Onderberg

Nicknames: "Rat City"; "Scrapheap"; "Wyrm's Eye"

Anthem: Powerhouse by Raymond Scott

Like an inverted mountain sunk into the earth. Like some conical chasm carved by a plummeting angel vented from the heavens. Like the bowels of Dis.

This abysmal city acts as the genius loci for each local guild town and outpost. It is the center of gravity around which swirls every verminous member, like planetary bodies in an orbit around the central star.

Oldest of the guild cities, the foundation stone for the Vermin Guild was laid within its bedrock. Here is the site of the Rattestag Building, where the Council of Wyrms convenes, and thus designating the capitol of the Wyrm Concord. This status, "Seat of Wyrms," has been held elsewhere throughout the long history of the concordat - most notably, the non-guild city of Wurst, the ancient rival of Onderberg for supremacy in the Low Countries. Prior to the rise of the Vermin Guild, the city of Wurst was the main power of the Low Countries, and remains, still, a cultural capitol for the region.

Mierenneuken

Nicknames: "Ziggurat'; "Tube Town"

The next eldest of the guild cities, and second only to Onderberg in terms of importance. Not known for its rich culture, nor for any sort of Machiavellian political maneuvering, nor even a strong military, this city derives its status through its bureaucracy. It's culture is one of administration. Its politics runs through a well-oiled machine. And the standard uniform of its military includes regulation horn-rimmed eyeglasses, stopwatch, and pocket protector.

Functionally, the city acts as the administrative capitol for the entirety of the Wyrm Concord, not just the guild network of the vermin. Official communications, fiscal management, infrastructure maintenance, records keeping, logistical work - all of this civil service and public administrative work will eventually pass through the beige ziggurat of its central metropolis. The layout of Mierenneuken resembles a multi-layered, poly-focal labyrinth, with endlessly-winding avenues, flanked by looming, grey-faced edifices, all of which creates the sensation of moving through civic arteries and municipal circuitry for those within.

Famous for its system of pneumatic tubes and tunnels. All day and night, communiques and parcels whoosh about this clockwork ziggurat of a city, moving through the networked jungle of pipes and chutes with ease and efficience. It also boasts the Zug - an interconnected web of vacuum tubes and traction lines and funiculars that crisscross and climb through the entire city, at every level, rushing passengers along its length at staggering speeds. Said by many to travel faster than a rumor.

Middenmoot

Nickname: "Midden"

Something of a depot for all of the excess scavenged goods and filthy lucre. That which is not consumed is brought here.

The name derives from the term "midden" which can refer to many different haphazard piles and mounds, but especially refuse heaps and dungheaps. Used to refer to anything that is a mess, a muddle, or chaos. Pack rats construct burrows called "middens" out of gathered vegetation and other assembled detritus and flotsam, the resulting den being in use for generations.

The name is likely also a mocking reference to the Imperial capitol, Middenheim - crowning jewel of the Empire-above. Middenmoot, meanwhile, squats beneath this imperial jewel, lurking and skittering through its waste. That city-above once excavated a vast network of catacombs, built in the early days of the Empire, but subsequently abandoned due to flooding and disease. These tunnels were moved into and colonized by the vermin, and over the years they would be extended, expanded, and reinforced until a truly ponderous underground complex existed, unseen, beneath that crown jewel of the Empire.

Oolsupp

Nickname: "Low Country Junction"

The most catholic of the guild cities. The settlement is located at the crossroads of the Wyrm Concord, functioning as a convergence point for the various tributaries of the vermin estates, all of which stream into this central city. A real melting pot for the concordat.

Situated along the frontier of the core rodent lands - the sphere of influence dominated by the guild rats, adjacent mouse territories, the vole and squirrel tribes, and those localized free rabbit warrens and maritime merchant dams. There was gathered, over the generations, a populace drawn from every territory that is sheltered beneath the Banner of the Wyrm.

Walking the streets of this cosmopolitan metropolis, one will likely encounter individuals of all stripes. Crow and gull bankers, from their respective avian financial houses, passing by cassocked friars from the eastern orders of gerbil. Tribal weasels set up stalls in a market bustling with the street cries of possum hawkers and singers, as well as the plaintive haggling of pigeons, while springhare couriers weave in and out of the traffic. Packs of coyote pass by road-weary Cavy gauchos, their business watched by members of the bandicoot guard.

Cagoterie

Nickname: "Molehill"

The guild city which is nearest the surface world. Constructed proximate a significant population of mole people who reside beneath a major metropolitan center for the Empire-above. This discriminated caste of rejected humanity left the world of disdain, above, and fled into the underground world of catacombs and sewers and access tunnels and train lines which stretched out below. When the Vermin Guild reached out to this group, a close working relationship soon developed.

Due to their nominal resemblance to those within the above world of man, these mole people are able to move much more freely in their public spaces, though it requires some special practice in grooming and manner. The Vermin Guild learns much from these people.

Hlose

Nicknames: "Sty"; "Bowery"

The "breadbasket" of the concordat. This city was built beneath the agricultural heartland of the Empire-above. This outpost served multiple purposes. First and foremost, there is the massive potential for scavenging foodstuffs. A bounty of grains, legumes, tubers, roots, and animal products sits above, just waiting to be pilfered. Thus did the city develop into something like a warehouse district, for the housing of the provisions, as well as an export center for the distribution of those goods across the concordat.

A secondary purpose for the city is the potential for the spread of disease. The density of animal and human quarters can be a petri dish for mixing up new microbial cocktails, and the resulting pestilence finds ready hosts for spreading. This is a major vector point for the experiments that are conducted at Cheopis.

Cheopis Caravanserai

Nickname: "Gypsy Rats"

More of a wandering tribe or perpetual procession than a permanent settlement. A nomadic clan of alchemists, inventors, and philosophers who migrate through the concordat setting up temporary tent cities and launching wild experiments and madcap expeditions into the Empire-above.

Their institution also serves as the mobile-center of research and innovation for the guild. Their caravan transports the renown Library of Microbiology, with its extensive genetics archive taking up dozens of wagons. They also run a transient school out of the caravan, known as the Institute for Disease Transmission, with students and researchers, alike, flocking from across the concordat to sit at the feet of their wagon-scholars. Thus does it also function as a vector of dissemination and promulgation.

Snaga

Nickname: "The Mount"

This city sits below the site of one of the largest slave revolts in Imperial history. On the frontier of that above-ground Empire, great amounts of slaves were harvested from foreign conquests, and these would be shipped to one of a number of border towns. These settlements always boasted stockades encircling the military barracks and slave quarters, where captives were interred until eventual conscription or export to market.

This particular frontier town happened to be near a cave system that was used as sanctuary by the escaped slaves following their revolt. Deeper and deeper they fled, until the tunnels opened into a great, yawning chasm within the bowels of the earth. Here was a verdant grotto, with a flowing freshwater spring fed by underground aquifer, and a garden of mosses, liverworts, fungi, and ferns. There was also a lively encampment of other outcasts, outlaws and vagabonds, of every conceivable race and breed. Though dwarfed by scores of newly-arrived fugitives, this community took them in and a real settlement would begin to grow. It was only a matter of time until they encountered the Vermin Guild.

Misthaufen

Nickname: "Lantern Marsh"

Situated beneath the sprawling swamplands and quagmires of the Empire-above. Those swamps exist as something of a retention basin and cesspit for an especially urbanized portion of their realm, with a number of imperial engineering projects having been initiated in order to reverse and reroute waterways so that they flowed into this diseased estuary. And Misthaufen acts as something of a leach field for this basin of waste and bog.

As this miasma of filth burgeoned with the growth of the empire, the entire region developed into a no-man's land, even a place of taboo, where no Imperial citizens dared go. In this capacity, it was adopted by the vermin as a major outpost, itself developing into a great metropolis in the absence of any threat and in the face of a bounty of filth. Perhaps the only place within the Wyrm Concord that has a permanent above-ground presence, as there is little need for remaining underground when the entire region was forsaken, characterized primarily by neglect and contamination.

Swamp gasses pervade the entire region. With such quantities of decaying organic matter present, there are frequent occurrences of spontaneous ignition as they react with the volatile air around it. Thus, ephemeral fires seem to dance throughout this rancid bayou. The rats of Misthaufen have learned to artfully capture these gasses with a system of capsules and pipelines which run through the swamp and into the city itself. This rotting natural gas powers the urban center of Misthaufen and its sprawling industrial fields around it. Much is fabricated within the factories of Misthaufen which time and space do not allow for the delineation of here.

Gehazi Enclave

Nickname: "The Enclave"

More of a refugee colony than a city. First settled during a humanitarian crisis on the surface world, during a time when pestilence and plague swept the land like the winds, instigating an era of extreme turmoil for the region - with paranoia, panic, and xenophobia boring themselves into the populace, leading to mass banishments and widespread pogroms. Many of these stigmatic exiles and unwanted castoffs washed up on the shores of the Wyrm Concord, their camps eventually coalescing into a semi-permanent settlement that was embraced by the Vermin Guild and brought into their fold.

Referred to colloquially as burrows, these cognate outposts and contacts of the Vermin Guild exist within the concordat, generally, while yet remaining outside of the official guild structure. Often, these are secondary or tertiary groups within one of the concord states, who have risen to some degree of prominence but whose official capacity remains outside of the regime. Other times, certain quasi-independent nations or sovereign tribes have been courted by the Guild directly, as official channels within the Concordat are found wanting.

A designation of a cognate burrows may represent any number of operational types, from a small concession in a city's foreign quarter, to just an office within a governmental complex, or even an agent designated to act as point of contact for the guild. This system is crucial for maintaining relationships inside of the greater Wyrm Concord within which the guild operates.

This list of states, dynasties, and other polities represent the signatories to the Vermin Accords, those portions of the Low Countries which were admitted into the overall membership of the Concordat of Wyrms. This concordat represents the overarching political structure within which the Vermin Guild operates.

The 1152 Charter of Wyrm Estates

• Mossflower Wood

  

• Thorn Valley

• Kingdom of Sable

• Diocese of the Horned Rat

• Allied Vole Tribes

• Kingdom of Acorn

• Dapper House of Gloucester

• Algernon Institute

• Kingdom of Lankhmar

• Order of St. Gerbil

• Undersea New York Rat Network

• Displaced Hamelin Migrants

• Treaty of the Prisoner's Aid Society

• House of Stahlbaum

• Beutelratte Wanderbühne

• Castor Maritime Republics

• Deptford Underground

• The Order of the Patagonian House of San Cavy

• Polecat Perfumer's Guild

• Kanga Rat Murder Society

• Alliance of Island Treeshrews

• Personal Union of Leon and Maus