Guilds and Professions of Nexus
The Bedrock of the Gilded Cage
Historian's Foreword: Mage histories star themselves. They are mistaken. Our history is one of building a robust artifice against overwhelming power. The modern Unawakened world was forged in the chaos of early Nexus, a city built on a psychic amplifier that drove unprotected minds to madness. We were saved not by archmages, but by bureaucrats and watchmen. Where magic was a contagion, mundane systems became our armor. This crucible forced us to innovate our own forms of power, giving birth to the Great Guilds. Their influence was cemented during the Great Silence, where their mundane systems of industry and law proved more resilient than magic itself.
1. The Lamplighters' Guild
- Motto: "We light the lamps and banish the dark. The rest is just shadows."
- Role: The official city watch of Nexus and its specialists in astral pest control.
- Methods: Lamplighters are recruited for their psychological stability and resistance to "Glass Sickness." They counter magical problems with mundane solutions, based on the principle of the Mundane Anchor: dragging a magical situation back to the brutal truths of physical reality. Their standard toolkit includes:
- Cold-Iron Cudgel: Their signature weapon. Cold iron, being fundamentally "of the earth" (Malkuth), has a disruptive effect on the purely astral constructs of Yesod. A physical blow can de-rez a minor phantasm.
- Resonance Jars: Clay jars filled with salt and iron filings. When shattered, they release a wave of "conceptual static"—meaningless sensory data that "jams" the frequency of a complex illusion, causing it to dissolve.
- Oiled Mirrors: Polished steel mirrors that show a mundane, distorted reality, allowing Lamplighters to identify illusions by their lack of reflection.
- Culture: Their philosophy is a form of stoic humanism known as the Iron Soul, which teaches that true strength is forged in the absence of power. Adherents view magic as a shortcut that bypasses the essential struggles that build character, finding virtue instead in mundane work and unwavering discipline. Mages are not envied but are seen as walking civic hazards to be managed. The guild's most decorated veteran, the retired Captain Eva Rostova (ret.), famously codified this pragmatic approach in her standard-issue training manual.
2. The Iron Scribes of the Unblinking Eye
- Motto: "Light fades, memories lie, magic fails. The ink remains."
- Role: The bureaucratic and legal backbone of Nexus, masters of the non-magical contract.
- Methods: The Scribes weaponize bureaucracy to create systems immune to magical tampering.
- Triple-Entry Bookkeeping: Contracts are cross-referenced in three separate, mundane ledgers. A magical alteration to one is instantly flagged as a discrepancy by routine audits.
- Conceptual Dead-Ink: An ink blended with lead and powdered obsidian that is resistant to magical scrying or alteration.
- The Unawakened Witness: Major contracts require the seal of three Unawakened witnesses, whose mundane minds are less susceptible to magical influence.
- Culture: Pedantic, meticulous, and patient. They are adherents of the Iron Soul philosophy, applying its principles of resilience and discipline to law and information. They believe a well-written, mundane contract is a stronger bulwark against chaos than any magical ward. Their current Master Archivist is Master Historian Loris.
3. The Weavers of the Tangible Thread
- Motto: "A fine coat for the body, a thick cloak for the mind."
- Role: Artisans who create textiles that interfere with magical perception.
- Methods: Their techniques disrupt magical senses rather than providing true resistance.
- The Grey Cloak: Their most famous product, a heavy wool cloak threaded with lead and silver. It "muddies" the wearer's aura, making them difficult for Magic-Vision to read clearly.
- Whisper-Silk Linings: Silk linings with iron-laced, nonsensical patterns that act as "conceptual static" against telepathic intrusion.
- Culture: A secretive and meticulous guild whose clients range from assassins to paranoid merchants. They are the preferred outfitters for the Hidden Dagger and the Concord's Silent Sentinels.
4. The Menders' Collective
- Motto: "They break it, we fix it. The price is non-negotiable."
- Role: Specialist artisans and engineers who repair the bizarre collateral damage of magic.
- Methods: The Menders treat metaphysics as a practical engineering problem.
- Harmonic Masonry: Using tuning forks and resonating hammers to "retune" magically-damaged materials back to their stable, mundane physical state.
- Conceptual Insulation: Creating building materials infused with "conceptually noisy" substances (fused sand, ground mirrors) to dampen magical scrying.
- Culture: Gruff, pragmatic, and wealthy. They are the primary proponents of the Technocratic Ideal, a radical philosophy that views magic as a system of physics to be observed, quantified, and ultimately engineered. The controversial Artisan-Primus Korbin is their most prominent and outspoken figure.
5. The Silent Relay
- Motto: "Neither thought nor dream, but lock and key."
- Role: A guild of secure couriers specializing in the physical transport of sensitive items, guaranteeing protection from magical surveillance.
- Methods: The Relay operates on the principle that the most complex mundane lock is more secure than a simple magical ward.
- Puzzle Boxes: Messages are placed in intricate puzzle boxes that require a complex, non-obvious physical sequence to open. The solution is taught only to the recipient.
- Rote-Runners: Couriers with disciplined, "boring" minds who know only their route, making them poor targets for mental interrogation.
- The Cold-Chain: A protocol using a series of runners, each carrying the package for only a small portion of its journey to make magical tracking nearly impossible.
- Culture: Secretive and highly disciplined under the leadership of the enigmatic Master Caelus, the anonymous master artisan who designs their unbreachable puzzle boxes and psychological protocols. They are the exclusive courier for the Hidden Dagger.
6. The Alchemical Purveyors
- Motto: "Every god has a price tag."
- Role: A guild of ritual component brokers. They are geologists, naturalists, and acquisition experts who source the bizarre components for high-tier magic.
- Methods: Their skill is in sourcing items with the correct metaphysical resonance or "story" attached to them (e.g., the ashes of an unjust law book for a Gevurah ritual). They employ teams of hardened explorers for hazardous prospecting in magically-scarred wastelands.
- Culture: A blend of hardened explorers, shrewd merchants, and obsessive academics. They maintain scrupulous neutrality to ensure access to all markets, from the Concord to the Garden.
7. The Gilded Scale Consortium
- Motto: "The Gilded Scale does not choose a side; it weighs them."
- Role: The largest purely mundane economic entity in the world. They treat magic as a volatile but predictable resource to be hedged and profited from.
- Methods: The Consortium's power lies in its mastery of risk analysis and its ability to treat magic as an industrial capacity subject to the laws of supply and demand.
- Factors: Shrewd public negotiators like Factor Gratian who broker deals between factions.
- Conceptual Actuarial Science: A discipline pioneered by the legendary Factoria Lex. It is the art of assigning a concrete monetary value to abstract magical risk, allowing the Consortium to "price" the risk of a war and treat the grand struggles of the magical world as a predictable set of market fluctuations.
- Friction Arbitrage: The Consortium's most advanced strategists do not invest in factions, but in the friction between them. They profit by creating stability, not from any single faction's victory.
- Culture: The ultimate pragmatists. Their philosophy is a form of Pragmatic Deism. They acknowledge that overwhelming power exists, and their response is to bargain with it. A powerful mage is a potential patron, a temporary "god" of a specific domain, but this divinity is measured purely by its usefulness and lasts only as long as results are delivered.