What is a guild?

[Robert]

I’m going to get deep for this one, but something’s been bugging me since yesterday.

I keep coming back to this image from Steve’s pamphlet drop.

Royal Houses? Guilds? What does it all mean?

The Guide told me I was a fit for Balimora. What does that mean? What’s it mean to be a Balimora, or a Gossmere? What’s it mean to be a member of House Baymor, or House Mer Gost?

Is the Guide just a well read sorting hat? It tells you what House you belong to out of a handful of made up house names because 6 powerful people were bored one day? In olden days would it have told me I should be in House Baymor, and I would have reported there for duty? We all assumed the old houses were dead and gone, but now that we know they’re not? It got kinda complicated. Can you be a Balimora without being in House Baymor? Originally the houses were families right? Was every child born in House Baymor automatically a Balimora? What does that even mean?

I guess what I’m trying to get at is. Is ‘Balimora’ deeper then just some group of royal people who decided they should have a House that followed certain beliefs? Is there a …underlying truth… for lack of a better term that says even if the House were to disappear tomorrow, and all records of them then the concept of being a Balimora, or a Gossmere, or a Weatherwatch would still exist?

We thought we were rebuilding the guilds, and they were the spiritual successors to these houses. Then we found out the houses still exist. Are we rebuilding anything? Are we just a bunch of lost people who took up names of guilds we don’t even belong to? Or do we belong to them as much as anyone from a Royal House could?

What does any of this even mean?

[Mr5yy]

To me, the guilds are a modern version of the houses. When they became a guild, they took the good parts, the important memories and ideas, and left behind the nasty bits. It’s like a faction split off of Monarch’s Mountain because of a disagreement, probably related to what’s happening now, and decided to become guilds.

[Rimor]

I believe that the Monarchs are the foundations that our new more forward thinking guilds have been built upon. Like 5 said we are a more untied family that has been refined.

[Leigha]

Whatever they were to the houses, whatever they became over time to the Mountaineers, we make them what they are now. They are ours now. What they mean is up to us, to what meaning we give them.

[Viviane]

Here’s the thing, though…I think the Guilds must have existed separately from Monarch’s Mountain somehow, even before the 94 Mountaineers. Wasn’t the Guide to MAGIQ published in the 50’s? And it refers to the Guilds like established entities with traits and affinities–not the Houses.