Messengers Guild
A guild with a near-monopoly on letter and package deliveries in Obsidian Bay.
Overview
Formally known as the Guild of Couriers and Messengers, the Messengers Guild was an innocuous, low-profile guild that specialized in running letters, packages and the certified messages around the city. Then its new guildmaster, a gnome named Ordo, took control in CY 590.
He formalized the guild's procedures, turning the patchwork operation into an effective messaging machine. In mid-CY 591, he hired a cadre of enforcers, and proceeded to use them to threaten and intimidate other non-guild couriers in the city, demanding that they either join the guild, or get out of the business. His practices were remarkably effective, and within weeks the guild had a near monopoly on courier services in the city.
The guild's been remarkably discreet in their threats and attacks, with few if any attacks capable of being tied back to Ordo and the Messengers. That said, their efforts have not been entirely unopposed.
The fledgling Persuaders Guild tried to convince Ordo to back off his campaign, but ended up dead, their tongues nailed to the door of the Dagger Down Inn as a message to those who might oppose the Messengers Guild. Unknown to Ordo, one of these Persuaders -- Wind -- was a newly blessed member of the Temple of the Earth Dragon. His death spawned a series of bloody skirmishes between the Earth Dragons and the Messengers Guild, temporarily distracting him from his larger campaign to dominate messaging in the city.
The few surviving independent couriers have used this lull in the Messengers Guild's "recruiting" to band together to form their own rival organization, the Couriers Association. Rallying around the halfling Largo Leftpocket -- who had his arm broken by the Messengers Guild -- the group is trying to use the city's laws to protect themselves from Ordo's excesses.
