Journeymen

A guild of explorers, guides, mercenaries, adventurers, and body-guards. They are headed by a council of varying size, consisting of anyone who can convince the others they deserve a voice. Numerous lieutenants and guild-houses operate with impressive autonomy in most major cities, and at any time one or two borderlands are heavily populated with Journeymen as the result of some border dispute or threat from the wilderness.

Journeymen enjoy a rough-and-tumble reputation, but they are reliable and competent if not expensive company. A member who reneges on an agreement places herself at odds with the whole of the guild, a fact which tarnishes even the most lucrative sounding double-deals. A band of Journeymen will push back a bandit raid from a beleaguered settlement, escort a caravan through a haunted wood, or patrol an unfriendly crowd during an unpopular demonstration. Any endeavor which slights towards conquest or oppression, however, they will not engage in, and members who find themselves duped into such an undertaking are allowed the rare privilege of defaulting their contract.

The guild grew out of an amalgamation of many smaller such organizations over the past several hundred years or so. The growing cities housed shadow wars between the numerous factions. The Journeymen's founders were those who saw sufficient danger and strife already existed in the world and that people would pay to be protected from it--creating such was just additional cost. The House of Kings and Burnt Mark single out Journeymen to this day.