As time went on, these guilds would start cooperating with one another — first with other local guilds from the same settlement; then with guilds local to neighboring settlements. This created a large number of growing confederations of guilds to emerge in Marcandria. These gradually evolved into behaving more like federations — forming a larger centralized organization, where individual guilds would retain some level of authority, but all agreeing to work together and be governed by a central authority. As time went on, these federations continued to grow and merge together until they eventually formed a single nation-spanning organization called the Wayfarer's Union.
These federation — and later the Wayfarer's Union itself — was originally governed by a delegate assembly. Each guild would elect one delegate, who'd both act as the guild's leader and as their representative at the assembly. They would bring matters to the assembly on behalf of the guild, where they'd discuss and vote on proposed solutions for said matter. Each guild would have a single delegate at the assembly, and the delegate for each guild was given a single vote. However, it was possible for multiple guilds to each pick the same delegate, in which case the delegate would have one vote for each guild they represented at the assembly. The intention here was for multiple guilds from the same area to pick a common delegate to unite and strengthen their voice at the assembly.
This is in part what caused the Wayfarer's Union to evolve into its modern form. The position of delegate was originally an addition one's regular work as a merchant, artisan, or craftsman. Every member of a guild would give part of their profits to their guild. These funds would then be divided up, with some going to the guild itself, some being given to the federation/Wayfarer's Union, and with a small portion going directly to the delegate. The portion going to the delegate was intended to compensate for their work, and incentivize skilled individuals into the role. However, several delegates eventually figured out that the compensation alone would be rather lucrative if one acted as delegate for multiple guilds. This created a new class of professional delegates, who all tried to grab more and delegate positions, with the most successful ones eventually forming their own businesses with their own employees to handle all the workload that came with it. This created a cascade effect where the seats at the assembly would be held by a ever fewer but more influential number of people. This eventually caused the assembly from having hundreds of delegates, down to only three.
-The Wayfarer's Union of today is essentially owned by three powerful families — each of which are essentially
+The Wayfarer's Union of today is essentially owned by three powerful families — each of which are essentially the delegate for a large portion of what used to be the Union's numerous guilds. While the procedure for selecting a delegate technically still exist for each of the old guilds, it's not been practices for generations. The power and influence of the three remaining delegates became so great as to there being no point in electing someone else, which eventually caused a cease to the actual election of delegates, and later to the position of delegate being inherited within the families of the remaining three.
+Re-implementing the old assembly with its hundreds of delegates is also no longer a straight-forward task, even if the assembly still technically exist with its three members. The distinctions between the old guilds have been so eroded over time as to make it hard to even determine what portion of today's Union belongs to which of the historical guilds. Cities who used to have multiple guilds now have a unified operation under whichever of the three families control it, making it close to impossible to determine what would belong to what guild. The Union has also expanded since the three families took control, with it being unclear whether the new locations would act as separate guilds in the assembly. The notion of who would get to vote for each delegate is also unclear, as members of today recruited as direct members of the Wayfarer's Union itself, and not members of a guild within the Union.
+In simple terms: the procedures around incorporating new guilds, expansion of current guilds, and the overall procedures of the assembly have been unused for so long as to have eroded to the point of requiring a make-over before being implementable again.
operate guild halls as if their own business, cooperating with each other to put up a united front.