Guild neutrality
PeacemakerGuild neutrality is the Assassins’ Guild’s commitment to handle disputes through impartial, documented procedure rather than partisan violence. It makes the Guild more than an instrument of force: its authority depends on rules that bind complainants, defendants, Guild units, and the Guild itself. During Murini’s coup, that principle became a test of whether the Guild could oppose lawbreakers without destroying the legal foundation that distinguished it from them.
Neutrality as Procedure
The Guild’s neutrality is expressed through the Filing of Intent. Before a legal assassination can proceed, a Document of Intent must be entered in the state registry, recording the issue between the parties in a sealed, archived form; an answer to the filing is likewise recorded. The process makes a dispute legible to the institution before it can become lethal action.
The Guild Council then publicly advises that it may act and gives both sides an opportunity to provide depositions. It first determines whether adequate cause exists for a filing, then considers the merits and whether a remedy short of lethal action is possible. Testimony from Guild members employed by either side may inform that deliberation, and the Council can impose further delay while it encourages settlement. Only after those measures fail can the Council approve the filing by vote and set a date after which action may begin.
This procedure is designed to deny either side an informational advantage. Bodyguards on both sides remain in contact with the central Guild, and a unit seeking to suspend action can ask the Guild to mediate a mutually acceptable solution. In smaller disputes, such as those involving property or divorce, an office of the Council may approve a filing after taking witness depositions; the usual limit is ninety-nine days, after which attempts must cease and the filing is set aside. The process therefore imposes delay and oversight even where the dispute is comparatively limited.
Limits on Force and the Possibility of Settlement
A Filing of Intent is required before action against a person or institution, except when defending against an illicit attack. The exception is specific: an attack includes movement within arm’s length or the first use of a distance weapon or a weapon of stealth. Outside such defense, the law forbids anyone other than a Guild Assassin from using violence against a fellow citizen, subject to stated exceptions for defending oneself, an employer, a household, clan property, or national treasure. A violator can be outlawed and exposed to Guild action without a time limit.
The system is meant to make lethal force possible under law without making it the ordinary outcome of a civil dispute. In practice, the Guild seeks to avoid bloodshed among its own members. Its units may request a truce to tell their lord that his defense has failed and that he must yield the contested matter if he and his unit are to survive. A lord who presses a case against his own bodyguards’ advice risks leaving them caught between obedience to him and the consequences of a doomed defense. The procedures thus create repeated openings for settlement, while making clear that neutrality does not guarantee either party victory.
The Coup and the Guild’s Crisis
The distinction between the legitimate Assassins’ Guild and the Shadow Guild becomes decisive during the coup. The Shadow Guild violates the established rules, while the legitimate Guild continues to follow them in an effort to preserve the lives of the lords who form the Aishidi’tat’s political structure. At the crisis’s outset, however, the legitimate Guild mistakenly takes orders from the conspirators. When reports say that Tabini is alive and then that he has been killed in Taiben, it again follows its superiors’ orders and Murini’s direction, without understanding that trusted authorities include conspirators hunting Tabini and Damiri.
That error exposes a weakness in procedural obedience: rules can restrain the Guild’s own conduct, but they cannot by themselves ensure that the people issuing orders are legitimate. Even so, the Guild’s refusal to abandon its rulebook remains central to its distinction from the Shadow Guild. The governing question is not simply how to stop the violators, but whether the Guild can do so without adopting their methods.
Exile, Proof, and Restored Legitimacy
After the Council’s attempt to arrest senior members, the exiled Guild—also called the Missing—continues to reject its orders. These members have reconstructed how decisions about appointments and offices helped arrange the coup. They know that Haikuti was involved in the attack on Tabini at Taiben and that his location had been known while he remained untouched; they provide names for investigation. The legitimate Guild’s files have kept Haikuti’s records secret, but the exiles’ information gives the opposing group a basis for connecting the conspiracy to the Guild’s internal failures.
The exiles do not support Tabini because of his association with humans, and they fear Lord Geigi; they had also opposed the space program and once backed Shishogi’s demands against computers. Their decision to return is instead grounded in the restoration of law and of the Guild as an institution. They agree to come back, leave their identities again, and risk separation from families and marriages so they can reclaim the Guild, examine its records, and restore lawful practice.
For those seeking to recover the Guild, proof is essential. A bloody confrontation with innocent members could allow the wrong side to prevail or destroy the evidence. If Tabini had to uphold the reformers solely by decree and the power of the aijinate, the Guild might never regain its former standing. The objective is therefore to establish before the Council that the Council itself has broken the law. Neutrality emerges not as a claim that the institution has never failed, but as a demanding standard for its recovery: authority must be demonstrated through the same law the Guild exists to enforce.
