Stormwatch Alliance

The Order of Stormwatchers, coloquially known as the Stormwatchers, is a guild comprised of several outposts that dot the Maelstrom Sea and gather information about weather patterns, trade routes and dangers at sea. They are an independent organization, but are heavily supported by merchant guilds and navies of the surrounding lands.
The Stormwatchers build and maintain lighthouses to ward ships from shallows and dangerous waters. The lighthouses are maintained by members of the order or those employed under their banner. In some cases, lighthouses are imbued with a continual flame, but only on outlying beacons where storms are less common, as the storms from the Maelstrom tend to quench even those magical fires.
Lastly, the Stormwatchers provide services to ships in the Maelstrom Sea. For a fee to be paid to the guild and the hireling, the Stormwatchers have a number of seafaring mages known as "wavespeakers" that can be hired by ships. Though other ship mages capable of assisting their vessel on the sea can be hired outside the guild, the Stormwatchers take care to train those mages, druids, or other magically-inclined persons who intend to ply their trade as a ship mage, giving credence to their capabilities. The guild has also invented devices capable of giving warning to a ship when a storm is on the move in their direction in the cases where other means of divining that information isn't available.

Recently...

Over the last decade and a half, the Stormwatch Alliance has lost the business of all Imperial military vessels and most trade vessels owned or operated by the Aestaran Empire, who lean instead on the assistance of the druidic circle out of the city of Narel known as the Thal, said to be last decendents of the clansmen of the Korsair Isles, who mastered the storm and sea hundreds of years ago. This has caused the alliance's loyalties to skew further in the favor of the R'bah Exchange and other merchant guilds of Zarrath, but they remain an independent organization.

Bring Calm to the Storm

Type

Information Network

Alternative Names

Order of Stormwatchers, Circle of Calm Waters

Demonym

Stormwatcher