The Greenwake Exchange

The consortium’s origins remain obscure. Its records begin in Sorania 156 years ago, when a foreign fleet negotiated the right to establish a market in a coastal settlement that later became a major port. Within a generation, the fleet had created permanent trade routes between Sorania, the outer islands, and distant shores. It gained a reputation for arriving after disasters with necessities and leaving before local rulers could claim ownership of its warehouses. Its first century in Sorania was marked by expansion. Green markets appeared wherever a town could provide safe anchorage or guarded streets. The faction built shipyards, trained navigators, standardized contracts, and developed a common system of colored tokens that allowed merchants from different cultures to trade without sharing a language. It also began accepting members from every ancestry and social class, provided they could uphold its rules and repay their debts. The watershed moment came 91 years ago during the Seven-Port Famine. Three kingdoms attempted to seize the consortium’s grain fleet and force it to sell only to royal granaries. The Green Table rejected all three demands. Captains divided the fleet into dozens of smaller convoys, distributed grain through local markets, and publicly posted the names of officials who had diverted relief supplies. The action saved thousands of lives, but it also made the faction a political power. From that point onward, neutrality no longer meant avoiding politics. It meant refusing to let any single power control the flow of necessities. Fifty-six years ago, the consortium branched formally into Sorania’s independent charter system and established an outpost in the Floating Dock City. The outpost became a meeting place for foreign captains, local brokers, smugglers, diplomats, adventurers, and refugees. It also became the faction’s most contested holding. In recent decades, the Merchant Faction has grown too large to remain merely a collection of traders. It now controls routes, information, credit, shipbuilding contracts, and access to distant goods. Many members fear that success has transformed a culture of mutual survival into an empire without a throne.