Social Roles of Sulamir
The stations and occupations that make up Sulamir. This document is a reference for scenes where characters need to be placed in a social and occupational context that feels specific to the world. For the guild structure that contains many of these roles, see. For the technologies many of these roles operate, see.
1. The Guild Tier
Section titled “1. The Guild Tier”Guild Leader
Section titled “Guild Leader”The eighteen most powerful political figures in Sulamir, the members of the secret Council of 18, in perpetual cold war with each other. For seventeen of the eighteen, the same person is simultaneously the head of a fused great house and the holder of that province’s dominant public senate seat. The public Senate of Great Houses is the formal sovereign; the Council is where outcomes are actually decided, and it is the Council, in the deepest technical sense, that is the senate of a king who no longer exists. A Leader’s day is crowded with meetings, receptions, whispered agreements, and the signing of documents that can unmake houses.
Guild Lieutenant (Right Hand, Left Hand)
Section titled “Guild Lieutenant (Right Hand, Left Hand)”The second and third in command of each guild. Hold near-absolute authority on guild matters. Handle most day-to-day affairs for their Leaders. Frequently outweigh weaker Leaders in practice. A Lieutenant’s authority is legitimate but also conditional on the Leader’s favor; succession in most guilds is from Right Hand to Leader in the ordinary course.
Guild Member
Section titled “Guild Member”Rank and file of a guild. Serves many functions inside the guild and inside the province the guild governs. Enforces guild law, performs civic duty, maintains the guild’s infrastructure, and fights when the guild mobilizes. Most Sulamiris who interact with a guild encounter a Guild Member rather than a Lieutenant or a Leader.
2. Enforcement Tier
Section titled “2. Enforcement Tier”Marshal
Section titled “Marshal”Collectively guild-approved body enforcing guild law throughout the entire city. Federal police and investigators. Homeland-security-grade authority. Near-autonomous. Can indict anyone, including guild Leaders, though in practice Leaders rarely see a cell. A Marshal’s badge is the single most portable authority in Sulamir: it works in any province, on any street, against any suspect, pending later Council review.
Militia
Section titled “Militia”Guild-approved law enforcement for a specific province. Local police. Paid by the provincial guild, loyal to it, often corrupt to the benefit of the great houses of that province. A Militia officer’s authority stops at the province line.
Bounty Hunter
Section titled “Bounty Hunter”Works with the Militia and the Marshals to capture criminals who cross province lines but who are not important enough for Marshals to pursue directly. Freelance. Paid by the job. Often former Militia, former Marshal, or former guild muscle.
Assassin
Section titled “Assassin”Works for gang leaders or private clients to perform highly dangerous or important tasks. There is a hierarchy and a code among assassins in Sulamir; freelance killers without standing in that code are usually short-lived.
3. Infrastructure Tier
Section titled “3. Infrastructure Tier”Steam System Worker
Section titled “Steam System Worker”Maintains the electric grid that powers the entire city. Lives underground in vast multi-generational communities. Lifelong service. Rarely emerges above ground, and does so with solidarity and watchfulness. Families inside the Worker community intermarry, train their children from infancy, and consider themselves a third order of Sulamir alongside the nobles and the guilds. Oen was raised here.
A Worker strike can dim the city to candles in hours. Both the Militia and the guilds treat Worker relations with public contempt and private dread.
Inn Keeper, Smith, Artificer, Custodian, Missive-Mailer, Farmer, Animal-Handler, Entertainer, Tailor
Section titled “Inn Keeper, Smith, Artificer, Custodian, Missive-Mailer, Farmer, Animal-Handler, Entertainer, Tailor”The ordinary trades that make up the bulk of Sulamir’s millions. Most are not guild-affiliated. They pay tariffs and taxes to their provincial guild in exchange for the guild’s protection, which they receive unevenly. Together these tradespeople form the majority of the city’s population and none of its political power.
Dockworker
Section titled “Dockworker”Operates the harbor. Coastal Sulamir is an important trade hub, and dockwork is a category large enough to be noticed by the Council. Most dockworkers are guild-associated (Iron Coin in some provinces, Bavit-vita in others), but a minority is independent. The dockworkers’ culture is loud, traditional, superstitious, and hospitable.
4. Noble Tier
Section titled “4. Noble Tier”The wealthiest and most powerful private citizens. Descendants of the first families to help build the city and side with the celestials in the Founding. To belong to one of the great houses of Sulamir is to never know real hunger or desperation. Noble children inherit everything, including the contract-memory that underlies their family’s wealth.
Noble’s Heir
Section titled “Noble’s Heir”Continues the bloodline of their house. Gender-neutral: the oldest competent child of the house is the heir regardless of gender. It is common to marry non-heirs from other houses to form alliances, which produces intricate multi-house networks that the guilds exploit and sometimes break.
Political Spouse (non-heir marriage)
Section titled “Political Spouse (non-heir marriage)”The child of a house married into another house to cement an alliance. Typically the younger child or the less politically ambitious. Socially important, politically constrained. A few political spouses become more influential than their heir-siblings by choice or circumstance.
5. Craft and Scholarship Tier
Section titled “5. Craft and Scholarship Tier”Scientist
Section titled “Scientist”Constantly searches for discoveries and answers to mysteries. Explores the bounds of natural and magical law. Scientists in Sulamir operate in loose federations across the guilds; some are on retainer, some are independent, some are academic. Discipline theory is a science in Sulamir.
Inventor
Section titled “Inventor”Uses the discoveries of scientists to create new tools for creation, destruction, health, and entertainment. The artificer class. Often more highly compensated than scientists. Sometimes partnered into inventor-scientist pairs whose output dominates whole markets for a generation.
Entrepreneur
Section titled “Entrepreneur”Captain of industry. Keeps the city as the commerce center of the continent. Entrepreneurs often align to a guild for protection but maintain independence in their businesses. Master Enwith is the archetype.
Athlete
Section titled “Athlete”Competitive performer in the many sports of Sulamir. Can be celebrities, comparable in reach to the most famous Leaders. Sponsored by houses, guilds, or private patrons.
6. Religious Tier
Section titled “6. Religious Tier”Temple Leader
Section titled “Temple Leader”Temple of the One proselytizer. Missionaries with presence all over the provinces. Cultural, spiritual, and military leaders combined: the Temple’s current guild status gives these roles teeth. Not all Temple Leaders are on the guild Council side of the order; many are purely priestly.
Church Leader
Section titled “Church Leader”Concerned with teaching piety according to their understanding of the gods (mainstream pantheon). Parish priest, basilica abbot, shrine-keeper. Not the same as Temple Leaders. The mainstream tradition uses “church” rather than “temple.”
Reader (OCTA officer)
Section titled “Reader (OCTA officer)”An officer of the OCTA (the Office of Containment and Threat Assessment) who hunts Hollow practitioners and Hollow cults, reading the cost-signature to judge where a working’s cost fell. Authority across all provinces. Feared. (Formerly rendered “Inquisitor.”) See
Devout
Section titled “Devout”A layperson whose religious practice is serious enough to become a public identity. Wears its signs. Keeps its calendar. The mainstream and the Temple both have devout laypeople who are consulted locally but hold no ordained authority.
7. Criminal Tier
Section titled “7. Criminal Tier”Gang Leader
Section titled “Gang Leader”Many groups form to make a living in conflict with the law. Not always violent. Some of the best fighters in the city. Some gangs are family businesses that have survived for generations; others are ephemeral operations that rise and fall in a season.
Ganger
Section titled “Ganger”Rank and file of a gang. The most desperate of Sulamir’s citizens, or the children of those who were. Common for families to raise gangers for many generations; the cycle, once entered, is difficult to leave. Gangers can be guild-adjacent (working as deniable muscle for a house) or fully independent.
Con Artist
Section titled “Con Artist”Grifter operating at any level of society. There is a hierarchy and a code among cons. Higher-tier cons wear the face of merchants, priests, or even nobles and operate in plain sight for years.
Master and Slave
Section titled “Master and Slave”Participants and victims in a defunct way of life. Slavery was once prevalent in the territories that Kane helped destabilize. The uprising and subsequent war formally ended slavery across Sulamir. Enforcement remains imperfect; some households and remote provinces are rumored to continue older arrangements under different names. The social role of “master and slave” is, in the Current Age, either an illegal holdover to be prosecuted or a cultural memory that still shapes how certain houses treat their staff.
8. The Adventurer Exception
Section titled “8. The Adventurer Exception”Outside the above tiers, Sulamir has a floating class of adventurers: low- and mid-level combatants, problem-solvers, and odd-job contractors who move between guilds, houses, and the criminal underworld. Adventurers are the people who get hired to dive into the Maw for treasure, extract a hostage from a gang stronghold, transport a sensitive artifact by train, or scout the edge of Sulamir Forest for a house that does not want to send its own.
Adventurers are often guildless. Some are ex-Militia, ex-Masons apprentices, ex-Iron Coin merchants who lost their capital, or former nobles who slipped the net of their house. Adventurers are useful to the guilds precisely because they are deniable. Most live short lives. A few become legendary and are eventually offered guild membership, house adoption, or (rarely) a seat at a Council Lieutenant’s table.
The opening arc of the main-line trilogy and most tie-in novels runs through the adventurer class for this reason: it is the one social layer in Sulamir where a commoner can still stumble into cosmic weight.