Colors: Green and Brown
Current Guild Leader: Benjamin Canto, The Order of the Axe
Requirements to Join: Must work in the lumber industry for at least 1 year
Requirements of Membership: Must continue work in the lumber industry for at least 11 months out of the year
Majority Composition: Lumberjacks
Minority Composition: Fire Mages, Clerics of Eraen, Clerics of Fiera
On the Guild Council?: No

While to the people of Torodan this is one of the minor Guilds, concerned mostly with the production of lumber and farmland, they have some very interesting groups within them, and are not all purely hell-bent on destroying forest after forest. By working with certain groups, I believe that we might be able to help Torodan toward a more manageable ecology, and thus save our own forests from their hands.

What is interesting about the Order is not its election structure for Orders or lower. Order Leaders are elected every 5 years. Besides them, the other leaders are all selected by the Order Leaders, who hold a position higher than that of provincials within the Guild. The group with the best lumber production in the past 5 years is given the position of Guild Leader, who immediately selects an Order Leader as his replacement. This Order is then given a choice pick of the best fourth of the provinces of Torodan, where the Order may do business in lumber. The other Orders go along this path, in the Order of which they have produced capital, with the one that has produced the least amount of labor getting the worst of the provinces. While some, particularly those of the orders that have not done as well, claim this is unfair, it is a tradition that has placed control of most of the lumber in Torodan in the hands of one Order. I believe that with political and economic pressure, we can help some of the more ecologically beneficial Orders of the Forester’s Guild to come to power, protecting our own forests for years to come.

Politically speaking, the Forester’s Guild gets along best with the Builder’s Guild, to whom they supply most of their materials. They also get along well with the Farmer’s Guild, who often get used land after it has been cleared of trees. The Miner’s Guild and the Forester’s Guild often come into competition involving land resources, but the competition is often more friendly than anything else, and more than one dispute has been solved by jointly sharing the land after plotting it out.

The Order of the Axe

Symbol: A brown axe with a black head on a green field
Current Order Leader: Edmon Caligar
Requirements to Join: 1 gold registration fee
Requirements of Membership: 1 gold/year membership dues

The Order of the Axe is the most powerful Order of the Forester’s Guild, holding the best land and producing the most lumber. Using its status, the Order of the Axe manages to maintain a strong trade by chopping apart all of the trees of a region, often leaving behind dead stumps and selling the land for a fraction of its value to farmers, who then remove the excess stumps and take care of turning the land into farms. I would suggest that clandestine missions into the territory of the Order of the Axe might be in order, along with the planting of certain seeds that might cause them to get less business than normal. But that is purely my recommendation.

The Order of the Flame

Symbol: A red flame on a green field with brown trim
Current Order Leader: Karen Medsar, Cleric of Fiera, Flame Mage
Requirements to Join: 1 gold registration fee
Requirements of Membership: 1 gold/year membership dues

Worse than the Order of the Axe in many regards, the Order of the Flame believes in burning down trees and selling the land, working more to grant land to those organizations that need it than by providing lumber. While the Order of the Axe goes mostly into the bigger growth forests, the Order of the Flame works hard to try to take those areas that are near developed areas, that new farmland can be formed quickly and efficiently. Though traditional lumberjacks are also members of the Order of the Flame, fire mages and clerics of Fiera are also members, often using their abilities to attempt to create magical effects that raze whole forests to the bare earth. It is good for our people that the Order of the Flame is not the primary Order among the Forester’s Guild, and that they are not allowed more than their share of the land, or else we could all face danger at their hands.

The Order of the Old Growth

Symbol: An evergreen tree with a brown base on a white field with brown trim
Current Order Leader: Patris Hedner, Cleric of Eraen
Requirements to Join: 1 gold registration fee
Requirements of Membership: 1 gold/year membership dues

Though only making a slight profit higher than the Order of the New Growth, the Order of the Old Growth is the third most profitable Order of the Forester’s Guild. Unlike the two Orders above it, the Order of the Old Growth is mostly populated by the clergy of Eraen, who formed the Order in an attempt to show the Forester’s Guild that other ways of tree harvesting could be used. The Order of the Old Growth does not cut down freshly grown trees, but rather cuts down the older trees in an attempt to breathe new life into the ecosystem. While I believe that we should support their endeavors, I feel this should not be our primary concern, as the Order of the Old Growth has not, in its long history, ever earned a profit higher than that of the Order of the Flame, and certainly not one higher than that of the Order of the Axe.

The Order of the New Growth

Symbol: A brown sapling on a green field
Current Order Leader: Borom Demurr, Cleric of Eraen
Requirements to Join: 1 gold registration fee
Requirements of Membership: 1 gold/year membership dues

Formed by disenchanted members of the Order of the Old Growth, the Order of the New Growth has come up with a new plan to save the old forests of Torodan: tree harvesting. The Order of the New Growth has created fields of trees, planted as wheat is on farms. When the trees mature, they are cut down, and new trees are planted in the area. Working with multiple plots, the Order of the New Growth has, in my opinion, the potential to have a more steady business, and a more profitable one, than any of the other Orders, if it can be brought up from its status in last place. To these ends, I think we should supply the Order of the New Growth with funds, buying their lumber at inflated prices to give them greater profit, as well as bringing in some of our experts who can instruct them on ways to make the trees grow faster. While their method is not the preferred method for our people, they have the potential to produce enough to drive out the other Orders, saving the traditional forests and preventing our own from being destroyed.