Lia Tsashu’s Guilds and Guild Politics

April 5, 2010 · Posted in World Background · Comment 
A Roman denarius, a standardized silver coin.
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Now that we know what kinds and how many of each type of business Lia Tsashu has, we can work out how many guilds there are and how powerful each of them is, how they relate to each other, and what part they play in Tsashu politics.

Lia Tsashu’s town council—it’s main governing body—is split between merchant guilds and craft guilds. Every trade in town has it’s own guild, but not all of them are large enough to play an important part in the town’s politics. The town council needs to be big enough to allow interesting conflicts between its member, but not so big it’s unwieldy for the GM.

The Guilds

Based on sheer numbers, Tsashu’s most influential guilds are:

Merchant Guilds:

  • Dockworkers (including boat handlers)
  • Millers
  • fishmongers
  • Livestock dealers
  • spice merchants
  • “Hospitality” workers (inn-keepers, pub and restaurant owners, hostlers)

I put millers here, rather in the craft guilds. While millers do, indeed, produce flour, they act more like selling agents for the grain farmers.

Craft Guilds:

  • tailors/clothiers
  • Barbers
  • leather-workers
  • jewelers
  • shoemakers
  • Masons (for simplicity, lets include all building trade workers here, including roofers, framers, etc.)

Additionally, a couple of businesses would have more clout than their numbers would suggest:

Others:

  • Banks/moneychangers (after all, money talks. Especially in Kukuri)
  • Fix-its (because of their magical abilities, minor as they might be)
  • Magic-shop owner (because he’s a sorcerer of PC-level ability)
  • Priests/shamans (because of their influence on the townspeople).
  • Farmers (who don’t actually have a guild, but do send a representative to the Council)

That gives us 17 council members, not including the mayor and the two magistrates (the “mayors” of Bigtun and Littletun).

Politics

Now that we’ve figured out who comprises the council, we can figure out its politics. Here’s where we can start to bring in the theme I’ve chosen for this city (stagnation vs. growth.) to flesh out the bare structure and give the council some life.

Basically, the town council is split into two factions: the craft guilds and the merchants guilds. We can postulate that the mayor and magistrates’ sympathies lie with whichever guild they belong to. Or they can form a third, neutral faction. The merchant guilds would have much to gain from increasing the town’s size and increasing the mining operations. While the craft guilds would also benefit from more people (who equal more customers), they’re the older guilds in town and, therefore, are more conservative and would prefer things to remain “status quo”. They oppose the mining operation and the Seafarers’ control on the basis that both bring an increased number of “undesirables” to the town.

The merchants are a newer influence on the town. Lia Tsashu hasn’t been a mining and trade town for very long—it was primarily a farming town until the Seafarers’ Guild took it over. Now it’s becoming a stop on the Seafarers’ trade route, as well as supplying ore for the Seafarers’ tool-makers. This has caused a rapid growth in the city over the course of the last five years, to the tune of 30%, which raised Tsashu from a population of 2800 to 4000 in a very short period of time. This rapid growth has caused resentment between “old-timers”–those born and raised in Lia Tsashu—and the “newcomers” who’ve recently moved here.

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The Businesses of Lia Tsashu

March 29, 2010 · Posted in World Background · Comment 
Modern leather-working tools
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Despite what many fantasy games imply, towns are more than just the ubiquitous taverns, inns, weaponsmiths, armorers and magic shops we usually see. Most of a town’s businesses exist to support its own residents, not adventurers, which means that most of the towns the PCs would pass through wouldn’t even have a weaponsmith. With 4000 people, Lia Tsashu is a good-sized town by Guang Keshar standards. Because of that, it can support a wide variety of busineses. Some of the most important are:

Important Businesses

Millers

Even the smallest village has at least one miller. With 4000 people, Lia Tsashu can have as many as 20 millers. Most of them don’t live in town; rather, they live closer to the grain fields then carry the flour into town for sale.

Brewers

Beer is a very important commodity throughout Guang Keshar. While members of the noble Houses drink primarily wine, beer is the drink of the common man. Lia Tsashu has three brewers.

Shoemakers

Everyone needs shoes. In historical medieval times, a town the size of Tsashu would have between 25-30 shoemakers. Shoes of the medieval period were made from soft leather that wore out quickly, meaning that they needed replacing frequently. With even minor magics, shoes can be repaired easily and there’s no reason the Keshari shoemakers couldn’t make sturdy boots. So we’ll cut the number down to ten shoemakers.

Clothiers

Like shoes, clothes are a necessity, at least for the human inhabitants of the town. While the Richichi don’t wear clothes, per se, they’re very fond of “accessories”: belts, leather jewelry, headbands and hats, hair ribbons, etc. So Tsashu has 15 clothiers, ten who specialize in human clothes and five who specialize in Richichi accessories.

Fix-its (tinkerers)

In our real world, tinkers were menders, primarily of metal items. Typically, they traveled from town to town to ply their trade. As with shoes and clothing, Mend cantrips and other such spells make mending more of a skilled trade. In Guang Keshar, “fix-its” (people who mend all types of items) are respected tradesmen, many of whom have minor magical abilities. In Lia Tsashu, they’re also the closest thing the town has to a “sorcerer’s guild”.

Healers

Most healing is done by the various temples in the town. The town has five “lay doctors”, both with magical abilities and without, most of whom are also midwives and/or herbalists. Three of these lay doctors are Richichi and the other two are human.

Lia Tsashu’s Businesses: A Complete List

Here’s the complete list of Lia Tsashu’s businesses and how many of each kind there are:

  • Apothecaries: 1
  • Banks/moneychangers: 1
  • Barbers: 10
  • Bath-houses: 1
  • Blacksmiths: 3
  • Boat handlers: 20
  • Brewers: 3
  • Butchers: 4 (2 poultry, 2 other forms of meat)
  • Chandlers: 6
  • Clothiers: 15 (10 human, 5 Richichi)
  • Coopers (barrell-makers): 6
  • Dockworkers: 30-40
  • Dyers: 1
  • Farmers’ Markets: 2, one in Bigtun and one in Littletun. Each market would have 3d10 number of vendors on any particular day.
  • Fix-its: 5
  • Hostlers: 2. Used primarily by visitors, attached to the inns.
  • Inns: 2
  • Leather-workers: 11
  • Livestock dealers: 20
  • Masons and bricklayers: 6
  • Metalsmiths: 5
  • Midwives: 5
  • Millers: 20
  • Pubs/Restaurants/Taverns: 10
  • Rope-makers: 2
  • Shoemakers: 10
  • Tanners: 1
  • Weavers: 7
  • Woodcarvers: 2
  • Beggars: Variable. 2D10 for the number encountered by the PCs on any given day.
  • Brothels: 0. Streetwalkers: 1d20 for the number encountered by the PCs on any given day/night.
  • Thieves’ Guild: 1 (very small). Most people don’t even know it exists, much less how to contact it. There are rumors, though.
  • Assassins’ Guild: 0
  • Magic Shop: 1. Also sells books, paper and curios. The shop’s owner is the towns only bookbinder and one of two papermakers (his apprentice being the second one).
  • Temples: 20. Dedicated to Huang Ti in her various aspects. The Richichi don’t build temples, per se. Their shamans operate out of their own homes.
  • Richichi shamans: 20

These numbers are beginning estimates and the list of businesses shouldn’t be considered exhaustive. These numbers will probably change as I develop the town further. Of course, feel free to add/change/alter/fold/spindle/mutilate to suit your own game.

I’d love feedback on this. If you see a trade or business you feel I’m missing, please feel free to let me know in the comments section below. Your comments can definitely have an impact on the final form of the town.

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