Mercenary Companies

Mercenary companies are groups of fighters that operate under a common banner, fighting for whomever pays them, and under a combination of contractual law and the Mercenary Code.

Mercenary Bond Council

The Bond Council is a collection of ex-mercenaries who sit in council, overseeing contractual disputes between mercenary companies and the nobility that hire them. They offer certification of a company's trustworthiness, often visiting the company unannounced to ascertain the company's current fighting strength, organization, and discipline, and also periodically visit a mercenary employer (noble or otherwise) to determine the fiscal strength and liquidity of the employer, so as to be able to best determine the guilt or innocence when an inevitable dispute arises.

Despite the rife potential for corruption or outright politicization, the Bond Council has remained remarkably neutral and even-handed, and is as likely to rule against the mercenaries as they are the employers that hire them. As a result, the Council's Bond guarantees have a high degree of faith behind them, and both employers and employed have every solid reason to remain faithful to the contracts negotiated.

For those employers who seek to abrogate their contractual boundaries, the Bond Council can declare them "masked", meaning no contract will be countersigned by the Bond Council (and thus no mercenary company worth trusting will offer their services to that employer). This signficantly reduces the ability of nobles to carry out their own local missions of force, and the few times that a noble has risked being "masked", they have often found themselves at the mercy of mercenary forces hired against them.

Similarly, mercenary companies who seek to break faith with their contracts can find themselves "marked", meaning the Bond Council will not countersign on their behalf either, leaving the mercenary company at the mercy of anyone around them--the Code is considered to no longer apply to them. Employers' requirements to fulfill contractual obligations are now obliged only by their own moral code, and any mercenary companies nearby are under no restrictions when operating against them. Most companies, when "marked", will find themselves dissolved shortly thereafter, as prudent mercenaries suddenly find they have pressing business elsewhere--particularly since it's highly likely the mercenary leadership that allowed its company to be "marked" felt it wasn't under any obligation to pay its ranks anymore, either.

Dispute

The process of Dispute is a formal and rigorous one, and not taken lightly.