers that protect the world from ancient threats, especially those that they awaken in crypts and other archaeological sites. Their role as silent protectors makes members of the Guild feel that they have earned the right to hoard ancient artifacts in their treasured museums.
West Gathandia Trading Company
The West Gathandia Trading Company, or WGC, is a private corporation that builds enormous deep-sea vessels in the shipyards of Pash. The WGC has warehouses and administration buildings in virtually every port city along the south and east of Gathandia, and has many established trading posts on the west coast and in the Inner Sea, as well. The WGC is currently developing vessels that should be capable of long-term voyages, allowing their crew to explore beyond Gathandia and make contact with the other continents.
Most national governments are not fond of WGC because of the company’s aggressive and monopolistic trade practices, but the wealth that they bring to the port cities is usually enough to make monarchs and other rulers begrudgingly overlook WGC’s less savory practices.