Brotherhood of Foresters



The Brotherhood of Foresters is a fraternal organization, based mostly in Edury but operating worldwide, which draws its linage from guilds of foresters from medieval and early modern Edury. While there are many fraternal and social groups in Edury, the Foresters are notable for their avowed apolitical stance; most other such groups in Edury play both club and political party. This is largely believed to come from the days when guilds of foresters would swear to serve the people of a particular area, but not those who ruled it, due to the quickly changing fortunes in Eduran politics and the shortage of people with the skills to efficiently manage forests. Today, the Brotherhood has only ceremonial roles in managing forestry, especially since so many Eduran citizens do not live in heavily forested or rural areas.

Forestry (in terms of the fraternal organization) is organized into Lodges, where initiates are termed "Freemen," slightly more experienced members are called "Watchers" and are lead by Captains (or Past Captains.) These, of course, are meant to emulate the old ranks of the medieval guilds.

Lodge
A lodge is the basic unit of Forestry. A lodge typically owns a building, in which there will be a central meeting room for business, as well as a kitchen, other social rooms, and sometimes beds for visiting members. The members of a lodge will meet regularly, typically once or twice a week, to conduct the business of any small organization or committee; approving minutes, electing new members, approving budgets, et cetera. Lodges also meet regularly to perform rituals, ceremonies, or lectures related to Forestry. These ceremonies and rituals are usually pertaining to conferring of Ranks, or titles, within Forestry; the aforementioned Freemen, Watchers and Captains. Members are initiated as Freemen, raised to Watcher and appointed Captain; with each there is a proscribed ceremony to pass the obligations of each rank, as well as secret knowledge (typically signs or hand-signals, to distinguish members of each rank.)

One of the most important ceremonies that Lodges meet for is the appointment of a Captain. The Captain oversees the lodge, typically for a year, and has its own set secrets and handshakes. For this ceremony, typically hosted in January, the outgoing Captain invests his successor with the secrets pertaining to his lodge, and then becomes a Past Captain.

In addition to these ceremonies, most lodges often meet for social functions in which family relations and other non-Forester members of the public can meet openly. These are often tied to the duty of charity that is part of Forestry,

History
Any histories which claim that the Brotherhood is descended from the appointed forester of a bronze age king are agreed to be apocryphal in nature.

The Brotherhood is recognized to be descended from numerous organizations of old foresters in various regions in Edury. These groups would not typically act as lumberjacks, but would manage the forests to designate which trees were ready for harvest and which purposes, as well as maintaining roads and tracks through wooded areas, manage rivers and streams, and defend the people who lived in and around the forests from criminals and wild animals.

Due to the various skills required for these activities, and the long times it took to train people for this job, most forestry organizations in Edury swore only to manage the forests, not as part of any state, but as a separate organization. Due to the quickly changing regimens in the Eduran provinces and states, this vow was usually recognized by the powers-that-be, who would appoint their own lumberjacks to work with the foresters to harvest trees deemed ready to be felled. Due to the precious nature of wood, and the numerous uses of it, these foresters were held in high regard, and as such, usually required that prospective members be free commoners, rather than bonded serfs.

Through the 16th to the 19th centuries, these groups merged and gave up more and more of their actual duties as state-appointed arborists would manage the precious resource of lumber. It is unknown when the central Brotherhood started to take over from the individual guilds, but it happened sometime around the 18th century. Today, the Brotherhood is a purely fraternal organization, which sometimes takes up charitable causes or ceremonial forestry duties.

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