There is a port city in Uresia called Pech Attar (situated wherever the GM might need it to be), where a large river flows down to a natural breakwater sheltered on two sides by tall cliffs, creating a pocket several miles around. This would make it an ideal port, except for the jagged, shifting shards of Heaven that fill the mouth of the harbor like gnashing teeth. There are only a few navigable passages through the Teeth at any given moment, and these change almost as quickly as a merchant ship can travel them. Because of this, for the past few centuries the Brotherhood of Pilots and Harbormasters has been the de facto ruling class of Pech Attar. The City Fathers bluster and proclaim, the merchant factors hem and haw, the captains curse and shout - and the Pilots' Guild nods and quietly goes on about making things work. Surprisingly, the Guild has pretty much maintained its integrity for all these years, with no more than petty corruption (usually on the level of accepting a "donation" to pilot one merchant's boat out to sea before a rival's).
Pilots are technically slaves belonging to the State and by law and custom must live in the Guild dormitory built into the western cliff wall, near the Low Town where the ships tie up and the warehouses can be found. Most Pilots feel no need for flashy clothes or expensive gimcracks, since they hold their nation's lifeblood in their fists. The citizens of Pech Attar treat them with something like the mixture of contempt and respect shown police in contemporary America, and their "slave" status is mostly a holdover from an archaic decree, with little day-to-day effect save their Guild Marks - a red tattoo stroke down across the left eye, and a centuries-out-of-date topknot. In their free time, they tend to frequent many of the same establishments sailors do, and it's hard for a Guildsmember to enter a pub and not have his first drink purchased for him. Most like a stiff drink, a hearty meal, a loud song, and a lusty wench (or oaf) to bed... simple pleasures, for the most part, reflecting the workaday nature of their practical rule over this land. And after nearly half a millennium of working this harbor, both the harbor and its Pilots have become steeped in (admittedly workaday) wonder...
The members of the Guild are all magicians, recruited at birth from sailor's orphans (Guildsmembers' children are free, but must live with the non-Guild parent), and trained and educated until 12, when they becoming working apprentices. Most are elevated to Journeyman rank by age 16, and are attuned to the harbor by a ritual drowning and rebirth. The Brothers and Sisters of the Pilots' Guild work together to fend off hurricanes, put out fires (a major hazard both in the Low Town and the Driftwood), and bring ships into harbor. Their method for bringing the ships in is unique, though. As a ship approaches Pech Attar, one of the Pilots hovering above the harbor swoops down onto the deck and speaks with the captain. Once the harbor fee is guaranteed, the Pilot takes his badge of office, an enchanted boarding spear, and jabs the tip into the mainmast (anywhere will do, but the mainmast has a nice formal feel to it). A Word Of Power or two follows, and then the ship is levitated over the Teeth and into the harbor, where it is then piloted normally through the masses of derelict and/or siezed ships moored together (again, by ancient law) collectively known as the Driftwood.
The Driftwood serves Pech Attar as prison, slum, free trade zone, giant fire hazard, and wooden creaky dungeon-analog, all at once. How did the Driftwood come to be? By ancient law, while bringing in a ship, be it by magic or by sail, a Pilot outranks everybody else. Captains who violate this order have their ship confiscated and their cargo impounded. Likewise, occasionally a captain will lack the fee to take his ship back out (although it's a reasonable fee, this can still happen) and his ship will become a temporary addition to the Driftwood. And of course, sometimes a ship full of delvers comes into port in a vessel they own, and they never return from whatever they're going to investigate inland. By these three common (and a dozen or so uncommon) practical or legal flukes, the Guild comes into possession of these ships. But once again, by ancient law and more importantly now, by Proud Guild Tradition, these ships must remain at anchor until claimed by their rightful owners or until they rot into the sea.
Today there are somewhere between five hundred and a thousand such craft tied together near the cliff face where the Guildhall is located. They range in size and style from a Troll-built eelskin kayak, to a Celari submersible (clockwork, and no, it doesn't work all that well), to the single largest vessel in the Driftwood, the Cloak of Storms, a troop hulk of the old Kovali Empire (and now the site of a justly famous brothel). No one knows exactly how many ships make up the Driftwood, because the Guild keeps these records private to themselves and the boat's owner - who as we discussed earlier may be missing, rotting in debtor's prison, or one of the handful of heads on pikes above the Guildhall's sally port, 300 feet up a sheer cliff face.
At any given time, day or night, fair weather or foul, at least four or five Pilots are on station over the harbor, hanging in midair, spears slung over one shoulder and PDAs in their free hand. Yes, PDAs. The Masters of the Guild have discovered these items and fallen in love, and thus was born the first major change in the Guild since 1217. Every member of the Guild, on the day he puts on his yellow and black vestments and robe (which has led to the Guildsmembers' semi-affectionate nickname, "Attar's Wasps") now takes up his or her Three Treasures: a medallion that lets them fly slowly and see fires through fog or wooden deck; a PDA of one type or another, loaded with maps of Pech Attar's harbor and charts of the local seas, as well as whatever handful of spells they might presently be trying to learn; and a boarding spear with two minor enchantments - the focussing enchantment for their ship-lifting magic, and a static charge collector, which feeds Heaven's Hate (the Uresian name for the phenomenon of St. Elmo's Fire) from the rune-carved steel spearhead down through the carved darkwood staff into a USB port protected by the black gutta-percha ferrule covering the butt of the spear.
One of the Lesser Treasures of the Guild is the length of USB cable they all use to bind up their topknots, which they periodically use to recharge their PDAs or swap map and spell files. Some Guildsmembers have IR transcievers or Bluetooth wireless technology in their PDAs, but the Guild's Grand Master Emeritus in Charge of I.T. can't get them all to talk to each other. The I.T. Grand Master Emeritus is a recent arrival from another plane whose name is Etienne the Welsh, and he has gone prematurely grey trying to get all these PDAs from all these different suppliers and alternate worlds to communicate with each other. Rumor has it that he will discreetly give a medium-sized fortune in seized cargo and a sturdy ship to any mage who can come up with a magical replacement for the PDAs that can be produced cheaply enough to get the guild to switch over. Failing that, he has informers in many ports ready to shanghai travellers who speak of coming from another world and having tech support experience. Meanwhile, one of the few material things you can really quickly tempt a Pilot with is a bit of gear or software for his PDA. Earphones are a perennial favorite, as are Flash memory cards full of pr0n...
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