The Chronicle

of the month of Lorinfall in the year 149

Sheriff Jenny Davy has taken decisive action to resolve the guild membership crisis. She has placed a hard hitting and controversial motion before council which, she announced, "will force people to face up to the issues and provide a clear path to resolving them".

'This Council recognises the important role of the Guilds and will resist all attempts to diminish this. We affirm our desire to see the many new and highly skilled craftsmen arriving in our City participating actively within this structure. Council resolves to establish a review committee, chaired by Sheriff Davy and tasked with determining how best this can be achieved. In the interim, this council strongly advises the Guilds of Linrodeth to immediately accept, without charge, any suitably skilled immigrant as a provisional member of the Guild with all rights and obligations except the ability to hold guild posts or vote in guild elections.'

Marcus Lambourne is believed to back the proposals and rumours are circulating that they originated from Princess Selina. With both Jim Bottler and Alan Monterey taking on Kerunians within their own business it seems that, despite the strong words, our councillors have already capitulated. Marc Bergeren has returned from Eresan with the dramatic news that King Kieran is marching a huge army south to Cascorach. Whether this force will be sufficient to raise the siege of that city is unclear and military pundits describe the move as a desperate risk, which is most likely to result in the loss of most of his forces. Cllr Bergeren also described how he was forced to disguise himself and travel cross country in order to get past Aralan Derwent's camp in Fenny Bridges. He described the village as an armed camp training to attack the City and massively disrupting its trade. He expressed outrage that Aralan had detained him there for several months on his way out to Eresan.

Despite the likelihood that King Edward will soon be in charge of most of the country, Cllr Ralf Seagrim's motion that "The city of Linrodeth declares its intention to wage war upon the evil murder and oath breaker Kieran" has been heavily defeated. This is a reaffirmation that the pro-Kieran position taken by many of the senior members of the council is taking hold. Some are now suggesting that the City should formally declare for King Kieran, however the arrest of Cllr Seagrim by the City Guard on charges of Sedition may change this view. A major crisis may be about to blow up as the factions argue over whether to opposes Selina's move. Princess Selina's office however has expressed surprise that there is any controversy, commenting that anyone who attempts to unlawfully issue orders to the Army is committing a serious crime and is likely to have a nasty shock.

The proposals to restrict Guild membership on the basis of an ability to speak Athionic has been ruled invalid by a Hahnite Court. Gax the Heretic successfully argued that language was not a requirement to perform a craft. Since as only a monarch was able to amend the guild charters then the enactment of the Witanmoot's motion by any guild would in fact be a breach of that charter.

William Trueman has been elected as Guildmaster of the powerful Goldsmiths Guild. The outgoing Guildmaster George Rimon who was forced to retire by ill health announced his delight that Trueman's uncontested election. Trueman himself has been uncharacteristically quiet, simply commenting that he "was honoured that the Guild has seen fit to place this responsibility upon him" and praising George for "his many years serving the Guild and the City".

Arguments have raged in the Witanmoot this month over how to spend the extra funds provided by Alderman Trueman. A strong lobby came close to having the funds allocated to the restoration of the cuts in Welfare and Education budget. however an impassioned speech by Alderman Graham Porter extolling the virtues of trade as a means of generating future tax revenues convinced the Council to instead allocate the funds to "investments in the docks and associated roads to ensure continued growth in Linrodeth's trade".