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The Mercantile Guild

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Squidslinger Gilder:
Kinda consider the fleet as serving the minimalist government. They have to have something to protect routes and borders since so much is dependent upon it. Maybe some kind of secret police in it as well to keep the peace between families.

Perhaps what happens is, to be considered a member of a local Guild hall, you have to invest into it. The investments go towards keeping the minimal government afloat as well as funding the fleets. If investment was purely privatized then you'd have full blown corruption where family would be paying off patrol ships left and right. If they intend to do business everywhere then along with a code of ethics they'd need some degree of oversight. Granted I think no matter what it still would happen. But a fleet like this would provide a place for people who aren't cut out for merchant business.

So power hierarchy would put the families in on top with the government either on par or under it. Those who can't cut it then protect those who can. Trickle down from there you'd have the local businesses and small startups vying to make it to the top.

The trouble comes in with how do they decide things. Is there elections? I'd imagine there wouldn't be. But lets assume there is a form of elder merchant system. Japan has a similar system. It doesn't really help and sometimes it hinders things, but people who retire from businesses often get an in road into public office. So imagine a similar system for the Guild. The former family leaders or those who retire and pass along the business to a heir then become the next government heads for a local region. Likely more than one. Perhaps at least one or more local civilian elders gets elected to provide a voice for the people, not just the companies.

Helios.:
the origins of the merchant fleet were not for money and power though, so if you are right, wed have to explore that transition from an exploratory fleet centered around curing a plague (which they end up succeeding at) transitions, after the plague is cured, to the family buisness mafioso system you envision.  whatever the intentions of the fleet at its inception, we still dont know who it was that sent them, so it may not be a transition at all, it might have been the richest families to begin with that sent out the explorers.

that said, the fleet of ships to protect the web of marketplaces sounds more like the fleet that found the cure, while the merchants themselves might have to rely on the governmental fleet to protect them. if it were ME i woudl be very leery of huge corporations with private armies vying for control of the skies. the more successful the merchants become, the more dangerous they become (unless of course as i have suggested that the business of trading is so volatile that the individual merchant companies don't survive for ever, and will eventually get a run of bad luck and fall apart.) if the government maintains a strict ownership over teh military escorts on convoys it solves two problems as i see them:
1: what happened to the exploratory fleet? they are all very capable sailors and dealers, but they didn't ALL find the cure, and some are certainly more capable than wealthy, so what did they do as a society with these altruistic capable sailors? made them the navy of course to go to strange lands where brave polyglots would be uniquely able to do the job.
2: it helps the government stay in power! having the rich families have to rely on you to keep them safe creates the reliance on one another (what normal people call 'cooperation') and the specialization required for seamless trade across the world, and keeps the government (probably the heads of all the guild's merchant houses) is therefore invested in the safety of the merchandise, and the merchants invested in the guild. gotta pay your dues or the guild wont keep your ships safe, and if you dont pay, nobody will keep you safe, and the angleans or the arashi will pick you off faster than you can say 'all aboard for Nalm.'

Squidslinger Gilder:
Yeah it has to be volatile. I could foresee the good merchants as those who are deeply involved with other nations. Always one step ahead. Information trading would be huge because it could lead to the downfall of a merchant empire.

So lets consider a moment, a system like this. What limits expansion of a business and fosters such extreme situations? Likely I'm guessing Merchant dues which make you part of the establishment. Sort of like taxes except for the Guild you'd know better what your money is paying for. Hence, the Guild's navy. Now some money would need to go to local cities to help maintain and such.  So we can assume there would be limited government to handle that.

This might then create a system where the rich companies are the ones who benefit most from the fleet as they'll be paying to maintain it which means they'll get the first pick of defense contracts. But what of smaller merchants? I'd imagine they'd be more or less exempt from this system. A lack of taxes would allow them to flourish and grow up to challenge the larger companies. Which would earn their way into the exclusive club that literally runs the Guild. If they can make it, they'd get a seat at the table and be on the forefront of trading.

An idea would be, compare DHL with UPS. UPS would be the Guild member elite. The 800lb gorilla. DHL would be the smaller company that may do things a little better and cheaper but isn't a member company yet. If the economic ecosystem was open enough to encourage business then DHL would eventually become prominent enough where they wouldn't have to pay private security to escort shipments and could then enter the Guild member system.

At some point there has to be a cost analysis where you'd look at the price of doing business before membership and the price after. If price of security of a large company rises exponentially and Guild membership relegated that fee to a level pay system then you'd have a reason why you'd want to become the 800lb gorilla. You'd get not only a membership seat and privileges at trade summits, but you'd also get the strength of the Guild Navy backing you.

Kinda fun thinking about all the possibilities of how their system would work. In a way I'm glad Muse hasn't done anything with the lore. Course I've had to do this for the last couple years working on the VN and then Aerodrome. Tho I didn't have much to do with the Guild arc in the VN. I had to rework it and update it but most of my thoughts on the Guild's system stem now from working on Chaladon arc and from Aero 3.

Aero 3's back story is kind of an extreme situation where a powerful family decides it wants to dictate Guild policy as a whole that is bred from others attempting similar. Information trading is used to manipulate and stir up the smaller companies into a frenzy which brings about the Mercantile War. So the main Guild guy could either be a villain or a hero. Eventually for another event we'll see the end result and the community can decide if they want to support his methods, or side with the opposition. Hence I asked Byron about using Timmy's name for it and we brought in a TB member for the voice. Figured it'd be a nice role to cast him as. Then we shot that video that was used for both Aero 3 and Timmy 2.

Helios.:
i tried catching up on the cantina stories but there is just way too much to get through to start at the beginning...

basically we know where they started, and have some idea of the people now through knowledge of their current government, sort of, and their culture, again sort of, because of their dress and the faction highlight.

im having a hard time squaring the merchant guild as mafiosos given how they dress and where they came from. its certainly possible that there are merchant families that weird tremendous power, but because of the origin of the fleet as a governmental group and the fact that we know they have a formal military of some kind, im thinking it might be like the navy in the age of sail, except more concerned with economic advantage and control than military advantage and control, ie. the fleet is a branch of the governmental armed services. you'd enlist to be a merchant sailor, your money would be split between the merchant guild that runs the fleets and the captains and crews keep some of course, as they did for capturing prices in teh Royal navy. this woudl allow for the extraordinary wealth of the merchant captains as we know exists, as well as a cohesive military, especially one that could maintain a grueling war with the arashi for years. if the trading fleets were privatized, they wouldn't bother fighting the arashi, there's no percentage in fighting hardened targets when there are markets in cathedral.

Squidslinger Gilder:
Even if we tie them in with say a...East India Trading company sort of setup. There would still be families with power.

War with the Arashi seems to come and go. From all I remember that Muse talked about, there was a lot of peaceful and war times. Generally Arashi get kept at bay by both the Guild and Yesha. I think how it happens is Arashi politics is entirely dependent on the ruling tribe in power. Tribal governments do not forget offenses but there can be moderates within them. Suppose a hardliner comes to power and decides to launch a massive attack on the trade routes, he's dealt with and then a moderate comes to power who is more open to talking to the Guild.

But we gotta ask the question, where does the Arashi get aide from when in peacetime. Chaladon can only supply so much. So what if main aide would be going to Alleron and the central cities, but outlining tribes would only get trickled down resources. They'd be more apt to then go raiding to make ends meet. Which would start a cycle of them gathering allies, challenging Alleron which gets lazy, and taking over. Which in turn starts another war path.

Personally I have a theory that the border between the Guild and Arashi is made up more of moderates who are willing to trade with some tribes, then in wartime they act as an early warning/buffer for the Guild. In fact if you look on the original map, there is an unmarked travel point within a giant crater that is very strategically placed. I dunno if Muse omitted it for a reason or just hadn't decided yet but I kinda like to think of that as a frontline staging area. If the depression was low enough and the walls high enough, it would be a great natural boundary. Just sit some defensive cannons up on the cliffs and done. Which could be why the Arashi haven't made major progress towards obliterating the Guild during a war event. If there was a major frontline base there, it would have to be taken first. Doubt they could siege it because one it would be big enough to have plenty of interior supplies, and two, the Arashi wouldn't have the resources to expend on taking it.

I can only back up the theory of a buffer region by looking at the city names. There is a stark contrast between interior Guild names and the border names. The area near the Arashi is clearly Japanese in naming. Originally Muse mentioned something about this that the Arashi desert was named by the Guild, but the Guild is a giant melting pot so suppose it was named by a Japanese style culture group that is part of the Guild but set up their own mini Guild within the Guild that borders the Arashi. If they were moderates it would explain why the Arashi kept the name and didn't go with a more traditional or local name.

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