The House of Contrive is divided into five ranks:
- Grand-Artificer
- High-Artificer
- Artificer
- Academic
- Architect
The title of
Grand-Artificer is held by those Antivans who have spent at minimum 20 years working with the House and are considered to be the masters of their specific craft. They make up the Directorate and are functionally the absolute leaders of the entire guild. Any large projects that the House undertakes must at one point cross the desks of the Grand-Artificers. When one who holds the title passes away or retires, the High-Artificers gather together to vote for which amongst them deserves this new title. If none of them meet the necessary requirements, the role is kept open until someone meets it. It has never happened that such a title has been vacant for more than a month.
High-Artificers are senior and experienced members of the guild. They are the ones who put together the blueprints and serve as the think-tank where much of the brilliance of the House can be found. High-Artificers also act as mentors for those beneath them, helping these candidates to choose their sub-discipline and directing them to bodies of useful knowledge. In order to attain such a rank, an Artificer must have spent at least 10 years working with the House. During that time, they also must have created some "master piece" which would be presented to their master along with a detailed dissertation. The master piece an Artificer makes is often a solution to some problem inspired by their master's work.
Artificers are the mainstay rank within the guild proper and make up most of its membership. They are considered fully functional and capable members of the House, though they still have much to learn. They spend the bulk of their time going through troves of texts and reading over blueprints to understand new design techniques. Usually by the end of their second year as an Artificer, one would have decided on what discipline they would like to further research and found a High-Artificer to work under. Some of the more popular disciplines are as follows:
- Construction
- Tool Forging (for war purposes)
- Civil Engineering
- Alchemy (the most popular of which is for medicinal purposes)
- Smithing Techniques
The rank of
Academic is given to those who have spent their 1 year of time as an Architect. Those who have been willing to put their bodies through brutal efforts to reach this point are rewarded with 2 years to be spent in classrooms. Here, they are taught by House instructors in a plethora of different fields to equip themselves with the tools and knowledge needed to begin artificing. After their two years, those who have shown an acceptable level of knowledge are allowed to become Artificers.
Finally,
Architect is the title given to those individuals who only recently joined the House. They serve as the manual labor of the guild. It is during this year of training that Architects learn with hands-on techniques and get a better sense of what they should aspire to do years from now. They mostly perform menial tasks and help out those far above them. The primary purpose of this rank is to humble those who wish to become artificers while also putting low amounts of pressure on those new recruits.
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