Not that I'm still in the middle of A Dance with Dragons....

[nancylebov]

....but do Assassins Guilds actually make any sense?

Especially if the guild seems to be a secret?

And wouldn't there be even more dead nobles and merchants if there are so many super-competent assassins?

Comments

[twistedchick]

Yes, depending on how they're organized and run. In CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series, they function as security guards/police/militia, with rules about who is allowed to order a hit on someone and why.

[geekosaur]

Something else that occurs to me is that, if you've a group of people who are savvy enough to have done multiple assassinations and seen the consequences, you may also have a group of people who can give advice as to when it's a good idea and when alternative solutions might have better long term effects. (This also, of course, enhances the assassins' lifespans in several ways.)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

No, yes, and yes. (You'd think any government that didn't control such a guild would make certain to wipe it out on first discovery.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The guild is
1) a religious order, devoted to worship of the god of death. Think "monks who brew beer out of religious obligation", but assassins.
2) extremely small. And actual Faceless Men are in short supply.
3) extremely expensive. Death pays for life, life pays for death. They're not exactly in it for the money, and they're not really all that *controllable*. This makes them hard to hire.[1]

The idea of "a guild of assassins" is still a little wacky, but in this case, I think it works.

[avram]

Think "monks who brew beer out of religious obligation", but assassins.

Wait, are they assassins instead of brewing beer, or in addition to?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Well, I meant "instead of", but "in addition to" is better, so that's the one I think more authors should go with.

[captain-button.livejournal.com]

Addition to. They also run a sort of hospice/suicide service.


Edit: There is at least one other assassin's guild. The Sorrowful Men, who always say, "I am so sorry" right before they kill you.

[avram]

Do they drink their beer out of the skulls of their victims? I hope so, because what's the point of being an assassin/brewer otherwise?

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

"in addition to"

"There's some amount of overlap." (http://lackadaisy.foxprints.com/comic.php?comicid=115)

Do they drink their beer out of the skulls of their victims?

There's a problem with that. (http://oglaf.com/skulls/) (That's one of the few SFW pages on that site.)

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

If you substitute "death cult" or "organized crime family" for "guild," not only does it make perfect sense, but it's the way such things were done as often as not in real history.

Yes, there are good reasons that assassins might bond together into a formal organization; training, mutual support, cartelizing the pay-for-death industry, the same reasons any other guild, union, crime family or other economic organization comes together.

And considering the extreme risks an assassin runs- potential loss of life at the hands of the state, death or injury by bodyguards, soldiers, or even the target, accidents, and rival assassins- any death cartel is going to put the price of death astronomically high- high enough that only the very rich and powerful will be able to afford their services, thus limiting the number of actual deaths.

A death cult, on the other hand, may do things for non-economic reasons, and thus the writer can get away with being much more loose with common sense with them.

[goodbyemyboy.livejournal.com]

If you substitute "death cult" or "organized crime family" for "guild,"

That's what I was thinking. Haven't read the books, but it seems like asking how an assassin's guild could exist without getting caught/wiping out the population is kind of like asking how the mafia can exist without getting caught/wiping out the population.

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

Ninjas were, essentially (though not technically), a guild of assassins were they not? Although they were also spies and saboteurs, which probably came in more often handy, and their existence (despite their tactics) was probably common knowledge.

Where there exists an honor code and rule of law for nobility, there will also be a market for nobles being able to plausibly deny they had anything to do with their enemy being discovered one morning inside their locked and guarded bedroom, missing a head on their pillow.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Ninjas weren't one unified guild; they were a lot of groups, usually families or clans, who could sometimes clash as bodyguards or assassins, either way.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I believe it was a John Barnes novel, perhaps THE UNHANDSOME PRINCE, which had Thieves' Guilds that were actually run by the Crown. If you went into a Thieves' Guild, the burly guardsmen inside would give you a sound beating, and explain that you were too stupid to be a criminal, so Go And Sin No More.

[henrytroup.livejournal.com]

There were real world thugs, religious murderers. They're all dead now. The neighbors (with some help) eventually decided to put a stop to them.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Goodbyemyboy has it right: The Mafia *are* a real assassins guild. They do other things too, but there is definitely a guild of murderers within the larger group.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The thing I'm trying to get at (and failed to mention in the first post) is that an assassin's guild which is fully for hire (not controlled by a territory-claiming organization) seems unlikely.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

That, I can definitely agree with. I definitely can't see there being an all-encompassing Assassins' Guild in a locale independent of some larger purpose--though I could see small groups of, essentially, "private security" forces that hire on to various organizations.