In that context, what do Gond and his followers actually do?
Here is the writeup on Gond I created for my players in my current campaign:
Gondar churches are styled quite differently to most other churches. A small chapel is erected next to a guild house. This chapel provides space for the clergy and the guilds members to meet with the public. However sermons themselves do not occur within the chapel. Instead sermons are carried out in auditoriums within the guild house itself. These auditoriums almost universally take the form of a gladiatorial style with seats and tables circling the pulpit in layers so that everyone can see the centre. Typically a sermon will begin with a traditional prayer by a priest along with any guild business carried out by the secretary. A cautionary tale follows before a presentation on a new idea or concept. This can be given by a traveling priest or a laymen. After this presentation a quick prayer is followed before the sermon adjourns to an adjacent hall for food and drinks. It is this unorthodox setup that allowed the Gondar churches to survive the ravages of the Spellplague.
A single city may have any number of Gondar churches connected to these guilds. Such guilds include the Order of Puissant Stonemasons and Stonecarvers. the Holy Order of Most Skilled Architects and Bridgemakers, the Armorers of the Wonder-bringer, the Most Arcane Order of Gearmakers, Clockmakers, and Au-tomationists, the Society of Creative Castle Design and Construction, and the Industrious Brothers and Sisters of Carpentry, Cabinetry, Pup-petry, and Toymaking. The only unifying trait of these guild houses is a string desire to innovate and find new ways to do things. Those that become mired in tradition find themselves abandoned by the clergy of Gond before which they find themselves under savage attack. After all, who better to bring down a guild than the clergy who were once trusted with the guild’s closest secrets?
The role of the clergy is to maintain the guild records on it’s members, representing the guild to outside bodies such as the government, maintaining new inventions, recording guild decisions and manage exhibitions that are put on display in the chapel. They also organise tours where inventors travel from guild house to guild house where they can spread the word and demonstrate new ideas and bring in news from nearby guilds.
Gondar priests spread to new cities by either establishing a new guild or petitioning existing ones to erect a chapel by enunciating the benefits the priesthood can bring.
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This was inspired directly from Faiths and Avatars (specifically all of the associated order names) and Elminster's Guide to the Forgotten Realms. They spend their days encouraging other people to invent new things and then spread about this new idea so that it doesn't die with the death of the inventor. However these new inventions need to be practical and are limited by the imaginations of specialists in a particular field.
So what are Gondar clerics doing? Largely a whole lot of paperwork
