Paksworld

Today was spent mostly working on the essay for the exhibition catalog, but also, for recreation, a bit more work on Book 3.    I am learning more about the Thieves’ Guild than I ever expected to and it turns out to resemble (though different in goals)  other human organizations of like size.   You have your steady, stable, hardworking members, and your crackpots, and your enthusiasts, and your explosive personalities…it’s more like what you read about the Mafia than the rather disorganized souls who fill the cells of the county jail.

The political setup that caused Arvid such grief in his home chapter is not, however, stable, as the individuals involved were those who had a personal dislike of Arvid, not those with any real organizational experience.  The situation in Aarenis was stable (the merchant and crafts guilds making up the Guild League had a sort of distant relationship with the Aarenis Thieves’ Guild, because the Thieves’ Guild had a side business in what we call corporate espionage) but has now become somewhat destabilized (not as bad as that in Verella) by the new Duke of Immer.

Most of this will not be surfacing in the book proper, but is background I need to work out (e.g., which Thieves’ Guild city masters are Alured the Black’s agents, and which aren’t, and who gets assassinated when) before I can write some of what’s coming up in the next books.  Notes are being made.

I also need to review which guilds dominate in which cities and which may be penetrated by agents of others.   And yet–not too much time can be spent on this when Story calls.  (At the moment, it’s supper that’s calling, so I’d best go check the pot before the beans or the barley stick to the bottom!)