Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
< Quests & Plots |Looking For Group | World Lore | Rules Index | Staff Requests | Active Topics >
Search Members FAQ
  • Navigation
  • Tohea
  • →
  • Role Playing Essentials
  • →
  • World Information
  • →
  • Trainer's Guild
Non-Weekly Quote:
(Updated when the fancy strikes us)
"I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything." - Nikola Tesla

Recent Site Updates:

Tohea is in archive mode, but the legend lives on.
Popup Cbox
While you're free to preview the site as a guest, only members can actually post or roleplay here. Join today!

Username:   Password:
Add A Reply
Trainer's Guild
Tweet Topic Started: Jun 15 2011, 05:11 AM (261 Views)
Munchkinator Jun 15 2011, 05:11 AM Post #1
Member Avatar
Pax Bionicus
[ *  *  *  *  * ]
Posts:
4,654
Group:
Administrator
Member
#1,709
Joined:
December 17, 2006
The Trainer's Guild, often referred to as simply the Guild by its members, sometimes known as The Brotherhood, is an organization by trainers, for trainers. While membership is technically voluntary, is is a universal standard for all trainers, regardless of status. The reasoning is simple; what the Brotherhood offers trainers is vastly more worthwhile than what it requires - which most of its participants would already do anyways, making it win/win - and some of the benefits it offers are extremely difficult to do without for any aspiring trainer. At face value, the Guild offers a cell phone with a couple handy apps, often a weak Pokémon or two to trainers starting from scratch, a bit of admittedly-pertinent advice, and not much else. Any trainer who is a part of it realizes that its value goes far, far beyond the initial offering.

For starters, the Guild is a Trainer organization. From top to bottom, it is filled with trainers. Its members are trainers. The League is comprised of trainers. Even the Council members know their way around a Pokeball. For aspiring trainers, that alone is enough to inspire entry - there is nothing so effective as meeting a makeshift mentor, or more commonly likeminded friends and rivals and partners and occasionally lovers, to helping trainers ease into their new lives and learn more quickly than they would on their own. Additionally, the services that the Guild offers are excellent tools to trainers who choose to make use of them; Clans sponsored by the Guild are often offered jobs that single trainers could never hope to be trusted with, sent on explorations to restricted areas that would be exceedingly difficult to wheedle one's way into or otherwise access, or even used as guinea pigs for new technology from one of the League's sponsor organizations, from Othello Industries to Lethos Laboratories to one of the great Pokémon Researchers, who occasionally conscript up-and-coming guild members into unnecessarily complex world-spanning journeys.

The League - the branch of the Guild specifically dedicated to providing opportunity and endgame to trainers - also offers structure for the more competitive sorts; trainer rankings in both solo queues and arranged teams, occasional arenas, cage matches, all the amenities that one might expect. It also hosts and legitimizes trainer guilds - usually referred to as Clans - not to be confused with the Guild as a whole; specialty groups within the Guild that are created, staffed, and funded entirely by the ambitious trainers who create them for exploration, battles, glory, or fun. Funding is entirely member-provided, but the Guild often offers rudimentary headquarters to these upstart groups and generally makes a concerted effort to keep them busy, should they be interested in taking on any of the seemingly-endless Clan-only jobs.

The Guild also offers what has occasionally been referred to distastefully by certain dissatisfied citizens as "strongarm services," though realistically they are in effect little more than underpaid security, stand-ins and occasionally replacements for the vastly overworked and critically understaffed city security forces. While these opportunities are generally limited to upright and well-known Clans should anything of import need be protected, any trainer can generally find some variety of job in this area and work their way up, gaining a certain degree of notoriety that can often land them significantly more lucrative - if dangerous - jobs. This particular branch of the League is made significant use of by organizations from the city council to private industries such as Lethos and retail stores and even in the private sector, from non-trainers who just need an escort to small businesses that need an equally small security detail. This function of the guild is in turns pointed out as their legitimizing factor and as a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, depending on who one might ask at the time, but it does generally serve to help keep the peace, so as long as nothing goes too wrong even most political opponents of the idea are content to bide their time and wait for a colossal meltdown.

Above it all, though, the guild provides trainers with a taste of a society of peers, a place where they can be with like-minded men and teenagers, adults and elderly who all share a love of Pokémon and an open mind to the creatures. Society as a whole is a dreadfully mixed bag on the subject, and many trainers have had dramatically negative experiences with those who are less than approving of Pokémon training or the creatures in general. For those trainers who spend their lives on the road, fellow trainers, and specifically Guild members, are the closest thing to family they have, the only real exposure they have to a society that understands them and that they can in turn understand. Most long-term Guild members are borderline-fanatically loyal after all that the Guild and its members have provided them over the years.

However, it also provides one more extremely important function, one that is less commonly discussed but a sad necessity in this world we live in. Indeed, the original charter for the vast majority of the Guild's funding was dependent on it making an effort to discourage trainers from using their newfound powers to destabilize society in the myriad ways they could, if only they put their minds to it. While the vast majority of trainers would never do anything particularly illegal with their supernatural companions, the dangers of trainers rising up to overthrow society were bandied around quite loudly in political arenas in the years prior to the formation of the Guild, and many opponents are simply biding their time, waiting for the League to fail so colossally that they can finally ban the profession as a whole. Not everyone is a fan of the immense amounts of personal puissance that children and ex-cons alike can easily access through the creatures that help define the world, and some would rather see them gone entirely so that humanity might stand fully on its own merits, without any reliance on monsters.

Trainers sent out on security details have been forced to face and apprehend rogue trainers, even as Guild members as a whole are constantly urged to be on the lookout for crime and try to stop it. Their efforts have not been in vain; League trainers have been instrumental in absolutely crippling the crime rate, outright destroying organized crime - or at least, the more obvious cartels... - and regularly bringing in petty criminals for re-education. To call them a police force would be to drastically overrate their personal authority, but the League and its members have been so inordinately successful in fighting crime that even many outspoken opponents have joined their camp, even if some pundits refer to the entire process as "fighting fire with fire." While it is not impossible for a criminal to get into the League, especially given the occasionally-shoddy nature of background files, it is generally difficult for active criminals to gain membership and being convicted of anything serious is often accompanied by a swift removal from the Guild, occasionally accompanied by what amounts to public crucifixion.

The Trainer's Code guides members of the Guild, or at least amounts to some trite commandments to memorize and then move on with life. They all essentially boil down to "don't be a prick," so most trainers don't have too much trouble following them without every bothering to memorize a single one. More common is the unspoken Code that guides trainers; while sharing a tent with a random man on the streets of Riverwood could be a dangerous experience, trainers have little issue cavorting around with their own kind, the result of a sort of innate trust they feel for each other. There will always be bad apples, but as a whole trainers don't generally expect anything illegal or particularly douchey from each other, though that isn't to say that they're exactly nice - there's plenty of room for unpleasantness and arrogance, you just aren't going to get held up for money by another trainer or have your Pokémon stolen overnight.
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Enjoy forums? Start your own community for free.
Learn More · Register Now
« Previous Topic · World Information · Next Topic »
Add A Reply

Track Topic · E-mail Topic Time: 5:19 PM Jul 10
Hosted for free by ZetaBoards · Privacy Policy