The five Global Guilds of Aurin: who they are and why no one touches them

“Here there is no Zenith and no Nadir. Only the wounded, and whoever heals them.” Sable Okoye, administrator of El Vivero, gives that answer to anyone who asks which side the Pioneers are on. The other four guilds have their own version of it, and every one of them dates from the same six weeks.

The five Global Guilds of COLONIZED are The Pioneers, Apex Syndicate, The Forge, The Vanguard and The Pathfinders. They belong to neither faction: they were born among the survivors of a shipwreck, the fall of the Arca Aurora on Ithera in Year 1 E.A., and the Ithera Armistice recognised them as neutral in Year 12. Both the Zenith and the Nadir tolerate and fund them, and neither controls them.

This guide follows the canon of the Aurin system. The Codex records it with the source of every detail, and The Aurin Chronicle, the serialised novel of COLONIZED, puts the guilds on stage. What you can play in each alpha wave will be listed in the alpha notes.

The five at a glance

Guild	Trade	Born in the Ark’s	Seat in La Cicatriz	Leader	Companion
The Pioneers	Settlement, construction, medicine, farming	Bioengineering and infirmary	El Vivero	Administrator Sable Okoye, “Madre Sable”	LUMBRE
Apex Syndicate	Wildlife control, hunting, biomaterials	Xenological containment bay	El Aguijón	Kestrel Vasko, “La Loba de la Cicatriz”	AVISPÓN
The Forge	Mining, refining, industrial logistics	Reactor core and hull workshops	La Fragua Baja	Torvun Ekes, “El Fundidor”	FUELLE
The Vanguard	Security, defence, escorts	Command bridge and armoury	El Bastión	Colonel Reyna Ostrach, “El Muro”	MAMPARO
The Pathfinders	Cartography, anomalies, data recovery	Navigation and sensor tower	El Faro Roto	Quill Sarn, “El Ojo Ciego”	CUADRANTE

Forty days

The Arca Aurora did not come down in one piece. It broke open in the air and scattered its modules over several kilometres of Ithera, and every module carried survivors from both sides, mixed together beyond sorting. Nobody was Zenith or Nadir yet. They were crew, with no command, no supplies and a war overhead that was never going to send a rescue.

The survivors call those first forty days, almost six weeks, the Cuarenta Días de Fuego. There was no perimeter, the fauna attacked at night and the wreck kept burning from the inside. The only law was usefulness, so each person went wherever their trade was any good. In the infirmary module they treated the wounded without asking whose they were. In the xenological containment bay the biologists fought off the night attacks and, after the Primera Cacería, became hunters. In the reactor workshops the engineers stripped the Arca itself for shelter, and Torvun Ekes, an apprentice welder at the time, still counts the first plate torn off the hull as Year 0 of The Forge. On the bridge, military police from both fleets held a truce. From the navigation tower went the expeditions looking for water, rescue and other survivors.

Those five gathering points, the broken sections of one hull, are the physical seed of the five guilds. Eleven years later, the Armistice turned them into institutions.

The five, one by one

The Pioneers build, heal and grow food. El Vivero, a dome of organic glass, “does not close its doors to anyone who bleeds”. Their spirit is close to the Nadir’s without being Nadir, and they clash with Zenith terraforming.

Apex Syndicate keeps Ithera’s fauna in check and turns it into materials. Their doctrine is the controlled cut, between the Zenith’s extermination and the Nadir’s paralysis. Kestrel Vasko: “We do not hunt to empty the forest. We hunt so the forest still has something to fear that is not us.”

The Forge mines, refines and moves metal. It has paid its own way for a decade and works for whoever pays on time. Torvun Ekes: “Metal does not choose sides. Neither do I. I only choose who pays on time.”

The Vanguard keeps order: security, defence and convoy escorts, with the right to inspect convoys under the Armistice. Colonel Reyna Ostrach: “I annoy all five guilds equally. That is not a whim: it is proof that I play no favourites.”

The Pathfinders map the system, chase anomalies and recover data, and their charter obliges them to share it with all five guilds. Quill Sarn lost his sight mapping something “that should not be looked at directly”. At El Faro Roto, the Muro de los No Vueltos keeps the names of the explorers who never came back.

Why no one touches them

Every station counts among its citizens grandparents who survived the Cuarenta Días thanks to one of these collectives. Denying the guilds recognition would mean denying a faction’s own survival. And nobody can do without what they produce. That is why a Zenith and a Nadir can queue at the same counter in La Cicatriz without anyone asking questions.

Their neutrality rests on the hardest rule of the world: attacking inside Ithera outside the rules is a desecration of the Armistice, and the five guilds punish it together.

Trust, and its price

All five measure trust on the same five-rank ladder:

Rank	Reputation
Paria (pariah)	−1,000 to 0
Colaborador (collaborator)	1 to 2,500
Socio (partner)	2,501 to 7,500
Especialista (specialist)	7,501 to 15,000
Leyenda (legend)	15,001 and above

Trust with one guild does not transfer to another, and sometimes it costs:

Whoever works for	Loses trust with	Why
The Pioneers	The Forge	Every hectare of greenhouse is ground the Forge cannot mine
Apex Syndicate	The Pathfinders	Clearing a valley ruins months of clean readings
The Forge	The Pioneers	The furnaces damage crops downwind
The Vanguard	The other four	Checkpoints and curfews annoy everyone equally
The Pathfinders	No one	Their charter obliges them to share with all five

Ekes and Okoye, who officially cost each other trust, swap scrap for fresh vegetables in private, and none of it goes in any ledger.

The guilds in the Chronicle

The Aurin Chronicle is the novel of COLONIZED, published free in the Codex. Book One, Holding, is complete: a prologue, thirteen chapters and an epilogue, set between days 221 and 238 of Year 47 E.A., with one chapter in Year 1. The guilds are where much of the story happens:

Chapter	When and where	The guilds on stage
Holding	Year 47, day 221 · Cementerio de Aura	A Vanguard patrol follows a 46-year-old pressure heartbeat to a sealed room
One Alive	Day 223 · La Cicatriz	The seats of the five guilds, and El Vivero of The Pioneers with Sable Okoye and LUMBRE
The Wall	Day 223 · El Bastión	The Vanguard’s fortress, and Colonel Ostrach’s wall of 412 names
Measured, Not Derived	Day 224 · El Faro Roto	Apex Syndicate’s controlled cull with Kestrel Vasko, and the Pathfinders’ Phase Table with Quill Sarn
Red Ribbon	Day 225 · El Fondeadero	Torvun Ekes of The Forge and FUELLE, among the buyers at an auction in the dark
The Names	Day 236 · El Bastión	The Vanguard’s reading of the names on the anniversary

The novel adds characters and events of its own; the canon stays in the Codex. Start from the Chronicle index, or read our spoiler-free guide to Book One first.

In the game today

Reputation with the five guilds is part of the current build of COLONIZED, with its five ranks and the cross effects between guilds. The companions each guild hands out, the Compis, exist as a finished system in a development branch, still outside the main build. Wider guild mission lines are in development. How the guilds fit with the two factions is in the Zenith and the Nadir, and each guild has its own entry in the Codex: The Pioneers, Apex Syndicate, The Forge, The Vanguard and The Pathfinders. The wreck they were born from is in the fall of the Arca Aurora.