Day Jobs for Adventurers

To some extent, the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game has always been an escape from daily life. A chance to be more glamorous, beautiful, skilled, important, dashing, and truly heroic than we are in reality.
Yet that doesn’t mean D&D should be fast¬action clowning in which any behavior is allowed and there’s no risk or opposition. The world must be a challenge, and the deeds of the characters should have the power to really change their world, to foster hope and improve lives and do things of lasting importance.
Which all sounds very grand—but how? If being an adventurer is simply a matter of chop¬ping apart a dark-hearted tyrant on a throne, or slaying a fearsome dragon, what happens after you do that?
Oddly, it comes back to daily, real-world conditions (such as needing to work to have enough money for food and a place to live) and 
competencies (such as acting decisively, mak¬ing good decisions, building friendships, and networking).
Let’s have a look at day jobs for adventurers in the Realms, starting with the obvious ones.
Many adventurers have the skills to read¬ily land more mundane, less dangerous work as bodyguards, caravan guards, “drawn-dagger agents” (the polite term for a spy, hired killer, or outside-the-law facilitator, usually for a wealthy patron or a guild), or envoys (when such a post in¬volves perilous journeys or negotiations in which intimidation is likely). Guard duty (of a person, property, or place) is common “winterbound” work for adventurers.
Yet some wayfarers seeking work are more cre¬ative, and not always in ways that involve breaking the law. In general, if a job is dangerous, unpleas¬ant, or exacting—and the hirer wants discretion, absolute secrecy, or loyalty—the rewards are high.
Grave digging, for instance, is poorly paid and unglamorous in some places, but very well paid in others. Working in the sewers in Waterdeep (be¬cause it’s guilded work, and highly dangerous to boot) is well paid, but unpleasant. Stonemasonry concerned with fortifications (castle and wall re¬pairs; shoring up vaulted cellars; and mining to enlarge cellars, tunnels, and privy chutes) is gen¬erally underappreciated, but is always well paid.
Every city has to decide how to dispose of ex¬crement, and sewers seldom work well unless they’re flushed by streams and not subject to tidal flooding (a problem in most ports). Because of this, many places—such as Suzail, in the king-dom of Cormyr, and Athkatla, in the kingdom of Amn—have “night-soil” or dung wagons that col¬lect chamber-pot refuse from the populace (1 cp per pot) and cart these collections out of town to be dumped on fields where they are mixed with straw and left to rot down into compost. More than a few dung carters have smuggled items— and even people—out of cities under the noisome heaps in their wagons, for payment of a lot more than a wagonload normally earns them.
Animal training (and monster capturing, which is almost always adventurers’ work) tends to be low in status but well compensated. So, for that matter, is finding and bringing back rare plants or unhatched eggs for herbalists and alchemists.
Painting and plastering palaces and nobles’ mansions, styling hair, and sewing and custom fitting fine garments for nobility are also generally unglamorous but well-paid lines of work. In some communities, smiths, plumbers, and slaughterers (butchers) are paid well for their work. So are bed nurses for royalty and nobility, particularly those who bathe, tend, and guard the mad or the long¬term afflicted . . . and royal or noble tasters, who sample the food and drink of important persons to take the fall for them in cases of bad cooking or murderous malice.
A lesser-known line of work that pays well is writing love letters, job applications, and deli¬cate apologies on behalf of noble, royal, or merely wealthy patrons. In short, a scribe who poses as another person, writing for that person and keep-ing both the writing task and the contents of what was written utterly secret. A variant on this kind of work (believed to be the source of one court lady’s fortune, some centuries ago in Cormyr) is writing “lust tales” or “heartwarms” (flowery ro¬mance) intended for the eyes of one royal patron only (and sometimes written to order, using real individuals as characters). A few bards secretly hire others to write their jokes, and conversely more than a few royalty and nobility employ bards to write ballads and witty poems they can claim as their own.
Rooftop Climbing
Suzail is typical of busy cities across the Heart¬lands and the Sword Coast, and so can serve as an example of these risky professions. Even where guilds exist to perform roofing or chimney re¬pairs, falls and injuries are frequent occurrences, so hiring casual “hands” to fill out a crew is like¬wise frequent.
Fog is more rare in Suzail than in many other port cities because of the prevailing breezes. Strong winds are rare, except during out-and- out lashing storms, though they do occur. Rain is frequent, though it tends toward brief, vigorous downpours followed by clear skies, not “gray day after gray day” weather. In winter, wet snowfalls are common.
Most of the buildings in central Suzail (exclud¬ing the dock warehouses, the military bases, the westernmost hovels, and the mansions north of the Promenade) are stone or brick structures (or
older stone patched with newer brick) that rise three to four floors above the street and have steeply pitched roofs to shed snow and rain. Bal¬conies are found on upper floors, outside the reach of thieves’ ladders, spires are relatively rare, and there’s a recent fashion for installing glass skylights (three panes thick, for strength). Most buildings have tile or slate roofs (wooden shingles are still found, but they rot swiftly, tend to leak, and offer rooftop clamberers very spongy foot¬ing), a decorative repeating ironwork pattern along the roof’s peak that can be used to anchor safety ropes while doing roof repairs, and cor¬ner downspouts. A climber should not depend on these downspouts to support much weight as climbing ladders, nor should one swing from them (which risks crashing down with the spout tearing away and coming down alongside). In a storm, beware: Lightning rods are increasingly popular, and are found at both ends of a peaked roof—connected directly to the downspouts.
Dormers are common architectural features, as are rooftop window box gardens for herbs and “pipeleaf” attached to them. Dormers with the windows open are used for hot-weather sleeping, rather than lying out on the open roof (because level areas on roofs are too rare and too small for this practice to be safe or popular). Trapdoors are found on almost all roofs, but are sealed from below with gum or pitch to prevent leak¬ing, and barred shut. Rooftop clamberers should not expect to easily—and never stealthily—force entrance into the building below by means of a trapdoor. Laundry does often get strung from bal¬conies or high windowsill spars to similar features on adjacent buildings, but is rarely hung above roofs (except in the aforementioned westernmost hovels), and very few roofs are well lit at night.
A daring and agile being can use a long se¬quence of rooftops as a highway of sorts; the small gaps between buildings allow for such travel in many routes throughout the city. Climbing down from a building when you run out of roof can be deadly difficult in wet weather. In hot weather, open shutters and the like often lessen the severity of a fall or a jump from a rooftop by breaking the descent into stages, allowing someone to slow his or her fall by making “snatch-grabs” (snatching at things on the way past, then letting go before dislocating an arm). Leaping down into a wagon is all too popular a practice (thought to be preferable
to simply hitting the ground), but usually ends in severe injury for the jumper—and, of course, damages the wagon and its contents as well.
The traditional method of descent used by thieves in Suzail uses long coils of oiled cord. One end of a coil goes around a chimney (chimneys are abundant) or a roof-peak decoration, and the other wraps around the thief’s body so that he or she can use a “body belay” to unwind the coil as slowly as possible to lessen the rate of fall. Even if the cord ends up breaking under the thief’s weight, the resultant fall is from a lower eleva¬tion than the roof. If the cord suspends the thief all the way down, so much the better; or the thief touches down, cuts the cord, and vanishes into the night with the remainder of the coil (so it can be used for the next descent).
Burials
Grave digging is backbreaking, often unpleasant, widely feared work. (Temple influence keeps this from being guild-exclusive work, in most places.)
The written or publicly expressed desires of the dead are considered paramount, so a few ec¬centrics have been buried in their own cellars or in various odd places, in accordance with their stated-before-death requests. Devout persons with coin enough and a life of good character (whose families don’t express wishes to the con¬trary or refuse to pay) are interred by temples.
In this case, the ceremony, preparation, and in¬terment is all done by priests, who prepare the body in such a way as to prevent undeath (or at least make rising into undeath unlikely). Such interments are in crypts in the temple proper if a sufficient donation is made, in a common temple crypt for a lesser donation (or for deceased priests and temple workers), and in a plot on consecrated temple grounds for the less wealthy.
Faiths not well represented by local clerics fre¬quently establish their own burial sites. These are often small, boulder-walled rectangles of ground with lots of mature trees to provide shade.
Unknown decedents, the homeless, and out¬laws tend to get buried in waste ground that is fairly close to a settlement but well away from streams and marshes. Those who were diseased or poisoned or tainted by necromancy are burned in an outdoor pyre, and their ashes are interred in a regular grave. 
Outlaws and Bounty Hunters
Some hired adventuring bands go rogue and de¬cide to keep the lands and properties they seize for their own. Once this activity is discovered, the perpetrators are denounced to local rulers, who usually declare such bands outlaw (unless they are bands who are covertly working for those same rulers) and send other adventuring bands out to deal with them.
In 1400 DR, a shift in public attitude toward bounty hunters began. In that year, the Masked Lords ofWaterdeep issued a decree known as the Tarnsmoke Proclamation (after the wronged mer¬chant Lorigo Tarnsmoke, but publicly referred to as “hardhand justice”), by which it became legal in Waterdeep and its patrolled environs to hire bounty hunters (usually adventurers, but some¬times out-of-work caravan guards or sellswords) to go after outlaws whom you see as having wronged you. These bounty hunters attempt to get your property back or at least eliminate the outlaws and so “repay the debt in blood before the gods.” This practice became very popular over the next decade, and is now legal in most places along the Sword Coast, though many faiths still frown on it.
Blood for Coin: Mercenaries
True loyalty takes time to build, and loyal soldiers vary widely in fighting capabilities, so truly dedi¬cated fighters in the corps are always too few for a leader’s liking.
Building a professional standing army takes time, both for combat training to be honed to an edge and for mental discipline to become iron¬clad tradition. It also takes the right environment, usually an ordered, law-abiding land, such as Cormyr, and a lot of coins. Monetary costs must be borne even in peacetime, which is one reason why some rulers get so aggressive about border patrols and expansion, reasoning that “If I’m pay¬ing for these sword swingers, I’m going to use them!” and “If they sit idle, someone may use them against me, or some might get dangerous ideas about their own capabilities—so let’s keep them busy, by the gods! Besides, their aggressive vigilance will keep any citizens from daring to op¬pose me in anything.”
For everyone else in the Realms, who are prob¬ably poorer and who don’t need an army all the time but might pressingly need one right now, mercenaries are the answer. Leaders use their best, most loyal fighters as personal bodyguards and generals, and turn to hireswords for the bulk of their fighting force. (Hireswords are also known as sellswords, though this term is more for individuals and impromptu bands, whereas hire¬swords are well organized—with ranks, insignias, or even uniforms—chartered companies.)
Mercenaries are particularly suited to raiding, pillaging, and wild charging attacks, activi¬ties they enjoy and ones in which breakdowns in discipline won’t matter as much as, say, when withstanding a siege or holding a vital pass.
A reputation for unreliability inevitably clings to mercenaries, because saving their own skins usually trumps dying for a cause. It’s not their own homes and families they’re fighting for— although their self-respect, their prospects for continued employment, and their standing with Tempus all demand they fight well.
Those same societal pressures make mercenar¬ies trustworthy in limited ways. Most patrons who hire them don’t have to worry about said hirelings double-crossing them in the midst of a battle, be¬cause hired blades “bloodsworn” to one side in a conflict dare not switch sides. Even if they are captured or offered more money, they must sit out as neutral, usually withdrawing from the battle¬field to keep from having to fight on the wrong side in self-defense, and departing the region of the conflict to avoid being imprisoned by whoever captured them. When proper prisons or soldiers enough to garrison them are lacking, captured hireswords are often put on a boat to “a far, fair port” to keep them at sea for a month or more.
Mercenaries also dare not switch sides because heralds and priests of Tempus would proclaim their deeds to everyone, so no one would hire them thereafter. Even if such turncoats change their names, trudge halfway across the Realms, assemble into different groups, and start over, they might still be recognized and scorned. Those who are not shunned outright can most often find work only as “dullblades.”
Dullblades are inexperienced, untested, or un¬trustworthy muscle sent on the most dangerous assignments and deemed expendable. They are paid the bottom rate: 1 cp a day plus two daily 
meals, a bed blanket, and wound-dressing—a wash and bandages—if needed. If adventurers are not known to be capable and accomplished com¬batants, they are hired on as dullblades.
At the other end of the salary scale, employers can expect to pay as much as 25 gp per day per soldier for skilled individuals, such as nightblades (commandos) and sappers, who can build bridges and plant bombs covertly and while under heavy attack.
Standard mercenary rates are 1 gp per day plus three meals with drink, provision of a tent and a new pair of boots, and a bonus (usually 5 gp) for every major battle won, such as the seizure of a city.
The commander of a mercenary force is paid a large negotiated amount for expenses upon hiring, a 1,000 gp bonus for the achievement of agreed-upon objectives, and a large negotiated fulfillment fee when the ultimate objective is achieved. Such payments are made to surviving soldiers and never to the kin of the fallen (except
by fellow comrades-in-arms, out of personal sentiment).
Very few employers of mercenaries dare to try to get out of paying them by having them slain (either by attacking them with other friendly forces or by sending them to or leaving them in an impossible battlefield situation). Heralds and priests of Tempus witness the signing of such agreements, retain copies, and will proclaim against those who betray such agreements on the altars of the Wargod and publicly, meaning no one would work with them and Tempus would frown on their battle fortune.
From Chessenta eastward and southward, and east and south of Raurin, the situation is slightly different. Mercenaries, like royalty and nobility everywhere in the Realms, have a ransom price that their families or treasuries pay if they are captured. So if you capture a king, a lord, or the head of a mercenary company, you can slay, exile, maim, or enslave that person if you can square such treatment with local laws and with the gods, or imprison him or her—or you can demand a
ransom, and when you receive it, return your quarry safely home. The gods and the heralds frown on those who collect a ransom and then de¬liver a mistreated, near-death captive, or free the victim far from home in dangerous territory so that he or she could well be recaptured and ran¬somed again.
An old Faerunian saying runs, “Spring is for planting and getting stuck in mud, summer is for loving and fighting, fall is for harvesting and get¬ting stuck in mud, and winter is for shivering, cursing, and starving.” Mercenaries in winter, “not fighting season,” without a local war to wage, as well as disgraced and untried swords for hire, are often employed by merchants as body¬guards, cargo loaders and unloaders, and guards for warehouses, shops, cargo, and wagons. Such jobs are negotiated on an individual basis, but merchants typically don’t offer much below the common minimum of 3 sp per day. In addition, pay usually includes “one light and one square,” meaning two meals, the evening meal being the large or “square” one; “decent shelter,” implying some privacy, a bed, and warmth; and vacation, which is almost always a tenday on, then two days off on a repeating cycle.
From the 1350s DR onward, the hitherto ever- larger mercenary companies (such as the famous Flaming Fist) began to dwindle and disappear.
By the mid-1360s DR, most standing companies consisted of a charismatic leader plus a staff of four to six trusted battlefield officers, command¬ing forty mounted and fully armored fighters, with a handful of veteran trainers (often sorely wounded oldsters) training a reinforcements force of twenty-odd copper-a-day hopefuls.
A few of these smaller companies are detailed below. Most such groups formed in the 1350s DR, then found their reputations rising a decade later because they were left standing when other forces had disbanded.
The Bold Blades of Berdusk: Commanded by “the Sorceress with a Sword” Dauntarra Hel- gorhand, based in Berdusk and widely believed to be riddled with Harpers.
Sammarth’s Swords: Led by the much¬scarred warrior “Mad” Madreth Dorl, based in Scornubel and considered vicious.
The Ready Gauntlet: Commanded by the self-styled “Lord” Argreth Harhawk, an effete half-elf highly skilled with a sword; based in
Saradush and considered the ultimate profession¬als at playing politics.
The Retired Adventurer
Few adventurers survive long enough to suc¬cumb to the infirmities of old age. Others choose not to, instead striding lightly clad into a blizzard or provoking an armed brawl they have no hope of winning. Many who do survive are disabled in ways that limit the professions they can undertake—ruling out, say, becom¬ing weapon trainers or guides for younger adventurers.
Many ex-adventurers find somewhere warm enough to sleep under the stars the year through, and take to frequenting taverns and selling em¬broidered tales of the heroics of their younger days, directions, and maps (however fanciful) to younger adventurers.
A few retain enough skill to become expert weapon sharpeners, or “eyes and ears” spies for rulers or other organizations. Some become de¬spairing, or uncaring, enough to hire themselves out to be experimented upon by alchemists, nec¬romancers, wizards, and makers of scents.
Then there are the truly desperate, those who’ll try anything for a chance at having their youthful vigor restored, or a new life in a new body (perhaps that of a monster, or an automa¬ton, or even the sentience of an enchanted sword). “Everybody knows” that some sorely wounded and pain-wracked elderly have—by the grace of the gods or through fell magic—gained new lives. The mightiest priests of Tempus transfer the minds of great heroes into swords, and into suits of armor worn by temple guards, so such steel can reason and speak advice. A handful of the walking suits of armor popularly known as helmed hor¬rors, animated in secret by very powerful clerics and wizards, house the most valiant warriors their creators could find.
Ostur “Oldbuckles” Olbrawvyn of Scornubel was a legless man dragging himself along on a cart with crutches one morn—and by that very night had become the brains of a wizard’s mighty dragon steed, transformed and melded into the body of a crazed, nigh-mindless wyrm hatchling. Varendur Zhal of Tashluta gambled his lands, horses, belongings, and left arm away in games of chance with the senile Brothers Torlaene of
his city, but in the end won a potion that made him young and strong and restored his arm, so he could live life anew. So it can happen!
Less dramatic but more successful is the sort of retirement managed by the veteran mercenary Harondus Sardgard. He wanted a little ease, and a far lower public profile than the infamous Mirt the Moneylender or the famous Durnan of the Yawning Portal. So he kept up his contacts in the sword-swinging business for protection, sank his coin into rental properties all over Waterdeep, and lived in one of his own buildings, on all the rents coming in. There are scores more like him—and they are the greatest source of treasure tales, bat¬tle wisdom, and distant contacts in Faerun.
GUILDS
The official trade organizations collectively known as guilds are by nature specific to a trade or a group of (usually closely related) trades, and are almost always found in cities. Over time, many of them tend to sit in unofficial opposition to the local rulers and nobility.
Shelves of books could be written detailing the deeds, internal intrigues, and unfolding histories of the guilds of Faerun. The guilds of the city of Waterdeep are infamous across the Realms for their abundance, their ongoing squabbles, and their investments and sideline dealings outside the City of Splendors. Over the centuries, guilds have had a lot of influence over trade customs, other guilds, local laws and regulations, and the way things are done all over the Heartlands.
Most guilds have heraldry, badges, and col¬ored wax seals of inspection they stamp on goods. These change with bewildering rapidity, often to denote dating and therefore old goods, or to try to foil fraudsters who have gained or duplicated a seal stamp.
Suzail, the capital of Cormyr, is home to a smaller number of guilds than Waterdeep and in that respect is more typical of cities across the Realms. These guilds should prove a good model that can be modified for other cities.
Guilds in Cormyr have far less power and wealth than in Waterdeep, and are far friendlier to authorities. They operate only in Suzail and the lands immediately around the city (on the south¬ern or Suzail side of the Starwater River, plus

Hilp but minus Marsember). Thanks to the re¬bellious histories of Arabel and Marsember, most guilds have trade agents and observers in both of those cities, but no real power or organization. This is reinforced by the traditional resistance of nobles to anyone, even the Crown, meddling unnecessarily in life, customs, and matters befall¬ing on “their” lands—which covers much of the countryside.
Guilds in Cormyr perform the following func¬tions, for the benefit of themselves and their members.
1.They publicize rosters of their members in good standing, intimating that all do work of the best standard, and agreeing that members shall not hesitate to repair or maintain any item that is the work of another member. This means a guild member will never tell a would-be customer: “Pooh! I can’t fix that! Utter trash; hurl it away and buy one of mine!” Most guilds secretly try to fix prices by agreeing on a going rate for cer¬tain goods or services that members aren’t bound to, but which they will refer to when negotiating with clients. They do not have the legal right to set prices or even standards. They do have almost complete control over who qualifies for member¬ship, dues, and the local conduct of the trades they represent.
2.They agree on approved glues, finishes, and other materials. Sometimes, guilds also approve of suppliers for their materials, as well as—when members desire-—procuring supplies in bulk to get discounted prices for members. Nonmembers who buy raw supplies from guild members are charged a markup over standard street prices.
3.They provide warehousing or materials stor¬age facilities for members. Most guild charters provide for immediate emergency storage for members who have been burned out of their own facilities or otherwise prevented from using them. In addition, most guilds secretly provide one or more hidden locations not officially owned by or linked to the guild for members to temporarily stash goods, themselves, or apprentices who are wanted by the law or who are being hunted by personal foes.
4.They maintain, with the agreement of the royal court, precise and public definitions of ob¬jects, sizes, and amounts used by guild members in their trade. This ensures that one member’s “firkin” or “ell” is the same as another’s. 
5.They support indigent retired guild mem¬bers, usually by a monthly measure of grain, ale, and meat or fish, or a few coins in lieu of such supplies. For instance, 12 gp is the monthly mu¬nificence wage paid by the Guild of Coachlars, Carriers, Waymen, and Locksters, but the Sea¬farers Guild doles out only 8 gp. Some guilds maintain an “old bones lodge” for retired guild members, which sometimes take in nonmembers for stiff fees to support the care of the retired guild members, who are charged little or nothing.
6.They offer money changing and money¬lending services to members in need at set rates (always lower than market) agreed upon at guild meetings. Most guilds also provide secure money storage for members, who often prefer such si¬lent storage to banking their coins with the royal court, enabling tax collectors to take note of the amounts of funds specific individuals handle.
7.They provide guild members as observers when caravans arrive for fairs at Jester’s Green, elsewhere around Hilp, or south of the Starwater, as well as when ships unload at the docks in Su- zail. In fact, they insist on guild members being present in order to see what cargoes are arriving, in which containers, where they are intended to be sold, and to whom. This supervision allows the guilds to see if everything adheres to regulations as well as gives them a day or so of warning on price fluctuations.
Guilds in Cormyr also unofficially perform a lot of other functions, from investing members’ profits to engaging in (or hiring others to per¬form) arson, vandalism, or theft against rivals.
All guilds lobby against competing outlander peddlers and ship captains who don’t adhere to court-approved guild measures. Additionally, guilds quite openly gather information about who is trading in what sort of goods, and they argue before the royal court as to which guild should have a say over a newly introduced product or ser¬vice. For example, the Tanners and Leatherers Guild and the Guild of Coachlars, Carriers, Way- men, and Locksters might argue over who has purview over clip-in harnesses made for attaching additional draft animals to a coach or a wagon.
Almost every guild charges membership fees—and its apprentices or would-be members even higher fees. The royal court must be kept fully informed of fee changes and of member¬ship requirements, and court officers aggressively
investigate all complaints regarding apprentices or probationary members facing unusual difficulties in acquiring full membership. The Crown prohib¬its any non-Cormyreans and any Cormyreans of noble or royal blood from being guildmasters. In addition, most guilds withhold membership from persons who don’t own land in Cormyr. Crown law prevents race or gender from having any part in guild membership rules.
Almost every guild tries to control the profes¬sional behavior of its members in some way, either through formal rules or through informal secret edicts and temporary boycotts. For example, “No member of the Vintners and Falconers Guild is to trade with any member of the Brewers and Cheesemakers Guild until further notice from the Grand Hooded Vintner” (the guildmaster).
To form a guild, its proponents must first suc¬cessfully petition the Crown. A royal charter is granted that sets forth membership requirements, a founding roster of members, a rota of officers, and the guild rules. It also includes the grant of a badge or a device (a physical object, such as the miniature helms mounted on scepters and shop signs by members of the Armorers) for guild use. This is not a heraldic grant of arms, though the Heralds keep records of these badges as well. Heralds can, of course, separately grant arms to guilds who desire and pay for a grant. All guilds are required to keep up-to-date rolls at court and in their headquarters, recording all changes in membership, rules, and fees. In this case “up-to- date” means “must reflect all changes fully and accurately within a tenday, or face stiff fines and a mark of censure.”
Two marks of censure against any guild means an automatic War Wizard investigation of all guild activities, taxes, and finances. Six marks means the guild charter is forfeit. Marks are of¬ficially rescinded after an investigation is passed, but are never automatically removed after passage of time.
Illegal Guilds
Every civilized realm has so-called or self-styled guilds everyone knows about that are actually ille¬gal organizations regulated only by themselves.
In the case of Cormyr, these outlaw guilds in¬clude the infamous Fire Knives and an endless succession of small, local thieves’ guilds that are 
inevitably crushed by the War Wizards and the Highknights but often re-founded. Such illicit or¬ganizations have traditionally held little power in Cormyr, except in Marsember and in small but frequent Dragon Coast smuggling operations. In fact, at any one time, Marsember usually has a Guild of Marsember rebel organization and three or four small Guilds of Goodsrunners that adopt various fanciful names and try to import goods from Sembia, Westgate, or the Vilhon Reach without paying taxes or enduring government inspections. The Crown usually infiltrates and shatters these false guilds, sometimes hiring ad¬venturers to assist when fighting is expected.
Craft Guilds
Apart from the grand, official high guilds of Cor¬myr, small, local craft guilds are found in every town and city in Cormyr. Some villages have fledgling, disorganized craft guilds, and those in cities are often little more than powerless com-plaining societies.
A craft guild is a collective of all the various crafters and shopkeepers in a particular place (as opposed to just those engaged in a specific profes¬sion), who band together to try to buy materials in bulk for the sake of lower prices and shipping costs. The guild also tries to argue taxes down to a minimum and seeks to establish common work¬ing conditions for its members. The goal of a craft guild is to eliminate what the weaver Lurdruth Thaloane of Waymoot recently called “unfair ad¬vantages gained by merchants who work family members, children they’ve taken in, and debtors they have holds over to death in near slavery!”
Craft guilds tend to have high-sounding names such as the Benevolent Muster of Merchants of Eveningstar, and the Loyal Council of Coinfel¬lows of Espar.
The chief benefits of both the craft guilds and the high guilds are social. Members can swiftly spread word among fellow members of prices, practices, swindles, and other news. This quick communication aids in cutting down on impos-tures, false rumors of shortages designed to drive up prices of materials, and confidence tricks. In addition, guild members more easily hear which journeymen are seeking new employment and which masters are seeking new hires, as well as which apprentices have acquired real skills.

Information of this last sort opens up alternative employment opportunities for skilled apprentices, should their current masters prove unscrupulous enough to avoid granting them recognition. In turn, novices can learn who is best at this or that specialty of guildcraft (the best knife polisher, the best toolmaker, the crafter whose work is most fashionable among lavishly spending nobles, and so on).
These true Cormyrean craft fraternities—that is, organizations of workers largely engaged in the same specific profession—have been some¬what curbed in powers, hauteur, and fripperies since their excesses during the time of the Tu- igan Horde. These excesses included uniforms, secret handshakes, arcane festivals and rituals, passing internal laws, advising their members on which Crown laws to obey and which to flout, and closely allying with certain noble families who had their own treasonous agendas for financial gain.
The hitherto-flourishing Bricklayers Guild, for instance, no longer exists because it became a front for several noble families plotting to over¬throw the Dragon Throne. Those nobles used the guild to enrich themselves by smuggling stolen goods and small valuables, evading taxes, and hiding valuables inside hollow bricks.
Cormyr’s guilds traditionally held little po¬litical power, but were “feeling their brawn” (as the Cormyrean expression has it) just before the arrival of the Tuigan Horde, led by the aforemen¬tioned Bricklayers, the Sculptors and Masons Guild, and the Guild of Carpenters and Joiners. The surviving two construction guilds are now carefully law-abiding. However, flush with the coin from those aspiring to live in ever-grander residences and erect ever-fancier follies, they have learned the value of their work, and they con¬tinue to be locally politically active, pursuing and guarding their own interests with passion and manipulative skill.
The Guilds of Cormyr currently recognized in the Forest Kingdom are detailed below, presented in roughly descending order of influence.
Sculptors and Masons Guild: Controls stonework, statuary, quarrying, plastering, mud- daub, and waterproofing. This guild knows its true power more than any other. However, 
it is also steadfastly loyal to the Obarskyrs for their striving to maintain a fair and prosperous Cormyr.
Guild of Carpenters and Joiners: Controls wood cutting, curing, staining, furniture making, fitted carpentry, and joinery. This is a wealthy, energetic, “into everything” (such as new styles of coffers, chairs, and stools) guild. It’s also frac¬tious; the guildmaster faces almost constant challenges to his authority from what he calls “pompous fat little trumpet-mouths” who think they can do a better job of running the guild.
Armorers Guild: Controls armor- and weapon-making, plus the making of tempered tools from sewing needles to tiny gears and cogs. This guild is watched by the War Wizards to pre¬vent any noble from equipping a private army without the Crown’s knowledge. Members resent this scrutiny even as they accept its necessity.
Guild of Coachlars, Carriers, Waymen, and Locksters: Controls wagon makers and wagon owners, locksmiths, coachlars (coach
drovers), carters (those who operate local delivery wagons), and draymen (deliverers and loaders of ships at the docks, on wagons everywhere, and in warehouses). “Locksters” is the Dragon Reach term for owners and guardians of warehouses. Rampant ambition within the Coachcowls, as most of Cormyr calls this guild, was curbed by the War Wizards and the Highknights in the wake of the battles against the Tuigan Horde.
Truebreeds Guild: Controls trade in horses, oxen, sheep, cattle, guard dogs, and sheepdogs, as well as the breeding, care, and sale of all kept beasts. This guild is an often fractious group of ranchers. Due to offers from Sembia, Westgate, and certain Cormyrean nobles wanting exotic guardians or pets, the guildmaster is privately considering breaking the guild rule that Van- gerdahast forced on his now-dead predecessor Belivaerus Daethul: Members of the Truebreeds would never attempt to crossbreed species nor make any use of magic enabling features of one 
beast to be added to another. Or, more simply, they’d never try to “make monsters.”
Seafarers Guild: Includes sailors, captains, fleet owners, navigators, mapmakers, ropers (the local name for rope makers), sail makers, ship¬wrights, and ship repairers. Interests in Sembia and Westgate frequently try to bribe these guild members to aid and abet smuggling and even slave running. Under the guildmaster’s firm, dili¬gent hand, this guild is courteous, abides by both guild and Crown laws, and cultivates a trustwor¬thy, stolid, reliable, “no changes, please” image.
Vintners and Falconers Guild: Controls fal¬conry, raptor breeding and trading, wine making, vineyard owning and tending, wine blendings, and sales. Many guild members are flamboyant revelers and hedonists who consider a fun-loving lifestyle the proper aim and achievement of a suc¬cessful life. Because the falconers and the vintners of Suzail aspired to serve the same noble clientele, they were the first to join ranks and form a guild. Their success led to the other “anvil-and-flower” (the Realms term for “chalk-and-cheese”) com¬bined disparate-trades guilds.
Brewers and Cheesemakers Guild: Made up of brewers, spirits blenders and importers, and cheesemakers. The guild’s headquarters, called the Caskhouse, often hosts days-long drinking revels for members (and one guest each).
Roofers, Thatchers, and Glaziers Guild: Made up of roofers, slate masons, shingle cutters, thatchers and thatch cutters, glaziers, “sandglass” makers, and glass Stainers.
Tanners and Leatherers Guild: Composed of tanners, leather dyers, glovers, corvisers (boot- and shoemakers), cobblers, harness makers, battle leatherers (makers of leather armor and under armor), trimmers (who sew leather trim to gar¬ments), weatherdarrs (makers of leather caps, hats, “deep-snows” leggings, and weather-cloaks), and leatherwork repairers and alterers.
Guild of Weavers and Coopers: Made up of coopers, weavers, textile dyers, garment cutters, embroiderers, clothiers, and drapers (sellers of draperies and tapestries)
Guild of Naturalists: Controls medicinal, edible, lubricant, dye-source, and craft-worthy uses for plant and animal matter, either as dis¬tillates or as solids (and all who work with such substances, and associated research and vending).

The current Naturalists Guild is more of a debating society than anything else.