DMnastics #54 - Gildi, Gegyld, Geld, Gild
Apr 28, 2016 12:18:04 GMT
joatmoniac and swordnut like this
Post by Athikin on Apr 28, 2016 12:18:04 GMT
So why do they?
Quality control is the big one. once it gets going and gets wealthy, you can make an arguement for vested interests.
An un-regulated market leads to exploitation by unscrupulous (and very numerous) people who make\sell fake goods. Not fake as in designer knock offs (that are irl often made in the country of sale and of superior quality to the sweatshop made real stuff). Fake as in flour that is mostly chalk dust, or bread with sawdust in it. Cosmetics containing lead and arsenic, or machinery that will fail dangerously. Medicine that is basically ethanol with colouring, or homoeopathy. Wait....
So we have a guild to reassure people that the work will be up to quality, and if it isnt, that there is recourse to a higher authority.
Law makers enshrine the guilds with powers and monopolies because it saves them a headache dealing with all the claims.
So, what was going wrong that led the people to support a lumberjacks guild?
Were unscrupulous lumber jacks felling illegally? (medieval english laws differentiated between "wood" - trees under 4 inches thick that could be gathered by anyone and "timber" that belonged to the landowner, leading to changes in building design, large scale use of wicker and the practice of coppicing and fagotting)
Was there a timber shortage caused by a dispute or illegal logging?
Was there a landslide caused by logging?
Would an unqualified lumberjack cause damage to the forest that would upset someone? Might there have been a war with a forest-dwelling people?
Were timber yards stealing wood from properties and re-selling it? (this actually happened, "reclaimed" timber is fashionable now but was seen as being the hallmark of poverty or miserliness) Could there be a turn of phrase like "his house is full of nails" to mean he is a miser and will stoop to less than legal means to save money?
I really like this consideration. I'm thinking that the Guild was actually created by a group of druids, secretly, to preserve the forest. They knew they weren't powerful enough to outright stop the Lumber Jacks, so they sought instead to control them, make sure they logged sustainably, and focus their efforts away from particularly sensitive groves. They made sure the public aspects of the guild would appeal to the stereotypical lumberjacks "Chop wood, make money, don't get killed by monsters". Note that these are not the druids Baul Panyon Encountered. Perhaps the Guild leader is one of these druids, and he seeks out a suitable replacement and secretly trains his replacement to become a druid himself
