"Not all power is equal. Physical power can have great impact on your immediate surroundings, but its influence is hostile and temporary. Someone always shows up with a bigger axe.
Diplomatic power is no different, its scope is wider, but being built on compromise, it never truly gets to exert its full potential.
To truly have power, you must be able to make your ambitions theirs, control the discourse without putting yourself in harms way.
Nothing sparks ambitions like technology, and once it is set in motion, it's influence can not be retracted again.
We shall be the spark that ignites their ambition, and the cog that chokes them should they cross us."
the Vaastukaar or the Architects are a fraternal order of interlectuals who seem to be the first to learn how to extract the power from the Thranite. Their prowess in exploiting this material to create extraordinary technological leaps is unmatched.
Their primary bastion is the southern city of Geier Reach. Looking more like a academy than a city, they are the primary trade hub to the Sapphire shard and its secrets.
Her guild exerts their power through their monopoly on Thranifite production. As well as many of the technologies that are a biproduct of its invention. All the other guilds in Ghirapur need the Thranite to function.