The five Global Guilds

What are the Guilds?

They are five trade organisations. They belong to neither of the system’s two factions, the Zenith and the Nadir, but both depend on them. They govern Ithera, the temperate planet, from La Cicatriz, the area where the Arca Aurora came down.

Guild	Trade	Seat	Leader
The Pioneers	Settlers: construction, medicine, cultivation	El Vivero	Sable Okoye, “Madre Sable”
Apex Syndicate	Hunters: fauna control	El Aguijón	Kestrel Vasko, “La Loba de la Cicatriz”
The Forge	Producers: mining, refining, haulage	La Fragua Baja	Torvun Ekes, “El Fundidor”
The Vanguard	Military: security, armed escort	El Bastión	Colonel Reyna Ostrach, “El Muro”
The Pathfinders	Exploration: maps, data	El Faro Roto	Quill Sarn, “El Ojo Ciego”

How did they begin?

They were born of a shipwreck. The war of Year 1 split the Flota Aura, the settlers’ fleet, in two. In the middle of that war, the Arca Aurora fell on Ithera.

In the wreckage, nobody was yet Zenith or Nadir. A badly wounded officer could wake up bandaged by a botanist who, the next day, would be Nadir. They were stranded crew, with no command and no supplies, and with the war raging in orbit nobody would come down to rescue them.

The forty days that followed, almost six weeks, are known as the Cuarenta Días de Fuego. There was no secure perimeter, the fauna attacked at night and the wreckage burned from within. The only law was usefulness: every survivor gathered wherever their trade was any good. That is how five groups formed, each in a different part of the Arca:

• Módulo de Bioingeniería y Enfermería (the Pioneers). They treated the wounded of both sides without asking which.
• Bahía de Contención Xenológica (Apex Syndicate). They fought off the first night attacks. On the night of the Primera Cacería, its biologists became hunters.
• Núcleo de Reactor y Talleres de Casco (the Forge). They stripped the Arca to put up shelter. Torvun Ekes still counts the first plate torn off as Year 0 of the guild.
• Puente de Mando y Armería (the Vanguard). Military police from both fleets held a truce.
• Torre de Navegación y Sensores (the Pathfinders). Expeditions set out from here in search of rescue, water and survivors. Those that never returned are still on the Muro de los No Vueltos at El Faro Roto.

In Year 12 E.A., the Armisticio de Ithera, the pact that stopped the war, recognised them as neutral. E.A. stands for Años de Asentamiento, the settlers’ calendar.

Why does no one touch them?

• People owe them their lives. Every station, each faction’s home, has grandparents, uncles and aunts who survived thanks to one of the five groups. Denying them recognition would mean denying their own survival.
• People need them. Nobody can do without what they produce. The factions tolerate them and fund them, but never control them.

So in La Cicatriz a Zenith and a Nadir queue at the same counter. As Ekes puts it: “Metal doesn’t pick a side. Neither do I. I only pick who pays on time.”

That neutrality is guarded by the hardest rule in the world. Attacking inside Ithera outside the rules is a desecration of the Armisticio, and all five Guilds punish it at once.

How do you earn their trust?

Each Guild keeps its own reputation ledger: how far it trusts each person. All five use the same ladder of ranks: Paria, Colaborador, Socio, Especialista and Leyenda, rank V.

Trust with one guild does not carry over to another. And sometimes it subtracts: what pleases one annoys another.

Who are they on good and bad terms with?

• The Pioneers and the Forge cost each other. Every hectare of greenhouse is ground La Fragua Baja will never mine, and its furnaces release particles that damage crops downwind. Even so, Ekes and Okoye privately swap scrap for fresh vegetables, without it entering any ledger.
• Apex Syndicate costs trust with the Pathfinders. Clearing a valley ruins months of Sarn’s clean readings. In the cantinas of La Cicatriz there are bets on who gives way first, the Loba or the Ojo Ciego.
• The Vanguard costs trust with the other four. Its checkpoints and curfews annoy everyone.
• The Pathfinders cost nobody anything. Their charter obliges them to share data with the other four.

What else do they share?

Each Guild also pays in a voucher of its own, good only in its catalogue: Sellos Comunitarios (Pioneers), Marcas de Caza (Apex), Vales de Producción (Forge), Créditos de Servicio (Vanguard) and Datos de Navegación (Pathfinders).

Their five workshops certify the bodies of the compis. These are auxiliary cores, small machine minds of the Flota Aura, that each Guild went looking for along the path of its trade.

And together they run the Mercado Global, the neutral trade between the sides, from El Fulcro, the midpoint between the two stations.