What one hero cannot hold alone
A guild is a brotherhood: a banner, a treasury, a warehouse and a war, shared by heroes who decided the Forgotten Realms are easier to endure together. Alone, a hero hunts. In a guild, a hero belongs — and some of the realm's greatest undertakings, from alliance wars to the world bosses themselves, are simply closed to anyone without a banner.
Founding or joining
Any hero may seek a guild. Joining is the simple path: find a brotherhood whose banner you respect and whose members you can stand, and ask for a place. Founding is the ambitious one: it takes gold and it takes nerve, because a new banner starts with no reputation and everything to prove.
A guild grows the way a hero does — through activity. What its members hunt, win and build feeds the brotherhood itself, and an experienced guild can do things a young one cannot.
Ranks and permissions
Every guild is a hierarchy. The leader sits at the top, and beneath them the members are organized into ranks — each rank carrying its own permissions. Who may invite recruits, who may touch the vault, who may launch an attack, who may manage the market: all of it is decided by rank.
This is worth understanding before you join or promote. Permissions are real power: a careless promotion hands someone the keys to the treasury and the authority to start wars in your name. Good guilds treat ranks as trust made visible.
The vault — and the one rule that matters
The vault is the guild's shared treasury of gold and gems, funded by its members. It pays for everything the brotherhood does together: expanding the guild's holdings, keeping the stable, waging war.
Know this rule before you give: donations are permanent. What you place in the vault belongs to the guild, forever. There is no taking it back, no personal withdrawal, no changing your mind. Donate as an act of belonging — because that is exactly what it is.
The guild market
Brotherhoods keep an internal market: stalls where members trade with one another, apart from the open bazaar of the realm. It works like the market every trader knows (see /wiki/how-to-play/economy-and-trade), but among your own — and the guild can expand its stalls by investing from the vault, growing the market as the brotherhood grows.
The stable
The guild stable houses the brotherhood's horses, and horses are speed. A well-stocked stable shortens the guild's undertakings across the map — the long ride to a world boss, the tempo of its campaigns. Ambitious guilds fund the stable early; wars and hunts alike are won by whoever arrives first.
War
Guilds do not merely coexist. There are two ways to bring steel against another banner:
Raids
A guild may raid another outright — no invitation, no acceptance. The defenders cannot refuse; they can only fight. When the attack is launched, the raiders choose its form:
- Trial of points. The members of both guilds are matched against each other, each pair as evenly as possible — the strongest face the strongest, the newest face the newest. Every clash awards points, and the banner with the greater tally takes the day.
- Last man standing. No tally, no mercy. Champions fight on until one entire side has fallen. Wounds carry over from clash to clash, and a single great warrior can hold a line alone — for a while.
Victory is not symbolic: the winning raiders plunder a portion of the losers' vault. Two mercies temper the bloodshed: a powerful guild cannot raid one far beneath its strength, and a defeated guild cannot be raided again by the same attacker until a good while has passed.
No hero is harmed in a raid — these are contests of strength, not funerals. The vault is what bleeds.
Declared war
For a true feud, a guild may declare war. The challenged guild chooses to accept, and if it does, the two banners enter a state of open war lasting many days. While it burns, every duel and court challenge between members of the two guilds scores points for their banner, and raids between the two grow crueler — the plunder runs richer. When the war ends, the guild with the greater score claims victory and the glory that follows it.
Hunting world bosses
The realm's colossi — the Kraken, Boren, Dautilus — can only be challenged by guilds. It is the brotherhood's highest calling and its own art entirely: see /wiki/how-to-play/world-bosses-guide.
Choosing well
A guild will hold your donations forever and wage wars in your name. Join one whose leaders you trust, contribute like the vault is a bonfire everyone must feed, and treat the banner as what it is — the only family anyone gets in the Forgotten Realms.