Interesting stuff taken from discussions about the Guild Ball lore on discord some time back, including bits with the author Sherwin a bit further down.
Also have a look at the Lore Compendium here on The Bench.
Captains in the lore
How do guild captains work? Does a guild field multiple individual teams or they show up like we do in regular games and whoever is the best fit plays?
They’re more like a professional football captain, they’ll be the same from game to game unless circumstances interfere. The reason we have multiple Captains is representing different time periods. So for example, we open S1 with Shark as Fish captain because Corsair lost his leg by being horribly mutilated by Ox. By S2/3, Corsair has returned and Shark has stepped aside.
Each guild has a different way captains work. Some are captains because the previous one has died or been injured. Others are coups. Tapper is brewmaster and captain because in the fluff he was responsible for a coup which is why majority of members are from the same nation. Corker is a captain, but it’s a partnership not a hostile take over. Other guilds have a rotating roster and so on.
Kinda like how the butchers have Boar as a captain now but Ox still plays with them.
Ox was taken prisoner, but was presumed dead by the Butchers. In his absence the guild fell into civil war divided between Fillet and Brisket. Brisket won, but that ended her up at the church (sBrisket in Order) and Fillet took the captaincy. Brisket not killing Fillet was to prevent Boar from seizing power, but it mainly just painted Fillet as weak. Some other events happened leading to Boar becoming captain, and at some point vOx became a thing when he got free and returned to the Guild, but had lost the captaincy in his absence.
It’s like how blackheart was killed by rage and rage took the treasure from coin and became captain by paying off the rest of the guild with the treasure. So captain vet rage it is.
And then the union disbanded and greede left the company of avarisse and became leader of his own gang and the next captain of the union.
Midas lost of Alchemists the captaincy after losing the Frontier’s Cup after the Alchemist’s had invested so much in it. Then Calculus got Smoke promoted by writing to the guild leadership.
There are many more examples, but these are the ones that turned up during the discussion 🙂
Sherwin, who is the author of much/all of the Guild Ball lore, came by to offer some insights around the Butcher’s Civil War. This below is not the exact wording, since it is taken from more than one ongoing discussions on discord. But all of it was said there, while The Bench could be a rumor mill the intention is to spotlight what has actually been said 🙂
If Brisket had lost the civil war community event, Ox would have been killed. We had four levels of outcome. While the details are a little hazy due to it being a long while ago, in the bigger scope it was something like this.
Big Brisket win = Brisket becomes next Butcher Captain, Ox returns.
Marginal Brisket win = Brisket exiled to Order, Ox returns.
Marginal Fillet win = Brisket exiled to order, Ox dies.
Big Fillet win = Brisket and Ox dead, Gutter becomes Order Captain
Sherwin — 2024-06-24
This is one of the reasons I pushed so hard for (and tbh pretty much forced) us to do community events.
I love this sort of thing. Best type of community engagement there is.
<3
Season 5 is the lore that is currently out, even though no gameplay side of S5 is made yet.
Here are some potential spoilers for coming contiuation of the lore in a hypothetical Season 6. We know for sure that nothing is decided here though, the only formal answer about it from SFG has been that no work on new GB lore is planned. Last mentioned in february, that I’ve seen.
Still, we can all enjoy Sherwins informal speculations! 😀
As we end Season Five, Obulus has retired. He’s head of the Physician’s Guild, and thus controls all of the Guilds now.
I think if I were to create season six, we’d see some fairly significant changes.
Alchemists: We never really explored what Soma added to the Guild, although I’m more inclined to follow the end times we had for them and see the destruction of the guild, and then turn the survivors into the new Union.
Brewers: I think they’ve hit a peroid of stability and rebuilding. They probably need to lean on their minor guild arrangement to get by.
Smiths: Loads going on here. Hearth vs. Anvil power struggle.
Butchers: Boar definitely gets slotted very quickly, leaving Fillet in charge, but more likely then to see a breakaway Butcher’s team consisting of Ox’s people and the Order.
Cogs: Really want to do the Mechanica War story arc.
Farmers: I think these guys drop down out of the spotlight for a bit. Festival has them travelling around, and their financial backers just dropped out.
Fish: These guys probably drop to minor guild status. They’re barely hanging on.
Hunters: Loads going on here. What does the continued existance of Skatha mean? Theron leaves to join the Falconers. Steeljaw’s southern hunters turn up with dinosaurs.
Masons: I think they literally continue exactly as they always do.
Morts: Probably gone to minor guild.
Union: Obviously dead and buried.
Plus, a lot of minor guilds looking to get promoted up.
Maybe an interesting concept in a new Order team, unaffiliated with the Church and built by Brisket as a home for the abandoned or alienated?
If (and that is a big IF) I were to write about anything, it would likely be the Death of Midas story arc, and Steeljaw hunting dragons.
But I should stress this is in no way canon, or indicator of any actual writing that will take place.
…sooo that’s a lot of ifs and buts as to how it would look on the gameplay side if all of this happened in the lore. Really exciting possibilities for continued evolvement of the game and new guild compositions though!
A link to parts of the more recent discussions in the GBCP discord Lore channel:
https://discord.com/channels/742358956122308688/859097273752485899/1255428464735948821
Also! Surprise link to another part where Sherwin wrote informally about the unwritten/unreleased Guild Ball Lore of the potential future.
https://discord.com/channels/742358956122308688/859097273752485899/1218253499901411421
“I had planned a community event that would involve the death of an entire Guild, that we almost put in place, before landing on the Rookies instead.
It would have either been the Alchemists, or the Engineers.
In the Alchemist one, Katalyst basically continues to ‘evolve’ and soon grows into something largely resembling godzilla crossed with Doomsday. And then there is something that resembles an Avengers movie as the Alchemists try to stop him.
In the Engineer one, Pin Vice continues to gain support and we discover that she’s built an army of mechanica to take over the Empire of Free Cities, or at very least reignite the Century wars.”
This is all for this time. There will be more 😉
