History

"The best secret to reveal
is the secret behind a lady's veil,
the most deadly,
is that of an Illuminator's spark."
Saying in Tanchico, Tarabon

While the beginnings of the art of Illumination, the creation of fireworks – to develop them so that they are safe to store and to transport, and so that they give an effective and pleasing design – stems back to some time before the War of the Hundred Years, there was no formal organisation to the practice given until the foundation of The Guild.

Serving in part as quality assurance and in part as a cartel, The Guild of Illuminators was formed by a small consortium of the most proficient Illumination artists with the express concerns to share their discoveries, set standards for safety, and to monopolise the industry. The Guild made all work to do with fireworks trade secrets – secrets that The Guild would defend with an almost cult-like aggression.

The Guild established Chapter Houses – factories to control firework manufacture and to supervise trainee Illuminators. The course taken to become an Illuminator apprentice was riddled with psychological ploys and discipline in order to root out any potential thieves of The Guild's secrets and to install into the new applicants a feeling of utter loyalty.

The long initiation process was sometimes compared to that the Novices undergo at the White Tower, in that the apprentices were led almost blindly through small tasks and heavy punishments before even beginning to study anything other than safety theory. The majority of Illuminators are born into The Guild, although it is not particularly rare for an outsider to be initiated.

While it could take years to establish oneself as a full Illuminator, it was not unknown for new Illuminators still to be willing to flee the establishment with what secrets they could obtain. There was only ever one punishment: the run-away would be lucky to get two days away from a Chapter House before The Guild had issued orders for their immediate execution.

Further evidence in how closely the secrets were guarded could be found in the sourcing of materials. Non-essential supplies were ordered with raw materials for the fireworks, sometimes under the name of The Guild, other times under the names of dummy companies or private persons. The Guild accounts were known to few – but money was always available for financing The Guild's activities, from wherever it was sourced.

It was perhaps The Guild's utter complacency in running multinational monopoly on firework displays that was responsible for their eventual demise. After the Chapter House in Cairhien was destroyed because a large storage of fireworks was prematurely ignited, the Mistress of the Chapter House was dismissed and all operations moved to the first Chapter House, in Tanchico. However, when a division of the Seanchan invading army demanded access to the facility, The Guild upheld their policy of secrecy in the face of the foreign armed forces and denied them it. During the ensuing battle, the Chapter House's fireworks and raw materials were set off accidentally, and the resulting explosion, which decimated the buildings and killed numerous Seanchan and Illuminators, leading the Seanchan to believe that some or all of The Guild's members were, or were involved with, marath'damane.

The surviving Illuminators had little choice but to flee, or to be arrested by the Seanchan and engaged as da'covale. Some time after the destruction of the Chapter House in Tanchico, attempts were made by individual Illuminators to find each other, with the hope of regrouping The Guild and establishing a new, third Chapter House, far from the Seanchan and their vendetta against the Illuminators.

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