Guild of Sewer Workers¶

"If you want to know what's actually happening in this city, ask the woman who cleans up after it."
— Anonymous senior worker, quoted by Argos Brisandre

The least glamorous of the chartered guilds — and, for a particular kind of question, the most informed. Sewer Workers maintain the city's drainage, sewerage, and the upper levels of the catacrypt network. They walk underground six days out of seven. They see things.

What They Do¶

Sewer maintenance — the working sewers, the storm drains, the canal locks. The [[Grand Canal of Shû-Az]] in The Shades is partly their jurisdiction.
Catacrypt-edge work — the upper levels of the catacrypts where they touch the working sewers. They do not go deeper; the Circle of Explorers handles that.
Tide-of-the-Dead response — when heavy rains flood the underground, corpses from the common graves and old necropoli wash to the surface. Sewer Workers are first responders. Many have nightmares.
Underground intelligence — what the workers see, the workers know. The senior council does not share freely, but specific buyers pay specific prices.

Headquarters¶

Sewer Workers' Hall in The Shades (Var-Nokkt) — fortified compound at the head of the Grand Canal. Open to the public for permit applications; the upper floors are restricted.
Branch offices at every major sewer access in the lower city

The Underground Knowledge¶

What the senior workers know

The senior Sewer Workers know:

Where the [[Litiocs|litioc]] walls surface in the upper catacrypt — and which crews to keep away from them
The night-traffic patterns of the Soma underground parcels (they don't know what the parcels are; they know exactly which routes the carriers use)
Which sewer outfalls bleed weird water — including the one near the Garden of Desire district that runs warm even in winter
The drowned bodies that surface and shouldn't — many of which match descriptions on militia missing-persons lists going back decades

The guild does not volunteer this information. They sell it. To the right buyer. At the right price.

Relations¶

Var-Nokkt — landlord. The Var-Nokkts permit Sewer Worker access to private cellars in The Shades that are technically off-limits.
Circle of Explorers — operational counterpart. Sewer Workers handle the shallow; Explorers handle the deep. They exchange notes at a shared tavern in Buoyancy Bay.
Militia — formal coordination on body recoveries. Informal coordination on much more.
Guild of Architects — engineering partnership for sewer infrastructure

The carrier routes

A senior Sewer Worker is willing to sell the night-traffic routes of the Soma underground parcels. He wants free leaguers to make the buy — because the buyers he was approached by are people he doesn't want to die alongside.

The warm outfall

A junior worker has found water flowing warm from an outfall under the Garden of Desire district — in winter. He's reported it once and been ignored. He's about to report it again. Someone in the upper guild leadership is hoping he doesn't.