10.9 Stablehands and specialist care for steeds.

You may have noticed, particulalry in your travels through the streets of your home city, a stablehand touting for trade - often in a public square or main throughfare, though occasionally retired indoors if dangers or inclement weather threatens his pitch. The stablehands are not merely colourful local characters, useful for a riproaring yarn at the tavern but otherwise lackadasical, inconsequential members of the citizenry. They hold a secret known only to the stablemasters guild, a guild unlike others in that it is open only to a small clique of families whose knowledge is passed down, generation to generation; never do their ways become commonly known, nor are initiates invited to join from outside their ranks. The stablehand guild membership spans the continent, interconnected yet loyal - otherwise - solely to their homeland.

The service of most interest to their fellow citizens are the guild's world-renowned stabling and steedcare facilities. These are inaccessible to non guildmembes but you may pay gold for your own steed to benefit from safe housing or peerless vetenarians. Find a stablehand and type: STABLE followed by the precise mount you wish to send on its way to the guild's mysterious sanctuary. Should you wish to be reunited, type FETCH followed by your steed and it will be brought back into the stablehand's care and then passed back to you. No-one knows the whereabouts of the secret housings used by the guild for the mounts entrusted to their care are whisked away without opportunity to follow-on. The guild is rightly proud of its tradition and its most commonly heard boast: that never, in all of its four century history, has it lost or led to injury a single one of the millions left in its hands.