Alchemist's Guild of Dypholyos

The Alchemist's Guild of Dypholyos is a significant commercial force in the city, operating with the full co-operation of the broader network of Commercial Guilds. The guild is famed for its collective success in the formulation and manufacture of drugs and medicines (many of which appear to have magical properties), for its long-standing partnership with the Glassblower's Guild of Dyqamay and for the secrecy and security in which it conducts its research.

Foundation and history

The guild was founded in 168 AWR as a joint venture between a triumvirate of Dypholyan researchers and the Commercial Guilds of Dypholyos and Dyqamay. The researchers, Jalens Rogares, Qandymos Tochray and Sphoyan Wendymas had come into possession of a substantial body of literature relating to the gods Zargyod and Ajqyod and over some years of experimentation had used this literature to make some important breakthroughs - precisely what remains an interesting secret of the guild - in the targeted application of heat. They sought to apply these breakthroughs to the brewing of medicines and infusions, but the initial experimentation had beggared all three, leaving them with no capital with which to continue their work, and thus reached out to the guilds for more funding. After a lengthy round of negotiations the guilds funded the construction of the first building in what eventually grew to be a significant compound on the shores of what can be to be known as The Glimmerlet at the western end of the city.
Over the last three hundred years the guild has enjoyed a long history of successful research. This work was initially financed by the Commercial Guilds, who directed their research into the study of metals. This priority has led to the long-standing notion that the guild was being used to develop a method of transmuting base metals into gold. The paymasters in Dyqamay have a long history of rather wearily refuting this, noting that such an ability would simply lead to a massive oversupply of gold, which would destroy its value and with it the entire economy of the Sea of Jars. The objective, they explained, was to purify metals in order to ensure that the value of gold, silver, copper and so on could be trusted and the metals used efficiently. The alchemists themselves, interestingly, never publicly rejected the transmutation theory, which accordingly is still heard in some circles.
As well as working with precious metals the guild conducted research on base metals, developing new techniques by which to anneal iron and steel, creating numerous grades of weight, strength and flexibility. They received their raw material for these experiments from the iron mines of Dyqamay, importing charcoal from the Alluvial plain via Pholyos. The raw metals were processed, complicatedly, at length, and in great secrecy, and returned to Dyqamay as ingots, which were then worked into tools, including blades of Dyqamay watered steel, a material famous for its beauty and preternatural ability to take and hold an edge. The guild profited considerably from this trade for some fifty years until 304 AWR, when one of its researchers, Wesmod Rogares - a descendant of one of the founders - sold the secret of the metal's manufacture to metalworkers in Dyqamay and Loros, reputedly for a lifetime stipend and an estate in the hills outside Dyqamay. Rogares's colleagues discovered his plans as he was packing his personal effects to leave for this retirement. When his contacts met his ship at the Dyqamay docks a few days later, they found not their benefactor but two of his colleagues, wearing brass masks and bearing an irregular, cylindrical silver ingot. This, they explained, was a cast of Rogares's oesophagus, made by pouring molten silver down his throat, and would be kept in the library of the guild from now on as a reminder of where the loyalties of guild members should lie.

Current activities

In 324 AWR the secret for making Loros brass was stolen and taken to Loros by parties unknown. Since then on the guild has focused less on metals than on oils, medicines and reagents, producing various unguents and potions to treat afflictions and lacquers, dyes and varnishes sought after by craftspoeple. These are probably the finest such products to be found in the Eleven Cities and command high prices, though this is partly because they are manufactured in tiny quantities. The alchemists claim this is because the substances are hard to manufacture, requiring lengthy processing of rare and costly ingredients and a high failure rate, though frankly not everybody believes this.
In the last twenty years, under the leadership of Tozayn Semgyad, the guild has pivoted its activities again, focusing increasingly on Semgyad's dictum that if it is possible to infuse the human body with substances to cure its ills, then it should also be possible to create substances that boost the abilities of a healthy body, either temporarily or permanently. Semgyad claims to have made several major breakthroughs in this field, but as usual the guild is guarding its secrets closely.
In recent years The Bottled Whip, known to be a product of the guild, has begun trickling out into the black markets of Dypholyos, Dyqamay and Tyros. Interested parties have speculated that Semgyad's research in this field has reached a tipping point and are speculating about other essentially magical potions granting such abilities as invisibility or invulnerability to heat or pain, though this is only speculation.

Guild premises

The guild operates from a compound of buildings at the western end of Dypholyos, on the shores of the Glimmerlet. The substantial two-story wooden guildhouse originally built by the Commercial Guilds was gutted in a fire thirty years after the guild was established, and thus torn down and replaced by a stone structure equipped with several large smokestacks. This building is thought to house the laboratories where the alchemists conduct their research. A similar building with a single large, anvil-shaped stack was built next door in 213 AWR.
Behind these buildings are a pair of large wooden buildings, both two stories high. One of these is the library, where the guild houses written records of its combined researches. This is said to contain numerous unique manuals of alchemy and thaumatology, including the original manuscripts dealing with Ajqyod and Zargyod possessed by the founders. The building has barred windows and its entrances a guarded by heavily-armed guards both day and night; only full members of the guild are admitted, and though they may take notes out of the library the books themselves are never borrowed. The other building is the accommodations for those guild members and their families, which are apparently quite luxurious. There are, it is said, accommodations for up to sixteen alchemists and their dependents at once. A substantial domestic staff inhabit a cellar story. These two buildings are linked by covered bridges at each end; the resulting quadrangle contains a neatly-kept lawn.
The complex also includes several low, guarded stone storehouses and a small two-story building in which business is conducted. The whole compound is surrounded by a stone wall topped with large brass spikes; its one gate, on the landward side, is guarded and generally kept locked.

Membership

Throughout its history the guild has consisted of as few as three and as many as sixteen individual researchers. The current membership is nine, though the individual identities of the alchemists, apart from their current leader Semgyad, is unknown. When in public the alchemists wear heavy metal masks which cover their whole faces except for glass-covered portholes or vision slits for the eyes. Outside observers are divided on whether these masks are simple protective measures adopted for potentially dangerous experiments or have ceremonial or thaumaturgical significance, and on the precise reason for the secrecy.
Securing membership of the guild is a years-long process. It begins with a punishingly inquisitorial interview with all the existing members, in which the applicant is judged on their existing knowledge of chemistry, metallurgy and thaumatology (the guild offers no formal tuition) and intentions in joining. The guild members are jealous of their secrets and do not allow entry to anyone they suspect of wishing to steal them. If the alchemists are satisfied of an applicant's honest intentions and potential value the newcomer begins a long period of apprenticeship, lasting for anything from two to seven years, in the first two years of which they are trusted with only the most menial of support tasks - mostly mopping floors - and forbidden from entering the library. In their third year the alchemists gradually begin allowing prospects more freedom, involving them in aspects of research and allowing them supervised access to some of the library. Over the course of the next two to four years, all being well, the level of access is gradually increased and the applicant is given leeway to pursue their own projects. The precise nature of the eventual investiture of a successful trainee is one of the organisation's many secrets.
Trainees, and indeed full members, seldom leave the guildhouse, living there full-time (this is not an optional perk) and enjoying an impressive lifestyle in their scant time off. Trainees are watched by full members for their work ethic; those seeming more interested in relaxation than work are granted short shrift. A trainee who proves to be unsuitable or untrustworthy, or who asks to leave, will be presented with a bill for their keep and training to date, always an enormous sum; those without the money to pay it must work it off as a functionary of the guild, a process that may take decades. In this way the guild recruits its support staff, as well as deterring dabblers, arrivistes and profiteers.
The guild conducts its business with the outside world via intermediaries. Such employees - never more than a few individuals at a time - are chosen and employed in large part on the basis of their lack of knowledge of alchemy; these vendors may know the monetary value of a case of medicines, and are famous for driving hard bargains, but they know nothing about the composition and manufacture of these wares and what they tell customers of this matter is widely believed by outsiders to be deliberate disinformation intended to mystify the buyer (and incidentally drive up the price). A customer interested in placing a particularly large, demanding or costly order may be granted an audience with one of the alchemists to discuss the terms of the contract, though this is rare. The alchemists also seldom give interviews.

Livery

When at work in their laboratories the alchemists are thought to wear simple protective gear; this, many assume, is the origin of the mysterious masks they wear in public. The formal livery of the organisation, however, is very similar to what it was at foundation - a crimson jacket and knee-breeches, black hose and a yellow cape, reflecting the day-wear of well-heeled gentlemen in the island cities at the time of the formation of the guild. The chief alteration in the centuries since is the addition of an elaborate pattern of gold and silver brocading to both the jacket and the cape. 
The commercial intermediaries of the guild are permitted to wear this livery, and to modify it at their own expense. In recent years this has involved altering the brocade from abstract patterning to marine imagery such as ships and fish, the precise significance of which is unclear; it may simply be fashion.

Type

Corporation, Research & Development