THIEVES' GUILD. The best organized body of people in the continent. Thieves' Guilds exist in all CITIES and can usually pass messages reliably between branches, although each City appears to have its own independent hierarchy. The Thieves' Guild exists to transfer wealth but not to distribute it. Its members are pickpockets, burglars, robbers, fences, and housebreakers, but never muggers. The Guild claims to be a body of artists. All its members profess horror at violence (but are quite proficient fighters all the same) and pride themselves on bringing off robberies in apparently impregnable TREASURE stores, on picking locks, and on climbing smooth walls. The Guild is organized into masters, journeymen, and APPRENTICES, with an anonymous Hidden Head, or Guildmaster, who rejoices in such NAMES as The Faceless Man or The Gentleman. You will be taken to see this person at some point when your Tour visits a City. You will be blindfolded and led along strange-smelling passages to an upstairs venue evidently concealed between two or more houses. The man's face will be veiled by MAGIC or masked. But meanwhile you will have made the acquaintance of a very young Apprentice thief. In return for the Guild's helping the Tour, the Hidden Guildmaster will ask you to look after this Child because he shows promise, and you will take him with you when you leave on the rest of the Tour. He will become an excellent and useful Tour COMPANION, and even make JOKES. There is always an unspoken suggestion that this young thief is the son of the Hidden Guildmaster.
"I run the Thieves' Guild in Treverre. The name is ironic. We are not a guild, though we enjoy a few guild-like perquisites. We do not steal from citizens of Treverre, just from foreigners. Neither do we shit in our own beds. Mainly we steal from foreign merchants who deal miserly with Treverran merchants. The city guard knows us — knows me in particular — and we frequently help foreigners retrieve their lostments, for a modest and reasonable fee."
"I would say that a third of the professional thieves in Treverre are in my organization. Most of the rest work with Styvie or Amaraxco or Thunt or the Honest Man. The remainder are scum who steal from their neighbors to buy their bread and dried fish; when we find such, we beat them or give them to the city guards."
"I would say that a third of the professional thieves in Treverre are in my organization. Most of the rest work with Styvie or Amaraxco or Thunt or the Honest Man. The remainder are scum who steal from their neighbors to buy their bread and dried fish; when we find such, we beat them or give them to the city guards."
—Egnoster Chesewick, Khtsoyis crime lord, World Tree (RPG)
