The Definitive Country Almanac: The Free Banner Guild — Part 2#

Kethra Almanac • Approved 19 September 2026 • drafted 19 September 2026 • Sections 5–8 (Sections 1–4 are in Part 1)

Status: approved. Briana approved the whole almanac on 19 September 2026 (the Almanac Approval Decision). Where this file calls something a proposal, read it as approved, except the open points that decision lists.

Status before approval: proposal throughout, except what Part 1 lists as established in earlier files.

Section 5: Government, Law & Politics#

Constitutional Framework#

The Roll's rules, as every hand learns them#

The Banner Court#

• Two functions. The Court is the Guild's council, which makes the Roll's rules, and its arbitration court, which hears every dispute between a banner and a client on Kethra, and between banners anywhere. Clients sign to its arbitration in every contract; the Line ports' Tide Court, which hears disputes "between foreigners who choose it" (the Line almanac), and the Saltline Exchange enforce its awards, and the Crown's courts have upheld them since the Coldwell judgment (2289).
• The register's leverage is the Court's: "organised pilots, arbitration and reputational sanctions".
• The register's split is the Court's arithmetic: eight Old-Banner seats to six. "Senior companies can afford principles"; the Neutral Roll, the Withdrawal Clause and the Ledger Rule were all carried eight to six.

Sanctions: the Roll's ladder#

Empty hands is not the Rovessa's Empty Roads (the Rovessa almanac), and the Guild says so; but it was written in 2283, the Year of Empty Roads, and the Old Banners had been watching.

The Election of 2314 and the Seam question#

• The election. Yemisi Falk's term ends at the Court of 2314, on Roll Day. She may stand once more. The Old Banners' candidate against her is Torsten Iversen of Iversen's Banner, which keeps Muster; the Hungry Banners have no candidate, and eight votes against six either way.
• The Seam. The Coalition, which pays the Guild more than any other client, has asked for escorts at the Seam's edge, where frames clash every season (chapter 11). The Hungry Banners want the contract. The Old Banners say the Neutral Roll was written for a declared war between states, and the Seam is none: in peace, a banner that fires on the Imperium's frames at the Seam fires on a client whose contracts other banners hold at Muster. Falk has deferred it to the Court. Homeguard faces the same question the same year (the Homeguard almanac), and neither has answered.
• The Requisition Bill (the Assembly almanac) would let the Accord Council requisition "production, docks, relays and hulls" in an emergency. The Guild's ninety-one hulls are hulls. Its position is the Rovessa's: a hired hull is hired; a requisitioned one is bought.

The Judiciary#

• Contract disputes go to the Banner Court, whose awards the Line ports enforce. The Accord Tribunals cannot hear "anything that is not an Accord" (the Assembly almanac), and a contract is not one.
• Accord crimes by a hand go to the Accord Tribunals like anyone else's, and the member state where the crime was done punishes (the Assembly almanac). The Guild strikes first and lets the Tribunals follow.
• Crimes by a hand under contract are tried where they were done, under the client state's law. The Imperium tried the Fourteen of Tolvard for treason, since Imperial law executes only for treason and Accord crimes (the Vardane almanac), and shot them; the Guild's answer was the Withdrawal Clause, not an appeal, because there was no court to appeal to.
• No executions, no prisons: the Guild's worst sentence is the black line.

Foreign Relations & Defence#

Standing#

The Guild has no foreign relations; it has clients, and the powers that will not be clients.

Relations#

The Crown, Imperium and Black Ledger rows follow the relationship register, in both directions.

Defence: the Roll in arms#

Working. 124 + 124 + 108 + 58 + 55 + 52 + 51 + 37 = 609, the Roll's count. 10 + 30 + 4 + 22 + 5 + 4 + 12 + 4 = 91.

Doctrine. A hand in every frame; a contract for every hand; no bought hand on the Roll. The Guild fights escort actions and border watches, not campaigns; its largest single action in 165 years was the Blue Pennon's convoy of 2284, sixteen frames over twenty-six of House Coldwell's hulls in the Girdle Sea, and it lost it. The Neutral Roll means the Guild has never been on one side of a war between states; the Withdrawal Clause means it has never again been kept in one.

Section 6: Economy, Infrastructure & Industry#

Macroeconomics#

Working. 609 frames × Cr 10 million = Cr 6.1 billion. Cr 6 billion × 3% = Cr 180 million.

Money#

• The crown, for every contract (Chapter VI); Imperial contracts are written in crowns too, since 2292, so that the guarantor is solvent in a currency the Court can enforce.
• Insurance at the Saltline Exchange and Driftmark (the Line almanac), and at Cordale's banks for the belt (the Lesser Crowns almanac). A banner that is struck loses its cover the same day.
• The retainer: a client may pay a banner not to fly, and Vesper did for seven years. The Roll takes its due on a retainer as on a contract.

Industry#

Infrastructure#

Communications#

• The Roll Sheet, published at each season's turn: contracts let, banners marked, banners struck.
• The hiring floor at Banner Hall, where clients post contracts by the season and banners bid.
• Strings to the belt (Chapter VI). Banner Yard decides for itself within the Roll's rules, and answers to the Court a season late.

Section 7: Culture, Arts & Daily Life#

Holidays & Celebrations#

Culinary Traditions#

Banner-folk eat what their contract feeds them: Line rice at Saltline, vat protein at Banner Yard as on every rock in the belt (the League almanac), gorge bread on an Imperial corridor (the Vardane almanac). Contract bread is the Guild's own: a loaf baked at the Hall on the day a contract is signed, broken between the banner and the client's agent. A client who will not break bread is a client the Old Banners will not take.

Arts & Literature#

• The banners themselves: each company's pennon is cut and sewn by its own hands, and a struck banner's pennon is burned at the Court's door.
• The Roll-Call, sung; and the retainer songs, the belt escorts' songs of waiting.
• Literature:
  • The Roll (2149): Corbin Greyhawk's rules, in a page and a half;
  • Whose Banner? (2237): a play about the Two Years' Banner, performed at Saltline every Roll Day;
  • Fourteen (2293): the Tolvard Extension, by a survivor of the Tessmere Pennon;
  • The Retainer (2298): seven years of not sailing, by a Tide Pennon hull-master.

Sports & Recreation#

Social Norms & Etiquette#

• "Whose banner?" "My own." The greeting, and the creed.
• Never call a hand bought. It is the Guild's one fighting word.
• Never ask a hand whose contract. Saltline's rule, "never ask whose side someone is on" (the Line almanac), is the Guild's.
• Break bread on a contract, or do not sign it.
• A struck banner is not named except on Roll Day.
• The hand is returned. The pilots' salute, the right palm flat over the heart (the Homeguard almanac), is returned to any pilot of any flag, and to no one else.

Section 8: Appendices & Reference Materials#

Statistical Tables#

The Roll of Banners (complete)#

46 banners in AL 2314, in order of enrolment. "Home" is the yard where the banner is chartered and winters; "Enrolled" is the year it signed the Roll; "Standing" is its place on it. Of the fourteen banners that signed in 2149 only the Salt Company still flies: the rest merged, dissolved or were struck, and nineteen banners in all have had the black line. (All proposal. Generated from a fixed seed with mixed name pools; see the naming principles.)

Gazetteer#

Every place below is on the interactive Atlas. The generated Register of the Free Banner Guild lists them.

Bibliography#

In-world sources#

• The Roll of Banners (2149) and its rules; the Neutral Roll (2279); the Withdrawal Clause (2292); the Ledger Rule (2311)
• Whose Banner? (2237), Fourteen (2293), The Retainer (2298)
• The Roll Sheet (each season)
• The Coldwell judgment (High Bench of the Crown, 2289)
• Minutes of the Banner Court, including the Serrin case (2306–)

Development sources#

• 00 - Spine and Status · Chapter I · Chapter II · Chapter IV · Chapter V · Chapter VI
• 10 - Who's Who, 11 - Kronos and the Cinderbelt and 15 - The Kronos colony
• The clients' almanacs: the Crown, the Imperium, the Coalition, Vesper, the Rovessa, the League, the Line ports, the Lesser Crowns, the coast states, the Southern Holds, the Ilyr Sanctum, the Assembly and Homeguard
• The faction roster and the relationship register: the Guild's objective, fear, leverage and split, and its positions towards the Crown, the Imperium and the Black Ledger, and theirs towards it. The register's Guild–Wayfarer Exchange entry is not used: the Wayfarer Exchange belongs to a later era (the Who's Who).
• Almanac structure supplied by Briana.

Guidance for AI actors#

• A banner is hired, never owned. A Guild character serves a contract, not a cause, and says so; the insult for the alternative is "bought".
• Whose banner? My own. Never ask a hand whose contract they are on; it is Saltline's rule and the Guild's.
• The Neutral Roll holds. In a war between states, a Guild character may be on either side, never both in one theatre, and may meet another banner across the line; the Court will hear no case between them until the war ends.
• The Ledger is the enemy that does not sign. Any scene in which a banner is offered money to stand down is the Serrin betrayal happening again, and every hand knows it.
• The Seam question is open: whether the Court lets a banner take the Coalition's Seam contract. Do not settle it in a scene.
• This almanac is approved. Briana approved the whole almanac on 19 September 2026 (the Almanac Approval Decision).