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Message: <blockquote data-quote="guildofblades" data-source="post: 3361896" data-attributes="member: 27324">I had played in a campaign when I was younger where all the player's principle PCs had their hands in key positions in the leading guild's that dominated the eastern third of the continent. None of the guild's ruled the city states directly, but the leading guild's had so much power that many of the rulers of said cities were more puppet rulers than anything else. Or if the ruler was not controlled directly by one guild or another it had to walk a tight rope between them. The eastern cities were very large city states and had powerful armies and powerful agents.Into that campaign setting the other players and myself started new characters which campaigned amongst the guild intrigue and on the fringes of the developed lands. My character ended up getting stuck in the middle of a power play by one of the powerful guild and the opposition by another led to a nasty war. The PCs tried to chart their way through the war with minimal involvement, but my character's NPC girlfriend ended up being played as a pawn and to get her out of that situation my character had made a true enemy of one of the guild's. It was the best the other guild could do at the peace talks to save my character from the headsman and instead he was banished from all the known lands. The result of that meant he and his NPC wife and NPC brother and law had to venture into the "wilds" which were basically lands that comprised the center, mostly unpopulated (by humans) half of the continent. The few human settlements were often ravaged by powerful Orcish tribes and lots of other nasties. My character stumbled upon a modest sized settlement out in the wilds and ended up saving it from attack numerous times. Not that he was the type of character that would actually care, excepting he really didn't have much of anywhere else to go, being banished and all. Eventually he started a training school and began teaching many of the more promising youth of the city plus used some of his wealth to hire teachers to offer instruction in areas of knowledge he didn't have. After severals years of that, one of the guild members from one of the powerful eastern guild's had stumbled upon the settlement and reported its and his presence. That led to a underground war with the guild trying to take over the city for itself and that war ended up with the agents of the guild being defeated, but not before they had taken the town center and killed the entire ruling council. In the very same last battle, the town leading military commander and both of his underlings were killed.My PC had been offered the position of king by a number of leading nobles mostly because they felt he was the only one who could protect them and the town. He turned them down, wanting nothing to do with ruling. So the darn fools elected my character's NPC wife as their queen to oversee a new city council. Nearly half of the new city council were elected from my PC's School of Blades. So he didn't technically rule, but every time the council, city, or his students, which came to lead ever increasing rolls of importance in the military and the Guild they council formed. The town became more successful after its military expansion and the extra security allowed its trade to prosper. Of course, not getting sacked a couple times per year by the Orc tribes helped too. All of the other towns in the region asked for protection and then eventually for union with the town and hence the world's first real empire had been born. The council decided to declare my character's NPC as Empress. Which would not have been too bad if she weren't half way insane by then.Ultimately my PC and the leading movers and shaker PCs from the powerful guilds all had to band together to thwart a massive power play by one of the world's gods. They succeeded in killing all her minions and stopped her plan, but at the end they all fell prey to a trap she had left behind and all of their soul's became trapped. Leading NPC characters assumed control over the various eastern guild and some of the larger city states largely shook off the influence of the guilds and began empire building aspirations of their own. This led to some large scale conflicts with the Empress's empire. We ended up playing a new set of low level characters in that new era. The empire out in the wilds had ended up with some fairly low level characters trying to lead armies and managed the reins of power and it was overwhelming for them. Most ended up dead.Ryan S. JohnsonGuild of Blades Publishing Group<a href="http://www.guildofblades.com" target="_blank">http://www.guildofblades.com</a><a href="http://www.1483online.com" target="_blank">http://www.1483online.com</a><a href="http://www.thermopylae-online.com" target="_blank">http://www.thermopylae-online.com</a></blockquote>

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