The Road Guild began in the Year of Split Hooves, when a chain of droughts, bandit raids, and collapsed bridges nearly severed Aethering into hungry city-islands. A coalition of wagonmasters, well-scribes, bridge masons, and debt-priests gathered at the broken crossing of Halcyon Ford after a caravan carrying grain for three starving districts was ambushed and left to rot. Rather than let the roads remain a battlefield, they drafted the First Route Compact: every maintained road would be logged, every well measured, every convoy taxed, and every guard paid from the same central purse. The early years were almost noble. The Guild cleared ruins, rebuilt mile-stones, and created neutral caravan bells that bandits learned to fear. Their biggest triumph came during the Glass Winter, when they kept the capital supplied while rival houses hoarded their own stores and collapsed in scandal. Their watershed moment came thirty-one years later, in the Salt Rebellion, when a young Guild councilor ordered six frontier wells sealed to force surrender from a town that had refused toll payments. The town submitted, but the image of children queueing behind guarded casks became the Guild's shadow forever. From that day on, the organization ceased being merely a road service and became a power that believed order was worth almost any price.