Initially, it was a group of merchants huddling together, forming a trade association. Now, it has developed into a cross-regional alliance integrating assassins, spies, merchants, and armies, effectively controlling areas, even above conventional nations like the Tesser Kingdom.
No one was willing, nor dared, to easily provoke such a trade association, including the warlord nobles present here.
The methods these trade associations use to deal with their territories are more than imaginable.
Poisoning, assassinations, spreading plagues, buying high and selling low, inflating commodity prices, cutting off trade routes, etc.
Anyway, their territories are inanimate and cannot be moved.
Conversely, it's hard to uproot those merchant organizations because often, you may not even fully know their members, and there might be someone in your vicinity who is one of them.
